142 to 145-1106 Falcon Highport
With four days to pass in the hollow planetoid which is Falcon highport, the crew of the So Much For Subtlety decided that heir priorities were, in no particular order, to shop, carouse and perform some fairly-overdue maintenance before jump calculations became as reliable as taking life advice from a tarot reading.
Following the encounter with a heavily-armoured, Troll-class robot in the Pandora system, the priority for shopping (at least on a TL-12 installation) turned out to be prismatic grenades and lasers with armour-piercing capabilities.
Much of the rest of the Travellers’ time over the following days was spent in the Chasm Bar, in the Highport concourse: a haunt of crews from many of the substantial number of ships that made use of GeDeCo’s headquarters in the Borderland sector. There, Dr Parsifal met his old rival, Dr Izikai Nafir, who had stolen his work when they were at university, together, and turns out to have taken a similar line on other occasions, since. Dr Nafir was keen to stress the riches that his patented discoveries had brought him, and mentioned that his laboratory ship – The Spark of Life – was docked here on its way to Tech World, where he had vital discussions to have on further collaborations. Dr Parsifal painted a smile onto his face, while silently grinding the top layer of enamel off of his teeth.
Timaeus fell into conversation with GeDeCo security admin Arabella Payne. Asked about events on Arunisiir, she asserted that “everyone knows” that Hteilotorl left Inurin almost three weeks ago (in fact, it was now six weeks) and that the bulk of the mercenary ships involved in the search for him were now patrolling in the Drinaxian Chain: the Hallion and the Bayern in Hilfer (the latter, she asserted, because Hilfer lacked any real patrol capability, so corsairing was more possible). God’s Raptor as in Byrni, she knew, while others had gambled on the smugglers taking Hteilotorl through the main trade route at Paal: these included the Lambent Flame, the Aslan heavy corvette Syoirru and others. “God help them if they bump into the Lambent Flame,” she said, pointing out that it sported a 50-ton particle beam bay.
Talk was all of the dramatic search for the Aslan war criminal: Lars Berg spoke to a ship’s engineer on a Subsidized Merchant running the Voidsedge Cluster route. She claimed to know that Admiral Darokyn had sent two of his fleet to the area, hoping to cash in on the substantial pay on offer for successful capture of Hteilotorl. Interestingly, she also claimed that Petyr Vallis, sworn enemy of the Aslan, had refused to get involved, saying that “if the Aslan rulers of Arunisiir and their Uncle Tom human lackeys want this Aslan dead, then he’s the one Aslan I’d spit on to put out a fire.”
Dr Parsifal talked to a marine who was serving on convoy duty on a Tobias Commerce Guild ship running the Fist-to-Tyokh route. The man said that, since TCG had settled with the Florian-Aslan Trade Consortium, the latter had been getting more aggressive in their dealings with Pax Rulin Quartermasters and GeDeCo in attempting to force them to join their attempt to form a monopoly on trade on the Aslan route. If things got worse, he said, he could see a proper Limited Trade War breaking out, with corporate letters of marque issued by each side. if so, he planned to leave his ship and sign up with a mercenary ship, as there was good money to be made in such an event.
The Travellers fell in with another crew, of the Free Trader Seskehalen, who were full of talk of the Aslan fugitive. They told horrifying stories of the official version of events on Arunisiir, heavily (but entertainingly) embellished. Watching carefully, Lars noticed that when one each of the crew of the So Much For Subtlety first answered their questions, the Seskehalen’s astrogator would pay particularly close attention to them.
The night before the Harrier-class ship was due in the shipyard to have a fuel bladder fitted, Cauldron was approached by Sigismund Valter, a representative of Borderlines Shipping. He had heard of the reputation of the So Much For Subtlety for “measured and successful resolution of situations,” and wondered if they might be interested in dealing with a group of raiders who had hit a Borderlines trader and stolen five tons of high-grade lanthanum ore, worth several million credits to the right buyer.
If the party could hit this raider group, “deal with them in the most final sense,” then he would provide them with paperwork transferring the ownership of the ore shipment to them: it would be legally theirs and therefore it could be disposed of at full price. The party agreed to change their flight plans accordingly.
Anastasia spent the next day wandering the highport concourses, searching for Zira Loft, the astrogator for the Seskehalen. Spotting her without being seen herself, she attempted to read her surface thoughts and discovered that Loft was also a psion. How much had she read from the minds of the crew of the So Much For Subtlety, and when had she done so? What did she know of their cargo and plans?
146 to 152-1106 Jumpspace
The So Much For Subtlety, their opinions of Ergo as a destination radically altered, set a course for the interdicted planet. The tone of the journey was altered somewhat, with a serious air on the ship. Dr Parsifal closeted himself away with a stack of papers authoered by Dr Nafir, looking for signs of plagiarism and possible errors, as well as reading all he could find on the legal case that Dr Nafir had dismissively mentioned.
In a somewhat downbeat conversation in the sumptuous common area of the Sindalian ship, members of the crew spoke with Prince Hteilotorl of why he wanted to speak to Ehfyohoikoaleai (“Koaleai”) on Sink. Hteilotorl responded that, although he was condemned to death – something he asserted was unavoidable – he would die content if his honour was reclaimed in the knowledge that Koaleai had, indeed, betrayed Hteilotorl and the Iuwoi clan. He would not be a fool who squandered the forces placed at his disposal by his and other clans: he would be a doomed warrior, who fought bravely in an unwinnable fight.
Hteilotorl explained that, the second that he stepped onto his clan’s territory on Tyokh, he was bound to silence, unable to speak to anyone on any subject unless asked directly by the clan ‘Ko, his father, before sentence was carried out in a formal duel.
Timaeus felt that there had to be a way to persuade others of Hteilotorl’s betrayal at the hands of Koaleai, and spent the journey practising his Trokh and in legal and oratorical analysis of the events.
Meanwhile, Anastasia was researching news stories on Dr Nafir.
153-1106 Ergo Surface
Arriving at Ergo, the So Much For Subtlety used her advanced stealth capability and high-tech sensor suite to evade detection by the interdiction satellites in orbit around the forbidden planet. As they burned towards the surface, Anastasia on sensor duty noticed a jump flash from the direction of the system’s gas giant. When the transponder signal from the arrival eventually reached the SMFS it turned out to be the Far Trader Seskahalen! What did they know?
Arriving on the surface of Ergo at what passed for a downport (some cracked concrete, access to a nearby lake and a crumbling city backdrop) the crew of the So Much For Subtlety were invited to a meeting with no less than the Lords of Ergo themselves! Attending, they were treated to a Powerpoint presentation on the advantages of re-registering ships at Ergo. Benefits: a reasonable price and extremely flexible ship’s name and history. The presentation then went on to lay out the exciting possibilities for incredible wealth represented by an investment of only a few hundred million credits into Ergo spaceport, allowing ti to act as the gateway to Villane and Browne in the Reft to rimward: a vast market of 90 billion: almost as many humans as the rest of the Trojan Reach put together!
Delivered with an air of hopeful desperation, the presentation was received with an air of polite deferral. The party promised to speak to Oleb about such a trivial expenditure, but in the meantime offered five tons of high quality medical supplies from Falcon, as a gesture of goodwill from Drinax.
Next, the party would turn their thoughts to the raid on the corsair hideout, four hundred miles to the west.
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