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.
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