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.
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