021-1106 Pourne
Following the heist at the Pourne Highport, and the solution to the mystery of the Hiver starship, the temporarily-displaced crew of the So Much for Subtlety returned to the apartment suite that they had hired – comfortable, but Pourne is not a spacious or luxurious planet at the best of times – and turned their minds once ore to the suborning of planets. To this end, like so many adventuring groups before them, they pondered just how to hire the perfect civil engineer with a specialisation in fluid dynamics and water recycling technology. Throwing money and time at the problem, they kicked off a recruitment process that yielded fruit ten days later, with the hiring of Pernik Loy: Profession (Civil Engineer) 3, Admin 1, Engineering (Life Support) 2, charging 12,000Cr a month. He was sent to Hilfer to assess the state of the planet’s infrastructure.
025-1106 Pourne
An unusually stressed Captain Halet Tovrim of the Pourne Bureau of Investigation once more asked to meet the party in Satriale’s Bar in Joyeuse Dome 4 Arcology, Sector 2, Block 116.
Agitated and clearly embarrassed to the point of shame, he revealed that he was in a relationship with Arlena Vey: a member of a criminal smuggling and fencing group called the Slatejack Crew. He had discovered that the Special Investigation division of the PBI are laying a trap which will kill or capture the group, and that the bust was planned for the next evening, only 26 hours later. He begged the players to stop his loved one from reaching the rendezvous so that she will escape the trap.
He asks the Travellers to intervene discreetly:
• Keep Arlena from attending the rendezvous.
• She must not connect their actions to Tovrim.
• They must not compromise the bust itself.
The party debated and discarded several approaches before settling on disrupting the mass transit, inter-dome train that she would take from her home in Joyeuse 6 Dome to the meet location in Joyeuse 4, using Cauldron’s sabotage skills. However, with Deanna having set up access to cameras in her apartment block to see her departure, the group discovered that she had not left Dome 4, and seemed to be planning on staying with a colleague, with whom she was out drinking. The party were suspicious that the heart of poor Tovrim was in jeopardy, and were ready to round on Arlena as a heartless hussy, toying with the emotions of the poor Captain.
026-1106 Pourne
By now, it was the small hours of the morning: having located Arlena, the Travellers left Deanna providing top cover through the net with Berg for backup, while the rest of the group made for the bar, with Dr Parsifal using his medical skills to write a prescription for powerful sedatives, then Timaeus ordering drinks for the two women before providing a distraction by being thrown out, noisily, into the street (having to leave in a hurry before he was arrested by the officious, Pourne constabulary). Deanna ensured that any security footage was useless to investigators by lowering camera quality for the evening.
Finally, Cauldron took advantage of the resulting chaos to spike not just the drinks of Arlena and her companion, but those of several others in the bar. As a result, half a dozen people were unconscious within hours, for almost a day, including Arlena Vey and her comrade, each of whom were fortunate enough to avoid arrest as a result, but with a good and public reason for doing so that was clearly outside their control. Everyone lived happily ever after, except for the bar owners who lost their license.
027-1106 Pourne
Vi Lon and Tug Wilson had, over a week before, despatched two newly-recruited Vespexer marines to meet the party in Pourne, since they knew that the entire fleet was light on marine contingents. They bore a coded message from Princess Rao and an update from Vi Lon: she had located sufficient crew members to staff the Lucky Lady and it was being reactivated, and the crew properly acquainted with it, to perform trading between Drinax and Pourne.
The message from Rao was intriguing. Dated just over a week before, it said:
“Argona downport: meet Joachim Streussen, give codeword ‘Red Pharisee’. Sensitive cargo for Iuwoi clan, high value, terms notably generous, utmost urgency, move asap. Nature unclear. Absolute discretion. Repeat: Absolute Discretion. Potential for valuable leverage in Hierate politics. Believe highly sought by others. The game is afoot. P.R.”
044-1106 Pourne Space
The Harrier’s repairs complete, the party was reunited with a weary Patrick Steward, fresh from a month spent worrying over the fabrics in the ship’s common areas as dockyard workers rebuilt system after system in the Drinaxian corvette. They were greeted with a list of “Friend” affirmations by the Table, referred to by Patrick as The Manichean due to its black-or-white, good-or-evil view of the world. “Quite the paradox,” Patrick avers. “Equal parts sideboard and sidearm. He does so love to ask ‘Friend or shoot?’ — one fears his social circle will be regrettably limited.”
While cosmetically still a hodge-podge of glorious Sindalian decor and make-do, Ikea-level fittings, the So Much For Subtlety was running like a dream, with systems such as her ECM and her jump drive working beautifully. The party tested this with a jump to Hilfer, just one parsec away, noticing that they were actively scanned by two mercenary cruisers on their way to the jump point in orbit around Pourne.
053-1106 Hilfer Space
The party met up with Vas and Rog Blake, captaining the Janel Torsk and the Shinkiro, to receive an update on several weeks of successful piracy and scouting). They swapped the two new marines for Sharyl, generally felt to be a good trade for those in receipt of an imposing Aslan but a poor trade for the two pirate ships, and headed to refuel at Hilfer Highport, before proceeding in a Trailing direction into the Voidsedge Cluster. They chose not to trade in Hilfer, due to the time taken to find brokers in this largely paper-using society.
063-1106 Tech World
Arriving at Tech World, the Travellers turned their attention to their two great loves: collecting robots and elective surgery. We leave them pondering robotics catalogues and wandering through the marvel-strewn corridors of the Starport – virtually the only sophonts to be seen amidst masses of droids, drones and cyborgs. Each of the group was allocated a personal, grav-enabled Guidebot, and each of those seemed uncannily aware of their personality and tastes, and of the best ways to communicate with them.
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