155-1106 – Ergo Surface
The session opened with the damaged So Much For Subtlety still atop the brutalist hideout of the Black Arrow gang, loading the seized cargo into her hold. With that done, they looked out one last time over the darkened city that surrounded them, the crater from the nuclear exchange just visible in the fading light, and the light from two or three distant fires the only signs that any intelligent life survives on the verdant planet of Ergo.
The work done with the aid of the cargo loader droid they seized the previous year from the Cicendai, the party departed, a horrifying creaking sound echoing through the ship as the crippled landing gear complained about the shifting weight.
The astrogator, Lady Penelope, laid a course for Falcon, and Deanna configured the jump drives for the return to the asteroid highport they had left only twenty days earlier. Timaeus consoled himself with the thought that this would surely baffle any hunting ships.
164 to 167-1106 – Falcon Highport
167 to 174-1106 – Jumpspace
174 to 176-1106 – Yiys Gas Giant, Ergo System
After three days in Falcon, most of them spent aboard the So Much For Subtlety in order to avoid detection, the damage to the underside of the hull caused by the Black Arrow gang’s booby trap was repaired, and the crew jumped out to Ergo’s inner gas giant, Yiys. There, the So Much For Subtlety saw a distant mercenary cruiser – the Lamprey – patrolling the refuelling point, but there was no interaction by the time the Drinaxian Harrier refuelled, purified the scooped gas, and jumped back out on her way to Sink for the first of Hteilotorl’s final requested stops.
184-1106 – Sink Surface
Arriving at the surface of Sink at what passed for its starport, the crew of the SMFS found a radio-frequency navigation beacon and an old temporary construction unit fitted out as an office. Its occupant was a genial old-timer with a cheroot and a practised line in poor jokes, Jacob Custer with the official title of “Station Master”.
Jacob directed the party first to Brother Singer, a monk at the nearby monastery, who Jacob said always wanted to speak to the crews of visiting starships, so the party headed there before their planned visit to Hteilotorl’s uncle.
Having navigated the tiny hamlet that huddlet beside the monastery, they entered the open and unguarded complex – unsurprising on a planet with a population of only a few hundred – they met Brother Singer. He was an imposing but avuncular monk who, after some conversation to ascertain the reason for their visit, requested that they bring him one or all of some singular items: he would pay 1.2MCr for 1,340 GenTech Cosmos 7 Plus mobile phones from Sperle; 927 G27b Lookout fire alarms from Paal would fetch 200,000Cr; and 27 “Girls! Girls! Girls!” Neon signs from Byrni’s Jihandir Bros. Trading Co. were worth 500,000Cr. The party and Brother Singer discussed the local entertainments available in the village, which turned out to be mainly provided by one Bawdy Meg.
As the party left their audience with Brother Singer, they saw an extremely thin, ill-looking woman passing one of the doorways in the monastery.
Next, Timaeus, Deanna, Cauldron, Lady Penelope and Sharyl accompanied Hteilotorl to the estate of Koalei, the Aslan whom Prince Hteilotorl suspected of betraying him. The estate was grand: almost as extensive as the village and monastery combined, elegantly designed and opulently laid-out. Hteilotorl informed the party that the design would largely have been that of his uncle, as such architectural taste was expected of a senior Aslan male.
Entering through the main doors, the party were greeted by servants, and soon encountered the master of the estate himself. Hteilotorl asked him for a tour of the grounds, to be accompanied by Sharyl, and Koalei, taking this as Hteilotorl seeking to escape the boorish company of humans with whom he had spent so long, deigned to agree.
With Hteilotorl and Sharyl gone, the party were shown out by servants. They then immediately returned to the front door, to be intercepted at once and told to return by servants who, working as they did for a spymaster, were trained in not falling for obvious tricks.
Crossing the estate by the elevated walkway, the party then returned by another route, wading through the ornamental pond to access another room. This turned out to be Koalei’s office and, once the actual desk and computer had been identified amongst the extremely tasteful furnishings, Deanna made short work of the anti-intrusion software on the computer of an Aslan male whose ability to log into his own computer was fairly limited.
On hearing an approaching tread, the successful spies fled, leaving behind them watery footprints on the floor.
The crew returned to the So Much For Subtlety, followed shortly by an amused Sharyl and by Hteilotorl, who was visibly grinding his impressive incisors. Hteilotorl excused himself and retired to his cabin, while Sharyl recounted Hteilotorl’s stumbling attempts to subtly interrogate his uncle, in which he succeeded only in provoking his suspicion, so that Koalei made an excuse about an urgent message to dispatch with the ship to Tyokh, and swiftly returned.
185-1106 – The Battle of Sink Low Orbit
Leaving Sink, the So Much For Subtlety was ambushed by the Lamprey and the Seskehalen. As they would discover, the Seskehalen had tipped off the Lamprey’s captain and offered him a split of the bounty in return for help seizing the Drinaxian ship. The Lamprey had eventually tired of the wait after a week or so, and had jumped to Ergo instead, but had seen the Harrier refuelling – her 6G acceleration making her more obvious on sensors – and jumped back to Sink herself, joining forces with the Seskehalen to attack the SMFS as she clawed her way out of the gravity well.
Robbed of her advantages of range and stealth, the SMFS attempted to stretch her legs, outrunning missile salvos for as long as possible while trading shots with the Lamprey, who also sported a barbette. Each ship did terrible damage to the other, but in the end the Lamprey was close to destruction, her fuel tanks leaking, weapons damaged and manuevre drives all but destroyed, so the mercenary corvette surrendered, leaving the Seskehalen no choice but to do so as well.
Forcing the crews of their prizes into low berths, the party left the shattered Lamprey and untouched Seskehalen powered down on the surface of a planetoid in Sink’s primary belt, and departed for The World in the So Much For Subtlety, which also sported gouges in her armour, damaged thrusters and a barely-patched fuel leak.
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