Pirates of Drinax

233-1107 Clarke Surface

Having spoken to Clarke starport’s security administration department about Dr Astor’s arrival (in the adopted identity of “Captain Solvik” of the trader Eskibon), and having dispatched the real Captain Solvik to retrieve her ship, the Travellers spoke to Keeper Malos, who helped them to register for the Symposium, which had started two days before. The electronic tags on the elevated passes provided, he informed them, gave access to all sessions and areas, although anything they accessed would be recorded. The group thanked him and headed for the conference centre, where they started hunting the crowds of hundreds of delegates for Dr Astor.

The conference keynote address for the day was about to begin, delivered by Prince Harrik of Drinax, currently the leading candidate for the role of Head Psychopomp of Clarke. The symposium was held under vast screens which showed crowds of The Preserved, with the faces of one after another being picked out and amplified to vast size before returning to the crowd. Hanging from the ceiling were early versions of the preservation machinery that awaits all of Clarke’s faithful.

The subject was “Returned: Death, Continuity and the Duty to Preserve”. His central argument was that Clarke’s faith has spent generations concentrating on preservation, but preservation only has moral meaning if it is directed towards eventual restoration. The dead are not sacred because they are dead; they are sacred because they remain people whom Clarke has promised not to abandon.

He addressed several questions: when he awoke after his decade of medical rebuilding, was he still Harrick? He admitted that he has no philosophical proof: only memory, continuity of character, the recognition of friends and the internal certainty that he remains himself. Secondly, he asked how much change can a restored person undergo before that identity is lost? That naturally brought cybernetics, personality reconstruction and nanotechnology into the discussion. Third: if technology could save someone, does refusing to use it become morally equivalent to allowing them to die? His speech was generally well-received, but the representatives of the Shield Church of Neumann – notably Archon Dreek – clearly found much of it heretical.

Anastasia tried to user her psionic Life Detection ability: this did confirm that Dr Astor was within five kilometres.

At this point, Lady Yemar approached the Travellers. Although they had not previously met, she turned out to be as eerily well-informed as when the Diplomatic party had met her, and discussed their part in various, recent events in positive terms. Although the party did not state it in front of her, they later discussed her obvious interest in some of the themes of the conference: nanoscience, technology, healing and rebirth, given the constant, high-technology procedures required by her condition, and which had lead to every part of her beyond her brain having been replaced at one time or another.

The party also talked with Prince Grehai of the Bastion Movement. He was intrigued by Oleb’s manuevrings, while making some sly digs about violent and illegal coups in places like Acrid. He offered the party help if they should ever find themselves considering new employment, pointing out that he had considerable wealth available to him, and widespread influence due to his movement, which promoted the hardening of the Reach against the Aslan threat.

In an absolute flash of inspiration after less than an hour and a half of gameplay, our protagonists eventually worked out that the smart passes meant that Dr Jali Astor/Captain Solvik needed a pass and would be identifiable. Visiting the symposium’s front desk, they persuaded the administrator to tell them about the lady whose picture they showed her – Dr Astor – who turned out now to be attending under the name “Dr Amala Vey”, and who had submitted an abstract of her paper entitled “Distributed Medical Agency and the Moral Continuity of the Altered Self”.

Dr Astor had attended three sessions:

• Dreek’s address on the Shield Church’s “holy gifts”
• a restricted medical discussion about nanotechnological resurrection
• Harrick’s appearance concerning his own death and restoration

She had, however, recently left the conference hall.

The Travellers talked to Prince Harrik of Drinax – who recalled being asked an odd question by Dr Astor after his keynote: “When you came back, how did you know that the part of you making decisions was still you?” She asked whether Harrick would still regard himself as the same person if the technology which restored him had also changed his instincts. Harrick remembers that she seemed less interested in theology than in whether he held himself morally responsible for actions performed by an altered body.

Harrick himself asked Anastasia a series of questions about the persistence of the Self, and offered arguments that it in fact represents the creation of another being and the extinction of the Self.

While this discussion was going on, the party noticed Archon Dreek and his two guards leaving the conference centre. They followed shortly afterwards, spotting him entering a doorway two blocks away while his companions waited across the street.

The Travellers followed him down a large flight of stairs, just seconds behind him at first. But they painstakingly checked behind each of three locked doors on the basement floors below, using a microdrone to avoid placing themselves in any physical risk, with the result that it took them fifteen minutes to reach the fourth floor.

Entering the open doors there, and entering an abandoned Preservation Hall, they discovered that Dreek had been killed by Astor – having unwisely tried to purify the universe by attempting to eviscerate a highly paranoid heretic already pumped full of experimental, reactions-enhancing (and highly defensive) nanotechnology.

Standing over his body was Dr Astor, who had taken a sample of the Archon-grade Neumannisch nanotech in his blood and merged it with her own to create the blended super-technology her work had promised her. It transpired that she had lured him to the old Preservation Hall under the pretence of a forged invitation from Prince Harrik for a private conversation in such holy surroundings.

And beside her stood the suddenly larger and more imposing Lemuel Vinus: no longer a shambling, stooped grad student but now wielding an impossibly compact plasma weapon which was pointed at Dr Astor. He was telling her that her experiment was promising, but too dangerous, and that he had not protected Neumann for these past millenia only to have them destroyed by an experiment which he assessed had a twenty percent chance of killing all those alive on its surface at the hands of enhanced nanoswarms.

Lemuel, it transpired, while not the Immortal Protector, was an avatar of that being: a parallel shard of its consciousness sent to achieve its will.

Dr Astor, her eyes glowing bright red with the combined nanotech coursing through her veins, said that she had sacrificed everything for this, and could not turn back. Well, replied the avatar Lemuel, in that case he would have to destroy her to protect his charges.

The party intervened at this point, trying and failing through various means to persuade one or the other to back down. Eventually, they persuaded the Neumannisch avatar that Dr Astor, contained and left to experiment, might yet finish her work – perhaps at the Scholar’s Tower – and that this was worth sparing her. At this, “Lemuel” knocked her unconscious with a single, swift blow and the session ended.

215-1107 – Pourne System, Calverin gas giant orbit

With Krrsh at her helm, the crew of the So Much For Subtlety took her gradually into Neural Activity Scanner range to assess whether the Spark of Life was truly abandoned. Three life forms were detected, but the sensor-operator – affectionately known as “Sparky Droid” – was able to provide enough details for Dr Parsifal to assure his companions that these were not more Cursed like those found in the previous ship.

Boarding the orbiting Spark of Life, the party descended the docking arm to the outer ring, with normal gravity operating in the ship. Passing through an engineering space, they opened the door to the ring itself, to find two maintenance robots standing in front of them a few metres away. The nearest one said “This section is out of bounds. Please return to your ship immediately. This section will be made available to you in four days.”

Dr Parsifal attempted to start a conversation with the droids, which ignored his queries and repeated the same message. He then moved forward to a side-door, to be told again to return to the ship, and warned that this was his final warning. Nevertheless, Dr Parsifal ignored the warning and opened the second door, and was immediately attacked by the front maintenance droid, whose right arm turned out to end in a large, oxy-acetylene torch: a welding attachment used for working on the outer hull of the ship. This burned through Parsifal’s armoured vacc suit easily, and nearly severed his arm, cutting through sinews, bone and muscle and leaving only a quarter of the arm attached. Only the cauterising effect of the flame stopped Parsifal bleeding out in seconds.

Nonetheless, Parsifal attemped to lash out at the droid, succeeding in severing a hydraulics line. With the second droid moving in to assist, a third one entering from the other direction, and his companions limited in their ability to help by the cramped conditions and the steep curve of the ship’s hull, Parsifal collapsed into the side-room and shut the door behind him, attempting to apply a tourniquet to his arm as the vacc suit supported his arm and saled itself with foam.

Lars loosed-off a round from his gauss rifle into the neck area of the droid behind him, severing the head and leaving the body lashing around until, deprived of its balance sensors, it fell over. Anastasia, meanwhile, used an ion rifle to make short work of the original two droids. The party’s accompanying electronics droid was detailed to take Parsifal to the So Much For Subtlety’s auto-doc for stabilisation, while the party investigated the rest of the ship.

With the ship secured, a semi-conscious Parsifal saw Dr Nafir, along with his bodyguard, moving to enter Nafir’s ship. In the meantime, the rest of the Travellers sought out the three lifeforms, finding the crew of the missing Far Trader Eskibon at the far side of the ship’s ring, locked into the galley area with food and supplies. These they freed, and started questioning. Captain Nera Solvik, captain and part-owner of the Eskibon, while somewhat rueful about the loss of her ship, nonetheless felt no great remorse at investigating the very weak distress signal that the Spark Of life had been transmitting: the law is the law, and the code of the stars meant that she had had to help.

The crew questioned the dispossessed crew further about Dr Astor. Solvik said that they had been ordered by Astor to surrender their ship, and that the scientist had been backed by four maintenance droids. When the first mate, Bram Kallin, had started to argue, Astor had said “Please listen to me. I do not want to hurt you. I am asking you not to resist because I cannot promise what will happen to you if you frighten me.”

Making their way to the bridge, the Travellers found a delighted Nafir already there. He confidently entered the 16-digit unlock code to return control of the ship to himself, looked puzzled for a second, then Olafson shouted “He’s wiping the computers!” and dived across, moving his fist in front of Nafir’s face and driving the concealed blades right into his supposed-employer’s eyes. He looked down at the crumpled body and said “I knew he wasn’t the real Nafir!” before muttering “I should have known when he was polite to me.”

Sure enough, the ship’s systems were still locked and a progress bar showed that Nafir had, indeed entered a wipe-code that was rapidly deleting and overwriting the science cores. With only a robot to attempt to break into the science core quickly (droids cannot attempt tasks higher than their skill level, and this task was Formidable) the data was lost. Luckily, the ship’s own main systems had been unlocked by Astor when she stole the ship.

The party secured each ship began the long process of refuelling at Calverin, the nearby gas giant, before jumping to Clarke.

226-1107 – Jumpspace

In jump, Parsifal (aided by Lemuel) conducted as good a post mortem as was possible with the systems available, revealing that Nafir had never had any augmentations, had never had any dentistry, and had suffered no scars or broken bones during his entire life.

Parsifal did, however, want to hire Sigismund Olafson, who turned out to be a security operative, originally from the Sword Worlds. He declined the offer of employment as a ship’s marine, and demanded KCr5 a month as a bodyguard for Parsifal, to which the doctor eagerly agreed.

233-1107 – Clarke Downport

On arriving at Clarke, the party docked at the lowport and passed under the great arch in Arrivals which greets all who come to Clarke, and which says “YOU HAVE NOT COME TOO LATE”. They spoke to Clarke starport security, and (with some difficulty) managed to persuade them that they were in the company of the real crew of the Eskibon: the identification provided persuaded security that something was amiss, and while Solvik set about recovering her ship, starport administration revealed that a “Captain Solvik”, who looked younger and thinner than her ID, had disembarked three days before, carrying four scientific cases with the assistance of a cargo droid from the ship.

Checking the cameras on the Spark Of Life revealed that, during her time on the ship, Astor had spent her time in three pursuits: writing huge amounts of text on her mobile computer; doing calculations on a dataslate; and eating vast quantities of food.

The party turned their attention to working out how to find the missing Dr Astor before she could perform some horrific act to any of the planet’s eighty million inhabitants, notable amongst them being Prince Harrick of Drinax or the attendees of the ongoing Ecumenical conference on Faith.

215-1107 – Hilfer

At the end of the last session, the Travellers had just entered the drifting hulk of the Vagabond Soul, with eight weak life-signs visible to the So Much For Subtlety’s powerful Neural Activity Scanner, and had found themselves confronting a horrific, half-man, half-machine being which moved incredibly quickly and sported terrifying, hypodermic fingernails, sensors where eyes should be and armour apparently fashioned by nanobots from the very walls of the ship.

The part fled for the airlock a few metres behind them, but with Cauldron unable to reach the Airlock before the horrifying being, Lars chose to cover his retreat with laser fire. In their ears, a horrifying, high-frequency screeching burst through their radio sets, reminiscent of the hunting calls of the Chamax but with an eery, almost human quality.

The party just managed to close the airlock in time, but before they could cycle the outer door, the Cursed being simply entered the airlock code and opened the inner door again. Then, with laser fire largely inneffective against its polished carapace, it rammed three fingers through Lars’ vacc suit and into his throat. Lars felt something expand from the ends of the horrifying, hypodermic nails. and started to choke. Parsifal extended his embedded, arc-field claws, ruining the gloves of his suit but counting on the self-sealing effect to keep him safe from the worst of the impending vacuum, and slashed at the jagged nails that protruded from Lar’s throat. The technology of the nails was too high for the arc-field weapon to simply slice through them, but two were ripped out while the third broke off, still embedded in Lars’ throat. Lars, his carotid artery torn, saw the inside of his spacesuit visor suddenly covered with jets of his own blood.

At this point, Anastasia called Krrsh and told him to detach the breaching tube while the party tried to override the airlock systems and decompress the Vagabond Soul, simultaneously fighting off the horrifying abomination that shared the airlock with them. Krrsh refused to abandon them and said he was coming, but Anastasia ordered him to detach the tube, then teleported naked into the So Much For Subtlety, leaving behind the vaccsuit that she could not carry with her. Two more of the Cursed appeared around the corner of the corridor.

As the airlock opened, the breaching tube was drifing back to the Travellers’ own ship. Most of them allowed themselves to be vented into space, but Cauldron instinctively switched on his magboots, finding himself suddenly bent backwards at 90 degrees by the force of the venting atmosphere on him and on the Cursed which now clung to his shoulder. He fired his gauss rifle back over his shoulder on full auto, placing the muzzle against the head of the Cursed, which exploded instantly, blood boiling off into the vacuum.

Krrsh then piloted the So Much For Subtlety to pick up the floating crew (and Anastasia’s spacesuit). Lars, his throat pumping his blood out into his suit, was rushed to the TL15 autodoc, only just reaching it before dying. Lemuel, who had been studying the nanobots as part of his work with Dr Astor, took a sample from the spreading population in Lar’s throat then sealed him into the highly advanced autodoc, which was capable of generating its own nanobots to fight back the infection, although Lemuel expressed pessimism as to the likely effectiveness. Parsifal, not to be discouraged, was tremendously successful in his treatment, and was able to seal the wounds and remove the infection in time.

The crew of the SMFS then decided that, tempting as salvage rights to a MCr40 trader undoubtedly were, the clause disclaiming responsibility for any “slight nanobot infection” hidden in the small print would make the sale likely to incur something of a discount, and they worried that stashing the ship in the pirate-infested system of Hilfer might lead to another crew discovering it and suffering the same fate. Therefore, they used their particle accelerator barbette to rapidly disassemble the ship.

At a loss as to where to go next, and requiring fuel, the Travellers landed at Hilfer Lowport, where the captain’s attendance was demanded by the security department of the local government for that region. After almost two years of travelling in the Shinkiro the Travellers realised that, as an anarcho-libertarian collective ruling through participative votes requiring a quorum of two thirds of the ship-share-owning crew in order to pass binding resolutions on matters of policy, they had neglected to nominate a captain and, in a panic, chose Krrsh.

Krrsh grew by over an inch, donned his cape and a never-before-seen but suspiciously-appropriate uniform, smiled paternally at his new crew, and headed for Downport security. Returning about half an hour later, he brought the happy news that the ship was allowed to buy fuel despite suspicions regarding a starship explosion shortly before a detested, Drinaxian, innocently-trading commerce raider had landed. He did, however, mutter something about having perhaps granted letters patent for a knighthood to the shift leader of the starport security force. Sure enough, the party received a visit, later, from someone calling himself “Captain Sir Eddy Khidir”.

Having refuelled, the party departed on 217-1107 and jumped to the inner of Pourne’s two gas giants, which tended to be the busier of the pair, eschewing both the outer Jovian and the highport at which they had an intelligence source.

During the journey, Parsifal interrogated the passengers, particularly Lemuel. The bumbling grad student was questioned in detail about his religion, and accused of being his own god, which Lemuel found highly amusing, but which he was not apparently terribly offended by. He gave the history of the religion and its head, the Immortal Protector, and his role in saving Neumann from the nanoswarms and of fighting them back for hundreds of years. He also confirmed that he had seen the Immortal Protector himself and that he had, indeed been blond and muscular, but seemed to have grown somewhat shorter than the eight feet which the stories told of him.

Parsifal also questioned Dr Nafir, who claimed not have any augmentations, nor to have ever sported such. This appeared (using the ship’s sensors) to be true, despite the opposite having been the case before. Nafir’s bodyguard, Olafson, watched carefully, inseparable from his principal.

215-1107 – Pourne System, Calverin gas giant orbit

Arriving in orbit around Calverin, the innermost of Pourne’s two gas giants, the party used the So Much For Subtlety’s immensely-powerful, TL15 active sensors to search for any sign of Jali Astor and her ship or, more likely, another abandoned hulk occupied by nanoware-infected undead. They were surprised to find the Spark of Life herself, occupying a gradually-decaying orbit only two thirds of a million kilometres away. The So Much For Subtlety turned and accelerated towards her at 6G.

207-1107 – Tech World

Lead by Dr Hodal, the travellers hurried to the laboratory of Dr Jali Astor. Leading them down access tunnels, and talking as they go, Hodal explains what has happened. Dr Jali had been distracted for days, eager to get back to her work as quickly as possible after the meeting the previous day with the players. She had spoken of being close to a breakthrough.

She had been working with nanotech from Neumann, her home world. But the nano containment system had failed. “There was an explosion and Jali was possessed by the nanotech. No, not possessed: that’s the primitive thinking of the Shield Church. Infected.” The Shield Church, he explained, teaches that experimental nanotechnology is demonic in nature. Not that a scientist like him believes such things, of course.

Dr Jali then made her way to the starport and accessed the docking systems. Somehow, she was able to board and take control of the Spark of Life. She had taken off, despite it being under interdiction, and would reach the jump point before she could be stopped.

The robot crews assigned to the maintenance overhaul of the drive systems of the So Much For Subtlety and Shinkiro had been doubled, and they should be ready to fly within a couple of hours. Dr Hodal pleaded with the Travellers to go after her and stop Dr Astor infecting others with the nanotech in her system, saving her if at all possible.

The party were discussing how to find out where the Spark of Life was going, and Dr Hodal mentioned that one of Tech World’s pre-eminent scientists had been working on an experimental jump-tracker system which analysed jump flashes and, in the hands of an excellent sensor operator, could sometimes pinpoint system or even location. He would arrange to have a prototype fitted to their ship, although the robot team doing so would have to eject on the way to orbit when it was completed, as it would take too long if they waited in dock, and Dr Jali would be gone.

At the damaged laboratory, the party found Lemuel Vinus, Dr Astor’s lab assistant, being bandaged for cuts to his face and hands. He had been hurt in the explosion, although he had not been as near to the containment vessel and had not been infected. When questioned, he mentioned that Dr Astor believed that she had been close to a breakthrough for days, but it had eluded her.

Warned that there would be a purge cycle soon that would ensure that the laboratory and everything in it was destroyed, the travellers investigated where Dr Astor had been working. They noticed that the words SHIELD CHURCH had been scratched into the metal wall. Watching security camera footage, they saw Jali working with the large nano-containment vessel to mix two different nanobot swarms. Warning lights flashed, with Lemuel Vinus turning in surprise, explaining the damage to his hands when the containment crucible failed in an explosion, with the nanotech rapidly eating through first it then Dr Astor’s containment suit.

Instead of pulling her apart, the nanotech infects her. There is a pause as she seems to fight for control, then scratches on the wall in front of her before spinning around and moving incredibly quickly through the door of the laboratory. A glimpse of her eyes as she looks up at the camera shows them glowing red.

The sound was confused, but the words “Immortal Protector” can be heard.

After their investigation, the purge cycle begins, and the laboratory is sealed off and destroyed by plasma fire.

The travellers questioned Lemuel Vinus further, discovering him to be a distraught young man from Neumann who had come to work with Dr Astor as she was dedicated to saving Neumann from the Nanite swarms that cover a third of the planet. The party asked Lemuel to join them and he was reluctant, saying that it seemed “kinda dangerous.” Dr Parsifal assured him, however, that it would be “perfectly safe” and that there was “no danger at all.” Faced with this reassurance from a respectable man of science, Vemuel cautiously agreed to join the party.

Next, the Drinaxians contacted Dr Nafir, saying that they were going to pursue, but pointedly not mentioning the presence of Dr Parsifal on the ship. Did he want to join them to recover his ship? Nafir said that he was some way away, but said that he could be there in a little over 30 minutes. He brought a bodyguard with him, a very professional-looking ex-military type called Sigismund Olafson, with what looked like some expensive chrome.

Taking the So Much for Subtlety, the party burned out after Dr Astor, managing to come within sensor range before the Spark of Life jumped. Analysing the sensor information, the party were able to detect that he was going to Hilfer, in the opposite direction from their expectations that he was heading for Neumann. Checking, the party found that there was no gas giant in Hilfer, and they knew that the outer system was rife with pirates, having previously roughly located (but ignored) at least one pirate base from back when they briefly flirted with piracy, themselves.

During the jump, Anastasia enquired as to why Nafir had rushed to Tech World from Blue. He was vague, but mentioned that he had heard rumours about someone performing cloning research that seemed extremely promising. Anastasia was surprised to be able to read his surface thoughts, and he seemed to be telling the truth. Performing a quick medical check on him – which Nafir happily consented to – also revealed none of the implants that the party expected to find.

The party almost entirely ignored the young grad student Vinus, who spent the week studying and working on his computer.

215-1107 – Hilfer

On emerging from jump, the So Much For Subtlety could not find the Spark of life but were able to detect a distress signal from a far trader in a decaying orbit. Her transponder indicated that she was the Vagabond Soul. They burned towards her, as law and custom demanded, and found it unresponsive. Using the Harrier class ship’s Neural Activity Scanner, they located eight weak life signals on the ship, none apparently very active: perhaps they were unconscious or had taken medical fast drug?

Boarding the ship, the group found the lights flickering and the gravity cycling erratically, making it very difficult to move on the ship. The hallway was pitted by tiny holes and abrasions. Suddenly, two horrific figures appeared around the corner, just a few metres away down the corridor. They were humanoid, but covered in silvery scales and their fingertips bristled with elongated, tiny needles. Their eyes were covered with glowing plates, and they moved like lizards, scuttling along the walls and ceiling of the craft. In their helmets, the travellers could hear clicks and staccato screams of radio-frequency energy.

Meanwhile, Operation Hubcap swings into effect: the operation to chop-shop the stolen Imperium treasure ship, the Martin II.

Vaz and Goorp, master and mate on the Mercifuge, acutely aware that they will be made independently wealthy as a result, agree to be paid in two instalments: they are pleasantly surprised not to be stiffed.

178-1107 – Pandora Kuiper Belt

The Mercifuge is a specialised salvage ship, and this is key to the Drinaxian pirates’ plans. The Diplomat party on board the Recent Convert (formerly the Deepnight Amundsen survey ship) embark upon the location of a suitable icy body in the Kuiper belt of Pandora, where the Martin II is hidden.

It takes nine days to find a captured cometary body within a couple of days of the Martin II’s location, and the Mercifuge, using the fuel bladder fitted in her cargo bay for the Argona attack, spends almost a month flying back and forth between the freighter and the comet, purifying fuel during each return journey to save time. Eventually, however, she retrieves enough fuel to fill the Martin II, the Recent Convert, and to brim her own tanks.

In the meantime, the crew of the Mercifuge, comprising mainly tireless Shipmate droids, strip the Martin II of her manuevre drives, sensors, fabricators, weapons and screens. Some of these have to be stored in the hold of the Martin herself in order to allow the higher-value treasure items on the Martin II to be transferred to the cargo bays and empty vehicle bays of the Mercifuge and the Recent Convert, which would normally hold some 250 dtons of loot. However, much of the hold of the Mercifuge now contains fuel. Goorp, in the meantime, insists on rebuilding sections of the Martin II’s jump drive while the salvage and refuelling operation is underway. The uplifted ape is by nature reckless, but not when it comes to misjumps on the edge of the Great Rift.

The bodies of the dead conspirators are sampled for DNA then given a decent burial in space.

225-1107 – Acrid Lowport

Salvestes, Vaughan and Osha are moved – still in cold sleep – to the Recent Convert, which then departs for Acrid, carrying a hundred tons of vastly expensive treasure, much of it irreplaceable. Leaving most of this at Acrid, the Recent Convert’s hold is filled, instead, with illegal pharmaceuticals, alcohol, prohibited media content and several square kilometres of microns-thick, black, carbon-fibre wrap.

225-1107 – Cordan Kuiper Belt

Once the Martin II is fuelled and jump-ready, she attaches the Mercifuge to herself using the Swiftsure-class vessel’s massive, type-IV docking clamps, and jumps to the Kuiper Belt of the Cordan system, with the transponders of both vessels disabled.

The extra mass of the Mercifuge means that this uses up extra fuel, leaving her short of what is required for the jump to Exe. However, the Mercifuge is still carrying just enough fuel for the journey on to Exe’s outer system.

234-1107 – Exe outer gas giant orbital space

Shortly after the Martin II and the Mercifuge arrive, they rendezvous with the Recent Convert on her arrival from Acrid.

In Exe’s Kuiper Belt, the crew of the Mercifuge continue stripping out more equipment from the Martin II. The salvaged equipment is packaged in the carbon fibre wrapping and sent on a carefully-measured orbit for later collection.

After a few weeks, with the Martin II stripped of her jump drives, the Mercifuge accelerates her for 72 hours to pass roughly through the point where Hroal was awaiting her arrival, her course adjusted midway so as not to point back at where the salvaged components were placed.

Deanna worked to make the navcom look like it had been hastily wiped and reprogammed, in order to hide where the Martin II had been while still looking actively piratical. The comms systems on the Martin II were set up to secretly broadcast any activity on her bridge in clear to anyone in the system as soon as the Screamer goes off.

244-1107 – Exe Highport

The Recent Convert, with her cargo of illegal funtimes, heads to Exe highport and turns her transponder back on.

255-1107 – Exe outer gas giant orbital space

The Mercifuge then jumped out and, allowing time for the expanding, light-speed shell of her jump flash to be outside the system, the Screamer beacon placed originally by Hroal goes off. At the same time, the cold sleep defrost cycle on the ship’s cold berths goes off, awakening the remaining crew of the Martin II.

Finally, a note was left in the Martin II’s bridge, purportedly from the missing conspirators:

Goobye shipmates. Sorry to leave you in a bit of a shit situation with that worthless jackass Torsa, but Hroal wanted us to murder you all, so don’t be too mad about it. Any landing you walk away from is a good landing, right mates?

We can’t stop laughing that Torsa never even noticed us messing with the NavCom TWICE, nor did his stupid poncy Drinaxian stooges who thought they were being clever trying to spy on us work it out either. They didn’t even notice the Screamer!

Anyway, Hroal is an even worse arsehole than Torsa, no tears after we heard what happened to him, so we thought we’d just keep all the loot ourselves. We’ll have new faces, new names, new lives a long way from this dump of a Reach, and you never know – maybe we’ll see you again one day. We’ll be the rich bastards buying drinks.

Hey, Jagad – Give Torsa slap across the back of his fat greasy head from us!

The Irontooth Crew

174-1107 – Elohai, Blue

The day after speaking to Dr Lira Venn, Anastasia and Lars arrived at the Spark of Life for their tour, with Anastasia showing her years-old journalistic accreditation and just managing to bluff her way past security. They were greeted by the ship’s pilot and astrogator, Sela Marrin, who answered Anastasia’s questions about Dr Nafir: she had been his pilot for many years, having flown the Spark of Life all the way to Deneb and the Spinward Marches and then back down through the Trojan Reach in Nafir’s search for the best scientific talent he could find.

The fact that a science ship was able to land at a starport struck Lars as surprising, but this turned out to be as a result of work in the area of aerodynamics optimisation which Nafir held a patent on: was there no field in which he did not excel?!?

Lars and Anastasia were given a tour of the laboratory areas, noting the name of Dr Kessarin Jaal on the way past: the scientist that Dr Venn had noted seemed rather jaded. Then they met Dr Nafir himself: he was as enthusastic and smooth as the others had found him to be before on Falcon, and happily answered Anastasia’s questions. Her attempts to use psionics on him, however, failed utterly. He was unreadable for some reason.

Dr Nafir’s rise had begun in tragedy: his collaborator – Dr Jans Trask – had died tragically young, and Nafir had sworn to continue their work, bringing their tasks rapidly to a conclusion in the form of the collaborative software that was at the heart of the Spark of Life’s success. Dr Nafir sadly answered questions about Trask’s death, in 1100, seven years before, and how important that Trask’s memory was to him.

On the way out, Anastasia sent a psionic message to Dr Jaal, with a means to contact her, but whether due to suspicion, confusion, an attribution of the message to intrusive thoughts and incipient madness, or the general loathing of psionics which is so general in and around the Imperium, no contact was made.

Anastasia had also attempted to send messages to former members of the raided Psionics Institute on Blue, but if any were on the planet, they were either not in range or were not responsive. A visit to the site of the Institute yielded only a large area of concreted-over land.

In the starport, the party took the time to note the many naval personel present – far too many for such a small population – as well as a couple of sleek, modern vessels in port. They also noted the political officers dotted around, wearing distinctive grey uniforms with red flashes and psi helmets.

On returning to the Shinkiro, the party discovered that Krrsh, having been left aboard yet again – he had hardly been off the ship in months – had killed time through taking control of the ship’s droids (a gunnery robot, an engineering droid and Patrice, the ship’s instance of the Patrickswarm which served on each of the Drinaxians’ ships). These he had provided with scripts for the notoriously high-energy, sprawling and violent epic poem which serves as a foundation myth for Vargr society through the borderline-surreal interactions of their great, mythical heros and gods. Think the Mahabharata crossed with the Chinese tale of the Monkey King. The performance had been underway for several hours, with Krrsh as lead star and director. Patrice in particular was strikingly relieved at the return of the party.

175-1107 – Elohai, Blue

The next morning, the crew of the Shinkiro awoke to find that the Spark of Life had left, late the previous night. Investigations showed that she had filed a flight destination of Clarke, but further investigation revealed that she had taken on cargo due to be delivered to Arunisiir: Nafir’s love of money had betrayed him. So off to Arunisiir it was!

182-1107 – Arunisiir Highport

At Arunisiir highport, the Shinkiro found that the Spark of Life had already left. A repeat of the previous investigations revealed that Nafir had filed a destination of Pandora, but had taken on freight for Acrid. The party pursued, however their investigations each time meant that they were falling further behind, each time.

190-1107 – Acrid Lowport, Kingdom of Drinax

Falling further behind, the Shinkiro’s occupants gambled and had a fuel bladder fitted quickly at the Drinaxian-controlled Lowport. Looking at his route, they deduced that Nafir was heading either for Tech World or for the medically-advanced laboratories of Falcon, not least since he had filed a flight path for Argona. So their next jump was to Inurin.

198-1107 – Inurin high orbit

Arriving in Inurin, the Shinkiro immediately refuelled from her fuel bladder and jumped at once to Tech World. Would this gamble pay off?

205-1107 – Tech World lowport

Arriving at the nanotech marvel which was the Tech World Lowport, the party were greeted by the tailored robot who would act as their guide for their stay. Few sophonts were to be seen, but huge numbers of droids – both realistic and fantastical – swarmed the hangars and corridors.

Soon after their arrival, a mysterious parcel with a worrying accompanying message was delivered to the ship. The parcel contained a beautifully-crafted computer module with an expert system on it, programmed to advise on linguistics, philosophy, psychology and sophontology. The party were understandably cautious about plugging this into the ship’s computer, but decided to use one of their intrusion devices, instead.

The message began positively enough:

“Greetings. Your presence is requested as matters of mutual interest and profitability may be discussed. We offer you this gift as a mark of our respect, in the hopes of future friendship. We hope that the enclosed information will demonstrate that we have no desire to harm you, as we have kept this scrupulously confidential.”

The enclosed information in question detailed a number of matters which nobody outside of the pirates themselves should have known about: the precise location and state of the Martin II, and the secret location of Orpheus Base, as well as discussions amongst various crew members of the pirate fleet regarding the robbery of the Imperium treasure ship on Arunisiir.

The party very quickly surmised that the Patrickswarm, built to order by Tech World to spy upon and report on the crews of each of the ships in their fleet, had in fact been uploading its findings to more than just Patrick.

A few hours later, their Tech World liaison droid asked them to accompany her to a meeting with “interested individuals”. After arriving at the sales office of “Action at a Distance” – a company involved in the forbiddden field of psionomechanical research – they were taken into the city basements, through access tunnels and service shafts, making use of their disguise nets to appear as droids and slip past GeDeCo security guards. Eventually, the crew arrived at the laboratories of Hodal Genotech AG.

There they met Dr Gerret Hodal, a geneticist from Neumann; Dr Jali Astor, a nanotechnologist from Neumann who appeared distracted throughout; and Dr Rex Darke, a roboticist formerly of the university of Regina who had an offputting laugh and a disturbing tendency to rub his hands together when enthusiastic. The three explained that they represented the Founders: the group of around a hundred scientists and entrepreneurs who formed much of the human population of Tech World. They had been invited to the planet by GeDeCo with the promise of unfettered abilities to carry out whatever research they desired, but they had found GeDeCo’s “pettifogging moral scruples” challenging to work within, and they had watched the rise of Drinax with interest.

In return for protection, supplies and the loan of defensive ships until they could build out their own robotic, defensive capabilities, they would join the Kingdom as a member state. One other condition applied, however: they would be allowed unquestioned scientific research freedom without interference or enquiry.

The party promised to take these requests to King Oleb and Princess Rao, but expressed their enthusiasm for the proposal.

In return, the scientists stated that they knew of the party’s interest in Dr Nafir and his ship, and offered to ensure that it would require a lengthy stay for unforeseen technical issues. In addition, the crew of the Shinkiro were offered the best hotel accomodation on Tech World.

205-1107 – Tech World lowport

The next morning, when assembled to discuss the events of the previous day, the party were surprised when Dr Hodal suddenly walked through the apparently solid (but nanotech-constructed) wall of their room, and told them, in distress, that Dr Astor had had a terrible accident. Infected by the Neumann nanobots that she had been experimenting upon, she had stolen the Spark of Life and departed!

Dr Hodal begged the party to help save Dr Astor – if she infected others with the nanobots then the results could be disastrous for the Reach! – and agreed to take the party to the laboratory of Dr Astor to investigate the accident.

161-1107 Orpheus Base (TR 2523)

The crew of the Shinkiro (Anastasia, Lars, Dr Parsifal and Cauldron, with Krrsh in tow) parted company with the Recent Convert (formerly the Deepnight Amundsen), who left for Pandora and the hidden Martin II, accompanied by the Mercifuge.

Leaving the hidden Sindalian base – now reclaimed on behalf of King Oleb, himself the proclaimed successor-in-exile to the Dragon Emperor of Sindal, the Shinkiro jumped to Blue, where the Spark of Life was most recently reported to be. The Spark of Life was the ship of Dr Izikai Nafir, the bitter rival of Dr Parsifal, whose early career was blighted by Nafir’s plagiarism and betrayal.

Parsifal now sought revenge: a revenge made all the more convenient by the demand of Prince Harrick that he be able to provide Clarke with a science vessel capable of performing research and improving the health sector on Clarke before he accepts the role of High Psychopomp. Since this was Clarke’s condition for entering the Kingdom of Drinax, the party had genuine motivation to succeed in acquiring the ship in a way that would not see Harrick, Prince of Drinax, accused of piracy!

170-1107 – Bulhai Base, Blue system

The crew of the Shinkiro chose to jump, first, to Bulhai Station, the independent freeport on a moon of the outer gas giant in the Blue system which they had used before due to the presence of a mercenary supply company. From there they contacted Loren Els, a junior civil servant in Blue’s capital city, Elohai. Els had been recruited the year before by Basemath Mondrane, a colleague from Deanna’s naval career who was now a wandering agent and recruiter for the growing asset of intel sources in Deanna’s employ. Another agent existed on Blue – Fa Roysopp, a petty criminal – but the party chose not to activate her at this time.

While the party were nominally in Blue to pursue the Spark of Life, the growing hostility to Drinax of the Blue government, and the possible links to the government on Lilgan, were impossible to ignore. So the group asked Loren what he could tell them about the attitude of the government of Blue to Drinax. A couple of days later they got a response, detailing how, in the last 20 years or so, Blue had gone from a small backwater, essentially passive in whatever external relations it had, to possessing a virulently anti-Drinaxian media and (in recent years) to building, buying or renovating a far larger, jump-capable fleet than its economy could dream of supporting.

I’ve managed to finish compiling the latest fleet records. Blue’s got more ships than anyone here admits we can pay for — five Edict-class defence boats, five Vigilant-class corvettes, and two Bedrock-class carriers still “under evaluation” at the Highport. The Edicts are supposed to be system-only craft, but I’ve seen the movement schedules — they can be ferried elsewhere by the Bedrocks. Someone’s planning for more than defence.

No one down here in admin knows where the money’s coming from. Every budget line for the fleet ties back to something called “Special Continuity Funds.” When I tried to trace it, I got told (politely) to stop asking questions.

Morale’s good but the officers are nervous — too many inspections, too many “advisors” aboard every ship. None of us know who they actually report to.

I’ll try to find out refit schedules soon.

There’s a new hauler been bought in Empire which will go in for refit later this year: they are calling it the Cornerstone class liner but it’s supposedly a troop carrier, with small ships for ferrying troops to the ground. It should be commissioned in 18 months.

The party asked Loren to give them a summary of the fleet built by Blue. In the meantime, they moved to the surface of Blue itself, relying on disguise nets, a programmable transponder and the adaptable hull of the Shinkiro to avoid being identified as Drinaxians.

173-1107 – Elohai city, Blue

On their way to Blue’s capital city, Elohai, the party researched the Spark of Life and her time on the planet. They discovered excitable stories in the local press about the ship and her cutting-edge computer systems, which not just backed-up each onboard scientist’s work overnight, but somehow multiplied the productivity of each through a multiplicative effect. Aware of the trail of bitter former collaborators alleging IP theft that Nafir possessed – including Parsifal himself – the party viewed this with great suspicion.

They also spotted a news story about the quadrennial interfaith conference, held on a varying rota of planets over the years, which would start on Clarke in two months: it was being hosted by the Psychopomps this time, and the interesting news was the announcement that Prince Harrick of Drinax was slated to attend as guest of honour, while attendees were to include the Psychopomps of Clarke themselves, the Church of the Solar Divinity, the Church of the Starry Wisdom and the Shield Church of Neumann

Much of the press concerned a junior scientist by the name of Lira Venn who was joining Dr Nafir’s incubator aboard the Spark of Life. The party discovered that she was renting out her apartment during her absence and, posing as prospective tenants, visited her. Finding out more about the ship and the fellow scientists (of whom there were two, at least one of them far less positive about Nafir), Anastasia managed to arrange a tour of the ship the next day in her role of journalist.

The players decided to rent Lira’s one-bedroom apartment on Blue since the plan is to get Lars on-board the Spark of Life as a mechanic/engineer, and they supposed that he may need an address for his disguise.

089-1107 – Ergo

Having survived their battle with the two leviathans in the forests of Ergo, the group then engaged in a shooting match with two of the Chain Gang members, before encountering locals, who appeared to possess a culture originally based in some strange half-memory of ancient Persia, and who had been essentially enslaved by the Chain Gang and their higher technology. Discussions with several groups of locals revealed a society divided into inherited societal roles: one family might produce technicians, another soldiers, and another hunters.

The locals had, it transpired, ritually killed the crew of the ship having taken them for gods, and had then placed their own, preserved clan gods (long dead astronauts from another crashed vessel) into the ship, closing it in the belief that they would fly the ship into the heavens and return with great wealth. Now the ship was locked and disguised from scans by piles of scrap, the anomaly in which it sat, and the ship’s own stealthy hull.

Breaking into the ship, the party found the embalmed bodies of the locals’ two gods. Leaving the natives with gifts, including substantial numbers of weapons with which to greet the remaining Chain Gang members on their return, the party then left for Tech World, taking both the Shinkiro and the Deepnight Amundsen.

097-1107 – Tech World

After some basic repairs, the party left in the Deepnight Amundsen to perform a survey of the apparently-empty parsec 2523. For this, we used the surveying rules from the Referee’s Guide of the Deepnight Revelation box set. This took five weeks of surveying, and a second jump, but the party managed to identify (alongside a rogue cometary body, to which they burned over the course of five days to refuel) a dense dust cloud half a light year across, within which they found a brown dwarf, orbited closely by several moons, one of them a tidally-locked moon 50% bigger than Titan which lay inside the fearfully-narrow, habitable belt of the Brown Dwarf. Bookmarking its location, they jumped out to Tech World once more, to rendezvous (a month late) with the crew of the So Much For Subtlety.

153-1107 – Tech World

Leaving the SMFS on Tech World, the Mercifuge, Shinkiro and Deepnight Amundsen then jumped to the moon they had discovered.

And on that moon, they located the Heart of Darkness: the fabled, long-abandoned Sindalian base. The rest of the session was spent investigating this base, and the greatest prizes were two Harrier-class commerce raiders. Each had been stripped for parts, and the ships were in far worse states than the SMFS, which had spent its long exile out in the dark vacuum and constant temperature of Drinax’s Oort Cloud instead of a moist, oxygen-laden atmosphere. But they were, nonetheless, recoverable (for a nine-figure investment of credits).

Satisfied, the crew of the Deepnight Amundsen – Timaeus, Eric, Lars and Penelope – then jumped to Acrid and then Pandora to work out what to do with the treasure-packed Martin II. The Shinkiro departed for Clarke and their long-planned reckoning with Dr Izikai Nafir.

Having heard of the success of the Imperium-Drinaxian fleet at Exe, the Shinkiro and Mercifuge travelled from Pandora to Drinax.

Much of the session was spent in collaboratively designing a pet snake for Erik. The snake in question being a robot and more intelligent than almost any member of the crew. It was to be accompanied by five drone snakes that it could control using Swarm Control software. The snake in question was murderously expensive (2.1MCr!) and clearly designed as murderous in other ways, too: stealthy, armed with a poison bite, capable of moving faster than a human on walls and ceilings… An order was dispatched to Tech World.

112-1107 – Drinax

The crew of the Shinkiro brought news of their successes to Oleb, who was delighted and declared a week’s feasting to celebrate the victory at Exe, and who was persuaded not to mention the Martin II at all.

We then moved onto the question of the (fake) treaty that the party had found on the Martin II, which purported to be an agreement between the Imperium and the Hierate, granting the Aslan full influence and freedom of action in all systems currently within six parsecs of the Aslan border. Discussing this with Princess Rao, the party persuaded her anonymously to circulate news of the treaty throughout the affected systems.

The effect was to drive several systems towards the rising power of Drinax, and to make those systems more receptive to Drinaxian advances as a result, as they sought collective security from any potential attack. The following systems shifted one step towards Drinax: Pourne, Asim, Torpol, Exocet, Marduk, Salif, Acis, Tktk, Tyr, Tech-World, Inurin, Exe.

Although Drinax’s name was not formally linked with the circulated treaty, there was enough circumstantial evidence (cui bono? Drinax bono!) to implicate them (GeDeCo had a very clear idea, but could not risk leaking their own involvement to prove it), and the party’s standing with the Hierate fell by six, while their standing with the Imperium fell by five.