Category: Across the Rift

229-1103 – Sturgeon’s Law-VI Gas Giant

Following the destruction of the Neubayern scout ship, the Travellers scooped and purified fuel to fill their free space (enough for three jumps, if needed) and then jumped to deep space, on their way to Elysee. To mitigate the stressful effects of the long and dangerous journey through deep space, a series of movie nights were organised by the crew.

244-1103 – Elysee High Orbit

On emerging from jump space, the Perfect Stranger – wary of another attempted ambush – immediately used her powerful, active sensor suite to check for other, nearby ships. Only one was detected – a ship burning in towards the planet – but upon spotting their emergence jump flash, Elysee Orbital Control contacted the Travellers with an urgent message. The other ship that they had seen had failed to respond to hails and was currently on a course to hit the only city on Elysee, where almost all of the planet’s eight hundred thousand inhabitants lived. No other ship was near enough to intercept in time: could the party please do so?

Deckplans of the ship – a local Prospecter-class mining ship – were requested by the party, and were quickly provided. In the meantime, Travis plotted an intercept course, which Zhana executed. Rosa’s knowledge of naval tactics allowed her to spot a predictable pattern in the manuevring of the target ship, the Dagger.

As they approached, the Dagger fired upon the Perfect Stranger, and only the work of Travis and Ferrik on sandcasters prevented the hit from landing. To avoid a recurrence, Zhana used the pattern of the ship’s automated manuevring and the placement of her turret to approach the Dagger from beneath, in her blind spot. She then used the Dagger’s docking clamps to effect a forced docking with the target ship, hearing the clamps lock in place. The two ships were now locked together: their thrusters just balancing each other so that the course remained steadily aimed at the city ahead.

Boarding the ship, the Travellers found that the bridge had been stripped and that all computer access had been torn out, leaving dangling cable ends. Only dim, red, emergency lighting was still working in the ship, and even that seemed to be failing.

Proceeding aft, they were ambushed by a crude, automated laser system that guarded the access corridor to the rear of the ship. Knowing that he only had limited time before the two ships crashed into the planet, Travis trusted to his armour and ran down the corridor into the teeth of the laser bolts. This proved effective as an ineffective series of hits just failed to penetrate his armoured vacc suit, and he shot the turret at point blank range with his laser rifle.

Checking the galley and cabins off the corridor, the Travellers found bloodstains and bullet holes in one of the mattresses: someone had been shot while still in bed, suggesting an ambush or a traitor aboard the ship. Zhana collected samples and a spent bullet, using a container from the galley to hold the evidence.

The ship was groaning and creaking around the Travellers as its engines contested with those of the Perfect Stranger, all of the huge forces competing within the docking clamps.

The engineering bay felt like a carcass, bathed in the harsh, arterial red of the surviving emergency lighting-strips. Where the heart of the ship should have been, there were stripped bulkheads, with the jump drives disabled. Bundles of severed fiber-optics and cabling dangled from the ceiling grates, swaying slightly in the weak, failing air currents. It stank of ozone.

Between the gutted, skeletal husks of the port and starboard drives sat a brutal, matte-grey cylinder. It was anchored directly to the primary deck plates with heavy-duty, shear-resistant mag-bolts. Thick, braided power cables snaked from its base, leeching the last power from the ship’s plant into its dense housing.

It bore no manufacturer’s stamp, no serial numbers, and no obvious control interface. Just a thick cage of cooling fins, an over-engineered, tamper-proof outer casing, and a single, recessed panel blinking with a slow, rhythmic amber pulse. It didn’t look like a conventional weapon or a standard missile payload, but its sheer, lead-lined mass and the cold, terrifying precision of its assembly radiate a silent, undeniable hostility.

Zhana had seen one of these before, and knew that within it was a spherical high-explosive implosion array. At the dead center of the mass sits a sub-critical core of weapon-grade fissile material, tightly wrapped in a neutron-reflector lattice.

When the initiator triggered, the conventional explosives would compress the core, creating a localized nuclear yield. That primary blast is designed to flash-ignite the raw fuel still sitting in the drive lines in a cascaded, radiological ain reaction, acting as a dirty nuke. It was rigged not just to vaporize this engineering section, but to turn the entire aft half of the starship into a multi-megaton fusion shotgun, and with no atmosphere on Elysee, it would irradiate anything within a thousand miles.

This meant that the party had even less time than they thought: the ship didn’t even need to reach the city to destroy it. Zhana and Rosa, working together, started to try to hack into the control systems, but that would take a long time and they were clearly hardened against intrusion. Then, Ferrik and Travis started working on how to sabotage the weapon by setting off its anti-tamper protection, and considered sacrificing one of the crew droids to do so.

When Anson asked why they were trying to avoid setting off the liquid hydrogen fuel, the party decided to attempt to trigger the weapon’s anti-tamper devices from a safer distance, and retreated to their ship, aware that they now had only twenty minutes until the ship was in range of the target. By the time that Travis, using his mag boots to EVA to the docking clamps, had released the Perfect Stranger, they had only eight minutes left: a single round of combat.

Moving to less than a hundred kilometres away, the gunners on the Perfect Stranger used the four turrets of the ship to make called shots on the loaded fuel tanks. Rosa managed to pierce them, but only just. Travis, similarly, landed a hit on the fuel tanks, butt only managed to increase the leak rate.

Then, with time almost run out, and the lives of hundreds of thousands hanging in the balance, Ferrik landed a perfect shot into the hole punctured by the previous shot, igniting the fuel as it mixed with the ship’s atmosphere and destroying the fuel tanks, causing the device to immediately explode. The radiation shielding on the ship protected the crew, while the automated sensors shut down the view just in time to save the eyesight of those staring at the target ship, as engineering section of the Dagger became a devastatingly radioactive, miniature sun.

244-1103 – Elysee Downport

Arriving at Elysee, the crew were lauded as heroes. Keen to keep a low profile and avoid Neubayern attention, they declined a formal reception and media interviews, but were able to gain excellent deals on their cargo, and to buy more at suspiciously favourable prices, while the tiny, naval dockyard at Elysee fixed the laser fire from the fight with the Neubayerners free of charge.

Now the next decision for the party was whether to jump to Besancon planet, or whether to plot a more direct course to Herzenslust, where they hoped to find the elusive Drop Point Hotel.

186-1103 Colchis

Having made the rendezvous with the Sternmetal extraction team for the bodies and equipment recovered from the sunken ship “Mary Lou”, the travellers returned in the Painted Lady to harbour and attempted to sell their craft back to Kaspar the boat merchant. He, however seemed to have taken a more jaundiced view of the ship: she was old; her engine was ruined; the party had made personalised improvements which another buyer might wish to remove…

Eventually, by throwing in some expenses fraud and a free night on the boat, Kaspar agreed to pay the party most of what they spent on the old ship in the first place.

The extra night accommodation was needed since the starport was closed, allegedly due to “terrorist incursions”, although Kaspar suggested that there may just be a cashflow shortage or a desire to save on operating expenses on the part of the government. So the party settled down for another night in the garish but dated interior of the pleasure cruiser following a shopping trip into town to buy fridge magnets and other tourist memorabilia. In a bar, they met an elderly woman – Captain Hannelore Vane – who had, decades before, made her fortune in the early rush of trading with the Imperium.

At around 3am, however, three of the occupants were awakened by the sound of activity outside the boat: Rosa heard a low “clunk” of something being attached to the other side of the hull next to her cabin, while Travis and Ferrik each heard whispering and low voices. Rousing their companions, the Travellers rushed out onto the rear deck, where they encountered a frogman in a wetsuit who narrowly missed Rosa’s head with a speargun. Rosa, armed only with a kitchen knife and aware that she was not supposed to be an Imperium secret agent, started screaming loudly for help.

Ferrik started grappling another frogman who had just climbed over the side of the boat, adopting a catch-and-return policy to throw him back in, while Ferrik attempted to restrain another frogman, for’ard, eventually getting the better of him with help from Zhana and hurling him, injured, overboard, while Ferrik grappled with the first frogman until Anson crowned them with a heavy wrench, fracturing their skull.

While this was going on, the frogman thrown off the boat had decided that he would live to frogman another day and was swimming back to the boat the attackers had paddled into shore on. Unfortunately for him, the naval base next door – the intended target of the raid until nighttime and poor navigation came into play – had a sentry tower armed with a searchlight and a .50 calibre machinegun. He was quickly spotted and the searchlight ensured that the devastating effects of .50 calibre fire (fist-sized exit wounds and fountains of red water) were on display for all to see, followed quickly by the dispatch of the second frogman to be thrown back into the water.

The third was pinned-down and, despite a massive concussion and fading consciousness, he became confused and frantic as he plead with the party to question him in prison; or on the docks; or anywhere without a limpet mine attached to it. The party remembered that element in time to withdraw to a safe distance while the naval marines who arrived bravely threw out a very wide perimeter and watched the destruction of poor Kaspar’s property. Anson was approached at one point to remove the mine, but refused: not on the grounds that it would be dangerous, but because she hated water and had had enough of the risk of drowning.

196-1103 Deep Space

The Perfect Stranger could only make 1 parsec jumps, so a deep-space midpoint was needed on her way to New Home.

During the trip, the warmth of the air conditioning caused hundreds of spiders to hatch from the luggage of one of the passengers: Magda Cress, who had managed to gouge a shipment of Colchis Silk-Spider eggs from a desperate village. Now, they had awoken and were trying to make their way throughout the cabin, into the aircon system and out into the corridor. Sealing up the luggage with duct-tape, Zhana (in her thankless new role of steward) then vented the atmosphere in the cabin to vacuum and set the climate controls to -80C to get rid of the remainder. Having cleaned up the carcasses, Rosa’s suggestion was that the irate Magda be given the hoover bag.

Another passenger wished to complain – at length – at how the supposedly eco-tourist heaven of Colchis had in fact been a warzone. This was a fact that he had felt should have been more prominently stated by the travel company. He had not enjoyed the fact that the fireworks display on the last night had, in fact, been floodlights and tracer fire from Colchisian ships hunting frogmen. Nor was the cancellation of the Colchis Crested Newt safar (on the grounds that their habitat was now in the middle of a dense minefield) at all satisfactory. He demanded a discount on his flight; an upgrade; an audience with the authorities and more.

204-1103 New Home

After a two-jump voyage, the Perfect Stranger arrived at New Home starport. New Home was the original system colonised by the slower-than-light ships that arrived from Terra over a thousand years before: it was the Old Money of the Islands cluster: technologically advanced, rich and possessed of a very high self-opinion.

The crew of the Perfect Stranger were detained after customs due to “Class 3 Organic Particulates” on their clothing: remaining mildew from the Painted Lady.

On visiting the faux-industrial Isotopes Bar, the party were verbally harassed by a group of ultra-rich university students: the Golden Youth of New Home. The fashion of the time on New Home was to wear high-end, haute-couture versions of working cloths: boiler suits or vacc suits, and this group was amused by – and scornful of – the worn outfits of the genuine spacers before them. Despite considerable provocation, the Travellers declined to get drawn into a fight. Not for want of trying on my part.

Importantly, the Travellers chose to spend 300KCr of their trading profits on two crew droids with their advocate software replaced by Gunnery (Turret). They could now man (for a certain value of “man”) all four turrets on the Perfect Stranger.

216-1103 Deep Space

Having loaded up on freight, passengers and as much speculative cargo as their limited funds would allow them to buy, the party headed for the environmentally-challenging hellworld of Sturgeon’s Law. This again required a deep-space midpoint and the stress on the crew and passengers of these repeated, prolonged and dangerous journeys through deep space began to tell, with aggression, arguments and complaining frequent.

One passenger, Linnet Scoville, who was travelling to the ethically-relaxed world of Sturgeon’s Law for medical treatment for her “vital energy disability”, complained that the grav-fields of the ship were oscillating at a frequency that disturbed her chakras. She harassed Dr Bilal for second, third and even fourth opinions on her “condition”, and enquired of Anson whether the radiation from the ship’s manuevre drive was organically-certified, being assured by the bluff Belter that it was entirely free range.

224-1103 Sturgeon’s Law Orbital Space

On arriving at Sturgeon’s Law, the Perfect Stranger was hailed by the Starport, with the conversation going much like the following:

“Imperium-Registered ship Perfect Stranger switch to channel Whisky-Nine=Three.

Imperium-Registered ship Perfect Stranger is this your captain?

Imperium-Registered ship Perfect Stranger you are informed that you are denied clearance to land at Sturgeon’s Law starport. I repeat you are denied docking permission.

An injunction has been granted against you in Neubayern Hight Court for contravention of safety standards. Under the terms of the Sturgeon-Neubayern Trade Facilitation Treaty this injunction has force for a period of three months pending a full hearing for damages. Should you wish to challenge this you must inform the court of your intention to appeal, giving two weeks’ notice to the plaintiffs.”

The party were able to negotiate a shuttle to offload their passengers and chartered freight, then made their way to the only gas giant in the system to refuel. The journey took three days in the slow subsidised-freighter, and the crew were confident that this was a trap by Neubayern to force them away from the starport and out to a known and remote point for an ambush. Accordingly, they manned the TL15 sensor suite provided as part of the Perfect Stranger’s role as an intel-gathering ship.

Sure enough, they detected a stealthed Neubayern scout ship lurking in the upper edges of the atmosphere of the Sturgeon-V gas giant. They were able to do so on passive sensors, while the Neubayern ship approached them at a closing rate of 3G. They were sure that the civilian sensors of a Type-R “Subbie” could never spot them: their briefing had been based on data from a group of non-starfaring agents on Acadie, who had searched the Perfect Stranger on Acadie but had failed to understand what the TL15 machinery so far in advance of their own, TL12 technology was even intended to do.

The crew of the Perfect Stranger waited until the Neubayern ship was within range of their extended-range beam lasers and opened fire with a devastating fusillade with both the normal and the concealed turrets, surprising the stalking ship. Three out of the four attacks connected, and all three landed critical hits, with the damage accumulating so quickly that the hull of the Neubayern ship was critically damaged as well. The attacker’s maneuvre drive was devastated, reduced to only 1G and handling horribly, while a crew member was injured on the bridge and the jump drive took heavy damage.

The ambushing ship – itself now surprised, attacked the Perfect Stranger, her pulse lasers lancing across her prey’s hull, and doing further critical damage due to her lack of armour. Rather optimistically, her captain hailed the Perfect Stranger and demanded her surrender, only to be met with a further broadside which landed another lucky hit on her M-Drives. The Travellers watched with grim satisfaction as the Neubayern scout plummeted into the gas giant’s abyssal depths, pleading for rescue.

182-1103 – Colchis Surface

The Perfect Stranger landed at Colchis Lowport, on the shores of Lake Yokohama, with a day to spare before their supply drop would be made. They had brought some equipment that seemed appropriate for a group of holidaymakers, but their weapons, sonar and the like would be arriving the next day.

The Customs Hall

The group had, however, decided to wear layered cloth and body armour, which inevitably made them stand out in a civilian starport – even one on the edge of a rebellious province. On attempting to pass through customs – located in a sweltering concrete box with broken fans – they encountered Officer Guntram: overweight, sweating through a khaki uniform that was two sizes too small, and with a stamp that he wielded like a judge’s gavel.

He moved with agonizing slowness. He picked up every piece of the Travellers’ luggage, inspected it, smelled it, and then sighed deeply each time.

“Your armour,” he said, tapping a finger on the table. “It is not on the approved import list for Class 4 civilian goods. It requires a formidable amount of paperwork. Form 88-B. It could take weeks to process.” He cleaned his fingernails with a matchstick. “Unless, of course, you wish to pay the ‘Expedited Processing Tariff’ strictly in cash. For the… administrative overtime.”

The bribe was paid. Anson muttered on the way out: “I’ve seen rock crushers with more subtlety than that crook.”

Doing Their Bit

As the Travellers left the starport and headed for the station, they were blocked by a cheerful, immaculately dressed government official flanked by a floating media drone. He insisted that before they could depart, they had to participate in the “Daily Plebiscite.”

Cautiously, the party agreed, and were asked: “Should the Starport atrium lighting be changed from ‘Soft Morning Peach’ to ‘Industrial Cool White’?” To which their response was firmly in favour of retaining the current lighting. The second question – “Should the tax on imported off-world cheese be raised by 0.04%?” – saw them come out equally strongly in favour of the status quo.

The official beamed, handed them a “I Did My Duty” sticker, and the Colchis bureaucracy ignored the result anyway, since the Colchis government uses constant polling to make the population feel involved while ignoring the results.

New Okayama

The city of New Okayama, once a flourishing tourist destination, had not flourished on the edges of a long-running civil war. There were posters proclaiming the medical aid provided by Amondiage, with posyters showing Amondiage doctors vaccinating Colchis babies. And, from the train, the party saw a housing estate being cleaned up methodically and to a high standard by smart, happy, uniformed teenagers. A banner at the estate entrance proclaims them to be the Neubayernjugend: a youth organisation based on Neubayern itself.

But on emerging from the train station, the sense of decay everywhere around them was obvious. The party hired a taxi after Taz Orsel, its driver, approached them when they emerged from the station. Luckily, he knew the perfect hotel, which his cousin ran: the Marina Grand. He would take them there at once!

Luckily, the Marina Grand was less derelict than most of its neighbours, and Taz was hired for the rest of the day by way, so he waited outside until they emerged for food. Blessed good fortune: his uncle ran a superb restaurant! So they went to Dudie’s for kebabs, where the walls were lined with photographs of the owners with people of local fame on Colchis. On discovering that Dr Bilal had twice won prestigious Imperium awards for scientific achievement, and had published several books, Dudie insisted on having his picture taken by a waiter wielding an ancient film camera with a flash that could signal nearby spaceships.

Yacht Party

Next, the party needed to find a boat. Against all the odds, Taz had another cousin who might have just the thing for them… So he took them to a dilapidated marina on the edge of New Okayama, where the water smelled of diesel and rotting vegetation. The sign above the office read “Luxury Lake Tours – Closed for Season.”

Kaspar Vane, the owner seemed to be melting in the heat, dressed in a linen suit that was white ten years ago and was now the colour of old parchment. He constantly wiped his neck with a handkerchief and sipped a drink that looks like motor oil.

“Gentlemen, Ladies! I understand you wish to enjoy the scenic vistas of our beautiful lake. A fishing trip, perhaps? You are in luck. The war has been terrible for tourism, which means it is excellent for the buyer. I have the crown jewel of the fleet available.”

He leads them past several half-sunken wrecks to the end of a creaking pier to see “The Painted Lady”, a 40-foot fiberglass pleasure cruiser. Faded, pinkish-biege painton a hull covered in algae. The rear deck had a hot tub that had been converted into a storage bin for rusty chains. Inside, once-plush velvet seating now smelled of mildew and a cockpit that featured a mini-bar (empty) within reach of the steering wheel.

Kaspar smiled broadly. “She is a beauty, no? Fast, discreet. Perfect for… unobserved movement. I will be distressed to let her go. I am considering keeping her for myself. I can see my family enjoying her so much.”

At this point, the party asked for a demonstration. He turned the key.

CLUNK. WHEEZE. BANG. A cloud of thick, black smoke erupted from the exhaust port, and the engine shuddered violently before dying with a metallic cough.

Kaspar didn’t blink. “Ah. She is just… resting. A little cold, perhaps. The mechanic, he is away at the front, but for people of your technical skills? A minor adjustment!”

Travis inspected the engine and saw the problem immediately. The fuel injectors were fouled with low-grade local sludge, and the intake manifold was clogged with bird’s nest debris: a 2-hour fix with the right tools. The engine block itself was surprisingly solid.

Kaspar wanted 20,000 Credits to buy it outright (claiming it was a collector’s item) or 2,000 Credits per day to rent. Ferrik, the crew’s broker, talked Kaspar down to 5,000 Credits to buy it outright.

Anson was sceptical: “Look at the absolute state of her. She looks like a floating brothel. And listen to that engine. It sounds like a smoker with emphysema climbing a flight of stairs. Tell you what, sunshine, we’ll take it off your hands so you don’t have to pay to scuttle it.”

The Mechanic

While Travis and Anson went to work repairing the engine, Dr Bilal took a stroll along the water’s edge. He heard swearing and saw an oil-smeared mechanic throw a wrench onto the deck with a clang. She shouted “Garbage! Expensive, over-engineered garbage!”

Dr Bilal asked if he could help, and what was the matter? They then chatted for a time: her name was Jhenn, and she gestured to a sleek, metallic sensor housing she had just removed from the boat. It looked far too high-tech for the rust-bucket vessel it was attached to.

“Look at this,” she spits. “New targeting sensor. Government says it’s ‘top of the line.’ Sure, if you’re in a vacuum. It’s got Serendip Belt manufacturing stamps all over the purity seals. It’s built for asteroid mining drones, not a muddy lake on a humid rock like Colchis. One splash of pond water and the fancy Serendip electronics short out.”

She then kicked the hull of the boat, pointing to a cluster of jagged, heavy-impact holes that shredded the plating.

“And you know what did that? That’s not local iron. Those are high-velocity kinetic penetrators. I dug a slug out of the bilge this morning. It’s got a Neubayern arsenal mark on the base. That’s military-grade alloy.”

She lit a cigarette, looking out over the foggy lake. “You see what’s happening, don’t you? The Government boats are running Serendip tech they can’t maintain, getting chewed up by bloody rebels shooting Neubayern guns they couldn’t afford on their own. We aren’t fighting a civil war anymore. We’re just the battlefield.”

Dr Bilal felt a real connection was forming between them, and asked if Jhenn cared to have a drink, later. She declined, gracefully.

Feeling Lucky?

Walking back to the Marina Grand, the party passed “Le Palais du Lac,” a casino with peeling stucco paint and a neon sign that buzzed and flickered (reading: “Le P la s u Lac”). As the party walked past, Alfonse practically leapt into their path, bowing low. He spotted their off-world clothes immediately. “Sir! Madam! Please, come inside! The air conditioning is… mostly functional! We have legitimate whiskey, not the local swill! The roulette wheel is spinning! We have baccarat!”

As the Travellers looked past him through the glass doors, the casino was empty save for two elderly locals playing cards for matchsticks and a boredom-struck bartender. Alfonse whispered, desperate: “I can offer you a private room. High stakes? Please. The owner says if we don’t get a whale in tonight, he’s turning the place into a barracks for the reserves.”

The travellers, however, did go in and question the natives about the disappearance of the ship they sought for Sternmetal, and the barman was able to give them a name and a date. They used this to go and search the local newspaper archives, finding a photograph taken as the ship – The Mary Lou – finally slipped beneath the waves. They were then able to geolocate the rough area of the sinking.

184-1103 Air Drop

The next day, the party hired an ATV truck from yet another of Taz’s many alleged cousins, and headed to pick up the airdrop delivery. On their way, they were stopped at a roadblock, where Anson bribed a weary sergeant with off-world cigarettes while an edgy young pirate accused the party of being terrorist bombers.

The airdrop was kicked out of the back of a Free Trader on one-shot, anti-grav palettes. Just in time, Bilal helped the crew to hide the vehicle and deliveries before two Colchis government fighters overflew the area, trying to find the smugglers.

185-1103 Boat Trip

The deliveries were taken back to the Painted Lady, and the party headed out onto the lake. It was dark before they reached the area of the sinking, and the next morning the party started slowly searching the floor of the lake with sonar, while Zhana and Bilal spoofed their GPS to appear to be elsewhere. After a few hours, the wreck was located, and Dr Bilal, Travis and Anson fived to her while Rosa, Ferrik and Zhana stayed on the boat, pretending to party.

The party underwater managed to effect entry and to locate the remains and the equipment. Meanwhile, rebels approached the Painted Lady on a converted speedboat. When they were about to board, Rosa, Ferrik and Zhana – who had kept their weapons concealed just out of sight, drew their guns and shot the rebels with laser and suppressed automatic fire: in a few seconds, the rebels were dead or dying.

The divers were retrieved, the grisly cargo stowed in sealed body bags and the signal sent for the pickup. This occurred the next day, and by 187-1103 the party departed Colchis, considerably richer and with a highly satisfied patron in Sternmetal Holdings.

163-1103 – Acadie

Having returned to their ship after the raid on the Neubayern agents’ safe-house the previous night, the rew of the Perfect Stranger set about cracking the encryption on the computer that they had siezed. Zhana went to work on this, and had the advantage of using the TL15 computer technology available on the Stranger: as a Signals Intelligence-gathering platform, she is essentially designed for rapid decryption. With the help of Ferrik, who used his forensics skills to look for unusual keyboard-wear, Zhana didn’t take long to break the relatively-primitive TL12 security.

It turned out that the studiously-rigorous Neubayern agents had indeed, in the words of Stringer Bell, been keeping notes on a criminal conspiracy. The party found their report on the killing of the Imperium agents who had previously crewed the Perfect Stranger, showing that it had been carried out by militant union members from Houillon as part of the deal that supplied them with guns.

The party also found a series of receipts for the rental of a lock-up in town, clearly intended as part of an expenses report to account for petty cash expended!

The party decided to act on this information, and hired a car at the starport to investigate and to possibly retreive anything to be found at the lock-up. On leaving the starport, however, they discovered that Zak Larchwood (the debt collector in La Belle Femme) had been absolutely correct: martial law was in force and their car was searched more or less rigorously three times on the way to the lockup. They disguised their route by purchasing lubricants for the ship from the chandlers.

Zhana’s tactics and Ferrik’s investigative skills came to the fore, here: Zhana spotted possible overwatch positions that might be being used for surveillance of the lock-up, while Ferrick made sure each was clear, other than one window where the curtains were twitching repeatedly.

The Travellers marched confidently up to the lock-up and cracked the code on the entrance, but the chutters only lifted about two feet. Zhana checked and spotted a switch that was tucked behind the door at just that height, and once that was pressed, the door opened the rest of the way, revealing a Claymore mine set up above the entrance and intended to cut in half any unwary entrant.

The lock-up turned out to be packed with rifles and hand-guns – enough to arm at least a batallion of irregulars – all oiled and marked with the stamp of the manufacturers on New Home. The agents seem to have been planning to further arm Acadie’s revolutionaries and to pin the blame on the rival state of New Home!

Spotting that the person who had observed them was now on the telephone, the Travellers promptly returned to their ship.

Before the Travellers could work out what to do with their new information, Travis received a call from Inspecteur Villeneuve. He sounded cordial, but his message bore a degree of cool warning:

“I thought that I should inform you that a group of foreign agents – very likely the same group that attempted to detain you – was arrested last night. Two members of this spy ring remain at large: be aware that they may, for whatever reason, still bear whatever grudge drove them to interact with you in the first place.

Some concerned individuals called us last night, warning us of the presence of these agents not far from here, whom they claimed to have stumbled upon.

Their DNA is no doubt present on the scene: we found various blood traces in the apartment as the result of a firefight which appears to have occurred. At this time, we choose to believe that there was a falling-out amongst the enemy agents and that two of them – who remain at large – were attacked and escaped afer subduing their attackers. If we were to check the DNA at the scene that may confirm this theory. It might even point at the involvement of others. Who knows?

At the moment, however, the investigation remains live due to the removal of computer equipment from the scene: equipment that we believe may be useful in confirming our theory and closing the case. Were we to come into possession of this computer in the next day or so we would be able to complete our investigations and dispose of the remaining complications, both legal and human. The matter would be at an end and our investigation could end.

While the state of Amondiage is grateful to whatever concerned individuals uncovered this next of Neubayern vipers, I would say that they would be wise not to return to Amondiage or her colonial possessions for some time, as they would undoubtedly be the subjects of increased vigilance and even a petit peu of suspicion.”

Travis politely implied that he took the hint, and the party anonymously couriered the computer with a return address noted at the lock-up that they had discovered, with a note giving the decryption keys and suggesting care entering the lock-up.

With this, Travis rejoined Anson in working on repairing the sabotaged power systems of the Perfect Stranger, while Ferrik sought out freight and passengers for the looming trip to the party’s next destination, which they decided would be Colchis.

164-1103 – Acadie

The next day, Capitaine Marcel Durat of the starport administration contacted the group to say that, in a most irregular set of circumstances that seemed most rash and inappropriate to him, the murder case requiring the Perfect Stranger’s launch had been closed and marked as complete but placed under seal. He had never heard of such an egregious breach of procedure but his orders required him to return the launch to the operators of the craft forthwith, and the Perfect Stranger had been cleared for departure despite martial law being in force.

Travis also received an email from a burner account with photographs and details on the two remaining Neubayern agents who were at large:

Matthias Eberhardt
Eberhardt specialises in long-term cultural infiltration, embedding himself in guilds, unions, and religious communities. He builds trust patiently, then dismantles networks without ever appearing responsible. Most of his targets believe events simply “turned against them.”
He has dark, greying hair, an open face, broad shoulders, was last observed with substantial beard and moustache and is said to have an easy smile that invites confidence. His clothing subtly mirrors local fashion wherever he operates, down to regional mannerisms and accents.

Klaus Reinhardt
Reinhardt acts as analyst, handler liaison, and contingency planner, rarely exposing himself in the field. He excels at pattern recognition and prepares multiple escape vectors for every operation. Previous observations suspect that he understands their true strategic purpose better than anyone else present.
He is thin, pale, and chronically tired-looking, has been noted with ink-stained fingers and untidy, rumpled clothing. His gaze has been noted by observers as distant and he is said to have an “analytical” air; attitude is detached and unsympathetic.

165-1103 – Acadie Departure

The mystery of the fate of the previous crew solved and their ship deemed spaceworthy once more, the crew of the Perfect Stranger departed Acadie on the evening of 165-1103, carrying eight low-berth passengers, a few tons of luxury consumables that they had purchased, and a full hold of fuel and freight for the two-parsec journey to Colchis.

172-1103 – Deep Space

The first jump went well, and the Travellers busied themselves with rechecking the engineering systems after the first jump – Travis’s and Anson’s repairs seemed to have worked well – and pumping fuel from the auxiliary hold to the main fuel tanks before jumping once more. The party spent their time variously learning the local laws, shooting, carousing and sneaking furtively around the ship.

181-1103 – Colchis

Arriving at Colchis after more than a fortnight on the Perfect Stranger, the party were keen to stretch their legs and to find buyers for their cargo. The freight was delivered and payment accepted, and Vanderpool revived the low berth passengers, all of whom had survived the trip thanks to his skiled care.

They were heading to a bar when a harassed-looking businessman in a rumpled (but expensive) suit and a loosened tie raced up to them. “Perfect Stranger? What kept you? We expected you here months ago!”

Ushering them into the noise of Adelaide’s Bar, he introduced himself as Raoul Petrosa, the Regional Operations Director for Sternmetal Horizons. A contact for the firm running the Perfect Stranger had committed the crew to help him with a piece of work, months ago, and then they’d fallen off the radar. Was the job still on? This was now becoming urgent!

The party explained that there had been staffing changes on the ship, but asked to hear about the work.

Petrosa explained that a team for Sternmetal had performed a geological survey on Colchis in an area suspected to have substantial ore deposits. Control of the area was split between the government at the southern end of a seventy-five mile long lake, and rebels at the northern end. However, the team had been on a boat, returning from one side of the lake to the other when they were attacked at night, and the boat – The Mary Lou – had sunk rapidly with all hands.

Sternmetal would offer 200,000 credits if the Travellers would find the boat and retrieve the survey team’s results: they were given a deescription of what this would look like. A further bonus would be given of 10,000 credits for each of the five survey team bodies that they could retrieve, so that the company could return these to the deceaseds’ relatives.

Sternmetal would arrange an air-drop at 0630 on the second day after the team arrived on-planet, in order to deliver anything that the party felt that they would need in a war-zone that they couldn’t get through security on a high law-level world. Sternmetal would also provide locally-sourceable equipment up to the value of 100,000 credits as required.

The Travellers accepted the deal and set about planning.

159-1103 Acadie

The session began with the party calling on the station security office when the alleged police (with Germanic accents) from the previous night’s stand-off failed to show up. They were in turn directed to the Gendarmerie, and when their suspicions of Neubayernisch agents posing as police was mentioned, they were at last put through to the Agency for the Defence of Amondiage, 2nd Division (Colonial Security) – known simply as “La Défense”.

Soon, they were back at the scene of the abortive attack and speaking to the magnificently-moustachioed Monsieur l’Inspecteur Villeneuve. From him, they learned that the contact they had been given was one “Patrice Clenard”, a genuine citizen of Acadie who had in fact died at the age of three weeks, but for whom an elaborate cover identity had been constructed.

Inspecteur Villeneuve thanked them for the tip-off, and asked the party to let him know if they had any further contact with the false gendarmes.

Next, the Travellers paid a visit to La Grande Alliance, a ship suppliers and chandlers, for the remaining parts that they needed to repair the sabotaged power and sensor systems on the Perfect Stranger. Everywhere, they could see large groups of protestors or growing numbers of riot police shipped in from Amondiage and clearly itching for a fight.

Having ordered the parts to be delivered to the Stranger’s landing pad the next day, the party visited a bar in the city centre: La Belle Femme. Zhana chatted to a local, and asked about the ongoing unrest. He talked about what he’d heard, and at one point said “I heard that a bunch of weapons started showing up in Houillon about a year ago, maybe a bit less. Then a few months ago that bunch of merchants get shot out there, the ones from the ship that’s been at the starport ever since. Bit of a coincidence, eh?”

Ferrik bought a drink for another local, but on explaining why he was using a translator, found himself being harangued for taking part in the psyop which was the pretence that some mysterious “Imperium” existed outside of the Islands. “What are you people doing this for? I know you’re fakes, part of a govt conspiracy. The ‘Imperium’, hah! So for thousands of years we had this huge empire surrounding us on all sides and nobody knows a thing, then suddenly they magically appear and what a coincidence, we’re all on the brink of war! It’s all a fake and I know it. Prove to me that your so-called Imperium exists!” When Ferrik struggled to provide convincing proof of a vast Imperium spanning thousands of worlds, the man was delighted: “See! You can’t! Because it doesn’t exist!”

Travis spoke to Zak Larchwood, an Imperial citizen and a debt collector, who had heard the party speaking in Galanglic and come over to take a break from French. He gave his view on the current unrest: “Things are already tightening up here. It’ll be martial law, tomorrow, you mark my words, but they’re already stopping anyone walking around with guns. No wonder: they’re worried people might shoot back when the troops show up from the capital en masse, looking to crack some skulls and get people off the streets. There’ll be a big demonstration tomorrow, and it’ll all kick off then, you mark my words! There’s going to be a huge riot! These French workers love a riot, and the French coppers love a fight…”

With that, the party made their excuses and left, returning to the Perfect Stranger and preparing for several days of repairs.

162-1103 Acadie

The sensors were repaired first, and Ferrik and Dr Hakim together worked to isolate the frequency of the bugs being used on the ship, and to find the receiving stations that they were broadcasting to. This they swiftly achieved, only to find that the receivers were in a small apartment block only a few hundred metres away, in clear view of the Perfect Stranger’s landing pad.

Ferrik then used his PRIS binoculars to observe the observers, and he could see an array of electronics equipment and cameras in the window of the apartment. This was identified as 211/F2 Rue des Aigles, and Zhana used her computer skills to find that the downstairs flat was rented but that the first floor – where the equipment was stationed – was allegedly vacant.

That night, the party visited the Rue des Aigles. From the city came the sounds of riots, of fireworks being shot at police and extensive gunfire from varying calibres of guns.

The Travellers found that the rented flat was dark and empty but seeing activity in the first floor flat. Inspecting the premises from the outside, they say electronic locks and a camera system: opening a manhole service cover, they cut the power using a laser to cut through the armoured power cable within, then hacked the lock without being seen by the now-disabled camera, and swiftly made their way to the first floor apartment.

Breaking in, a firefight ensued, with the enemy agents (suspected by the party to be from Neubayern) using lethal weaponry against the party’s stunners. However, the Travellers had the advantage of wearing their protective, moderately-armoured vacc suits, while the agents were surprised. In less than thirty seconds, the agents were subdued, and the party repeatedly stunned them into unconsciousness before tying them up and subjecting one of them to “enhanced questioning”.

The agents were clearly made of stern stuff, and refused to yield immediately to questioning, claiming to be Amondiage agents watching the ship to find out what happened to the previous crew.

Meanwhile, Zhana was collecting the agents’ mobile computer while Travis and Perre were tossing the apartment: they found spare passports and ID cards for the agents as well as spotting that there should be two more Neubayerners than were present.

At this point, the party left, and called La Défense to report gunfire, Neubayern spies, fire and everything else they could think of to provoke an urgent response.

120-1103 – Rampart

Most of the party started this session in cold berths during the flight from the naval base at Rampart where they had been given their mission to retrieve the Perfect Stranger and her valuable, top-secret data cores. They were headed to Amondiage, via the lonely, deep-space refuelling point at Riftspan Station, one of the most remote, occupied locations in charted space.

Dr Vanderpool had been nominated to stay awake to provide medical assistance for the sometimes-risky process of waking the party up from their suspended animation: the rest of the group saw nothing of their journey aboard the vast Riftliner until they awoke on Amondiage.

148-1103 – Amondiage

Amondiage was a culture shock after weeks on isolated planets, in space stations, jump craft and highports. A hot, dry world it had some 3 billion inhabitants, a deeply French culture and an omnipresent, authoritarian government headed by Monsieur le Directeur: the Director of the planet. A few people spoke Rift-Galanglic, but mainly the party relied on their translator devices to talk to a population who had never known Imperium rule.

Propagandistic news stories were being broadcast constantly in public spaces, government offices and even on screens in bars announcing fleet deployments to counter aggressive Neubayern manoeuvres within jump range of Sansterre. New Home was condemned for “Anglophone cultural subversion”. The government of New Colchis was accused of “persistent spying incidents.”

Investigating the whereabouts of the Perfect Stranger, the party visited the coroner’s office, where they met Political Officer 2nd Class Thomas Volonnelle. Presenting appropriate documentation, they discovered that she had, in fact, been last reported at Acadie, and that the crew members whose bodies had been returned from Amondiage had died there, but that the “firearms discharge incident” had occurred on Acadie: the Perfect Stranger had jumped there from Amondiage and had posted a flight plan taking her on from Acadie to Colchis and New Home, deeper into the Great Rift.

Further research had uncovered distinctly unflattering reviews about the facilities and service offered by the Perfect Stranger in her plodding travels around the subsector.

The party then took low passage on the tramp freighter Le Bonhomme to Acadie, a light year distant.

158-1103 Acadie

Alhough another Francophone world, Acadie was a great contrast to Amondiage: where Amondiage had billions of occupants, Acadie had less than a million; where Amondiage was orderly and authoritarian, their Acadie colony was chaotic and on the point of riots; where Amondiage was dry, Acadie had plentiful water, and a light rain seemed omnipresent on the coast where the starport lay.

Le Bonhomme had landed at the starport, and the party set about finding their ship: the Perfect Stranger. They visited the Starport administration centre, and met Capitaine Marcel Durat, the chief administrator. He certainly knew where the Stranger was: it had been sitting at the starport for months, consuming energy and water and blocking a berth, and he wanted 72,000 credits just to release it.

This sum (over $400,000!) struck the party as unfair. Zhana pointed out the administrative flaws in his assessment, while Ferrik skimmed the legal terms and found various loopholes. Finally, with the use of Broker skills to haggle, the cost was reduced to a more reasonable 28kCr, which was within the party’s ability to pay.

The Perfect Stranger was found at a remote berth, and the codes the party were given by Naval Intelligence worked to open her up. Zhana went to the bridge and checked the security systems, finding three accesses since the ship landed. One was by Acadie government officials but the other two were done surreptitiously by other parties.

Ferrik and Dr Hakim swept the ship for bugs, and found several. They didn’t remove them, but warned the others of their presence, and Travis used the ship’s advanced sensor suite to discover the frequency that their transmissions occurred on.

Zhana’s investigations of the ship’s logs revealed that the crew had departed in the ship’s launch for the town of Houillon for a tempting trade deal, and had never returned. Houillon was in the news at the moment, as the centre of riots and demonstrations that saw the likely imposition of martial law on Acadie in the next few days. Research by the Travellers showed that this sort of unrest and frequent strikes occurred on Acadie not infrequently.

Investigating the ship, the Travellers found that various systems, such as power and long range sensors, had been deliberately, if crudely, sabotaged. They also found that the ship’s safe had been lasered open and the contents taken. The ship’s vital data cores, the main object of their mission, had also been stolen by one of the groups who had infiltrated the ship.

On the upside, they found a hidden backup-cache of credits, and a hidden file in the ship’s computer that gave the coordinates of where duplicates of the data cores had been stashed.

Travis embarked on fixing the ship’s power systems, taking his time: the job would, he predicted, take him a full week. Dr Bilal’s job repairing the sensors was a little easier, but would still take him three days of work. Between them, the work would cost 17,000 credits to complete, and would require parts from in Acadie City.

Aware that martial law might be imposed at any point, the group headed into town. As an experienced agent, Ferrik noticed that they were being followed, but the tail disappeared. Then, taking a wrong turn, the Travellers were help up at gunpoint by a group of four plain-clothed individuals claiming to be gendarmes. They ordered the party to disarm and to come with them for questioning. The party, their hands hovering over their weapons, declined to do so, and a stand-off ensued. Eventually, the apparent Gendarmes arranged to meet the Travellers at their ship the next morning, and withdrew.