Story HourPost your ongoing tales from your campaigns, and read those from others for inspiration. Lots of other RPG boards post "Story Hours", but this is where it started!
[Firefly] Ruthless Bastards of the 'Verse (Completed 3/6/09)
I run a Cinematic Unisystem game set in the Firefly Verse. Don't expect any heroes here. They're a bunch of bastards. After all, the nicest one is probably the sadistic doctor.
The regular schedule for gaming is trading off with Alwaystoast's exalted game every monday. You should be able to expect an update for one of the games every week, usually going up by sunday night (most of the time, I get firefly updates done on tuesdays).
Cast of Characters
Player Name: Dan User Name: Welverin Character Name: Ivan Nigel Take Role: Pilot Chain of Command: Captain (First)
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Wears brightly colored shirts, shorts, sandals, and glasses.
Player Name: Gabe User Name: None known here. Goes by tyranny12 on Randomlings. Character Name: Daniel Jardin Role: Smuggler & occasional Mercenary Chain of Command: XO (Second)
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Nicknames: Danny, Bugs
43 year old human male
Light brown peppery hair, swept back, medium length
Brown eyes
193 lbs.
Daniel is a lean, weathered older man who walks with a mild swagger at times. Often dressed in a weather, older brown jacket and nondescript clothing, he is quite good at blending into the background in bars and the assorted towns of the Border. He speaks in a low voice, often, except when he’s trying to get his point across, when an almost irresistible confidence invades his voice. And, of course, when he’s angry, but that doesn’t happen too often…
Player Name: Paul User Name: None known here. Goes by Alwaystoast on Randomlings. Character Name: Mort Cassé Role: Mechanic Chain of Command: Third
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Description: Mort is pretty average looking. He’s 28 years old, but looks like he carries a lot of mileage. He is about 6ft tall, brown hair, crew cut, shaves his face at irregular intervals. So most of the time, he looks like he needs a shave. He’s in rather good physical shape. Not that he works out, just from moving heavy equipment on a daily basis.
Quirks: Mort generally wears a lot of clothing on the top half of his body. He normally wears, an under shirt, a girdle with a shoulder strap (also good because of all the heavy lifting he does), a kevlar vest is he has one, a dingy grey shirt, a vest, and a Brown Coat (Coat optional if it’s too hot).
Mort smokes cigars. He likes the ones stolen from Alliance officials the best.
Player Name: Liz User Name: Evil_Kitty_Grrl Character Name: Asta Sarv Role: Doctor Chain of Command: Fourth
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Age: 35 Physical Description: Short black hair, hazel eyes, pale complexion. Average looks and build. Her face could be pretty if she wasn’t always making faces with it. Doesn’t pay too much attention to what she’s wearing, other than it being clean and in good repair.
Player Name: Ryan User Name: Guedo79 Character Name: Campan Lar Role: Mercenary Chain of Command: Fifth (and outranked by Maxx the cat in Mort's book)
Player Name: Arianne User Name: None Known Character Name: Ezmerelda Glass Role: Passenger Liason Chain of Command: She only outranks Jenny
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Pretty young woman in her early twenties with reddish-brown hair. Looks a bit like Daniel.
We had another player, who played Jasp, Leonard, and Kenny, but he has since left the game.
__________________ '' /\_/\
>(O.O)<
~(> <)
Last edited by Ao the Overkitty; 7th March 2009 at 03:42 AM..
It all started about four years after the war. Ivan Take was between piloting jobs and looking to make a new start of it. While on Persephone, he managed to run into two old war buddies. The first was Daniel Jardin, the former captain of ship Take piloted. The second was a mechanic named Mortimer, who was now going by the last name Cassé. Over a large amount of alcohol, the three of them reminisced about good times. Take brought up the idea of getting himself a ship and the three of them decided to pool their resources. Take and Mort dumped all of their savings into buying a decent sized ship. Daniel had very little to contribute monetarily, but did bring protection for the ship in the way of an old one-man attack ship. The ship was a bit of a fixer-upper, but that just really endeared it to Mort.
Things were hard going at first. Daniel was able to get them a few jobs here and there, but they were few and far between. They met Campan Lar through an acquaintance of Mort’s. Campan brought in some much-needed funds to fix up the Orasca’s failing engines. While not a genius like the others, he proved to be no slouch in intellect. An excellent thug and good at getting the crew discounts on account of his intimidating manner.
A while later they managed to get themselves a doctor by the name of Asta Sarv. She didn’t have anything in the way of funds, but she did bring enough equipment and medicine to fully stock the Orasca’s medical bay.
The last person to join the crew was Jasp Wee; a rather forgetful man and most definitely a complete nutter, but extremely good with a gun. The Orasca was in serious need of some repairs and upgrades after a job had gone bad. Mort was happy to cover the walls of Jasp’s room with tinfoil and install a shinny red “Self Destruct Button” to get Jasp’s money away from him and into the ship; where it belonged. The crew agreed that people who are nuttier then a peanut plantation shouldn’t be allowed to have large amounts of cash on hand.
While on New Melbourne, the crew of the Orasca sat in a mildly seedy bar waiting for information on a drop point to pick up some illicit cargo for transport to Verbena. Daniel also acquired a legitimate job of transferring some immigrant workers to Verbena to work at the new Alliance plant. The transport was Alliance work, so it wouldn't pay too much, but that wasn't the point. It was just a cover job to get them on Verebena, since they were increasing security for incoming vessels for the plant opening.
Daniel was able to keep the transfer of the drop point location unnoticed by the other patrons of the bar. The crew did a good job of almost avoiding a bar fight. Asta managed to sedate the initial agressor before fighting broke out. Unfortunately, drunken yokels can be persistant. Besides, people don’t generally like to see their buddy punched in the joy department, by Mort or anyone else. Decent sized bar fight ensued. Jasp flung himself across the room to crash into a couple of the yokels with a beer mug. Campan continued drinking for a while. Take ran for the door. Asta watched out for seriously injured. Daniel brawled. Mort pinched wallets from the fallen.
Despite being outnumbered, the crew managed to wipe the floor with the yokels. Several chairs were destroyed, a couple of beer mugs and bottles, and a good amount of liquor behind the bar. After being asked nicely to leave by the bartender with the shotgun, Mort took some of the money from the pinched wallets and paid the bartender for the broken chairs. Then the crew headed back to the ship.
That evening, Daniel and Campan headed to the drop point on Daniel's shuttle, the Korv. They arrived at a small, slightly forested island with an empty dock and a small shack. Campan stayed on the Korv to keep a hand on the weapons while Daniel went out to meet the contact; a man named Jacob that Dan was acquainted with. After making sure it was safe, they radioed the Orasca in to land and pick up the cargo. Before the Orasca arrived, Jacob left a message with Daniel for Campan from a guy named Logan (small time loanshark, from Daniel’s recollection). “Tell him he’s late. And Logan HATES it when someone is late.” Daniel relayed the message to Campan after they left and asked him if this would come back to bite them in the ass. Campan said it wouldn’t.
The pickup of the twenty immigrant workers went smoothly, as did the trip to Verbena. The crew all healed up any wounds received in the bar fight.
Take received landing clearance for the Orasca and touched down at night about half a mile from town. They were greeted by a motley and slightly skeevy bulbous man (Cashier). He counted out the workers as they left the ship and handed Take a wad of bills. He coughed up the money he had pocketed when Take called him on it, slightly sad about getting caught.
Take, Mort, Daniel, and Campan then headed off towards town. There was a veritable wonderland of lights, tents, games splayed out in a field in front of a large factory. The group moved through the carnival towards the Tattoo’d Man’s tent, where they were to meet the buyer.
They passed one particularly prominent feature; a stage with a large banner above it which reads, ALLIANCE REWARDS THOSE WHO REWARD THEMSELVES.
An Alliance high muckity muck was up on stage giving a speech, dedicating the new factory.
Commander Tanaka:Thanks to the good Alliance people of Verbena, our gear shift factory is opening ten days ahead of schedule.
The crowd around the stage cheered.
Commander Tanaka:Verbena was scarcely surviving, barely more than a piece of barren rock, but now with the Alliance factory opening you and your families will be able to lead full and satisfying lives.
Mort gritted his teeth and looked like he REALLY wanted to start something, but pushed on.
They also passed by a woman around Daniel’s age in an Alliance uniform with Lieutenant stripes keeping an eye on the crowd before making it to the Tattoo’d Man tent. A barker was out front trying to get people to come see the man with living pictures etched upon his body. Mort quietly moved around to the back of the tent as Daniel & company moved towards the front.
BOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!
The factory spectacularly blew up. A huge fireball went into the sky and shards of metal and wreckage were strewn into the crowd. The force of the explosion knocked people to the ground, including the crew.
Asta and Jasp easily saw and heard the explosion from the Orasca. Snagging some medical supplies, Asta told Jasp aliens attacked the factory and the two sprinted out towards the carnival.
Pushing wood and metal off of himself, Mort got up. Feeling like he could get blamed for this, Mort took off his brown coat.
We returned from commercial break with the crew stumbling about amid the chaos of the recent explosion. There was carnage everywhere. People were crying, screaming, and bleeding. Mort ignored it all and ducked into the Tattooed Man’s tent. A large beam had fallen upon the tent, collapsing the front half of it. Inside, the Tattooed Man was laying on the ground unconscious. The beam was lying across his legs, trapping him. Mort quickly rifled the man’s pockets and belongings, pilfering a few platinum and a ham sandwich. Out front, Take, Daniel, and Campan were taking stock of the situation. Parents were desperately hunting for their children among the smoke and wreckage. Some people were working to free trapped loved ones from underneath the rubble. Take stood over the barker, who now sported some facial burns and head trauma, pretty much ignoring him. Mort called Take into the tent.
Take entered to find Mort munching upon a sandwich. Take looked over the Tattooed man and noticed his legs had been crushed. He’d need some serious medical attention in order to retain his legs; much more than this little world could provide. Daniel called over the walkie-talkie to Asta to find out their ETA while Campan kept an eye out. Looking out at the crowd, Daniel begrudgingly removed his coat as well, not wanting to look like he was a target for the crowd’s aggression.
Asta and Jasp wove their way through the wreckage and people. They passed an older farmer clutching the body of a woman as they saw a few people had enough coherence to start dragging wounded towards one of the large tents to act as a triage center. Asta was ushered around back into the Tattooed Man’s tent when she arrived. After applying tourniquets to the man’s legs, the others lifted the beam off of him. With a mild stimulant, The Tattooed Man was brought back to consciousness. Daniel was quickly able to get out of him that the Barker, Bob, was the one who had the money and the hiding place for the goods.
Rushing outside, Mort and Take found the Barker still had a pulse. Asta followed and found the man had some facial burns, cranial swelling, and a mild concussion. She was able to fix him up good. Mort made up a couple stretchers. The crew dropped the Tattooed Man off at the triage center with Asta and Jasp and the others brought Bob back to the Orasca.
Asta found the triage tent in a poorly managed state. She quickly took over and set it up moving smoothly. A couple of hours later, Bob woke up and had a conversation with Mort and Daniel. He basically said that it was a bit too hot right now to move the cargo and they should wait for things to die down to make the transfer. The crew acted like they wanted to bolt, but Bob pointed out that their ship was very likely already landlocked (it was). They then wanted to move the cargo off the ship, which Bob pointed out that the area was crawling with Feds. If the cargo was found in the hold of the ship, then, well… the crew is transient. If it was found on the way to his hiding space, he lives here and therefore would be screwed. Bob made it clear that he was not wanted by the Alliance for anything and was looking to keep it that way.
Back in town, Jasp was standing guard over the triage tent. He watched as a crowd milled about in the open area. Some were trying to clean up and some were still moving wreckage. Most, however, were just angry and frustrated. Jasp was able to overhear a man with corporal stripes (Grayson) talking with the butch woman with Lieutenant stripes (Quillan) from earlier. He was talking about having run the factory manifest through the cortex and one of the workers got flagged for a suspicious background. Jasp wasn’t the only one that overheard this conversation, though. People started talking about a browncoat who worked with them, but never drank with them. It wasn’t long till the crowd starts yelling, “We’ve got ‘em!” Jasp found it very hard to see into the crowd. As he climbed on top of an outhouse, he heard cries of, “Murderous Independent!” Jasp could now see that it was a roughed up man in a brown coat like many of the crew wear.
A shot rang out into the air and the crowd backed up a few feet from the man. Lt. Quillan lowered her gun and stepped up to the man. Looking him over, she called out to the crowd.
Lieutenant Quillan: It’s not him. We know who the culprit is and he's no longer in town. He's taken a land shuttle. There's a bounty for whoever captures this guy. 400 credits will go to the one who captures him, but he has to be brought in alive. If anyone harms the target they'll face Alliance justice. Every available ship in port is now under my control. Alliance personnel and volunteers will be assigned to each in order to go after and apprehend the target. Captains please report to Corporal Grayson.
When Jasp relayed this info, Campan and Take headed off towards town. Campan tried to pretend he was the captain of the Orasca, but they’ve got Take on file as the captain from when the ship landed. Take quickly dismissed Campan as a little off and low on the totem poll. Take was approached by Quillan and told she would be accompanying him on the ship, along with three others. She handed Take a paper and told him that was the target and to be ready to go by oh-one-hundred.
Take recognized the target as Private Declan Everton, a kid who served on the Grieving Lark (Daniel's ship back during the war). When this info was brought back to the Daniel, he remembered Everton better. He was a man so by the book he’d get upset if someone pissed without getting an officer’s approval to leave. He even wanted to write Mort up for smoking and because he wouldn’t shave. Daniel, Mort, and Take seemed torn on what to do. They weren’t sure if they wanted to bollocks up their mission with the Lieutenant on board or actively find him so they could escape or what. Mort began ‘sabotaging’ the ship by disconnecting several parts and making a few areas where ‘accidents’ could happen to Alliance personnel can happen onboard.
Meanwhile, the crew was checking in with Asta on if she’d be able to accompany them on the search. She heard a commotion outside with people yelling about having gotten him free and calling for a doctor. Asta met them when they enter the tent. Two Alliance soldiers burst in carrying a stretcher with a man on it. Grayson hovered next to them, switching back and forth between looking for a doctor and attending to the man on the stretcher. Commander Tanaka appeared to be in a great deal of pain. He had his arm wrapped around his stomach, but was still issuing orders. Grayson told Asta that he had been trapped under the wreckage and he needed help. He then scurried off after Tanaka ordered him to bring him a status report. Asta quickly assessed that he likely had a lot of internal injuries and was going to require more equipment than was here in the tent. She sent Jasp off with a list for Mort to collect from the medbay and bring back. She then started to work on stabilizing him. Mort packaged up the equipment in a box and sent Jasp back, making sure he locked Jasp in his room while collecting the items and making a box.
While trying to stabilize him, Asta convinced Grayson and Quillan to hold off the departure of the Orasca for an hour so she can accompany them. Quillan really didn’t like this, but agreed.
Tanaka had a nasty habit of drifting in and out of consciousness. When he was awake, he demanded reports from Grayson. One particular report that was brought to him was the fact that the man they were chasing was a private in the war on the side of the Independents.
Tanaka (difficulty breathing):Damn brown coats. Should've wiped out when had chance.
He then drifted off back into unconsciousness from the pain.
Quillan arrived at the Orasca with three other shortly before one in the morning. Two of them were skeevy looking bounty hunter types; one with a sleek and shiny rifle (Jonah) and the other with an electric crossbow (Mather). The third was a farmer type in his late fifties with a shotgun strapped to his back. Jonah and Mather looked over the outside of the Orasca while Take greets Quillan.
Jonah:Well, shoot, doubt this piece of rustin' dust would be able to find a stick of dynamite up a donkey's ass.
Take took great offense at this and insulted him back, then Daniel told Quillan they didn’t need him onboard. Jonah backed down and apologized. (Admittedly, Mort had been taking the past couple hours to junk up the ship). Jonah, Mather, and the farmer were led onboard and stuck in the cargobay. Quillan then informed Take that they’ll be leaving an hour later because of their doctor and will that they would be patrolling the north sector.
A rumbling was heard from the tent as ships start taking off. A shiny Alliance shuttle rose, followed by three spaceships of various shapes and sizes, none of them particularly elegant or new. All the ships went off in different directions.
Almost an hour later, Asta realizes she wasn’t going to finish Tanaka anytime soon. Since he did have a lot of internal bleeding and she didn’t have an x-ray on hand, she was forced to operate. She managed to cauterize one laceration and was trying to reroute a crushed artery when she decided she wanted him back in her medbay. She knew moving him was risky, but she had decided, damn it! She got some people to clear a place for the Orasca to land and radioed for them to move to pick them up. She had to convince some officers that it was imperative for his survival that he was back on the ship. Jasp packed up the equipment and they transferred Tanaka to the Orasca. Quillan was just happy to get underway. One of Tanaka’s attendants tried to accompany them onto the ship, but Daniel tricked him off and Mort shut the door.
Bob was still in the medbay, sitting around and relaxing as he healed. They never actually gave him a chance to get off ship, just made sure Daniel had a cover story for why he was on the ship (old childhood friends). Bob played along.
Daniel also tried to get info out of Quillan about why they were chasing this person. It boiled down to the fact that he ran, had a suspicious background, and ‘it just felt right.’ Quillan commented that her instincts were usually pretty dead on. She also commented that her instincts told her Daniel wasn’t telling her everything.
The Orasca took off at a seriously diminished speed, due to ‘engine trouble.’ By now the other ships had located Declan’s land shuttle and were in pursuit, though about an hour behind it. A while out, Take noticed that, for the past twenty minutes, the shuttle’s flight pattern had been continuously repeating. Every zig, every zag. It was a bit too precise for a human to be at the wheel. Mort ‘fixed’ the engine problems and the Orasca sped up.
Asta had done a spinal block on Tanaka to keep the pain gone and him more at peace. She was still trying to get his bleeding under control when he awoke again.
Tanaka (a little loopy): Pain gone.
Asta just nodded.
Tanaka (still loopy): What give me?
She told him she had done a spinal block so he wouldn’t feel the pain.
Tanaka (loopy): Fancy technique for border doctor.
Asta shrugged.
Tanaka (looks around): Not to mention tools. Who are you?
Asta ignored the question and continued to work. Tanaka kept asking her. With no one to stop her, she blindfolded and gagged him. His face turned red in anger over this. Getting all riled over this was not good for his condition.
Once the Orasca got to the point where they believed Declan had jumped ship, Mort faked some engine problems and they were forced to land. Saying it’d take him a few weeks to get things fixed, Campan and Daniel decided to take a walk. Quillan and company followed. Mort, Take, and Jasp went outside as well (Mort to tweak the engines and Take to look around).
Somewhere in between taking off and landing, Campan explained to Jasp that these people weren’t aliens, but they could work or were working for the aliens.
Mather noticed a trail about the same time Take noticed some bent branches. Mort and Take stayed behind while the others went off following the trail. At one point, Mather noticed the tracks go off one way while Campan noticed them go off another. After some discussion, the group split into Campan, Daniel, Quillan, and Jonah following Campan’s tracks while Jasp, Mather, and the farmer following Mather’s tracks.
Campan’s tracks led them to a briar patch while Mather’s tracks stopped at a tree. Mather was slightly confused by this and, since he wasn’t good at climbing trees, asked Jasp to do it. Jasp wasn’t good at it either and said the farmer should do it. The farmer just moved up to the tree, pulled his shotgun off of his back, and shot up into the tree. When nothing fell, he shrugged.
For some strange reason, Jasp took this as a sign that these people needed to be dealt with. He raised his two big pistols and aimed them towards Mather and the farmer. Mather had a look of complete shock on his face as a bullet went through his heart and he collapsed to the ground, dead. The farmer was able to start to turn around before Jasp shot him dead. Standing over the two bodies, Jasp put his guns away and took Mather’s crossbow. He then radioed Daniel saying that he had spotted the fugitive and was giving chase.
When Daniel heard the shotgun, he asked Quillan, “I thought you specified you wanted him alive.” She confirmed that. When the two pistol shots were heard in rapid succession a few moments later, Quillan looked at the others and said, “Let’s go.”
Finding the scene wasn’t too hard. With the look of surprise still etched on Mather’s face, the farmer down as well, the crossbow missing, and the shot pellets imbedded in the tree nowhere near Jasp, Daniel had no problem piecing together what had happened. He could also see that Quillan was heading towards the same conclusions and would likely know it all once she investigated further. He immediately tried to throw her off with a couple of observations, though it was clear none of the crew were sure what they were going to do now.
Back from commercial, we focus on Mort and Take. They had been heading out to keep an eye on the hunting party. However, when they heard gunshots, Take turned to Mort and said, “We need to get back to the ship.”
They hurried along, but before they made it back they heard the crack of a stick breaking behind them. Turning around, they found a man Declan standing behind them, stopped in mid-stride by the breaking branch. He looked nervous and tired.
Declan:Lieutenant? God it’s so good to see guys. When I saw the Captain back there, I had hoped some of the rest of the old guard were around. I didn’t do it, Lieutenant, I swear. You’ve got to get me off this planet.
Declan: I ran as soon as I heard where that crowd was headed. Was sure they were gonna get me...
They asked him why they thought it was him that blew up the factory.
Declan: I swear I was just helping 'em build the factory. It wasn't the best job, but it's a bitch to get any work after the war. No one wants to hire an independent. I'm untrustworthy just cause we lost. I don't want to cause trouble for you or your crew. I just need shuttle. That's all. Okay, maybe a little money, but I promise I'll pay you back.
They decided to stow him away onboard the ship. Mort ran ahead to make sure the coast was clear. Once onboard, Mort heard some shouting coming from the med bay, demanding the presence of his assistant and a status report on that Hwoon dahn independent.
Mort quickly closed a few doors to block the sound, then they led Declan to Take’s quarters and locked him in. Take then proceeded to take off and do donuts to erase the footprints around the ship.
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Back to the group at the murder scene. Quillan walked away from the group and raised her Alliance issue walkie-talkie.
Quillan: Grayson, we’ve got a probable location of the suspect. I want the Farrington to continue after the land shuttle while the rest of you rendezvous at my coordinates and begin a ground search of the area.
We’ve got a situation here with two dead volunteers I believe were killed by one of the crew. I want a team to go over the scene
Daniel and Campan took this time to talk to each other to figure out what to do about Jasp and Quillan. They called Mort on their walkie-talkie and gave him a very abbreviated and slightly coded lowdown on what had happened. Mort responded in code that Declan had shown up.
Mort: I fixed the engines. It was just like that time I got written up for smoking.
Daniel then talked with Quillan. It was very likely that Jasp had killed these two in cold blood and they both knew it. He asked her what she saw and she confirmed his suspicions.
Quillan went back to conversing with Grayson over the comm as the others tried to figure out what to do. Mort decided to head off from the ship to join up with the others.
While people were still trying to figure out what to do with the situation, Jasp returned (weapon drawn). He had dropped the crossbow in the woods. Quillan trained her gun on him and told him to drop his weapons. It took a lot of persuasion from the crew to get him to do it, but he did. When asked what had happened, he gave a rather interesting version of events.
Jasp: Well, the target showed up and the farmer shot at him. The others got in the way of my shots and went down. The target then stole his crossbow and ran off. I pursued, but lost him.
He made his best effort at making that believable, but the odds were stacked against him. Quillan kept her gun trained on him and said she wished to conduct this interview in a more formal setting and asked Daniel to fully disarm Jasp. Daniel moved towards Jasp slowly while Campan took cover behind a tree. Jasp reluctantly started removing his weapons. He tried to leave his ‘hidden’ knife (hilt sticking out of his boot), but he was made to remove ‘Betsy’.
Mort showed up to find Quillan with her gun aimed at Jasp and Jasp slowly disarming.
Mort (clueless & slightly cheerful): What’s going on?
Campan quickly shooed Mort behind a tree.
With Daniel close, Jasp stage whispered, “But they were traitors!” Jonah angrily denied this by saying Mather wouldn’t do that and that he was lying.
About this time, there was a large explosion/crashing sound off away from the city. Finding out from Grayson and Take, one of the volunteer ships had just crashed. (plot twist)
Daniel continued chatting with Take during this time and became more involved in that conversation while Quillan got slightly distracted by her conversation with Grayson. Daniel turned his back on Jasp and motioned for him to flee.
Jasp dove for his weapons, grabbing Betsy and one of his handguns, then tumbled behind a tree. Daniel dove to the ground as Quillan opened fire. While she consistently hit Jasp’s positions on the trees, Jasp kept behind cover as he fled.
After Jasp was gone Mort turned to Campan and said, “So, what’s going on?” again. Campan responded with, “Jasp murdered two people we were with.”
With Jasp gone, Daniel reminded Quillan that there was a crashed ship to deal with. Reluctantly, she asked Mort to take Jasp’s weapons, which he was already collecting, back to the ship while she collected weapons off of the two dead men. Quillan relayed the direction that Jasp had run off in and that he was armed and considered dangerous.
Upon returning to the ship, Mort stuck Jasp’s things in a box and locked it. Hearing the Commander yelling, Quillan went off to give him a status report. Mather stuck in the cargo bay while the others all headed up to the cockpit to join Take. Daniel and Campan explained what had happened to Take and Mort in a detaled and none too flattering to Jasp way. Campan also admitted the “A” word may accidentally been used with some relation to the two people who died to Jasp.
While discussing what they should do about Jasp, it was commented by the GM that Take needed to put on the Captain Pants. Bob knocked on the cockpit’s door, looking for a place to lay down. It seems that he had left the med bay a while ago due to the noise. Mort took him down to his quarters, told him he could help himself to stuff in the fridge, but not to touch anything else. He then locked Bob in.
While he didn’t like it, Take decided that Jasp was expendable and had brought the trouble down on himself. Daniel and Mort agreed but weren’t sure how they were going to deal with him. Mort started forming a plan. Before getting to the crash site, Quillan had gotten Jasp’s name out of Daniel so she could run it through the cortex.
At the crash site, they found the ship had lost engine power and just crashed into the ground, taking out a path of trees till it stopped. Campan, Mather, Quillan, Mort, and Daniel went down in a shuttle while Take stayed aboard to pilot.
Daniel tried to annoy Quillan by asking if they should really help because it looked like they’d be in the way. Quillan inadvertently reminded Daniel that the Alliance had shot his ship down, back in the war. Everyone begrudgingly pitched in as Quillan ordered people around. Things were already in full swing by the time the crew got there, after all. Mort headed for the engine room, found the problem easily, and proceeded to loot engine parts. After collecting enough stuff, he went out and informed Quillan what the problem had been. He said that the mechanic was clearly an idiot and should be killed, if he wasn’t dead already.
After a few hours, light started to appear on the horizon. The only survivors of the crash was the captain, who didn’t have a scratch on him (lucky bastard), and two volunteers, who had gotten knocked around in the cargo bay and had a broken bone or two. The Orasca had landed on a hill a mile away and Daniel had set up a tent to catch a little rest. They took the time to further discuss the Jasp problem. Campan realized that he had never seen Jasp run out of ammo, which was a fact Daniel also remembered, once it was pointed out to him. So Daniel called Take and told him to “Look for the manifest in the third room on the right.”
Take went down and into Jasp’s room. He found a backpack full of MRE type food, walls of guns, and a dresser with three and a half drawers filled with ammo (and half a drawer of clothes). And, of course, the tinfoil that lined the room. Apparently “manifests” was code for ammunition. Take responded with “Yes, I found lots of manifests.”
A private showed up and informed them that they should head back to town. The rescue efforts were over and the search had been called off till the afternoon when a contingent of Alliance personnel would show up to continue the search. The crew happily picked up camp and headed back to the ship without any extra people this time.
They found things quiet onboard the Orasca. The Commander was resting and Asta was curled up on the other cot sleeping.
There was much drinking on the part of Campan and Daniel on their way back to town.
Back in town, Take landed the ship in a designated area and the crew got some rest. Before going to sleep, Mort talked to Asta and found out that the Commander could be moved off ship in a few hours. She had arranged for some men to move him off ship and was just heading off to make sure they had proper facilities set up to take care of him. Mort showed her out, hung up a sign, locked the door, and headed to his room. Declan began started knocking on the door in Take’s room. When asked what he wanted, he said he was hungry. Some protein cubes or twinkies or something got thrown to him while he was told some Alliance were still on the ship and he needed to be very quiet. While Take took to sleeping in his pilot chair on the bridge, Mort made Bob move to a chair and slept on his own bed.
Sign: Sleeping. Come back in a few hours
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Jasp had watched most of this from his sad little hideout at the top of a tree. Lots of pretty lights from the crash site. He hadn’t strayed far from the murder scene and was lacking any manner of survival skills. He just wedged himself in the tree and fell asleep. While asleep, a bird landed on his head. He snatched the bird, which promptly crapped on him. He broke its neck, but was at a loss as to figure out what the next step was in making it dinner. So he just sat and waited, listening to the occasional chatter on his walkie-talkie by the crew. The comments about a manifests confused him a little, especially when he figured out they referred to his room.
-----
A few hours later, Asta woke Mort up again. She had arranged for the Commander to be transported, but was going to be bringing a bunch of people on board to do so. There was a lack of pleasure about this, but what could he do. She also let him know of some developments in town.
Asta (gesturing over he shoulder): Oh, and the cavalry is here.
Mort: We have a cavalry?
Asta: Not our cavalry.
Daniel was quickly awoken and filled in. They decided to let Take sleep, since he needed his beauty sleep.
Quillan knocked on the ship door and Mort grumpily greeted her.
Mort: Do you know how much sleep we’ve had?
Quillan: More than I have. I came to talk to your captain about your crewmate.
Mort: Did you at least bring coffee?
She just looked at him. He went and woke up Daniel and Campan, then went off to make ‘coffee’ (boiled water plus caffeine tablets and a protein cube to make it brown). This led to Mort’s comment, “Be careful chewing your coffee.” Campan mixed his beer with his coffee to improve its taste.
Quillan had no problem speaking with Daniel about Jasp. It came up that Jasp had served as a mercenary in the war on the side of the Alliance. It seemed he enjoyed the violence and killing. When asked what he liked to kill, she responded that the records didn’t specify, just that he enjoyed it. His file was flagged for mental instability and he was scheduled for a psych test, but he managed to wander off before this could happen and they lost track of him. Mort made several comments about how the Alliance let a psychopath go loose and what a blunder that was. The crew made several comments about only having known him a week. Quillan asked to see his room and the gathered group all went. Mort went in first to check for booby-traps.
Mort: Dear God! Tin foil! It’s covered in tin foil!
Quillan went down and was followed by the others. As mort went through the drawers, he commented, “Well that’s excessive. That’s really excessive. Didn’t he have any clothes?” Campan passed on that they had never seen Jasp run out of ammo.
Afterwards, Quillan asked for the crew’s help in apprehending him. She didn’t want to further delay them from any pressing engagements they had elsewhere, however. She then said they would be compensated for their help. She relayed that she was going to send a squad to the area to search for both suspects. With questioning, she revealed they were being sent to retrieve, not kill, and would be armed with stun weapons. Daniel knew they were close range weapons and Mort knew those weapons had a range of about 10 feet maximum. The squad wouldn’t stand a chance against Jasp if he went sniper. She also relayed the death toll for the day (around one hundred). With a look to Campan and Mort, Daniel said they would help and asked how they would contact her. After giving that information, she left.
Daniel then proceeded to go talk to Declan. He was well rested and playing with Take’s toys when Daniel came in. Daniel asked him straight up if he had blown up the factory.
Declan:I swear I didn’t do it. You know the Alliance'll just pin this on me so it looks like they're actually doing something out here.
When pressed, Declan continued.
Declan: Besides, even if I did, it was an Alliance factory. Those gears are an essential part of a new line of military skiffs. You do remember what those skiffs did to our men on the field?
Daniel:What about all the innocent civilians who were killed by the explosion.
Declan: This is war. They were acceptable casualties. You know what a blow Tanaka’s death will be to this sector?
Daniel left Take’s room and relocked it, then went and woke Take. In a pow-wow with Campan, Take, and Mort in the cockpit, Daniel relayed that Declan had done it. This led to Mort putting together a rather brutal plan that would take care of both their problems. It was argued, by Mort, that Jasp couldn’t be allowed to live, since he knew too much about the crew and their life of crime. They should all think of it as a mercy killing, anyway. Around this time, they got a call on the walkie-talkie from Jasp.
Jasp: Guys? I’m hungry.
Mort , rather happily I might add, told him to stay put near the crash site and they’d be by to pick him up.
They then sent Quillan a wave telling her they were going to fly up to where they had last seen Jasp to flush him out. If she sent the squad by ground, they wouldn’t alert Jasp to their presence and could capture him. She thanked them for their help and signed off.
On the way up there, they went through Jasp’s stuff to find something he identified with aliens (a shiny, little green ball of a tin foil like substance). Mort then went down and talked to Declan.
Mort: Listen up. We’re going to hide you out with a friend of ours for a couple hours before. Its okay, he’ll keep you safe. Now, when you see him, show him this so he knows who you are. And here is a pistol to protect yourself.
Mort then handed him the green ball and one of Jasp’s pistols. Declan was grateful for the help and went along with the plan.
Daniel told Jasp that they’d send someone out to get him once they landed. Seeing the Orasca, Jasp climbed down from his tree and headed towards where they set down. Declan was sent out to go find Jasp.
Things quickly went south once Jasp saw Declan had one of his own guns and a ball like the one found at the wreckage of his family home. Declan somehow managed to dive out of the way of the first hail of bullets, take cover behind a tree, and even nail Jasp in the shoulder with a shot. His luck was short lived, however. Jasp’s very next shot took Declan out, despite the cover. Picking up the ball and his gun, Jasp headed towards the Orasca.
Mort closed the cargo door once the first gunshot rang out and Daniel had told him to close the gorram door.
Jasp: Uh, guys? Why is the door closed. Let me in.
Mort: Sorry. Door malfunction. Working on it.
They mentioned something about illegal aliens in the forest over the walkie-talkies as the Alliance squad showed up (plot twist). The aliens comment had the desired effect on Jasp. While Jasp fought valiantly and took out several soldiers, he forced them to resort to deadly force. He was riddled with bullets before he dropped. The remaining third of the squad collected the bodies and the leader used the walkie-talkie to thank the crew for their help and said they’d be able to collect their remuneration back I town.
Mort: Can we get our walkie-talkie back?
They were then told they could collect Jasp’s effects later, back in town.
Bob was then talked to and it was concluded that their business could be completed once the Alliance picked up stakes. The Orasca flew back to town and waited.
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Over the siesta, Campan monitored the incoming transmissions. The crew got a wave from Badger asking what was taking so long and saying where to drop off his payment. They got a wave from the local Alliance post saying they could pick up Jasp’s effects and their rewards. Finally, Campan got a personal wave from a guy named Logan, which seemed to worry him.
The crew picked up Jasp’s things, but the officers refused to relinquish Jasp’s backpack, which was full of ammo. They didn’t really care. Jasp’s body was also not returned to them, but they knew it wouldn’t be. They all agreed that Asta wasn’t going to be told what had actually transpired while she was taking care of the Commander and resting.
They finished their job with Bob and got off planet to drop off Badger’s payment. Campan calculated his cut of the profits from four ‘successful’ jobs. It came to just enough to make his owed payment to Logan, without the interest, of course.
Alex: Look on the bright side. Now your share of the profits is larger.
Synopsis of 8/01/05 Session – subtitled “Help Not Wanted”
With Verbena behind them, Daniel decided he had put it off talking to Asta about Jasp long enough. He omitted several bits about the level of the crew’s involvement, and mixed up by saying Campan and Mort snuck Declan on board, but added that Campan and himself felt rather badly about the turn off events with Jasp. Still, they felt it was better to have him dead than captured and able to betray the crew. Asta hadn’t even noticed Jasp missing and seemed to take what Daniel said at face value. She wasn’t too upset over it all, wondering if she should have upped his medication.
About a month later, the crew was currently headed for Beaumonde in hopes of finding work. Not much in the way of jobs these past couple of weeks and money was getting a little tight. They had picked up a passenger by the name of Leonard to help pay the costs of the trip. He was the kind of gent who was appealing to the eyes and could have had a way with words. The crew made sure he, for the most part, stayed in his quarters.
While sitting in the Captain’s chair, Take noticed a distress call coming over the comm. The Orasca was on the very edge of where the signal would reach, so it was very garbled and the visual was all static. The words he picked up were “Under Attack” “Cargo ship” and “Help.” Now, the Orasca was very likely too far away to be of any help in any immediate distress, but as Daniel correctly pointed out, they were close enough to pick the bones off the corpse.
Suspicious of their good fortune, they immediately suspected this to be a trap. A message was sent over the intercom that they had received a distress call and were going to make a slight detour to investigate. Asta answered back saying she’d make some med kits in case they were needed. Campan and Mort made their way to the bridge while Take altered course to bring the ship slowly into sensor range. When they finally got to within range, they were able to pick up was that there was indeed a ship there and it wasn’t moving.
Leonard came up to the bridge to inquire about was going on. He strode onto the bridge and made it clear that he did not want a detour delaying his arrival on Beaumonde. Leonard was asked to leave the bridge and Mort tried to forcibly eject him. Leonard quickly got off the bridge, leaving in a huff.
Take and Daniel brought the other two up to speed and had Mort have the ship go mostly dark to avoid detection. They set up the ship to mostly cost towards their target.
With the ship’s lights now almost all off, Leonard moved towards the only lit area he could see (the med bay). Finding Asta there, he proceeded to bombard her with questions about what was going on. She was working on her current project and wasn’t amused by the interruption. Finding he wasn’t hurt, she kicked him out of the med bay and went back to work. She made some comment about spacing him. He proceeded to stumble around the cargo bay in the dark, looking for a way off this ship of lunatics before the trouble they were heading towards tried to get him killed.
A quick conversation between the bridge and Asta led to Campan having to go down and escort their passenger back to his quarters (which he happily did with his rifle in hand). Once back in his quarters, Leonard proceeded to barricade himself in his room, to protect himself from these lunatics.
The crew eventually got within range to get a good look at the situation. The ship was alone, drifting in space. There were no heat signatures coming from the ship. When the Orasca finally got close enough to do a visual inspection, Mort was able to see that they had been immobilized with some precision work. Well-placed weapon blasts took out the weapons and other key systems so that it could be harpooned and boarded.
Daniel moved down to the Korv and set it out ready for launch, ‘just in case.’ He monitored his sensor screen while Take monitored his own.
As the Orasca docked with the other ship Mort and Campan put on suits to go investigate. The secondary door to the ship’s airlock looked to have been pried open. They found several crates and a bloated corpse. Campan was able to find a secret compartment, which had been raided. He did manage to find a second compartment hidden within that one, which contained crates of mostly foodstuffs.
Hauling the stuff back to the Orasca, they returned to the cargo ship to explore. Asta was left to move the stuff into their ship’s hidden compartment. They found the door to the mess area had a couple of bullet dents in it. With the Orasca now linked up to the ship, life support was slowly restoring air to the cargo area. Inside the mess area, Campan and Mort found a couple of people attached to the ceiling, harpooned through their skulls. This made Campan and Mort move more quickly. They found the food stores ransacked.
About this time, Daniel noticed that, in addition to the blue dot on his screen, a yellow blot had appeared and was moving in their general direction.
Campan and Mort continued on towards the engine room. They passed a partially skinned man and moved even faster. The engine room doors looked pried open and there were bodies inside. They completely ignored the bodies and checked on the engine. It had been shot, so was inoperable, but Mort found a couple of nice bits that would fetch a pretty price or go well in his engine, if he took the time to pull them out. Daniel informed them that they had company approaching. Mort decided it would take too long to pull the parts out and they hurried back to the ship.
Once back on the Orasca, they got everything set up to detach. Then Mort remembered to check for booby traps and told Take to wait on disconnecting. Mort and Campan completely failed to find any trap and declared it safe to leave. Asta and Daniel didn’t trust that and checked for themselves. Daniel flew the Korv around to look while Asta looked from the inside. They both found some wires attaching the two ships. It was a simple explosive rigged to blow a hole in the airlock, should the ships detach. Asta pointed them out to Mort and, seeing it would be easier to disable from outside, he headed out with Campan. Working quickly under stressful conditions, Mort removed the hazard and they headed back inside. Once detached, Take moved the ship away from the cargo ship and the approaching ship.
As for the approaching ship, Daniel recognized it as an older ship and slightly larger than the Orasca. Daniel docked the Korv again and Take put the cargo ship between them and the approaching ship.
The ship was about fifteen minutes behind the Orasca when it started and about 10 minutes behind by the time the Orasca got up to speed. Daniel sent a general open comm. message, with no response. He then asked the ship to identify itself. The only response he got was a green spot appearing on the radar (missile). It quickly moved towards the Orasca, but Take was easily able to avoid it.
The other ship was keeping pace with them, but wasn’t gaining anymore. By this point, Mort was jumping up and down, asking if they should go to full burn. Mort and Campan decided to pass on the info about the bodies they found. With this new info, the ship not breaking off pursuit and a second missile being launched, the answer was yes to pump up the speed.
They full-burned until the other ship was a safe distance away. It followed for a while, but eventually lost speed and slowed down, dropping off the radar. The crew were a little on edge all the way to a fueling station. Nothing eventful happened on the way to the station or while there. The trip to Beaumonde was also fairly uneventful, though they kept an eye on their sensors the whole way.
The Orasca touched down in the Capital on the docks of Beaumonde. The planet was closer to the core and its economy largely ran off of its many factories. Leonard quickly packed up his things, paid his bill and for the damages (he had smashed the intercom in his room) and left, swearing off the lunatics onboard.
Take stayed on the ship while the rest of the crew headed off to a local bar called The Maidenhead where Daniel had a couple of contacts whom he would fence the stolen goods to. It was a nice enough underground multi-level bar, with a rotating storage weapon check at the door. Daniel, Campan, and Mort went off in search of Fanty and Mingo, the proprietors of the establishment and Daniel’s contacts. Daniel knew that these twin brothers usually dealt in more risky and illegal jobs than he normally liked to perform, but when the going gets tough…
Anyway, Daniel arranged for the fencing of the foodstuffs and Campan haggled out the price with Fanty. Meanwhile, Daniel talked with Mingo. Mingo proposed to him a small job the ship might do. It was the simple transport of a man to an uninhabited, barren rock and back. When asked for the man’s name, Mingo responded, “His name is unimportant. I believe there are members of your crew that can understand the need for a certain amount of anonymity, yes? Let’s just call him Wing.” He needed to get to this rock to collect the gains of a profitable bank heist. Mort asked whom it was stolen from, Mingo responded that it was an Alliance bank. Mort happily said, “Oh goodie.” Now, since the Alliance had an interest in this, it wouldn’t have been wise for Wing to come straight to them with the goods, so he stashed it. The crew would be going along to provide transport and to make sure he didn’t skip off with the loot. Mort asked how alive Wing had to come back. Mingo’s reply was, “I would prefer him alive, since he has done good work here. If he does die, I do understand, but a sizable cut of your pay will be deducted. After all, it is hard to find good professionals.”
Daniel left the deal open ended, saying he needed to check with the Captain on the job. He then proceeded to do a little information gathering about recent criminal activity. It seems there was a sizable bank heist on Bellerophon recently.
Meanwhile, Campan collected his weaponry (hand pistols) and went off in search of Leonard. He found him chatting around looking for a job. Campan proposed that Leonard come work for the ship. Leonard was less than sure about this idea. A lengthy conversation about who to avoid on the ship ensued. Seems Campan felt Leonard had annoyed the two members of the ship you should avoid. ‘Avoid the med bay unless you’re hurt. As for Mort, just avoid him.’ Leonard got Campan to agree to more or less protect him while he was on the ship. “I swear by the Honor of... BEER! I know nothing higher than beer!”
Now, having hired Leonard as a front man, a stewardess, crap cleaner, and to make money for Campan, Campan now had to actually get him hired by the Captain. He hooked back up with Daniel, Mort, and Asta. They were less than thrilled about the idea. But, they agreed to go along with the captain. Returning to the Orasca, there was a discussion about Leonard’s employment. An interview by Take, Daniel, and Mort was agreed upon. Asta insisted upon a psych test, after their problems with Jasp.
They set up the interview in the cargo bay and Asta brought the psych test. Several questions were handwritten in at the end, including an essay (What would you do if you were alone with two Alliance bounty hunters and one of them shot his rifle up into a tree. Please give your reasons), a question about what you think about aliens, and a question about what you’d do if asked to toast the Alliance on U-day.
Leonard reluctantly agreed to the interview (and psych test). He was unhappy when they closed the cargo bay doors (felt it might be a trap), but agreed that it gave more privacy. He got a couple of funny looks at the final questions, but Asta declared him relatively sane (at least, more sane than most of the crew). There were a couple of snags in the interview, but most of them got ironed out. Mort really didn’t like that Leonard wouldn’t lie, but seemed to accept that at least he understood the need to omit information on occasion. They also hit upon the fact that Leonard really didn’t like his veracity questioned. The interview looked like it was going marginally well until they got to the Chain of Command. Leonard kept replying that he would follow any reasonable order. This seemed to set off all three of the interviewers, since no officer wants his orders questioned and they didn’t feel they could count on him to perform a duty at a crucial moment without stopping to question it. Ultimately, this ended the interview and Leonard went upon his way.
Synopsis of 8/15/05 Session – subtitled “Those left behind”
With Leonard gone, the crew got on with their business. After a quick chat with Take, Daniel and Campan headed back off to the bar to accept the pro-offered job.
After checking their guns, Campan noticed a guy sitting at the bar without a drink. Of course, he saw this as a very sad thing. Even sadder still, he recognized the guy as his cousin Kenny. Borrowing a bit from Daniel, he ordered a beer for Kenny, then followed Daniel back towards Mingo’s table.
Details were quickly worked out and the two were on their way back out of the bar. Daniel told Campan to go get the beer for the journey. Campan then hit Daniel up for more money to make the beer run.
Daniel:And strangely enough you never have any money.
Campan:I have a sick grandmother, sir.
Daniel:Yes. I met you sick grandmother, if you remember.
Campan:Yes sir, so you know I send her all the money I can.
Kenny intercepted them and chatted with Campan. Looking over Kenny, Daniel saw a very poor man, wearing dirty and soggy clothes. He also didn’t smell too good. Campan did his best to convince Daniel to hire his cousin.
Daniel: You’re related to him.
Campan: You can’t hold that against him.
Daniel: Does he also have a sick grandmother?
Campan: I believe he has two, sir.
Daniel did a quick pre-interview with Kenny, to assess his skills. He also asked Kenny if he had anyone hunting him. Kenny said he paid everyone so they wouldn’t hunt him. Daniel found this a bit strange, but told Campan to get his cousin cleaned up while he was buying the beer. He’d talk to Take about an interview when they got to the ship.
Daniel headed back to the ship and looked around for Take, finding the captain sleeping on the bridge. A brief, if sleepy, conversation ensued about the interview.
Daniel: He’s Campan’s cousin.
Take: Is he poor too?
Campan used a minor amount of the beer money to buy Kenny a new shirt and pants. When they arrived at the ship, Daniel greeted them while Mort was setting up the interview table. After waiting a few moments, Daniel realized he was going to have to go wake Take up again. He sure sleeps a lot for the work he does.
Once Take was woken and given some coffee, the interview could begin. Kenny passed the psych test easily, showing he was the most stable person on the ship. The rest of the interview process went smoothly and, once Take put on the Captain Pants, he was hired. Kenny was given some cleaning supplies and a bucket and Daniel showed him to Jasp’s old room. Kenny quickly started having ideas about what to do with all the tinfoil.
Daniel and Campan then discussed the beer that was procured. He really wasn’t sure about the jalapeno beer. While they were talking, there was a knock on the door to the ship. Mort opened it to find a short, bald gentleman in his sixties. The clothes he was wearing were utilitarian and a bit faded and he had a pistol holstered over his right hip. He stood with a bit of a hunch under the weight of the backpack over his left shoulder.
Wing: (holds out his hand) Howdy. I’m Wing. Nice to meet you, sonny.
Mort immediately hit the intercom button and asked Daniel if they were expecting someone. When told they were, Mort shook Wing’s hand and showed him in.
Daniel made his way down to the cargo bay to meet Wing. Wing greeted him in the same way he greeted Mort. The sonny comment confused Daniel a little, but he ignored it for the time being. Daniel asked Wing about coordinates to where they were headed.
Wing: Oh, I’ll plot in the course into your computer for you. No need to worry about that. Now, would one of you nice boys be kind enough to give me a tour of this boat. Looks like a fine ship.
Mort retreated to his engine room while Daniel gave him an abbreviated tour. He dropped his pack off in one of the passenger rooms. He was told Mort considered the engine room his private sanctum, so it’d be safer if he just stayed out of there. He was shown where the Med bay was, but told Asta considered that her sanctum, so not to go in unless he was injured. Asta didn’t seem to care for him calling her dearie. They ended the tour going through the lounge to the dining room where Campan was sitting, drinking beer.
Again there was the greeting, though Campan made the comment that Wing couldn’t have his beer. Wing said that was alright, cause he had brought his own. Campan perked up at this comment. While the two talked, Daniel went and got Take and mentioned the coordinates thing.
When Take came in, Wing again greeted with a smile and a handshake.
Wing: You’d be the Captain, right? Nice to meet you, sonny.
Wing was asked if he was hunted by anyone besides the Alliance. He responded no, adding something about being the one always left behind. When asked for the coordinates by Take, Wing tried the same line he had used on Daniel. Take said he wanted the coordinates, since he needed to know where they were going.
Campan (over the intercom to Asta): “Did you give him a backbone?”
Wing tried to reason out his argument to them, but it boiled down to him not wanting to be dumped off the ship once they knew where they had to go to get the goods. Daniel was able to convince him to hand over the coordinates.
After giving the coordinates to Take, Wing shuffled back to his quarters to get a bottle of whiskey. Perking up at the offer of some good booze, Campan was more than happy to chat with the fellow. Asta moved up to the dining area and joined them. During the trip, Kenny tried to requisition himself a gun from the armory. He found it locked. Searching out Campan, he was lent a small, concealable handgun (read the woman’s purse gun Wash has in War Stories).
Three days later, the ship made it to the small asteroid where Wing hid his bank robbings. Daniel used the scanning systems to find the hideout before Wing pointed it out and told them where to land. He told them the asteroid had an atmosphere, so they wouldn’t need suits. Gabe then proceeded to ask questions one should not ask (how does it have an atmosphere?) Alex glared at him and responded failed terraforming.
Mort, Campan and Kenny accompanied Wing into the hideout. On the approach to the hole in the ground, Wing told them to stand back as he walked in a funny, drunken pattern towards the hole. Once he brushed off a keypad and hit some combination he waved the others in. Mort had a very cautious Kenny go first, followed by an equally cautious Mort. Campan swaggered along behind.
At the bottom the ladder inside the hole, Wing punched in another combination after everyone was down. Several times through the journey down a mineshaft like tunnel, Wing stopped to disarm and then rearm traps.
They finally reached a room cluttered with lockers, crates, and four identical locked cases with small consoles. Mort and Wing checked them over to make sure they weren’t trapped. Mort got Wing to check inside one of them to make sure the goods were still there. Once they decided it was safe and the money was intact, everyone picked up a rather heavy case.
At this point, the sound of a gun powering up could be heard. An unkempt, muscular man of about six feet tall partially stepped out from behind a locker with his gun pointed at Wing.
Bad Guy: Drop the cases and leave Wing and you can leave. We’re just here for what is ours.
Mort muttered something and opened fire on the guy before dragging his moneybox into the hallway to use the door as cover. Unfortunately for him, he only hit the locker as the guy ducked back behind it. Campan and Wing both dropped their boxes and ended up diving behind the same crate near the door. Kenny dropped his box and ran behind a locker further into the room, yelling about not wanting a fight.
Wing: (from behind cover) They ain’t ruttin yours! You fled when things went bad and left me behind!
A brief firefight ensued as the bad guy’s companions, a short bald chick with a peacemaker and an ugly bastard with a submachine gun, joined the game. Campan and Mort got shot up good. Mort managed to get all the moneyboxes out into the hallway while Wing and Campan moved their cover towards the door. Wing wasn’t hitting anything, but he also wasn’t getting hit. Kenny moved further into the room before trying to get back out. Unfortunately for him, he tripped and fell in the middle of room. The Bad Guy moved over and picked up Kenny, using him as cover and a hostage (not that the others seemed to care). When a shot was made at the guy and the bullet whizzed passed Kenny, Kenny tried to convince him to move behind some cover.
Kenny: Could we move behind that locker? Cause now they’re just going to shoot both of us.
Daniel had been watching the scanners to keep an eye on the party as they went into the compound. They had dropped off the screen a minute or two ago, but he expected that. About this time, he noticed another ship approaching on the scanners. With the clip it was moving at, it’d get there in three or so minutes. He tried to call the others in the hideout, but all he got was static. He moved to the Korv, leaving Take and Asta on the bridge. Asta started working on boosting the comm. signal to reach those inside.
Once they identified the ship as looking and acting like the one they left in the dust a week or so ago, Asta got Take to set up some suits for the rest of the crew. Daniel took off in the Korv and got it situated in a nice spot away from the Orasca.
Campan shot the Bad Guy twice, dropping him. This freed Kenny up to dive behind their cover. Mort, much annoyed by now, cursed and moved into the room to mow down the guy with the submachine gun. About this time, Asta got through on the comm.
Asta: You should know it would be best if you returned to the ship post haste.(I can't remember what was said exactly and can't inflict the complete lack of urgency in which this was said)
Mort: We’re a bit busy at the moment. Can this wait?
Asta: Not when Mr. Likes-to-put-holes-in-the-ship is above us.
Seeing two of her crewmates downed in a hail of bullets, the Bald Chick swore in Chinese. The crew heard the tearing of something, the tinkle of metal hitting the ground, and saw something small and round land near the door between Campan and Mort, as the Bald Chick moved further behind her locker. Crouching behind Campan near the door, Kenny was the first to react to the grenade. He fled further into the room, hiding in a corner behind a locker. Campan picked up the grenade and chucked it back towards the Bald Chick, but didn’t get it far enough away from Mort. The Bald Chick dove behind a crate further away. Mort moved up and kicked the grenade so that it would hit a box and ricochet towards the Bald Chick... then shot at her twice for good measure. One second later, it exploded, obliterating the Bald Chick and tearing up Mort’s jacket, shirt, bullet proof vest, vest, and undershirt, filling his chest with shrapnel.
Exiting from his hiding spot, Kenny and Campan wanted to take the time to loot. Wing had heard Asta’s response and was already carting his moneybox down the shaft. The grenade had toasted the Bald Chick and the Ugly Bastard, along with their stuff. In their seriously injured states, Mort grabbed one moneybox while Campan dragged two. Kenny wanted to stick around and strip the Bad Guy, but ended up just dragging him, at the insistence of Mort.
On the way back to the surface, Mort asked Wing about the guys they just met. He said they were the crew that had done the bank job with him, but they had left him to rot when the feds showed up. By the time they got through the traps, Kenny had partially looted the body, gaining a mangled and hole filled bulletproof vest and a Peacemaker.
The group made it to the surface in time to see the Orasca lifting off, leaving them behind as the ship that looked like Reavers from the last session pursued it. Wing jumped up and down and cursed at the Orasca for getting left behind again. Mort said they weren’t getting left behind and opened fire with his gun at the pursuing ship. Mort asked Wing if that ship was the one guys inside used, to which Wing responded he'd never seen it before. The Korv flew by about a click behind the Reavers.
As the ship had passed the Korv earlier, Daniel noted they once again weren’t pumping out a ship ID single or radiation. A dogfight commenced with the Korv dealing pretty much all the damage. The Orasca and the Korv were just too maneuverable for the Reaver missiles. Daniel damaged the Reaver ship’s maneuverability and destroyed their food and supplies stores while doing a lot of structural damage. The Reavers broke off pursuit and went to full burn to escape.
While waiting for the Orasca to return, Mort asked Wing why his former partners didn’t just make off with the cases if they could get into his hideout.
Wing: The cases have a lock code on them. I’ll admit my security may be a little lacking, sonny, but a code (smiles and chuckles a little, shaking his finger), ah yes. A good code, I can make.
Mort was now covering his chest. He informed Asta that they were going to need serious medical attention. Without doing anything for their wounds and overexerting themselves, Mort and Campan were just gushing out blood.
Campan’s speech was getting slurred by the pain and fatigue.
Campan: I’m sleepy.
Wing cursed and reached into his pack to pull out a bottle of Whiskey. Handing it over, Campan started drinking.
Wing: You’re supposed to pour it… eh, whatever.
Daniel did a scan for the ship of Wing's former crew, but came up with nothing. The Korv redocked with the Orasca as it touched down to pick up its passengers.
Asta patched Campan up while a very stubborn Mort went back to his quarters, insisting he get taken care of there. Take watched over Mort until Asta arrived. Once Take left, Mort locked the door. Asta worked on patching up Mort, who eventually passed out. Asta, being locked in, set up some monitoring equipment, called Take to check on Campan and let him know she was going to be in there a while and took a nap on Mort's floor until Mort woke up.
A few days later, Mort gave a report on the happenings down in Wing's hideout to Daniel. Daniel then sought out Campan for his report.
At one of the meals that most everyone was there for, Daniel talked to Wing publicly, telling him they were unlikely to work together again, since Wing didn't give them all the necessary info. Wing didn't bother explaining, since he felt he already had. He just retorted that he had no idea that was going to happen and left it at that.
(Director's comment: Wing probably should have made a comment like, "You burn the bridges you feel you have to.")
The crew made it back to Beaumonde and met with Fanti and Mingo. Daniel brought Kenny along, since he was the least damaged 'bodyguard.' Daniel tried to get some hazard pay for the crew getting all shot up and Kenny butted in with his own reasoning. All they got were strange looks and a comment, "Maybe you should bring that up during job negotiations."
(Director's comment: Damn bastards rolled too well to use the following comment. "When you take on a job in this line of work, there is a certain expectation of danger involved, even on a cake-run like this one. If you can't accept that, you're in the wrong line of work. Your men getting shot up is a damn shame, but it's not our problem. Look, you do a good job, but don't get too full of yourself. There are plenty of others like you and they are just happy to have the work. You keep up that attitude and you're going to find yourself begging for scraps somewhere.)
The crew unloaded Wing and the cargo and got paid.
It had been two months since the retrieval of the bank heist gains. While they had received a job or two early on, they were fairly small scale. Since then, most people just didn’t have anything for them. They’ve had dry spells before, but usually not after some good jobs.
The Orasca stopped on Santo to refuel before heading on to the Georgia System, where they hoped to find some work. The Alliance chooses to pay more attention to nearby Persephone, leaving only a small post here, making this a nice stop over point. The crew set off their separate ways to run a few errands during their stay and took advantage of a few of the place’s wonderful amenities.
Campan ended up at the local whorehouse drinking some booze and chatting with the women. He managed to pick up news on a small bounty. Kenny ended up chatting with a friend of his, the head of the local Alliance post. He picked up some news on two possible bounties. Take used the quiet time on the ship to play with his dinosaurs. Daniel ended up at the local smugglers den chatting with the bartender. He too picked up some news of possible work, though was distrustful of the source.
Mort visited the local junkyard looking for parts. He found the man’s goods third rate and prices outrageous. Mort got into a shouting match with the man and threatened his life.
Asta approached the junkyard in hopes of finding some medical equipment for a portable crash cart. She passed a seriously annoyed Mort on the way there, but Mort in a pissy mood was nothing she hadn’t experienced before. She got to the junkyard ‘office’ a few minutes later and looked around for the caretaker. She found him lying on the ground, moaning, with blood pooling out of his shoulder. She quickly proceeded to stop the bleeding and patch him up. When she asked him what happened, he told her some lunatic shot him, describing Mort. When asked why, he said the nut job didn’t like his prices threatened his life. When he wouldn’t change them, the maniac shot him. Asta took him back to the Orasca to get him better taken care of and to get him a beer.
There, she set him up in the med bay and called Take over the intercom to come down to med bay with a beer, since they had a visitor. Take got the skunked beer out of the fridge and brought it down. When Asta filled Take in on Mort shooting a guy, they compared notes on Mort’s homicidal tendencies. Take immediately got the guy a better beer from Daniel’s cache and they did their best to placate the fellow (in an effort to keep the authorities out of it). Now mellowed a bit more, he went back into business mode and asked Asta what she had wanted from his yard. They headed back there to look to see what he had (with her radio off).
Campan and Kenny returned to the ship about this time, from their separate treks. They discussed their potential jobs and Kenny asked whom he should bring them to. Campan told Kenny to tell Daniel while Take was in the room, to cover all bases. They headed into the ship to find Take or Daniel.
Take then called Mort over the walkie-talkie.
Take: Umm Mort, could you come back, right about now and… make sure no one sees you.
Mort: Okay.
Take: Particularly that mechanic who, you know, got hurt.
Mort: I didn’t shoot anyone!
Take: Who said anything about you shooting anyone?
Mort:Nobody. And I didn't do it.
Hearing this, Daniel also hastened his way back to the ship. Getting back on board, he quickly made his way to the bridge and got Take to fill him in. Take was very careful to use the word someone instead of saying Mort.
Hearing lots of people in conference, Campan told Kenny something important was happening on the bridge and gestured to Kenny to follow him up. Arriving, Campan announced they had work. Asta countered by announcing to Campan that some beer was missing from the fridge. Campan immediately forgot about the work and started demanding they search for the beer thief, even if it was just the back-up beer.
Daniel: So, what work have you found?
Campan: Uh, whores, sir.
Campan wanted to be paid in beer, but the whores offered services or some money. Seems they just wanted them to beat up or kill a guy or two.
(breaking in) Kenny : I also found something to, sir. Apparently, uh, the authorities are looking for a man named Jardin (said with Texan pronunciation). There is a, uh, reward on him. And I heard it through the grapevine that he can be found on Ebbon. If, we didn’t want to work on the whores.
Daniel showed interest in this case. Kenny also relayed info about an official looking for a guy named Jasp. The crew ignored that one and Daniel then started to say something about the whore job, but got distracted by Mort walking in.
They were fairly quickly able to determine, upon questioning and examining of his gun, that Mort hadn’t shot anyone. Of course, Mort’s solution to stopping this guy from spreading around rumors about Mort shooting him was to kill him. Since no one liked that idea, he suggested they leave.
Now, the ship needed some money for refueling, so they were stuck at a bit of an impasse.
Coming back to the whore discussion, thanks to Campan, Daniel relayed that the whores wanted someone to kill the guys, and that they didn’t have any money. He heard there was a third party hiring people to protect these men from the whores’ friends.
It was decided that Asta would bring the junkyard guy back to the ship where Daniel could interrogate him. Meanwhile, Mort and Take would sneak into the shop and check for surveillance equipment to incriminate Mort. And Kenny would arrange a meet with his contact about the Jardin job at ‘the bar people don’t go to.’ Mort went and got his black hat and bandana mask from his room and the ones he got for Campan. Handing Campan’s off to him, he headed out on a leisurely route to the junkyard.
Take headed off on a direct route and found Asta & the junkyard guy in the back, looking at some junked medical equipment. Take let Asta in on the plan and proceeded to get roped into helping haul stuff back to the ship.
Mort got into the shop, and quickly surmised that the only security this place had was a pair of Rottweilers. He occupied the dogs with some found peanut butter, then moved about into the shop. He found a pair of knotholes that would be a good place to shoot someone from, if they were standing by the pool of blood on the floor. He then proceeded to loot things he actually wanted when he was there earlier. He finished it off with heading to ‘the bar people don’t go to.’
When Asta, Take, and the junkyard guy returned to the ship with a lot of medical junk, Campan immediately accused the guy of stealing his beer.
Campan: The beer does not follow the chain of command!
The crew, minus Mort, assembled in the dining hall and offered to help the guy find out about this shooting and stuff.
Junkyard guy: Well, I was having an argument with this totally irrational man. Saying I had only crap and saying I was way overcharging. Being a general jackass. He’s threatening my life. He didn’t pull his pistol out and wave it at me, but I could tell he wanted to. And finally he makes a couple violent remarks and walks out. A few seconds later, I’m shot! I had turned around to put away some stock.
Daniel: Why would he shoot you and not kill you?
Junkyard guy: Well, apparently he is a suck shot. Either that or he was so pissed off that he… missed.
He thought he saw a revolver, but Mort didn’t take it out, so he didn’t know. He said he'd never picked up a gun, so he didn’t know them.
Campan collected money from Asta and Daniel to go and get beer ‘for the whole crew.’ Kenny was sent along to supervise. They went to ‘the bar people don’t go to’ and ran into Mort. Wasn’t hard to run into him, since he was the only other guy in the bar, save for the bartender. The bartender was elated to have so many customers in one day. They got him to sing for their entertainment, but it was more torture then entertaining. The poor guy didn’t even have bottles of beer, just a tap.
Back on the ship, Daniel set about trying to convince the guy it wouldn’t make any sense for someone to have an argument, storm off, and then shoot him. He then went on to find out if he had problems with anyone. Most he could come up with was a guy a couple months back that wanted to work there. But, you know, he couldn’t really afford a helper, so turned him down. The guy was pissed about that. The guy had worked odd jobs around before hand; at a bar, as a stable boy, and constructing the new gambling parlor. He hadn’t seen the guy since. When asked to describe the guy, it was fairly vague (about Daniel’s height, but younger, didn’t wear glasses, had brownish hair, name started with a J).
Daniel headed back to the junkyard with the guy to check out the scene and see if someone showed up. He made sure his radio was off.
Take radioed the others to let them know to come back to the ship. Despite the bartender saying he could get bottles, they decided to get portable beer elsewhere.
Bartender: (overly enthusiastic) Come back anytime!
Mort: What’s wrong with this bar?
Bartender: I don’t… know. People just stopped coming… Don’t know why.
Dropping off his ill-gotten gains in the hidden compartment, Mort and the others sought out Take. He relayed what he found to everyone there, minus the liberated parts. Asta retrieved the bullet and they determined that it was a fairly common bullet that could have come from Mort’s revolver, though they knew it didn’t.
The crew then analyzed what ‘real job’ prospects they had. The whorehouse job was out, since it wasn’t a real job. Jasp was out, cause he was already tracked down and killed. Mort said they might want to ask Buggs about hunting down Jardin.
Daniel inspected the scene, found the knotholes, and figured from the angle of impact that the gun was shot from there, not the doorway. He pointed this all out to the junkyard guy and told him he had an enemy here. He was able to cast sufficient doubt into this man's mind about Mort shooting him. Daniel stuck around for an hour or two, then went back to the ship.
Mort met Daniel at the door and asked him about the Jardin job. Daniel said Kenny was already setting up a meet. They headed up to the cockpit to find Take. Up there, they discussed the meet tomorrow and the location.
Daniel: So, I’m not going to be inconspicuous sitting in the corner.
Mort: Take a newspaper. Go there twice. The bartender will think you’re his regular.
They decided they’d fill Campan in on the plan and leave Kenny ignorant, since Kenny was under the impression the crew was serious about taking the job. They discussed the possibility that they’d need to kill this contact of Kenny’s. They did decide to let Kenny do the job they hired him for, talking. After Mort got Campan, they told him they were going to meet with this guy about the Jardin job, cause they wanted to ‘deal’ with someone who might want him dead. They were planning on either killing this guy because he was after Jardin, or getting a meeting with the guy who wanted him dead. They did decide Kenny’s contact couldn’t see the ship unless they were going to vent him into space. Many methods of death were discussed.
Daniel took this time to fill them in on an actual business opportunity. Opposite of the whore job.
Daniel: The whores have no money and are trying get someone to kill a couple of men A local, allegedly local at least, businesswoman is hiring people to protect these men from getting killed by the whores, for whatever reason I’m trying to figure out why. She actually does have money.
She is either trying to set up her own business, she runs the new gambling house. She is trying to prevent Alliance attention. Or she has some interest in these men, who are contractors for the Alliance. Freighters who cart stuff for the Alliance. I don’t know if they WORK for the Alliance. I don’t know if she has connections to the Alliance. I don’t know why they’re valuable, but she wants them alive and I want to find that one out.
Probably Mort: That sounds really complicated. Can’t we just shoot people?
Daniel figured there would have to be some killing if they were to take this job. Mort suggested just shooting the whores, to simplify things. If there was no one to pay them, then no one would hunt these guys.
Daniel was asked about the businesswoman and he mentioned her name was Pearl Parker. At the mention of the name, Campan turned bright red.
Take: Is there something wrong, Campan? You look as if your beer suddenly exploded.
Campan denied anything was wrong, but was now definitely in favor of helping this woman. He let on that Daniel now knew the name of his sick grandmother. He said he wasn’t going on this job and wasn’t on this planet or ship. Mort asked him if his grandmother was mad at him.
Campan: I send her money…when I can… sometimes.
Campan just wanted his grandmother to be happy… and alive.
Mort went and asked Kenny if he had a sick grandmother named Pearl Parker. He responded affirmatively, and sounded sincere about it to Mort. Mort: Okay, so, things we need to do. Have a meeting with someone we may or may not kill. Have a meeting with Mrs. Parker so we can kill the whores for her.
Daniel: But what if her goal is no deaths at all while she sets up shop?
Mort: Then that’s overly complicated and we don’t get involved.
Fade to Black
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Paul:Why would anyone bother framing me? There is so much I’m guilty of already.
Gabe: Why do I see the end of the adventure, whichever night it ends, is going to end with; Kill the whores, kill the men (Mike: Kill Kenny), kill the guy, and on the way out, kill the mechanic.
Synopsis of 9/12/05 Session – subtitled “Whole Lot of Talking”
Daniel spent the rest of the evening setting himself up as the regular at the bar nobody goes to. Tom, the bartender, was more than happy to make sure he was a satisfied customer and was elated to find out he’d be bringing in even more business ‘in the morning.’
‘In the morning’ turned out to be the afternoon. Daniel showed up at the bar first with a urine-stained newspaper. He made sure the light was out over his table. He drank more than he should, spilling a lot of it on himself. He then ‘took a nap.’
Asta showed up about two hours before the meet was supposed to happen with some gadgets and a bunch of technical textbooks. She plunked herself down on the middle table and ordered some cider.
Back on the ship, Mort and Campan took Kenny aside to make sure he knew what was going to go on at the meet. They made sure that they needed to get the info about contacting the ‘head guy’ for the job. No middlemen, since they get a cut of the profits. Campan also reminded Kenny that they get money for turning in crewmembers. Kenny didn’t take it as the threat it was.
After a few ciders, Asta asked Tom if he knew where she could get a large rat or a rabbit… and a plastic tablecloth. After explaining that she wanted to brush up on some dissection techniques, Tom told her he was cutting her off. Some hard cider must have got mixed in with her drink somehow. He offered to get her some coffee and something to eat. When he came back with his lunch and the coffee, she found it was actual coffee flavored coffee and didn’t have any chunks.
Asta:What do you use the strain the chunks out of it?
Tom the bartender:I…………….’m going over here now.
Asta achieved her goal of establishing that she wasn’t someone he wanted to deal too much with.
When Mort, Kenny, and Campan arrived, they found Asta happily sitting at her table and Tom casting worried glances at her. The trio sat down at the empty table and pulled it about a foot farther from Asta. For entertainment, Campan asked Tom to sing for them. The group was then tortured by the GM’s bad singing and the GM’s fiancée scolded Campan’s player. Mort then ordered a beer and sat smugly between the two guys without beer money. Campan countered this by pulling a beer out of his coat.
About this point, Tom cut an overly hyper Asta off of coffee. Time passed until a man in comfortable clothes entered the bar. He was in his mid thirties, with speckled gray hair and wearing glasses. He called out to Tom to get him a beer and headed over to Kenny’s table. Greeting Kenny, he got him to introduce Mort and his cousin Campan. As he pulled up a chair, he introduced himself as Gene Wheeler.
He filled in the trio and the listening-in bystanders on the Daniel Jardin case. They were told that he had been in the area recently, a max of a month or two ago and were given a description (43 years old, light brown peppery hair, brown eyes, average height, etc). Gene offered to send them a picture of the guy after he got back to his office. Dead or Alive wasn’t specified, but Gene supposed that Alive was preferred. The reward was about five thousand credits, depending upon his condition (Rough translation of money).
Kenny asked him where the money was coming from, to which Gene responded that they’d need to contact Lieutenant Garrett Sarv, who was based over at Ebbon at the moment. Once Kenny expressed that they’d take up the job, Gene ordered beers for the table and sat around to chew the fat. Gene talked about how he was the quartermaster in charge of the local Alliance. He was only a Sergeant, but they don’t need someone important in charge, since he only had to check stuff in and out and keep and eye on it. Left him with a lot of time to kill. Mort asked what Jardin was wanted for, but Gene didn’t know.
Mort:Might be for shooting rapists…
(pause) Campan:I like molesters. (long pause) SHOOTING them.
They talked a bit about the Jasp job, Campan saying he thought he’d heard of him a couple planets ago. Turns out he was wanted for killing a prefect’s son on some moon about a year ago. Gene told them the local sheriff of that moon would appreciate any information they could give him. Gene eventually begged off, saying he had a shipment coming in that night. Some high tech gizmo from R&D or whatever. Mort got a little too interested in this.
With Kenny’s contact gone, the others left in fairly short order. Daniel stuck around a little bit to spend all of his money buying off Tom’s coffee. Asta tidied up her table and got Kenny to help her carry her stuff back to the ship.
Mort wandered up to the bridge and filled Take in on the meeting. The name of the Lieutenant in charge of the Jardin case peeked something in the back of Take’s mind.
Daniel did not let Campan know that he had spent the beer budget on coffee. He did, however, get Kenny to find out if any other guys were on the case, to which there were two.
Meanwhile, Mort and Take sought out Asta to ask her about this guy who shared her last name.
Take:You know how we have a problem with losing manifests.
Asta:You should probably look into getting a secretary for the manifests.
Mort:Nonono. Secretaries are bad. They keep track of information.
She told them that she had a little brother named Garrett, but she hadn’t spoken with him or the rest of her family in years, since she kind of wandered off duty in the middle of a war and the Alliance probably doesn’t like that fact. He was at boarding school when she left. Mort marked down Garrett’s name on his clipboard. Asta commented how she would prefer if they didn’t off her little brother. Sure, he was annoying and all (as much younger brothers tend to be), but he is family.
Deciding to work on part two of the agenda for the day, Daniel arranged a meeting with Pearl Parker. His initial idea of taking Campan and Mort with him was shot down by Campan. Since Campan said Kenny might also be afraid of their possibly contagious grandmother, Mort suggested taking Asta along instead.
They found Pearl’s gambling parlor to be a much more spacious environment. It was a large wooden building with large wooden doors (The non swinging kind). There were a number of wooden tables for drinking, a faro table, some pool tables, craps table, a new piano, and long bar. There were several doors along the back wall and a large open wooden staircase with a number of doors on the upper level as well.
The brute behind the bar led them upstairs to Miss Parker’s office. It was a nice sized office with a door that led out to a balcony and another door that was closed. There was a nice oak desk to one side with three chairs on the employee/client side of the desk and a standing safe over in the corner by the balcony. Sitting behind the desk was a woman with gray hair about Daniel’s age wearing a business suit. Mort cased the room and determined the safe was too big for him to carry.
Daniel was a little suspicious of the fact that, while they were looked over when they were brought up to the office, they weren’t disarmed and they were now the only ones in the room with Miss Parker. Daniel greeted Pearl before he and Asta each took a seat. Mort relaxed up against the wall with the door to the gambling parlor on it. Daniel introduced himself and the others and asked Pearl to fill them in on the specifics of the job.
Ms Parker: What I’m looking for is a couple of gentlemen or ladies…
Mort(Shifts uncomfortably and looks towards the door): I don’t think you want those.
Ms Parker:Well, it’s more polite than calling you s.
Mort: I don’t think you want those either. I think those are the ones you want dealt with.
She explained that what she was looking for was some people to stop whoever took on the whores’ bounty, since the murder of a couple of Alliance contracted men would be likely to attract the Alliance’s attention. At the moment, all they had to deal with is the local sheriff, who turned a blind eye to ‘Federal’ matters. If the Alliance took an interest, this would be bad for business for everyone who operates through Santo. She informed Daniel of her belief that the whores may have found some people that see things their way. She spoke of how the sheriff’s hands were tied until the whores made their move.
Mort, getting bored with the coded conversation, spoke up.
Mort: You don’t so much need a sheriff for this as you need an assassin. So, would you like another killing? Then you can have the nice sheriff arrest anyone you want and deal with the situation locally.
Ms Parker: Now, if more people were to die, that would be a damn shame. But, if they were to simply leave, that would be the best for everyone.
She wasn’t sure just how many of the whores were truly gunning for these men to be dead, but word was they all pooled their money together. She said there were six whores in total at the house, plus their engineer, Joel Starr. The engineer hadn’t been involved in their bounty. He got compensated for his damaged goods and was happy with it. He had proven to not be able to control his whores when they set their mind to something.
Ms Parker:You can only slap them around so much before you start losing money.
When asked, Ms Parker said she could get Daniel in contact with the man she had keeping an eye on the whores, Dan.
On the discussion of payment, they were given a rough abstract figure that was the equivalent of a Resources +1 (Middle Class) man’s earnings for a month. She said that this figure was fluid depending upon time spent on the job and how quietly or efficiently it was pulled off.
Mort: Louder is cheaper.
Ms Parker: Louder is always cheaper and messier. (pause). I do give bonus to people who take the time to do a good job and are careful of their work.
Daniel brought up the subject of hazard pay, which she responded that she had been fairly straight forward that this was not a job without risk and she was offering a reasonable pay. While she wouldn’t offer extra pay for those that got shot, she would offer the use of the town doctor or his supplies. Asta said she’d take advantage of his supplies, but they wouldn’t need his services. Pearl did toss in a free go with one of her ladies… or boys.
Asta:Have your girls had all their shots?
Ms Parker: I run a clean establishment.
From questioning, Daniel found that Doc Cochran had racked up a debt to Pearl. She said he had a weakness for cards. Around town, most of his patients bartered goods or services instead of paying him in money. He was known to care to the whores for services rendered. She said he was a skillful doctor, when he was sober.
Out of the blue, Mort blurted out a question.
Mort:What the hell is wrong with Tom’s bar?
(pause)
Ms Parker:Tom’s bar was the best bar, in its day. But, he hasn’t been catering to customer as he should. He didn’t learn to diversify. He’s a good man and I offered him a position, but he’s happy with his bar.
Asta:He doesn’t like you to dissect rats on his tables.
Ms Parker: Can’t say I disagree with him there. People don’t like to eat or drink around that sort of scene.
When asked about characters they should look out for, she told Daniel that she’d kept an eye on the docks, but has had a lot of things on her mind lately. A couple of nights ago, a couple of bruisers came in to her establishment, but weren’t looking to pay her rates. They were just an example of the colorful types this planet attracts.
Now, she didn’t know the location of the men that were currently being hunted; Jack Grenier and Larry Cook. She figured they were off somewhere working on a job. They must be aware of the bounty, so were likely laying low.
Before they left, Mort helped himself to a couple cigars, but felt cheapened when Pearl opened the box for him. They decided to head back to the ship to work out their plan for the job instead of whiling away time at the gambling parlor.
Once back on the ship, they found Campan and Kenny in the cargo hold throwing lawn darts at each other.
Mort:What are you idiots doing? You’re getting blood on my floor!
Kenny:Not much.
Campan: It’s mostly his.
Mort:Asta, I think these two need more medication.
Asta:I don’t think there is medication for that.
Before they went off to their officer’s meeting, Daniel asked Asta to look over the sensor logs to see how hard they were watched when they landed there and how often the ship manifest was accessed.
Daniel:I got a feeling our sick grandmother might know a bit more about us than we want her to.
Mort:Oh yeah. We forgot to ask her about her health.
The crew then took a couple minutes to figure out how old she must have been when she had kids for Campan to be her grandson.
Asta found the only person to access the ship manifest was the dock master. Meanwhile, she sent Kenny off to collect rumors on Garret Sarv. Since he hadn’t been around for several months, there really wasn’t much. He found out who his favorite whore was. He wasn’t on planet more than a couple days. He frequented Tom’s and was a good tipper. From Wheeler, he found out Garret’s official rank was Lieutenant Junior Grade and he was stationed on Ebbon. He had a good service record and he was on planet escorting some goods.
The general crew meeting, which followed the officers’ meeting, started with the questioning of Campan about his genealogy.
Campan:Have we just come here to discuss my sick grandmother?
Mort: No. Your family tree is disturbing us all.
Daniel took direction of the meeting to fill the others in.
Daniel:The situation that we have here is a job that involves us being quiet and it involves keeping Campan’s grandmother alive and happy, which, last I checked, was in his best interests.
Asta:It also involves keeping two guys whom we don’t know where they are, alive.
Daniel:We have some bloodthirsty whores, say about six of them, with a fairly inept sounding engineer who doesn’t care if they get themselves in trouble.
Mort: So we kill the engineer and give them to Tom.
Daniel:If we really think Tom is good enough to keep them in line.
Daniel then went on about the guys they were ‘protecting.’
Daniel:These might not be the brightest bunch in the box. Seems one of them managed to get himself physical with one of the whores and did the ungentlemanly thing of beating her up. These men were whipped by the sheriff and had to compensate for the damages. From what I’m told, this was a fairly reasonable settlement for all parties, but the whores wanted them dead. So, they’ve been slowly pooling up enough money to hire some foreign and local talent thugs to take care of these two men. These two men are transient shippers working for the Alliance most of the time and carrying cargo for them, mostly minor stuff and not directly for the Alliance.
Here are the issues we have at hand and what I think is available to us: The men – We don’t know where they are. They haven’t returned to the ship in a long time and we’re hoping they’re laying low. We have to find them. Right now we’ve got no one watching them. The pay – Is critical. It is going to get us off the planet to another planet and hopefully into a little less stressful of an environment. Plus, we’ll make a little money on the side.
On the note of the local doctor, Doctor Cochran, he likes alcohol, gambling, and whores. He owes a little bit of a debt to our friend Parker. Takes cares of the enemy whores on the side for benefits, to make sure they’re up to date on their shots, which from what I hear, they don’t keep up to speed on. Keep that in mind, Campan. There is a reason I’m pointing that out to him.
Ms Parker has a friend named Dan. Dan is keeping an eye on the whores for us. We’re going to be talking to Dan and getting some information out of him.
Campan. At some time I’d like to send you into the enemy whorehouse and get some intel. Asta, I think I’d like to send you on to get along with the Doctor. The doctor has treated the enemy whores.
One of the key things about this job is we’re trying to keep this planet wide open. We don’t want the Alliance on this planet and we don’t want extra death or extra trouble. Therefore, if these men go off-planet or these whores go off-planet, they should do so quietly.
Couple notes. I’d like to take a look at our friends’ ship, cause they’re not there, so why don’t we go on in. Sound like something for you Mort?
Mort: Walk into somebody else’s ship? That sounds fun. Can I take Campan?
Daniel:No looting at this time, but that might factor into a plan for later. Right now I want to look for clues as to where they’ve gone.
They got into a lengthy discussion about other ships they may loot, like the guys working with the whores, but Daniel wanted to concentrate for now on the guys ship.
Mort:Alright. It’s the guys we’re trying to protect’s ship that we’re going into. Can I still take Campan?
Daniel:With someone else.
Campan:But we’re going to get shot if we take someone else!
Daniel offered to be the extra guy on this expedition. He let the others know that he didn’t want to steal from them at first cause his initial idea for getting these guys off planet was for Kenny to arrange with Sergeant Wheeler a shipping job for them, pronto.
Daniel:If that doesn’t work, we’re going to have to resort to dropping in on Joel the engineer, or spacing these whores. And, we have no problem with making these whores disappear as long as we do it quietly.
Mort: We can probably cut down on the killing by just taking out the uppity whores.
Daniel:That’s why we need Campan to find out which whores are the uppity ones. So he’s going to have to interview each whore separately.
Campan: (sad & sarcastic)Oh boy…
Daniel:We should probably start checking out some of the other ships in dock. I hear tell some of them are brutes, but I figure that is where our problems are going to come from.
Asta suggested Campan agree to work for the whores to delay them for a couple days. Mort added he should get paid up front. Asta took Campan off to make sure he had all his shots... and a wide variety of prophylactics.
Daniel:Reason we’re looking at the brutes, by the way, is cause they didn’t want to pay for Ms. Parker’s civilized whores. So if you see some big, ugly men waiting in the whorehouse, keep an eye on them.
Campan: I’ll be looking at THEM.
They wrapped up the meeting and Daniel headed off to talk to Ms. Parker.
Synopsis of 9/26/05 Session – subtitled “Enemy Whores”
Mort headed out of the ship to case the docks to make sure they wouldn’t be seen sneaking into one of the other ships. The area was mostly deserted this time of night. There were a total of four ships in dock. Besides the Orasca, there was a ship a bit bigger than it and the others. There was a ship a little smaller than the Orasca, which was owned by the two guys the whores wanted dead. The last was a rather small ship, looking to be the right size for two or three people. The only other thing in the area was the dock warden’s shack, which had a light on.
Mort headed back in and let Daniel & Campan know the lay of the land. They took the time to properly disguise themselves. Mort and Campan were prepared with hanker chiefs and proper hats. Daniel was ill prepared in the hanker chief and head covering departments. The three went out and got into a good position to check out the shack from afar. The window was open and music was softly streaming out into the open air. Daniel found the music reminiscent of Alliance propaganda music and immediately took a disliking the to dock warden. Campan pointed out a security camera attached to the shack, pointing towards the marked men’s ship. Mort got a good look around seeing several security cameras mounted to the overhang of the shack. There was a camera pointed at each docking space and one pointing in towards town, covering all areas. Through the shack’s open window, he could see a man sleeping in a rocking chair inside while listening to an audio player. He couldn’t see if the guy was passed out drunk or not, but the man did have a lit cigar in his mouth. There were several monitors displaying the various feed routing in from the cameras. There was a pile on the floor and a shelf full of recordings.
The trio had a quick discussion about how to knock out the guy before they walked back to the ship and found Asta. Mort got some Ether from her and instructions on how to apply it. To see that he had a good idea of how to use it, he tested his method on an unsuspecting Kenny as it walked by. Campan dragged Kenny into the head and left him there.
Back outside, Campan snuck over and into the shack through the open window. He stepped on a very lazy orange tabby. Thankfully, the cat just kind of looked up at him, confused. Dr. Campan, Medicine Woman, walked over and applied the ether just right to knock the guy out but not harm him. Being Campan, he knocked the cat out with the ether as well. He then tried to use it on the goldfish, but it didn’t work. Mort proceeded to loot all of the surveillance equipment (four cameras, the recorders, the wiring, etc) and recordings. He took a quick check to make sure the feed wasn’t going anywhere else, but it didn’t seem to be. Mort took all of the equipment and stored it in the secret hold alongside the stuff he nabbed from the junkyard.
After giving Campan a beer wrapped in a hankerchief to empty, they went back. Daniel checked out the dock warden’s pockets, but found nothing of consequence except an ident card (Bill Wilcox). Daniel took the ident card. Mort nabbed the box of cigars. Campan was very unhappy with having to waste beer, dripping a drop or two on the guy’s mouth and face. He then drank the rest of it. Mort wiped off the beer again and they left. Campan stole the cat. Campan took the cat back to the ship and handed it to Asta before heading towards the bountied men’s ship. She gave it some oxygen, then took it up to the bridge and set it down on the sleeping Take’s stomach. The tabby didn’t seem to have the brainpower to care and curled up to go to sleep on Take.
At the other ship, Daniel found a mechanical lock as opposed to an electronic one. Pulling out some tools, he proceeded to pick the lock. Nothing attacked them as they entered the airlock. When they shut the outside door, it auto locked. Inspecting the now locked outer door, they found no opening mechanism on this side of the door. There was a small keypad next to the airlock door into the ship. Mort took the keypad apart and quickly figured out that the unlock code was 12345. Clearly they were not tracking the most brilliant of people.
Meanwhile, Take woke up to find an orange tabby sleeping on his lap. It kind of looked like a jar of orange marmalade with fur, only lazier. It looked very comfy.
Dan: Is this going to be like a regular thing every week? See how you can mess with Take before I show up?
Paul: (quick to answer) Yes!
Entering into the ship, the trio could now see that the cargo bay comprised most of the ship. It was a smaller ship, with only one level and no shuttles. There was a sleeping german shepherd. The cargo bay was moderately messy. No beer bottles, but there were dirty rags. There was also a corner the dog had been using as a bathroom. There was a half empty food bag and an empty water bowl on the ground next to each other. Mort picked up the water bowl and looked for the water source. Finding the kitchen, he filled the bowl with water and brought it back.
Campan was very sad to find the fridge void of beer, or anything for that matter. He went on to find the head, which was as messy as the rest of the ship. The toilet was dry, likely used as a secondary water source by the dog. He flushed the toilet to fill the bowl back up, making sure the dog had more water.
Mort found Jack’s quarters first. It was a dingy little hole. Felt kind of homey, really. He found the weapons locker devoid of guns or ammo. Booting up the computer, it prompted him for a password. He found typing in password worked just fine. Searching around the computer, he found a couple of games and some waves. There was a recorded message by a brick of a man discussing a meet out in Dreyden’s Gorge (two days previous to the current date). A message from his mom. An older message from Sergeant Wheeler about dropping off cargo.
Daniel found Larry’s quarters. The room was another dingy hole, but messier than Jack’s. The weapons locker was likewise empty, though looked to be set up to hold a shotgun. Larry was clearly the brains of the operation, since his password was not password. 12345 was, however, written under the keyboard. A wave from his mother was the most recent communication. A wave from his doctor informing him to take some medication after visiting a specific whore on another planet. A sent wave to someone off planet along the lines of ‘I didn’t mean to beat you up. You know you shouldn’t correct my spelling.’
Daniel: How does one misspell while visiting a whore?
Mort: (walks in) Umm... umm... I’m not answering that question. Maybe he’s dyslexic... and has spelling... Anyway, where is Dreyden’s Gorge?
Daniel: Bout a days ride in the desert. Nice little gorge suitable for ambushes and killing people.
Mort: Oh, they’re going there.
Mort played back the wave talking about the meet to show Daniel what the guy looked like.
Up in the cockpit, Campan found the place mostly not messy. They had fuzzy dice hanging. He also found a cheat sheet on how to fly in front of the controls. (forward, back, left, right). Campan flipped it. There were some little toy robots scattered around.
Daniel: Hey Campan. Anything interesting in there?
Campan: Toy robots, sir.
Daniel: Move along.
Daniel warned the other two not to get any of Larry’s blood on them, since he got a note from his doctor. Daniel checked to make sure they didn’t steal anything. Campan replied that he didn’t have any interest in toy robots (he didn’t realize/care how much Take would like robots so he could have them fight his dinosaurs).
Getting back to the cargo bay, they realized they hadn’t figured out how to get out yet. With Mort’s keen eyesight, he managed notice the control panel left of the door with paper slips under each button; ‘open’ ‘close’ ‘dump waste’ ‘flush toilet’ ‘depressurize airlock’ ‘pressurize airlock’ ‘self destruct’. Mort disconnected the self-destruct button and wired it to play the message from their mom that complains and bitches at them a lot. Campan and Daniel switched around a couple of the tags. Campan realized they needed to be able to leave alive and ran back to the cockpit to put their cheat sheet back the right way.
As they got back to the Orasca , they heard Take ask over the intercom why there was a cat on him. They also heard Asta fill him in on Campan stealing the cat. Take picked up the cat and stuck it on Campan’s bunk. The cat didn’t seem to care and curled up there.
Asta discussed with the crew how she was going to approach Doctor Cochran while she loaded up Campan with his supplies for whore interrogation.
Asta made her way to Doc Cochran’s shack. The moon was shining bright overhead as she arrived. There was light emanating through the dirty glass window on the shut door. Asta knocked, then knocked a little louder. After calling out hello, she heard some shuffling inside and the knocking over of some glass bottles. The door opened enough for her to see a small man with wild hair a bushy mustache and glasses. He was wearing suspenders that held up wool pants over full-length long johns. She could smell the whiskey on his breath as he asked her to come back in the morning. She talked her way inside, stating an embarrassing situation involving one of her crew. He resigned to having to talk to this woman and let her in. Once she got through her cover story, she realized she didn’t know what she wanted to get out of this guy. She excused herself and he went back to his drinking.
It was getting on towards one in the morning and, not being able to put it off any longer, Campan headed off towards the whore house. The common room was fairly empty at the moment. It had a few chairs and couches around the room. A young, fairly flat-chested brunette in her early twenties was lounging in one of the chairs. A tall, blonde woman in her twenties with a healthy bosom and fair skin in red clothes was sprawled out seductively on a couch. This was Joanie, the woman who first approached Campan with the job. Behind a shabby looking bar stood the engineer, Joel Starr. He was a wiry, greasy fellow with black hair and glasses. Campan made his way over to Joanie.
Campan: (with a bad seductive voice and wiggling his eyebrows) Why hello.
He discretely told her he was interested in a few more details on the job she had presented to him. When she suggested they head up to her room, he tried to get a free beer out of her first. When she told him couldn’t get him a free beer, he sulked and followed her up. Once upstairs, Campan drilled her for information. She revealed they had about five hundred platinum for the bounty. Campan thought of all the beer he could buy with that. Joanie told him that Joel’s interest in this ended when he got paid for Jenny’s misfortune. Campan asked her why they stuck around here, and she said there was no better place for them. No world was better than the next and Ms. Parker would shut them down if she tried to open her own house.
Campan: If you ever need a man to protect you, look me up.
Joanie:We’re always looking for a big, strapping man to protect us.
Campan:I’m not much for strapping. I like free range.
Campan asked her what exactly happened that night.
Joanie: Guys came in during the evening. Not the handsomest of fellows and they weren’t much for talking. But they had money. Jack went off with Little Dawn and Larry went off with Jenny. I was down in the common room, keeping an eye on things, when I started hearing some yelling upstairs. I got up there and found Larry standing there with his pants round his knees and he had a knife out. He was slamming her into the wall, punching her, and slashing up her face and chest. She was crying and saying she was sorry and yelling for him to get off. His friend Jack came in and grabbed her, throwing her into the bedpost. While they left, Larry kept repeating about how she was laughing at him. I got Jenny calmed down and looked to and she told me that, she didn’t mean to laugh. She got his pants off a him and she giggled, that was all.
Campan wanted to see Jenny. Joanie made sure he understood that Jenny was feeling a little self-conscious about how she was looking right now. He said he knew a surgeon who might be able to help. Joanie went out and came back with a short, shorthaired blonde. She had a black and blue face with a swollen shut left eye and cut marks on her face. She was fairly well covered up otherwise. Joanie convinced her to pull down her shirt a bit to show the cut marks across her chest. While she’d probably be average looking without being marked up, she would certainly not be making any money looking like this. Campan was suitably disgusted with what Larry did and told Jenny that he knew someone that could help her out. He said he’d bring the doctor from his ship over in the morning. She’d be able to fix her up. He also said to not worry about money, it’d be a bit of charity.
Campan: She’s a great doctor. She’ll get you a face transplant or something… uh, you’ll have eyelids...
After Jenny left, Campan said they’d take the job. Joanie let him know there were a few other people working on collecting the bounty. Jackson Bolt wasn’t around, but the Hagerty Brothers were. He expressed interest in meeting them, but they were currently engaged with Little Dawn and Delilah (separately). Campan said goodbye and that he’d be back in the morning with their doc. Joanie told him to come round back, since Joel wouldn’t take to kindly to them seeking out help on their own. Campan went back to the Orasca and filled the crew in.
When Campan left the ship, Daniel shadowed him till he got to the whorehouse then hid outside till Campan left. Once a little ways away from the whorehouse, Daniel made his prescience known and asked for a report.
Campan: I talked to the whores. Well, the main whore, mostly. I talked to the beat up whore. I didn’t bang any.
Well, apparently Larry, the genius of the two, was getting his nuts laughed at and decided to take it out on the girl. Cut her up pretty good. Apparently his friend came in and tried to stop him and threw her into a bedpost. Black and blued her face up real good. Not really sure why he did that. Might have been a little spin put on by the whores. Apparently their engineer doesn’t take kindly to them giving out free beer, so automatically, I don’t like him. He apparently got paid off after Jenny got beat up. She looks pretty bad. I’m going to take Asta over there in the morning to see if there is anything she can do.
There are three other people taking the job. The Hagerty Brothers, who I didn’t get to talk to cause they were banging whores. Also there is Jackson Bolt, who is mighty good with his gun, I reckon. The Hagerty Brothers are the big ones, I believe. That was my report by Campan.
Campan described Jenny as mortally wounded, but she was getting better. She’d be dead in a day or two. Daniel sent Campan back to fill Mort and Asta in, saying he’d be back in a bit. As Daniel walked off, Campan shouted out that he had forgotten the prophylactics. Daniel snuck into an alleyway and banged his head on the wall, waiting for Campan to leave.
Daniel made his way to the dark building across from the whorehouse. Making sure no one was looking, he knocked on the door and got let in. As stated, the house was dark, the only light coming from the small break in the curtains. Besides the burly man that let him in, all Daniel could see was a chair set up by the break in the curtains. Dan led Daniel back over to the window, where he sat down to keep an eye out.
Dan filled Daniel in on those that were working on the whores’ bounty. The Hagerty Brothers were a couple of brutes. Large folk and didn’t look too bright. They looked like they had been smacked with the ugly stick a few times and weren’t exactly burdened with an overflowing coin purse. So far, they had mostly stuck to the whorehouse, taking advantage of the whores’ friendly nature. The other one was a guy by the name of Jackson Bolt. He had a small rep as a good gunslinger. Much better dressed, with a fine brown coat and a nice holster for his gun. He didn’t spend long in the whorehouse and was probably out looking for the men. Bolt was in two days before. From what he’d heard, Bolt took up this job cause he’s no fan of the Alliance. Only reason why a guy of skill and means would take up this kind of job.
When asked what he’d do, Dan said he’d probably stop the trouble where it started. He agreed that the men were probably laying low right now and said they definitely weren’t in town. They left on a mule few days back.
Talking about Jenny, Dan said she couldn’t be as bad as he said, since she’d have been moved out of the house and to Doc’s shack if she were.
Back at the ship, Campan filled the others in. Mort grabbed one of the wires from the security equipment, went outside, and planted it near the larger ship (which they later figured out belonged to the Hagerty Brothers) to place the blame elsewhere. After a lot of talking, Mort, Campan, and Take decided they were going to go teach the Hagerty brothers a lesson. They bandana’d and hatted up and headed out. Take and Mort took care to be stealthy in setting themselves up in the alley next to the whorehouse. Campan, on the other hand, waved all around as he was approaching.
Dan: (nodding towards Campan and company outside) There’s an interesting group
Daniel only noticed Campan out there and watched Dan to see what he thought. Dan did his best not to show it, but most definitely recognized Campan. No anger, no love, just recognition. Daniel got the feeling that Dan was a guy who did his job and did it well and didn’t really care about the whys or whats. Daniel made his way back to the ship to get a cup of coffee.
Mort and Campan saw Daniel leave. The three waited around for another half an hour. It was getting on about two in the morning now when they saw two brutes leave the front of the whorehouse. They were about six and a half feet tall and built like linebackers. Mort went out and lured them into the alley.
Daniel got back to the ship and noticed the wonder trio were gone. Asta told him they left to go pay a visit to the guys at the whorehouse and that they said it wasn’t a chloroform job but a broken arms job. Daniel took out of there like a bat out of hell.
Back in the alley, Mort got the Hagerty Brothers far enough in, then turned around, dropped to his knees, grabbed for the guys’ balls and twisted. A fight ensued. The brothers pulled out steel pipes to use on the others. Take went down fairly quickly. He decided to play dead. Campan pistol-whipped one of the brothers while Mort wrestled with another. By the time Daniel arrived no one was looking great. Daniel saw Take on the ground and charged in. The fight ended when Daniel rifle butted one of the brothers into unconsciousness and Mort grabbed the other by the head and pressed his thumbs to the guy’s eyes.
Mort: Do you want to be blind tomorrow?
Darrel Hagerty: No.
Mort: Then I suggest you take your brother and you stop looking for Mr. Larry.
Darrel Hagerty: That mean we can’t work?
Mort: Yes. Doesn’t mean you can’t keep lying to the whores, though.
Darrel collected his brother and they hobbled out of the alley. Once they were gone, Daniel pulled Campan aside and quietly chewed him out. Mort followed the Hagerty brother back to their ship.
Once back at the ship, Daniel called Campan a moron.
Daniel: You walking up waving by a known to be watched whore house.
Campan: I didn’t know.
Daniel: I told you.
Campan: Oh. That makes sense sir. Worst is he’ll tell Ms. Parker that I’m around and they’ll just be looking for me.
Daniel: There are four ships at the docks. One is the people we’re looking for. One is ours. One is the guys you just beat up. And one is a really dangerous guy we have to find.
Campan:Oops.
Daniel:Lio Coh Jwei Ji Neong Hur Ho Deh Yung Duh Buhn Ja J'wohn.
Fade to Black
Lio Coh Jwei Ji Neong Hur Ho Deh Yung Duh Buhn Ja J'wohn. - Stupid son of a drooling whore and monkey
Synopsis of 10/17/05 Session – subtitled “Taking out the trash”
It was getting on towards two am when Campan, Daniel and Take got back. Asta quickly looked over Take and determined he was being a big baby. I’m not sure she even gave him a cold pack for the swelling.
When Mort got back to the ship after following the Hagerty brothers, he went to his room and found his bulletproof cup. After what he had just done, he felt he would need it. Mort was a bit dirty and dusty and bleeding a little from his forehead, but he didn’t really care and didn’t seek medical attention.
Asta: So how’d that no ether thing work out for you?
Campan: (quietly) We needed a little.
Campan tried to tell Daniel that no one else knew the whorehouse was being watched either.
Mort:The whorehouse was being watched?
Daniel: Yes. We found out at the meeting.
Mort: What meeting?
Daniel: (getting aggravated) You were there!
Mort: (thinks) Oh yeah. By the other Dan.
Campan: (shocked) You knew!?
Mort asked if they liked Dan.
Campan:Not really.
Daniel: He’s very efficient at what he does. Pearl Parker already knows, IF he’s telling Pearl.
Campan:I wouldn’t cry if he was dead.
Daniel: What’s your concern with Dan?
Campan: You remember Jacob? That guy who said to say hi to me for Logan back on New Melbourne? He’s kind of like Jacob, but works for Pearl.
Daniel:Logan doesn’t work for Pearl?
Campan:No.
Mort made a comment about being confused and Campan asked him if there were things in his life they should know about. Mort replied no, they’re much better off. Campan said this was something they shouldn’t know either. Daniel reminded him that they already knew about it and had to deal with it.
Campan:I’m trying not to tell you about it but you keep asking questions.
Mort:You need to lie better. I don’t want to know about it. I want plausible deniability!
Daniel:Anyway, you did a great job of waving at Dan.
Campan:I don’t know. I was bored and waiting for the fight to start. You never wave at things when you’re bored?
Chorus of voices:NO!
Campan:I’m sorry. I didn’t have a beer, so my default was waving.
Daniel was able to kind of get the conversation back on track talking about how to proceed with Pearl, but they were all tired.
Asta:So, is Pearl out to get your money or kill you?
Campan:I don’t know. I don’t tend to ask those questions.
Daniel: When was the last time you sent her a payment? If I recall, you did recently.
Campan:Um, no. That went to Logan. I don’t know. It’s been a while? I think it’s been since I took out the loan from him.
Mort: So you’re taking out money from loan sharks to pay loan sharks?
Campan:No no. I used that money to help pay for the ship.
Mort:GORRAMIT! LIE! LIE!
Asta:So, does this sick grandmother have an interest in our ship?
Campan:Well, he doesn’t really have interest, I just owe him money.
Asta:What is the collateral for the loan?
Campan:Uhhh…...
Campan said the ship was never discussed then, so he didn’t know about it. But Daniel pointed out that one of his sick grandmothers knew about the ship.
Campan:Well, she doesn’t know that I’m part of the crew. Just that I beat up people with them.
Mort:You’ll have to learn to lie better.
Campan:Oh. Right. I don’t know who these people are or what they want.
Mort: (shouting) It doesn’t help NOW!
Eventually the crew moved on to talking about Joel, Tom, and the three guys out in ambush canyon. They figured they could talk to Tom tomorrow to see if he wanted some whores, then go have a chat with Joel. The ambush canyon problem was something that needed to be dealt with now. Daniel went off and left them to discuss, coming back ten or so minutes with three cups of coffee. When he returned, Mort sniffed the air and asked if that was real coffee. Upon Daniel’s confirmation, he grabbed for a cup and enjoyed the brew. After all, it didn’t matter if it was bad coffee or not, it was real.
Take:Only three?
Daniel went back and got two more cups. With everyone refreshed, they decided to take the shuttle, leaving Captain Wounded and the cat to guard the ship and tell people no one was home.
Eventually Asta, Mort, Campan, and Daniel got on the shuttle and took off towards Dreyden’s Gorge. What was a day’s ride by horse took them about an hour by shuttle, since they were trying to be stealthy. They found the gorge to have a vertical ridge on one side and a steep, but walkable slope on the other. It was your typical rocky canyon with scrub brush and boulders. They pulled down some photos of the area from an orbiting satellite to get a bead on the location. Getting closer, they scanned the area for heat signatures and found a large clump all together about three or four miles in. They figured the men must be there, but were worried that they didn’t find Bolt.
Campan: Do we have night vision goggles?
Mort:No. They cost money.
Campan:Okay. Can I see in the dark?
Daniel: No.
Campan:If I drink enough coffee can I think I can see in the dark?
Daniel: No.
Daniel and Asta dropped off Mort and Campan at the top of the ridgeline (at a full stop, Mort demanded) to look for Bolt. Mort didn’t like their chances, since he suspected this guy was part of the browncoat sniper core. Asta gave Campan a sedative syringe, just in case. The two wandered off aimlessly, as they often do. If they knew what type of gun he had, they’d know where he would hide.
Back on the ship, Take heard a knocking sound. He ignored it at first, but eventually went to go find it. The noise led him to the loo, where he found a conscious, but groggy Kenny with sharpie marks all over his face standing there.
Kenny:It was locked!
Take led him to his room and stuck him in his bed.
Back with the shuttle, Daniel got a few miles closer and set down. Leaving Asta with the shuttle, he headed off to sneak up on the large grouping of heat signatures. As he got closer, he was able to make out a large, rectangular building that was two stories high with a third story section right at the front. He noticed a glint of metal up in the third story section. A small amount of light escaped from large, covered up, semi-circular windows. He circled around up the ridge to check out the other side of the building. He got along side the building and recognized it as a church in the dim light. He found a bolted shut door in the back, but no guards. He listened at the door and heard snoring.
Daniel called Campan down via walkie-talkie so they could go knock on the front door. They walked up and Campan waved at the nice man with the rifle up in the bell tower. After Daniel introduced himself and Campan, they had a short conversation and got him to send someone out to talk to them. Leon, a short brick-like guy that Daniel remembered from a wave back on endangered guys’ ship, came out carrying a shotgun. Neither side was very forthcoming about why they were there. Eventually Daniel was allowed to come inside to talk to Larry and Jack if he disarmed (though neither party said their names). Campan stayed outside and held onto Daniel’s stuff, striking up a conversation with another guy, John, who came out to keep an eye on him.
About this time Mort decided to give up looking for Bolt and turned on his radio to let them know.
Daniel: As it is, someone could be coming down the south side of the ridge and kick their way in the back door and you never would know.
Mort took this as an order and headed for the back door. When he got there, he found it bolted shut. He set about slowly opening the bolt with a screwdriver.
Take was once again rousted from his sleep by knocking. This knocking was coming from outside the ship, so he ignored it. After a while, he saw the dock warden, Bill Wilcox, walking away from the Orasca. It appeared that the man was going around knocking on each of the ships. He finally got someone to answer at the Hagerty Brothers’ ship and was let inside.
After talking with the Leon in the foyer of the church for a while, he convinced him to take him to see Jack & Larry. As Daniel was led through the church towards the rectory, he passed twenty to thirty people scattered among the pews. The people were poorly dressed and were composed of men, women, children, and old people. Majority of them were young men and women, though. As they made their way through, Leon explained that the mule was off getting the barge to transport these people out in the morning.
Once through, they arrived in the rectory where two ugly bastards were sleeping on cots. Leon walked over to the back door and opened it. Mort was standing there smoking a cigar and was a little surprised to see the door opening. Leon let him in and told John to bring Campan back.
Daniel woke up Jack while Mort kicked over Larry’s bunk. Larry proved to be violent, but Campan restrained him. The two proved to be stellar examples of intelligence. Daniel talked out how to get them and their cargo off world alive with Leon, mostly ignoring Jack and Larry. Then they could get on to Higgins’ Moon on their own. Daniel negotiated to get one of Leon’s men to ride in the mule back to town.
Mort planned on running back to town to get helmets and a big sheet with the words NOT THEM written on it for the transport. Campan stabbed Jack with the sedative, knocking him out. Larry tried to fight back, but Mort knocked him out. Daniel then told Leon he could take whatever cut of the morons’ profits he wanted for the use of one of his drivers.
Meanwhile, back at the shuttle, Asta heard a knock on the door.
Jackson Bolt: I would much rather if we could do this face to face. I could stop you from leaving, but that wouldn’t exactly be polite.
Asta:Well, threats aren’t exactly pleasant. And I believe any conversation with someone threatening me should be directed to my XO.
Campan and Mort left Daniel at the church and took off running towards the shuttle. Running uphill isn’t easy. Especially when you’ve got weakened lungs from all that cigar smoking. Campan was a little winded by the run, but not as much as Mort.
Jackson Bolt: I merely made a statement of my ability. You are the one who started up the engines after I asked to have a polite conversation with you. I apologize if you feel the need to flee from the sound of my voice.
Asta: (over comm.) Take? Would you care to take a little flight? I’ve got someone here discussing ways of making the shuttle not take off if I don’t open the door.
Take went down to the Korv and went for a little ride. Of course, he had to wait for Daniel to send him the security override codes to get the ship moving. Daniel talked with Leon about getting some boxes to store Larry and Jack in while he tied Larry up.
Daniel: By the way. I’m curious what you’re paying them to transport these people to their destination.
Leon: Well, uh, they paid us for the transport and they’re getting paid when they drop them off..
Daniel: I’m just curious about the price of our competitors for a similar job.
Leon:Bout Five thousand. Course, food and fuel cuts heavily into profits for them, I’m sure.
Asta kept up small talk with Bolt through the locked door until Mort and Campan were able to arrive.
Asta:So. Introductions might be in order.
Jackson Bolt: Name’s Jackson Bolt. And you are?
Asta: (completely ignores him and talks over the comm.) Hey XO, guess who’s up here?
Daniel responded that he guessed it was Bolt and wanted to know what unit he served in. Bolt responded the twenty-second division, which was the sniper unit.
Daniel:Mort, you realize you’re running towards a sniper, right?
Mort:Yeah. I’m gonna talk.
Alex: And that’s supposed to induce him not to shoot you?
Daniel:You know, I’m curious. What does he think about people who blow up factories and kill lots of innocent people?
Asta:I’m supposed to ask this of a guy who is standing outside threatening about not letting the shuttle take off?
Mort:His gun shoots through schools. Don’t irritate him.
Daniel had Asta relay that she was not putting the engines to full power and was just warming them till he got back. Asta and Jackson chatted about wanting to know each other’s plans.
Campan and Mort finally made it up the hill to see Bolt. In the dim light, they could see he was a short man, around 5’3”. More importantly, he still had his rifle on his back.
Mort: (whispered to Campan) Less of the talking.
Mort and Campan tried sneaking up on Bolt.
Without turning around to look at them, Bolt asked Asta if one of these men was her XO.
Asta:Well, not being able to see through walls and all.
Jackson Bolt: I’m assuming you’re keeping in contact with him.
Mort:Nah. Not so much. (wheeze, cough) It’s hard to talk. I’m tired from running up the hill.
Campan:I don’t run nothin round here.
Asta:He’s senior to the cabin boy.
Bolt turned around to look at Mort and Campan. They could see he was a well-groomed man of about thirty with short, black hair. His clothes were fairly plain and utilitarian, but looked well made and higher quality. In addition to the rifle on his back, he also had a sidearm on his hip. Mort and Campan approached enough to get a good look at him, but not close enough that he’d draw his gun.
Bolt got a good look at both of them as well.
Jackson Bolt:Mort?
Mort:Oh great. Someone I know. (pause) Did I fix something for you during the war?
Jackson Bolt: (glares at Mort with contempt) No. More like the things you screwed up.
Mort:Oh. Someone I did meet.
Asta:So you’re not happy to see him?
Jackson Bolt: (continuing to glare at Mort with contempt) This Go Neong Yung Duh? This Ching Soh is worse than the Alliance. This guy is your XO?
Mort:No, of course not. You think someone would let me be in charge?
Jackson Bolt: (continuing to glare at Mort with contempt) Well, I thought we could talk this out civilly, but now that I know you associate with this Huen Dahn, you’re probably no better than the ones down in that church. I thought maybe you were on the same job as me.
Mort:Oh. You’re working for the enemy whores now.
Jackson Bolt: (continuing to glare at Mort with contempt) Better than working for slavers.
Mort:I really wish the s word hadn’t come up.
Asta:Slavers? Which ones would those be? I mean, we all agreed those morons were a waste of space, but we agreed we’d keep them alive at least long enough to get them off this planet.
Mort:Okay. I’ve figured it all out. XO, make sure you’re not transmitting this. So we’re going to get the morons back to their ship. With the cargo. They’re going to take off into space, where the ship is going to break down. Then we’re going to come along and liberate their cargo. Then we’re going to liberate them from the airlock. We will then give the cargo to Mr. Jackson Bolt, along with any cased bodies he might like. Or body parts. Whatever. I’m flexible. This way, he gets paid. We get paid. People with more moral values than me aren’t upset.
Daniel:His ship won’t hold the people.
Mort: Then he can pay us to transport them somewhere. That’s fine. But that way he knows we aren’t doing anything immoral with them.
Take:He could just take the ship the two loser-guys have.
Mort: Aww, I wanted that ship. (to Bolt) You want to trade ships? You get their ship with the cargo in it and we get your ship.
Jackson Bolt: (continuing to glare at Mort with contempt) I like my ship.
Mort: You want to pay us for their ship. We’ll throw in the slaves for free.
Asta scolded Mort, telling him to behave and stop referring to them as slaves. Bolt drew his sidearm as the Korv approached, but Campan told him it was one of theirs. Bolt didn’t holster his gun.
Mort: So, currently, our major concern is that these guys get off planet alive. After they get off the planet, you know, a sniper could be on their ship. We don’t know. These things happen. Sometimes computers explode. You never know what is going to happen on these kind of things. I just want to make sure people die horrible, ugly deaths not on this planet.
Jackson Bolt: (continuing to glare at Mort with contempt) You weren’t very discriminating, back in the day.
Mort: Anyway. This way, everyone who needs to be dead gets dead, in the proper order for everyone to get paid. And then you have to give us the ship back unless you’re going to pay us for it. You get the ex-slaves for free.
Jackson Bolt: (continuing to glare at Mort with contempt) I figure it’s their (the ex-slaves) ship.
Mort: I don’t think they can pay us for it.
Jackson Bolt: (continuing to glare at Mort with contempt) It’s not always about the money.
Mort: No. Sometimes it’s about the fun. (long pause) And we really need an agreement that you aren’t going to talk about it.
Jackson Bolt: (continuing to glare at Mort with contempt) Who the hell would I talk about you to?
Mort: The Alliance. They’re the ones I really don’t want you talking to about. They’re pissy about that whole escape thing.
Jackson Bolt: (continuing to glare at Mort with contempt) I don’t want to talk to them anymore than I want to talk to you.
Mort: Oh, excellent. We’ll go and store someone, in their ship. And make sure you don’t shoot them prematurely.
Jackson Bolt: (continuing to glare at Mort with contempt) I’d like to get someone’s word besides yours.
Campan: I’ll give you my word.
Jackson Bolt: (continuing to glare at Mort with contempt) I don’t know you. All I know about you is you associate with him.
Campan:Only by paycheck, sir. Frankly.
Asta: (pops shuttle door open) I’ll make him behave… well.
Mort:Oh great. Like I’m not nervous enough.
Jackson Bolt: (continuing to glare at Mort with contempt) I’ll take the word of your captain.
Take landed and got out of the Korv, giving Bolt his word. Bolt, Asta, and Mort went back to the Orasca in the shuttle while Take went back in the Korv. Campan went back to the church to hang with Daniel.
Once Bolt was in the shuttle, Daniel talked to him over the comm.
Daniel: I’d like to thank you for bringing up that little fact up. I hadn’t caught that one.
Jackson Bolt: (continuing to glare at Mort with contempt) A whole church full of people… out in the middle of nowhere.
Mort: If they had slaves stamped on their forehead we would have got it faster, okay?
Daniel: I went in blind on this one. Names, uh, I served in the 623rd.
Once they were back, Mort, Asta, and Bolt hustled through the ship. Mort left Bolt and Asta in the cargo bay while he fetched the cat and returned it. By now it was past four am and at false dawn.
While Mort was gone, Bolt chatted with Asta.
Jackson Bolt: (no longer glaring at Mort with contempt) You just let him wander about without a leash?
Asta:So far he’s behaved.
Jackson Bolt: (no longer glaring at Mort with contempt) There are worlds where his name is a curse.
Asta:Interesting. (pause) You’re being very dramatic today.
Jackson Bolt: (no longer glaring at Mort with contempt) It’s four in the ing morning.
Asta: Yeah, I know. I really should be sleeping. I have surgery in the morning.
Jackson Bolt: (no longer glaring at Mort with contempt) That stuff that they carved on his chest is true. Most of it, at least.
Asta: I have very little liking for Alliance torturers or people who ask me to patch someone up so they can kill them.
Jackson Bolt: (no longer glaring at Mort with contempt) There were bad people on both sides. He was an example of ours. I’m thinking you were one of the good examples.
Asta:There is a reason why I didn’t love either side. The browncoats just needed a doctor more.
Back with Daniel and Campan.
Daniel:It’s bad when a sniper calls a guy a ruthless killer.
Campan: Yes sir. That’s our Mort. There is a reason he is number one on my list. I was half tempted to give him my price. ‘This is the number you need to get over and I’ll be on your side.’ No offense to yourself, sir. But sometimes, it is just a paycheck.
Daniel:We’d need a new mechanic.
Campan: Don’t say that too loud over the comm. system.
Daniel:I do still feel a certain amount of loyalty to him, though.
Campan:I understand sir. I’m just saying.
Daniel went off to find Leon and told him that Campan would be going in place of his man on the mule and that Campan would get the money for that. Leon replied that that was fair enough.
Back at town. Mort & company broke into Jack and Larry’s ship without a problem. Mort showed Bolt around and he found a good place to hide.
Mort: Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go steal a dog now. We can’t allow these two idiots who are about to die to have a dog.
Mort stole the dog and his dog bowl. Asta and Mort then went back to the Orasca. Mort went back outside and watched the Hagerty Brothers’ ship. Asta went to go get some sleep. By that time, Take was already back and sleeping.
Fade to Black
I’m going to start adding in some Chinese to spruce things up (and to amuse myself) I’ll stick a glossary at the bottom of the synopsis. I’m not adding to the dialogue, just changing English swears and such to comparable Chinese ones.
Go Neong Yung Duh – more vicious version of ‘Son of a Bitch’
Ching Soh – Ruthless or savage beast of a person
Huen Dahn – Bastard
Daniel and Campan, lacking caffeine, swapped two ninety-minute catnaps. At the end of that time, Leon came into the back room with two guys (including John) to let them know the mule was back. Leon’s henchmen grabbed the two coffins with Jack and Larry and dragged them outside. Leon took Campan and Daniel outside where three guys were loading the slaves onto the barge. The two including John dropped the coffins off outside the front door to the church and headed to the back of the mule to unload a crate. There was still a guy with a rifle in the bell tower. Leon walked over to the crate with a pouch and opened up the crate. He reached in and Daniel and Campan could hear the distinct jingle of metal as he transferred some from the crate to the pouch. He then shut the crate back up. As Leon walked back over to them, he tossed the pouch to Campan.
Leon: We're about set here. Once we finish getting these people on the barge, you'll be ready to go. (pointing over to the coffins) There are your other cargo. Don't know where you want them.
As the two guys started to haul the crate inside, Daniel spoke.
Daniel: All right, I'm going to have a mighty hard time getting these bastards off-planet if you don't leave them with some cred.
Leon: They've still got whatever they had on them. This is just our agreed upon payment. That. (pointing to the pouch he tossed Campan) is your cut. If you want to give it to them, that’s fine by me.
Daniel had Leon’s men load the crates into the back of the mule, since he didn’t want the slaves attacking Jack & Larry, for now.
-----
Mort sat outside watching the Hagerty Brothers' ship past full dawn and saw no activity going on. When he went back to the morons' ship to check for food, he found some crates with food in them. Nowhere near enough to feed twenty-five people for the 'intended' (minimum) three day journey to Higgins' Moon and keep the travelers happy. But, to Mort, that was good enough.
*****
In her sleep-deprivation induced hysteria, Asta thought she sent Campan off to fetch her a whore while she got some sleep. Campan, however, wasn't there, so no one fetched a whore. So, in the morning, a very groggy Asta awoke to her alarm. She stumbled about the ship, looking for coffee. Unfortunately for her, the only one who knew where Daniel stashed the coffee was Daniel. So she only found drained cups from the previous night and Mort coffee.
*****
Take had a good sleep wherever he settled down (presumably on his bed or possibly on the bridge)
*****
Daniel and Campan decided not to cause some trouble at the church, so they didn't have a problem getting set up to go.
The mule traveled a damn site slower than Daniel would have liked. He was stuck driving, since Campan forgot to bring a driving cheat sheet with him. Campan kept an eye out for evil-doers (or should that be goody two-shoes?). They did get shot at. And chased. Seems someone else out there was all with the taking offense to their existence. Daniel had a hard time with the nifty maneuvers. He is, after all, no Take. Damn bastards had a front windshield on their hovermule. That just ain't right. Campan managed to pull off some nice shots to temporarily disable their engines.
Campan: (smugly) Metal on metal my friend. No keyboard needed.
Who needs Mort?
The rest of the trip into town was fairly uneventful, but Daniel rode the accelerator. They radioed ahead to have Asta & Mort meet them at the morons' ship. They transferred the crates over easily and quickly cause they didn't know just how much time Campan bought them.
Mort and Campan got the shmucks set up in the cockpit. Then Daniel called Campan back to help with the people. Mort expected Asta to pull out a stimulant to wake them, but she just smacked then across the cheek. Larry really didn't like to be the one being hit and cursed at her. She just slapped him again before heading back to check on the people who were being loaded. She really would have liked to have innoculated all these people, but that would have been very expensive and she didn’t have that many supplies on hand.
The closest thing the poor bastards got to a last meal was the non-lumpy variety of Mort coffee. He forced them to send waves to their mothers. Gunpoint was necessary (it adds circumstance modifiers to the intimidate, after all, and Mort needs those for a Will+Influence roll). Once they were done, he told them their payment was loaded and their cargo was almost. He tried to instill fear in them without the gun, but Larry just cursed at him and struggled to get out of his chair. They didn’t have a timer onboard, but the dock warden had one in his shack. Mort was able to swipe it while Bill was out somewhere.
Once the people were all loaded and Asta gave her okay, they let Mort know and he set the timer. Telling them to take off when the timer goes off, he left them and headed off the ship with the others.
One minute later, the ship powered up and took off. Eight minutes later, Bolt's ship started up and took off.
Mort suggested to Daniel that they get paid by Parker as soon as possible.
With the morons underway, Asta turned to Campan and asked him to go and fetch her a whore. Campan, however, felt someone, anyone, could do that job better than him. After all, he might wave out of turn. He felt the best use of his resources would be for him to get on the ship and do the beer inventory. He suggested Daniel or Mort could easily show them the way. When Daniel said he needed Mort to go along with him to Miss Parker's as backup, Campan suggested Take would be a good choice. After all, Take had gotten enough sleep for the lot of them. Daniel agreed that Campan might not be the best choice, even if he was the contact with them. He suggested that Asta go herself.
Daniel: After all, the captain needs his beauty sleep.
Campan said he didn't think Asta should go alone.
Campan: There are disreputable people about.
Daniel left it up to Take and headed off with Mort.
Once roused from his slumber, Take was irked that he was being put to work, but he went along with it. He went to the whorehouse (Campan made sure he knew to go to the back) to collect Jenny. Take looked funnier than usual with his new black welt from the piping wound and Jenny wasn't sure about going with him, but he was able to convince her that Campan worked for him.
Once back on the ship, Campan let them in and Take showed her to the infirmary. Asta got a good look at her. The poor girl wasn't going to die as Campan suspected, but she was going to be scarred. Asta just didn't have the team or set up for proper plastic surgery. She'd need a trained assistant and some equipment she just didn't have. She could give her something for the swelling and some cream to make sure the cuts healed without infection, but that was mostly it. Asta did see an opportunity that they both could profit from this. With Jenny’s new disfigurement (she was sitting at an Attractiveness –2 at the moment, but with proper care, Asta felt she’d heal to a Attractiveness –1), she wouldn’t do well with her given profession anymore. Asta found the girl couldn’t read or write, but was willing to learn. She knew a little first aid, though pretty much just what a whore would need to know. She did say she was a quick study. Asta offered Jenny a place on the ship as her assistant. She said she’d be trained in a marketable skill, fed, clothed, and would have her own room. And, she wouldn’t have to service the crew. Jenny took up the job, eager to make a fresh start.
She didn’t want to return to the whorehouse for her things, so Asta showed Jenny to the passenger rooms.
*****
Mort and Daniel arrived at Parker's saloon later than they would have liked. It was past noon when they found themselves walking through the large, open wooden doors. The saloon itself was pretty empty. There was only a single gentleman sitting at the bar. He was a portly man with an old top hat and a plaid, worn coat and was drinking an amber colored liquid.
Dan stood behind the bar, polishing a glass with a rag. He looked over at the two and nodded to Daniel. He put two glasses on the bar and a bottle of what looked to be the same amber liquid.
Dan: Have a drink, gentlemen. I'll be but a moment.
He then moved out from behind the bar and headed up to Pearl's office.
Mort looked suspiciously at the liquid, but didn’t drink any. Daniel was polite and sipped some of the bourbon.
Dan returned a few minutes later to escort them up to her office. When Dan showed Mort & Daniel in, Pearl was once again sitting at her desk. The large windows and glass balcony door allowed this room a lot of natural lighting. She was looking through some papers as Dan gestured to the two seats in front of her desk. Once inside, Dan closed the door and walked over to the desk to collect the papers.
Mort took his usual spot along the wall.
Pearl:Good afternoon. I trust the matter has been taken care of?
The discussion was brief. Daniel talked about how the whores needed a firmer engineer than Joel and perhaps Tom would do a better job. Daniel managed to talk Pearl up from 180 credits to 200 for the job. They concluded their chat and were paid in Alliance credits.
They swung by Tom’s to talk to him about the whores. Daniel convinced Tom he should be handling the whores, even though he had no clue how.
*****
Since Take objected to the dog, Mort tried to sell it. The dock warden was a cat person, but the junkyard owner was willing to take it off Mort’s hands.
Meanwhile, Asta went out to find a kitten. She ended up finding someone with free kittens and picked up a male orange tiger Maine Coon cat. For the second time in one day, she neglected to ask or inform Take of an addition to the crew. Poor Take. His peons weren’t respecting the chain of command.
The past couple weeks had been fairly quiet. They were on a long journey out in the black, heading towards the Georgia system.
Daniel found out about Asta hiring Jenny and was not happy that she had gone over his head (and Take’s as well). She was unremorseful.
Take found out about the kitten and was not happy, since he had declared the ship a pet-free zone. Asta was unremorseful.
Asta spent her time teaching Jenny to read and what each tool in the med bay was called. Daniel spent a lot of time working out. Mort spent a lot of time holed-up in his bunk or in his workshop. Campan spent some time training Asta how to protect herself using a hand-to-hand weapon while Mort watched. The three of them spent time together organizing some recreational sports, which Jenny would participate in so they could have even teams.
Also during this time Mort eventually noticed that Kenny hadn’t been out of his room at all. Mort went to check and found Kenny wasn’t in his room (or on the ship). What he did find was a faux-leather jacket, a slightly rusty and junky pistol, a ballistic mesh shirt with some decent sized holes in it, and the small pistol Campan had leant Kenny. Mort took this stuff and eventually informed the crew that Kenny wasn’t onboard.
Mort was able to get the security system installed and interfaced with the ship’s circuitry. He installed a ‘hidden’ camera in the airlock (camera 1), minus red ‘on’ light, one at the top of the cargo bay looking at the door (camera 2), and one at the bridge pointing down the corridor towards the galley (camera 3). He stuck a view screen in the cargo bay that could view camera 1. Other view screens could access all three cameras.
When he got it all set up, he went and booted up the system. Unfortunately, it seemed he had made some mistakes in trying to make the system compatible with the ship. Spark. Spark. Spark. Spark. Lights went out. Engine wound down. Ship went quiet. Mort rolled a one (which was eerie, since Paul then proceeded to actually roll a one).
Take:What did you do to my ship?
Campan:Bad Mort! Bad!
Of course, since the intercom now wasn’t working, their voices got muffled to the point where Mort didn’t hear them. Daniel crashed about in the dark.
Daniel:Damn it, Mort! That was a bulkhead!
The only lit place on the ship was the med bay, which was illuminated by a single red emergency light rigged to turn on when power was interrupted to it.
Mort grabbed a palm light and quickly ascertained that he had overloaded a couple of circuit boards, frying them.
Mort: (yelling) Sorry! Blew a fuse!
Take and Daniel stumbled their way down to the Engine room to ask what Mort had done. Mort explained that is was the fault of bad parts and Take needed to give him more money for parts.
Mort:There was a slight overload when I wired in the security cameras.
Another cook showed up to help stir the pot, so too speak, as Asta arrived to help make suggestions. Daniel eventually herded everyone but Mort out so he could think in peace. Daniel hit his head twice on the way to the galley.
While Mort set about laying down wire to use the shuttle to power the bridge, Daniel woke up Campan and had him put together food and water and ammo to place on the shuttle. Campan put the beer on the shuttle first. Asta assembled some emergency medical gear and brought Jenny to the shuttle giving her a teaching data book to keep her occupied.
Mort got the wiring set up, disconnected the rest of the ship power system from the bridge and connected the shuttle’s power to the bridge. The bridge lights and systems glowed faintly and the lights on the shuttle dimmed greatly. Jenny whimpered (she was afraid of the dark).
Paul:There. Now there should be a ship nearby.
Alex:What do you take me for? Station. Ship is too dinky.
Paul:This is not good.
Mort:Hey look, a space station.
Take:We are saved.
Campan:Lets go there! It won’t be full of zombies!
Asta:Anything on the outside look like something you could steal?
Alex:This is why I don’t make it a ship. You can steal a ship.
Paul:I can steal a space station, it just isn’t as useful. Can’t go anywhere with it.
Mort:Clearly we need to depressurize it and take what we need.
Daniel:That would work well, but I don’t think everyone would be behind it, though.
Mort:Well, we could hail them. If we don’t get a nice coherent answer, we can talk about venting them all into space.
Bored with the conversation, Campan went back to earlier comments he had made about whores on board.
Asta:I don’t know. She actually seemed pretty excited about not having to sleep with anybody on the crew.
Mort:Well, I think Campan is the only representation of our crew she had seen, so I can’t blame her.
Campan:Steal my gun and insult me. Yup. It’s a dark ship. People could fall. On bullets.
The station itself wasn’t putting out much data. It had an Alliance transponder signal designating it as an Alliance research facility, but the station itself was shielded from sensors. They decided to go towards the station on the shuttle and leave Jenny on the bridge in case they needed to contact her. Of course, with the shuttle gone, this would cut off all power to the Orasca and make putting Jenny on the bridge pointless. Mort grumbled as he transferred the power cable from the shuttle to the Korv. Asta showed Jenny how to work the comm and how to watch the sensors for approaching ships. She also brought the kitten up to the bridge to keep Jenny company. Daniel was the only one to show up with a space suit. After a ‘duh!’ moment, Campan and the others headed back to get the remaining four suits (the ship has always only had five suits).
Once on the shuttle and underway, Daniel hailed the station, saying he was Bill Wilcox of the ship the Fragon. The only response he got was a computerized voice requesting an authorization code. Asta submitted hers.
She was a bit disconcerted that it accepted her code. Daniel kept talking to the station, but the only response he ever got was the request for authorization code. When they approached the base, they could see an older ship slightly smaller than the Orasca docked at one of the ports. They docked the ship at one of the adjacent ports and put on their space suits.
The crew put on their emergency suits and entered the airlock. Asta punched in her code and the door opened. Before her was a long, empty hallway. The power seemed mostly intact. The lights were dim and flickered, but the hum of an engine could be faintly heard coming from below. Asta had dragged along the half-finished medcomp as well as some scanning equipment. She found that containment was maintained and the air was good, so they could venture forth without their suits. As she was finishing up her scans, a woman’s scream could be heard off in the distance. This lead to Daniel ordering everyone back into the shuttle to remove their suits. The door into the base shut on its own as they re-entered the airlock. Once in ‘civvies’ they ventured back into the base. Daniel ordered them around in military combat squad fashion. They explored the first couple of numbered doors, which turned out to be empty barracks. The barracks were trashed, but otherwise empty. Getting closer to the center of this level of the station, the doors started having names on them instead of numbers. They entered the first one, which had the rank of Captain embossed on the name placard. Inside, they found an office with a skeleton sitting at a desk. Now, if this were a different game, the skeleton would actually be moving. But, unfortunately for the poor guy, he was just sitting back in his chair with his hands hanging at his side. Closer inspection revealed a large hole in his skull from a self-inflicted bullet wound and a pistol dropped on the floor his right hand. Asta decided to try and hack into the computer system, but Daniel stopped her when it took her longer than a minute. Damn those Alliance bastards and their decently encrypted machines.
They moved on, reaching the point in the hallway where it split to go around a center room. They ventured off to the right and found several portals in the outer walls where escape pods had been jettisoned. They made a quick loop around this central area to find all of the escape pods gone. They also found two doors leading into the central room, along with the corpse of an emaciated person in a white lab coat. The body itself was still fleshy, for what little it had left on it. There didn’t appear to be any external cause for this person’s death and Asta diagnosed the death as starvation.
Venturing into the central chamber, they found an unlit armory and emergency supplies area. The walls had been emptied of their goods, with obvious gun and clip holsters around, as well as all the emergency suits missing. Along the opposite walls that did not have doors, they found open-faced lifts, with both on their level. The floor was a trash heap of broken crates and cannibalized equipment. They also found a cannibalized person in an old Alliance uniform (around wartime). Mort didn’t find anything of value.
Climbing onto one of the lifts, they decided to head down towards the engine noise instead of up. The lift whined and made grinding noises as it descended, lurching at inconvenient intervals.
The next level was also dark, but the flashing around of several palm-lights showed a cafeteria with an enclosed galley in the center. There were several overturned tables, looking almost like they were used as cover. While looking around, some metal glinted from lights passing over it. Something humanoid made a half-roar and started moving towards the crew quickly. It fell to the ground face first in a hail of bullets. They didn’t approach it, just observing from a distance with their lights centered on it. Whatever or whoever it was, it was definitely scrawny and malnourished.
They decided not to look around any more and moved on down again. Again the lift groaned and lurched, bringing them into another dark area. Looking around, they found a storage area with many smashed crates. As the lift took its time getting to ground level, Campan caught sight of movement. This was just before their lights revealed three makeshift spears traveling towards the group. One hit Mort in the shoulder, another hit Asta in the torso, and one hit Campan in the leg. As the three stood with large chunks of wood sticking out of them, Mort frantically punched the up button. Unfortunately, the lift didn’t obey his commands. The beings almost made it to the lift before the last one was finally mowed down. Asta tended to her wound, blacking out from the pain when she removed the shaft. Mort also blacked out when she removed his piece of wood. Campan said he was fine and liked his new attachment. Really, he just didn’t want to go through the ordeal the other two did. Asta didn’t let him escape the pain. He was the only one not to black out, though.
While Asta tended to the wounded, Daniel and Take checked out the corpses. Flipping them over, they quickly determined that these were Reavers. They didn’t really care what they were doing there or how they came to be there, just that it was bad.
A bandaged Mort joined the two in searching for the part they needed. As they searched, Take heard the grinding of the other lift moving. Daniel came across the fresh, dead body of an emaciated woman in the remnants of an officer’s uniform. It looked like the Reavers had found a fresh meal. Mort found the replacement part needed and they quickly gathered back onto the lift.
As the lift groaned and climbed, the crew heard movement on the storage bay floor. Asta thought she heard some movement in the walls as well. The sounds of pursuit got closer and closer as they reached the armory again. Mort quickly ran over to the other side, opened up a wall access panel, and yanked out some wires needed for the lift to operate. He then quickly closed up the wall access panel. No one wanted to open the panel on the wall Asta had heard things moving in, so they left that lift operational and fled back towards the shuttle.
They got back to the airlock and Asta entered in her clearance code to open the door.
Computer:Authorization code not accepted. Blue Clearance Level Required.
The others set themselves up in defensive positions using the doors to the barracks while Asta worked on getting them out of there. Reavers were mowed down. Crewmembers were speared. Clearance codes were tried. As the Reavers were almost on top of them, Asta got the door open. Mort made sure the others got onboard and then jammed the airlock door open. When the shuttle detached, about a dozen Reaver corpses were vented into space.
They made it back to the Orasca in mostly one piece and Mort fixed the electrical system. With power restored, Asta herded everyone to the Med bay for sterilization and bandaging.
After leaving the Reaver-infested star base, Asta set about trying to decrypt the hard drive she had swiped. Finding it to be heavily encrypted, Asta spent a fair amount of time over the coming weeks working on it. While working with it, she was sure she could see a pattern; a hidden code.
Take made an executive decision to deal with the situation involving Asta’s brother now instead of later. Since Ebbon’s World was the hub world between the Core and the Georgia System and the Orasca was currently taking the long route through the black, Take had to turn the Orasca back in towards the Core for their detour. This added about a week onto their journey, but Take felt it was worth it. He informed Daniel, allowing Daniel to discuss the situation with everyone.
At one of the mealtimes, Daniel called a meeting to discuss the situation. Campan demanded more pie. But not beer pie. Daniel told the crew that they were headed for Ebbon’s World to deal with Asta’s bratty little brother, since he was going around distributing photos of Daniel and talking with bounty hunters about collecting him to be brought back to EW.
Campan: If I’m going to be shot at, I want to know what the pictures are of.
Now Daniel was only wanted for questioning, but the fact that there was a reward made them wary about it. They also didn’t think that Garrett would accept an essay instead of an in-person chat. Asta felt the need to specify that she wanted this dealt with in a nonphysical violence manner and wanted all of his appendages left attached. She wasn’t sure how her brother would greet her, but felt he’d better not slap her in irons, since she set him up pretty good before she went AWOL.
Daniel suggested stopping by a Mining Facility in the Belt near Ebbon’s, Gosbiishi, to meet with a few people, pick up some cargo, and generally get the lay of the land.
Daniel: Nice little place. Lots of Japs. Lots of sake.
Campan thought he could go meet with Asta’s brother and get info out of him. The crew didn’t like the idea of Campan talking to people. They decided upon just talking to people at the bar and gathering as much legal information as possible at first, then trying to hack the Cortex.
After the meeting, Daniel checked the local news for Ebbon’s World. A collapse in a mine was the big news. Otherwise, it was pretty much business as usual there. Asta brought up the warrant for Daniel. The attached picture was an older one of him. He had rather short hair and a beard in it. His hair was much less grey. The discussed how to mess with his appearance to look less like he did in the picture.
Asta: (shows Daniel the picture) You need longer hair. Stop getting haircuts.
Daniel: I’m old! My hair doesn’t grow that fast!
Jenny suggested he dress up like a whore. Asta decided on tanning his skin and coloring his hair. Mort made him a Plexiglas monocle. Asta talked to Jenny about changing Daniel’s appearance cosmetically.
Jenny: I don’t have my makeup kit anymore.
Asta: Just tell me what you need and I can see what I can whip up. We just need to make him look older.
Jenny: But he is already old.
Asta: Older.
Jenny: Dead?
Daniel demanded to have a say in how he would look. They decided to accentuate his scars. Campan was his usual self in making rude comments about Jenny’s usefulness. Asta asked Mort to remind her not to use the good stuff on Campan next time she needed to patch him up.
Asta spent a few days in the med bay concocting the proper chemicals and pigments. The awful smell of dead puppies wafted out of the med bay and crept into every section of the ship. Daniel got fixed up good.
Asta looked up information on her brother on the Cortex. She found he was a fairly boring person. No wife or kids. No medals or commendations. He did graduate from the military academy on Sihnon, though. She spent a couple of days hacking into personnel files to get his postings. They were few and all desk jobs. He was assigned on Santo briefly. He didn’t have any listed infractions. That didn’t mean he hadn’t done anything, just that he hadn’t been caught. His current assignment on the orbiting station started six months ago. His current job was pretty much as a bureaucrat peon.
Mort: Asta? Can we kidnap you? You know, ‘Stop investigating Daniel Jardin or your sister dies!’
Asta checked with Daniel before hacking into the station’s database. After making a couple of suggestions for creating some dirt on him, they decided hacking the files would be a good idea, but not from the Orasca. Mostly because the Cortex is just that monitored. A terminal from a person’s home was decided as the best way to circumvent the crew getting caught. Mort and Campan were given the task of making a friend at a bar.
Once at Gosbiishi, they looked for the type of bar where people who worked in offices for the ore company might go. They found a place with brown curtains (no window, just curtains). They found that this was the brown bar. All the liquid was brown.
Mort found a mark; a tax auditor. Mort got him to start bitching and bought him drinks. He proceeded to get the guy thoroughly drunk. Mort managed to not yawn thorough his rant. Campan nodded off for a bit. When he woke up, Campan had a conversation about beer with the bartender, mostly about beer. The bartender talked about how he was writing a musical about beer. Campan encouraged him in his project, but would not fund or direct it.
When Mort’s new friend, Johnny, was ready to pass out, he led him back to his house. The others followed behind. Take carried the guy’s briefcase. Campan told the bartender that he would buy tickets to the play next time he was around. The crew had to make sure they were quiet so they didn’t wake up Johnny’s parents.
When they got inside, a cat trotted over to the door and meowed at them. Then it ran into the kitchen and meowed. The cat followed them as they wandered down the hall. Johnny passed out in the hall. Mort found Johnny’s room and helped Johnny in before letting Asta take care of the drunk.
Back on the ship, Daniel helped Jenny out with a couple of words she didn’t know in her learning to read books.
Asta sat herself down at Johnny’s personal terminal and started trying to hack into case file for Daniel. This made the rest of those sitting around really bored as she took several hours to do this. Mort and Take looked around the room, trying to find stuff to steal. As Mort went around the room, he kept dropping tools mistakenly. Take knocked his glasses off and stumbled around for a while trying to find them. Lucky for them, Campan noticed Mort dropping tools and found them all. Campan then picked up Take’s glasses and put them on. Everything was very blurry and it made Campan’s eyes hurt.
Just as they were about to go insane from boredom, Asta finally got in.
Synopsis of 12/5/05 Session – subtitled There is no planet Glarpa
The hacking party were getting really bored watching Asta try and hack into the space station’s database. Johnny snored loudly throughout the several hours. Campan spent a lot of the time picking up the things Take and Mort dropped while trying to find stuff to steal. They heard movement outside the door several times, but thought nothing of it.
Just as Campan was getting ready to perform a little nasal surgery on Johnny to stop him from snoring, Asta found what she was looking for. There was a note in Daniel’s file that he was a person of interest with regards to a bank heist on Bellerophone some half a year back and wanted for questioning. There was also mention of the name Leon Rippy within the file, but without context. Daniel was listed as a former sheriff on the planet, but deserted his post. There was also a note that he never picked up his last paycheck.
Once they felt they had everything, they snuck out of the house. Asta bumped into a wall, which Johnny’s father heard, but they just moved out faster. By the time they got back to the Orasca, it was after six in the morning.
Daniel got up early and went to see his old friend Tako, who ran a mining company, about work.
Tako: (Mexican accent) Ah, Senor Jardin. It is good to see you again, my friend. I have a small shipment that needs to go to the skyplex over Ezra in the Georgia System It is good, steady work, if you would like it.
Daniel:When does it go out?
Tako: (Mexican accent) Oh, it is ready for shipment tomorrow. But, for you, I can wait a couple days.
Daniel got back to the Orasca to find everyone standing around waiting for him.
Campan:Why aren’t we robbing banks?
Asta:Well, apparently because it makes you a person of interest with the local authorities.
Mort:Oh. That’s just a polite euphemism for ‘We haven’t framed you yet.’
Daniel:What did you find out?
*Asta hands over some handwritten notes. Daniel strains his eyes looking at them, turning them sideways and upside down to try and decipher them.*
Daniel:Where is the decoder ring?
*Asta rolls her eyes and summarizes*
Asta:You’re wanted for questioning for a bank robbery on Bellerophone. You were mentioned in connection with Leon Rippy. That ring any bells?
Daniel: Uh, yeah.
Daniel asked if she had found anything else out about her brother, but she had nothing more to report. They figured he was either really boring or very good at squashing knowledge about himself.
Campan:Okay. So, we’ve got someone who is talking up about wanting you. We trace it back to a name, which happens to be her brother. That’s going to make you very interested. I mean, you show up. You do something about this. It could be a trap.
Daniel: Why isn’t my brain working? I understand this now that you’ve explained it.
Mort:You mean you didn’t realize this before? Of course it’s a trap.
Campan:It’s like that guy who is following Mort and killing people.
Daniel: Lets just pretend I realized this on my own and Campan didn’t have to just explain it to me. I just assumed it was her brother who actually wanted me.
Campan:We want you, sir.
Asta:His name might be on it but that doesn’t mean he’s the one who actually wants you. It looks like he is just a flunky.
Campan:Well, you make up crime. Call the guy in, then do whatever it is you want to do to him.
Daniel: This is why I don’t plan on getting caught.
Mort:No one ever plans on getting caught, sir.
Campan:Hey, where’d Kenny go?
Mort:He left.
Campan:When?
Mort:I’m not really sure. But he didn’t take any of his stuff. He might have stolen any weapons you might have given him.
Campan:You think he was upset about the chloroforming?
Mort:I don’t know. Maybe.
Daniel: I thought it was the storing him in the bathroom.
Mort:It was clearly the chloroforming, sir.
Campan:Oh well. He’ll come about. Always does.
They got to talking about Leon Rippy. Daniel said he was a flunky of one of the local crimelords, that he would inform them of things here and there, and that he had met him once or twice.
Mort:You want us to break his kneecaps and then ask him some questions?
Daniel: Him and Garret, really, but I think we want to hold off on breaking Garret’s kneecaps until Asta isn’t looking.
Asta:You could have waited till I wasn’t in the room to say that.
Since the matter didn’t seem to be high on the Alliance’s to do list, Asta felt that some private arrangements could be made. Some bribery might be in order. Or blackmail.
Campan:Or kneecaps.
The crew then told Daniel they were really bored and just wanted to get on with it and get somewhere with better bars.
Daniel accelerated his information gathering so they could get off this roid. While talking with Hans Burger, one thing of interest that he found out was a crooked little prick that used to work for him was now sheriff. He fired Charlie Claggett because he was easily bought.
They loaded Tako’s shipment onto the Orasca and headed off to Ebbon’s World. Since Ebbon’s world is a hub between the Georgia System and the Core, it is a very busy planet. There is a fair amount of smog from some ore processing done there. The docks were very busy, as always. They used manifest number two for when they docked.
Mort:So, do we have a plan or should Campan and I go to a bar.
Daniel: Well, I want to learn more about what Leon has been up to. That guy was more crooked than a rutting beaver.
They spent some time making fun of Daniel’s analogies before they split up to ‘see the sights.’ While Daniel, Mort, and Campan wandered off to talk to some of Daniel’s contacts, Take searched the city for bumper cars. As he was moving through the crowded docks, a pleasant feminine voice caught his attention. This was mostly because she was saying his name.
Short, happy woman:Ivan? Ivan, is that you?
Turning around, Take saw a young woman of about twenty years moving through the crowds quickly towards him. She was about five feet tall with long blonde hair done up in a bun. She had a very pleasing face, made more pleasant by a large smile. Take, of course, had no clue who this woman was or why she looked happy to see him. Take quickly tried to figure out if he had any contracts out on him. He was glad that she didn’t look armed and that no one was running with her, but was still confused and a little afraid. As the woman pushed through the crowd to get to him, Take kept an eye out for possible escape routes. She was already perplexing him, since he couldn’t think of anything that he would exert that much effort for.
He looked down completely confused when she got up to him and grabbed him into a big hug and squeezed.
Take:Uh, and you are…?
Short, happy woman:Uh, um. You probably don’t remember me. I mean, you probably help lots of girls much prettier than me. But, four years ago you helped me out back on Titan. You saved me from a couple ruffians who were trying to rob me. *Looks at Take’s blank stare* Yeah, I didn’t think you’d remember me.
Take:No… Sorry.
Short, happy woman:It is good to see you’re okay. (pause) You look a bit skinnier than you were.
Take:Yeah… well…. Fruit trees don’t grow too well in space.
Short, happy woman:Would you like something to eat? I don’t have much, but I’d be happy to make you dinner. I’ve got a place back this way.
Take:Uh, sure…
She led Take back to the shopping district. She took him up to a small apartment situated above an equally small shop. Take took no notice of the items in the shop’s window as his stomach grumbled.
Off with the three stooges, Daniel found out that Leon Rippy still ran with the same crew, but that Glen Morshower had been replaced by his cousin Bisque. Leon hung out down at the Terrance saloon. He also verified that Claggett was doing well for himself, with his own batch of deputies. He wasn’t sure if Claggett still held a grudge, though.
Daniel: He was crookeder than a rat’s ass but he knew what he was doing sometimes.
Back with Take, the woman had whipped him up a small soup. He was overjoyed that it not only contained meat but real vegetables.
Dan: Take is so bragging about this when he gets back.
Short, happy woman:It is not much. I hope you like it.
Take:Well, it’s real food. (long pause) Well, on the ship all we’ve got is protein. It tastes like tasty wheat.
While Take ate, she asked him about what he’d been doing the past four years and showed a general interest in his well being. Take eventually realized that he still hadn’t asked her what her name was and asked her. She told him it was Delilah. He found out she had a small shop where she sold antiques here. She did a fair amount of off-world business, shipping in stuff. She complained about tariffs and shipping costs.
Delilah: Sheriff here is a real bastard.
Take:So I hear. Hear the last one wasn’t too good either.
Delilah said that the sheriff regularly seized items he wanted through Customs. She commented that he had some of her stuff right now.
Take:How do you deal with him?
Delilah: Lightly. He often knows what he wants and, when he doesn’t get it, he takes something to hold over you. He got a little grabby with me. I didn’t take to it, so he seized my shipment.
Take:What does he have?
Delilah:A music box. Isn’t worth much at all, cept to me. I’d appreciate it if you knew anyone who could help me get it out.
Take:I think I might know a few people who’d be interested.
He talked to Delilah some more before he left. He found out that Asta’s brother frequented her shop.
While visiting some federal contacts, the trio managed to find out that Garrett’s direct superior was Lieutenant Kat Massie. They also found out that Claggett answered to Massie and that Massie was a shady character. Daniel also found out Claggett was holding the onboard computer for a mule that belonged to one of his contacts. Campan and Mort got very bored during this time, but were given beer. Beer delays the boredom-induced rampages.
While wandering back through the market, Take noticed the three stooges walking around. Campan had a beer in one hand and some yarn in another.
Take:That’s some mighty fine yarn ya got there.
Campan:I’m making me a kitty.
Asta was working with Jenny when the others showed up again. She noticed Take playing with a new toy (a robot model). Campan promptly wandered off again, saying he had stuff to do.
Take:Some woman who I apparently saved as a girl that I have no recollection of saw me, so…
Mort:You have amnesia?
Take:No, it happened four years ago, so I don’t remember. Anyway, the local sheriff decided to appropriate some of her cargo cause she is in the antique business and she wasn’t to receptive to his…
Asta:Advances?
Take:Yeah. That’s the word I’m looking for. Well, he apparently liked her but she wasn’t fond of him, so he took her antiques so no one could buy them. Apparently he makes a habit out of this sort of thing. If he doesn’t get what he wants, he just takes it. If he likes something, he just has it held up in customs indefinitely. Also, she apparently has a regular Alliance customer by the name of Sarv. Stops in regularly.
Mort:He likes antiques? What kind?
Take:He bought a table once.
Daniel:Why does he stop by? To buy antiques? Or is there something else?
Take:Well, that’s what she told me. I don’t know if there was more.
Mort:There has to be something more than antiques, cause it has to bite us on the ass.
Take:Well, anyway, she was looking for some help and I thought, you know, we might be able to catch him when he comes down off the space station.
Daniel:Sarv?
Take:Yeah.
Daniel:What are we going to do with him then?
Take:I don’t know. Beat him with a stick till he does what we want?
Mort:Again, you should probably wait for Asta to leave before having these ideas.
*Asta nods*
Daniel:The sheriff in question goes by the name of Charlie Claggett. Old subordinate of mine years ago, till I fired him. He was one crooked son of a bitch. Looks like he has a habit of impounding people’s goods to get them to do what he wants. At this time, looks like we need to find out more info on him. I reckon the reason Garrett has that warrant out on my head is cause of this Claggett fellow. Probably through a connection between Claggett and Garrett or Claggett and Garrett’s boss. Almost wondering here if this little friend of yours, since she is so often visited by Garrett, isn’t in some way a toy or a willing employee of Kat or Garrett. Might be getting more information before we go running into Claggett’s warehouse, not to mention we don’t know where Claggett’s warehouse is. Garrett might be able to tell ya if you do ambush him at Delilah’s shop. Or we could always sick Mort and Campan on Leon and see what he has to say.
Campan:I get the top end!
Daniel:We gotta get Claggett off our tails and find out where he keeps his stuff.
Mort:Why don’t we find out where he keeps his stuff, kill him, and take his stuff.
Daniel:Cause you bring down the weight of the local authorities on you when you kill lawmen.
Mort:Alright, we’ll arrange to have him killed.
Daniel:Might be a bit better. But it doesn’t get that warrant off my head.
Mort:No, but it’s fun.
Mort then suggested they frame Kat Massie for or arrange for him to kill Claggett. Daniel suggested revealing that Claggett and Massie were duplicitous bastards who were conniving, smuggling, and doing all sorts of evil, no good sorts of things. He talked to Asta about running into her brother at Delilah’s and talking him into revisiting the warrant. Asta pointed out several problems with this, causing him to majorly rework his plan. She requested a script for this conversation with her brother. Campan suggested shooting her brother in the leg when ever she said the wrong thing.
Step one of Daniel’s plan involved more information gathering, much to Mort’s displeasure. But, at least it involved gathering info from Leon Rippy first. This kind of info gathering would be fun, because it would involve kneecaps. Step two involved dropping in on Claggett. Step three involved blackmailing Kat. Somewhere in there, Take needed to go talk to Delilah to find out where Claggett’s warehouse is. Campan said the final step was to blow up.
Synopsis of 12/19/05 Session – subtitled Less Heroic Than Usual
After finishing their little planning session, Daniel realized that he had been awake for about thirty six hours and announced he was going to bed. Mort immediately considered grabbing the helm and getting the ship off this rock. Why he didn’t is anyone’s guess.
Mort: Alright. You wanted a computer terminal to do some more hacking, Asta, so once it gets to be daytime and people are at work, we’ll go out.
Campan: (looks worried) Wait! Does this mean Mort is in charge?
Take: As opposed to me? I’m still here…
*Campan still looks worried as the crew laughs at Take’s attempt to take control of his own crew*
Mort: (maniacal tone) Clearly I am in charge!
The crew proceeded to playfully mock Daniel in his absence, as they are apt to do. Of course, Daniel would have no knowledge any of this was going on, cause they were in a section that was poorly viewed by the security cameras and the cameras are visual only.
They passed the time by resting and doing speakable things to Daniel (these should in no way be confused with unspeakable things). But, since Daniel’s player doesn’t know exactly all that went on, we’ll keep it a secret for now. I will say it was a full group effort (NPCs and all).
In the morning, around ten am, Mort and Asta went off for a little breaking and entering while Campan was left to fulfill the Daniel responsibilities. Campan quickly shirked those duties and dragged Take off to go axe window shopping. Take wanted some suspenders, so went along with it.
But anyway, Mort and Asta snuck off to a section of town where peon government workers likely lived. They easily broke into random shmuck number one’s house. When they heard a deep Woof! Mort pulled out a cracker with peanut butter on it. But, when a little Chihuahua came out, he put the cracker away and ignored the little ankle-biter. Asta patted the dog before finding the cortex terminal and getting to work. While Asta worked at breaking into Kat Massie’s files, Mort looked around the place for stuff to steal. It took her a while to get in, but she found a lot of dirt stored up on Claggett. It was ‘this man is my bitch’ level dirt. It included photos. Apparently Claggett liked sheep. She threw all that stuff on a data disc before continuing on.
Mort:Maybe we can make a billboard out of that one.
While Mort was rooting around, he found some meat frozen in the freezer, some aged scotch, decaffeinated coffee and a data library. When Mort went to steal a pillowcase to carry the stuff in, he found out the guy had nice linens. So, obviously, Mort now had nice linens.
Asta found nothing on Kat Massie in the other places she checked. The lack of information led her to believe that Massie had meticulously cleaned up after himself.
Mort spray-painted on the guy’s wall The Aliens Are Among Us! Fight the Real Threat! –Jasp
Asta scratched the doggie and departed. The dog tried to piddle on Mort’s shoe, but he just nudged it away and left.
When they got back, Mort put the meat in the fridge first, then went to his room with the coffee and the linens.
When Campan and Take returned, they found Mort wandering around with the linens.
Campan:Cool! Did you get enough for everyone?
Mort:Nope. He only had two sets.
Campan: (sputtering) But… That’s enough to share!
Mort:Asta gets one.
Campan:Oh. I see. Is she your new buddy now? Is she going to rob places with you?
Mort:Well, I didn’t get shot!
Asta then delighted in showing off the picture of Claggett with a sheep. This reminded Mort to hand the data library over to Asta. She proceeded to look up the laws for the planet with regards to sheep-loving. She found that it was a crime punishable by a fine and wearing a button of a sheep with a line through it.
When Daniel finally woke up from his extended sleep, he groggily felt a tingling feeling on his face and found himself in a rather plain dress. Right in front of his eyes was a picture of a man making love to a sheep. Thankfully, it was not a picture of himself. Inspecting himself, he found he had recently received a nice manicure and pedicure. His hair was also nicely managed and full of product.
Finally, he noticed that it was Asta who was holding up the picture of Claggett.
Asta:You wanted dirt on Claggett, right?
She filled Daniel in on what they had found. He felt the picture kind of invalidated his theory that Kat put the bounty out as a favor to Claggett to try and control him. She eventually complemented him on the dress he was wearing. Daniel told Mort he was paying for this. When Asta proceeded to rub salt in the wound, Daniel grumpily ordered them out of his room. Mort was out of the room before he told Asta a second time.
When Daniel laid back down and stuck his hand underneath his pillow, he found a tail. The poor kitten was given flying lessons, which ended with an impact with the wall. The kitten mewed pitifully up at the locked door. Asta tried to get Mort to unlock the door, stating kitten abuse, but he knew better.
Sometime later, after Daniel was finished sulking, he got changed and left his room. The others tried several implausible explanations as to the origins of the dress, none of which Daniel bought. Daniel retrieved the kitten and handed it to Asta. She bandaged it up and splinted its front left leg.
Asta brought up that she found on the file about Claggett reasons for original dismissal from a sheriff Daniel Jardin. He was originally fired from the position of deputy for going behind Sheriff Jardin’s back and extorting money from an Alliance official that should have been avoided.
They then proceeded to discuss ‘the plan’. The plan involved an uber-scandel centering around Claggett to the point where Kat would completely disassociates himself from Claggett. Mort thought Daniel’s plan was way too complicated and wanted to know why they didn’t just kill Kat, or have him killed by Claggett. Daniel didn’t think that would get the bounty lifted on him.
Mort’s Plan:
Step 1: Arrange for Kat to die.
Step 2: Plant information that Daniel was framed (and that Kat was involved with Claggett). While tricky to get into someone’s personal logs after they’re dead, it should be doable for this crew. Something simple-like, ‘Daniel Jardin, I hate that bastard.’
Step 3: Leave Claggett alive as a possible scapegoat and someone whom they have dirt on.
Eventually they got to a point in the discussion when the GM decided to speak.
Alex:You're going around in circles. Stop it!
They discussed for a while longer until Daniel randomly commented that they needed to go interrogate Leon. The meeting broke down shortly after this. While alone, Asta quickly asked Mort about the Alliance’s interrogation techniques. Mort told her that, in his experience, it involved a lot of pain and confession forms and not so much with the truth seeking. But, this was in the post-war wrap-up, so it probably had changed. She mostly just wanted to know if they had some actual, working truth drugs.
Before they left, Mort remembered the Scotch and handed it over to Daniel.
Daniel, Mort, and Campan made their way to the Terrance Saloon in the docks area. It was kind of a shoddy place and not overly large. The inside was grimy, shoddy, and dark. There was sawdust on the floor and a thick cloud of smoke filled the room. A scrawny bartender stood behind the long bar. Most of the seating was stools by the bar, but there were two tables set up, with one closer to the door and one near the back. The table near the back had a trio of men sitting around playing a game of tall card. Two larger men with decent sized piles of chips flanked a scrawny, weaselly man with a small pile of chips. There was a curtained off area on the back wall, past the people at the bar. And, finally, there were three of the great unwashed sitting at the bar.
Daniel sent Mort and Campan in to determine how non challant the place was to casual violence, without causing said violence. Mort went in, ordered a beer and started talking to the guys at the bar. Finding them generally friendly, Mort started buying them drinks. After a little bit, Mort went over and watched the card game for a while. He found that all three were cheating, it’s just that the scrawny guy was cheating poorly. He also noticed that the game was mostly just a social game to pass the time (and secondarily fleece the scrawny guy). One of the larger guys asked Mort if he was looking for something. They proceeded to have quite the meeting of minds. Mort pointed out the cheating of one of the large guys with regard to a card he had up his sleeve. The others didn’t seem to care.
While Mort was doing this, Campan had seated himself at the bar. Unfortunately for him, he had no beer money. One of the drunks started getting friendly with him, saying his hair was like a girl’s. Daniel told Campan (over the comm.) to create a diversion, so Campan proceeded to start a fight with the barfly. He decked the man, knocking him off his barstool and into another barfly, who was also knocked to the ground. Mort incited the barflies to fight back. Second barfly got up and picked up his stool. Campan parried the barfly’s attack by picking up another barstool. The third barfly took offense to being knocked off his barstool by Campan, but just moved to another stool away from the fight. The lack of beer was clearly affecting Campan’s game, as the barfly seemed to be an even match for him (it was a sad bar fight). Mort knocked out the barfly on the floor while ‘helping him up.’ Campan broke a barstool on Mort’s kneecap, taking Mort to the ground in pain. Mort went and hid under the card game table.
During the commotion, Daniel slipped in to the bar and sat down at the other table, in the shadows. He recognized an aged Leon sitting between two hired thugs at the card game. He noticed one of the thugs was keeping an eye on the fight while the other was keeping an eye on him. Leon was keeping an eye on the game. Daniel settled in, waiting till the fight was over to get a beer.
Sometime during the fight, Leon got up from his card game and went behind the curtain. Daniel informed the other two (over the comm.) that Leon just left through the backroom. Mort waited for a few seconds before hobbling after Leon behind the curtain.
Campan flipped the barfly over the bar and got him to hit his head on the bar on the way down, knocking him out. As an added bonus, he managed to not destroy the booze.
Campan:That’s the end of THAT story.
Daniel moved up to the bar as Campan swiped the wallet of the unconscious barfly at his feet. He thought better of reaching over the bar for the other barfly’s wallet.
Bartender: Want another beer?
Campan: (looks in barfly’s wallet) Yes. Yes I do.
Campan then tipped the bartender well while Daniel took Mort’s untouched beer and drank it. He then went to follow Mort.
Mort got past the curtain and found himself in a hallway with Leon at the other end. He saw a door to his right that was grimy and look well used and had no door handle. Another door a little farther down on the left that was cleanish, less well used and had a lock and door handle. Finally, there was a door at the end of the hall. Leon looked over his shoulder at Mort then headed out the door at the end of the hall. With the door open, light filtered in from the outside. Mort groaned and hobbled faster.
Mort and Daniel got outside about the same time. There were a couple of dirty, cluttered alleys. Besides them, there was a bum and his shopping cart close-by. Spotting Leon wasn’t hard, as they saw him running down one of the alleys. Mort picked up some random bum-stuff from the shopping cart and whipped it at Leon. When Leon went down, Mort handed the bum two credits.
Mort: Here. Go buy yourself a drink and don’t mention this.
The bum headed into the bar as Daniel strode over and sat on Leon to make sure he didn’t get up and flee. Mort hobbled over to Leon. Leon tried to get up, but couldn’t.
Leon: Hello friend.
Daniel:Going somewhere?
Leon: I thought I’d go for a walk.
Mort: Oh, we’ll take you for a walk. We’re near a short peer, aren’t we?
Daniel helped Leon up and tried to relieve him of any weapons he had, but found he was unarmed.
Leon: Umm, is there something I can do for you?
Daniel: Where were you going in such a hurry?
Leon: I don’t like bar fights.
Daniel:Got any idea where we should go?
Leon: Oh, I know a wonderful spot.
Mort then kneed Leon in the groin. Leon groaned in pain and whimpered.
Mort: He wasn’t talking to you. I’m having a BAD day. You want to talk to him.
Leon: Of course! I always talk to my good friend Daniel.
Daniel then chatted with Leon about how his old boss was gone, but he was still around. Daniel commented on how Leon had weaseled his way into a new, less secure position for himself. He asked if Leon was trading up info to the new boss man, which he acknowledged. The conversation went along the lines of confirming that he was the same old Leon.
Leon: Other people do pay me, you know.
Daniel:Lets get back into some of our old habits, shall we?
Leon: Could you lay off the groin, please? Think of my children.
Daniel:That depends on which habits we get back into. First, you’re going to tell us what has been going on. Specifically, I’d like to hear what Claggett has been up to since I’ve been gone. Where he’s been keeping all his stuff?
Leon rattled off the location of a place, but Daniel didn’t believe him, on general principle.
Daniel:Wrong answer.
Correctly taking that as his cue, Mort grabbed Leon’s hand and broke one of his fingers.
Daniel:Things have gotten a little harsher around here.
Leon then rattled off another location. Daniel thought he could be telling the truth. He could also be lying. But, of course, they did just break his finger, so that tends to lead to truthfulness.
Mort idly began spinning the revolver in his gun.
Daniel:You know. I hear a man can’t walk at all if he has no toes.
Mort: Oh, that’s wrong. It’s really, really hard, but possible.
Leon: (pathetically) What do you want to know?
Daniel:I want to know where Claggett lives, where he keeps all his private stuff, and I want to know what your NEW boss, Mr. Kat, has coming to town this coming night.
Leon: (pathetically) I work for Bisque.
Daniel:Try that one again.
The snapping sound of another finger breaking could be heard.
Leon yelped in pain.
Leon: (whimpering) I really work for Bisque.
Daniel:You telling me you don’t have eyes on what’s coming into town. That’s your business. You know who has shipments coming in.
Leon: (angry and in pain) You asked me who I work for, not what I do! You said my new boss. That’s Bisque. I stay the hell away from Kat.
Daniel:You’re feeding me a bunch of here. I don’t give two :):):):):) who you work for.
Leon: (angry and in pain) Wong Ba Duhn, Ya Kuh Wu Lurn Shwei Jah Jwohn, Then why the hell did you ask who I worked for? People rough me up a little, fine. I go against Kat, I’m gonna get killed. Although, with your Wei Shian Dohn Woo friend here…
Daniel:Exactly. Don’t worry, your name isn’t coming out in any of this. For all I care, I’m going to be out of here in a night. My face will never come up. My name will never come up. No one will ever be able to link you to the information that comes out. Now then. If anyone can link you to the dead body they find with no feet in the alleyway of this neighborhood, I don’t know. I’ve heard some pretty nasty stories about those corpses they find in this area.
Mort and Daniel proceeded to discuss nasty things that ‘happened’ to people. Leon was all with the relieving of bodily functions. Mort was happy he had put on a bandana.
Daniel:So, ya gonna tell me what uh, he’s got coming in. I know you know.
Leon: (scared shitless) I heard he’s got a prototype gun coming by. On the Alliance cruiser WuZong. Up at the station. He deals with things up there.
Daniel:What does he care about down here?
Leon: (scared shitless) Claggett does all his dirty stuff down here.
Daniel then asked Leon why Bisque let him wander around without protection. He said Bisque didn’t like him too much. Glen took care of him. He protected him. He even paid Daniel not to rough him up too much, or at least he said he did (he didn’t). Or, at least, he paid him more. Mort took his wallet and checked it out. It was devoid of credits and ident card. Mort put it back.
Daniel told Leon that they were going to take a little walk. Leon asked if he really had a choice. He was told no. Mort went and got the bum’s cart and left a few credits in it’s place. He took the bum stuff out, put Leon in, and put the bum stuff back on top of Leon. Mort then used the bum cart as a walker as he headed back towards the ship. Daniel took the walkie-talkie out of his pocket and told Campan they were done. By now Campan had spent his ill-gotten gains on ‘better’ beer.
Mort and Daniel got Leon back to the ship and locked him in a passenger dorm modified into a cell. As an after thought, Mort yanked the broken fingers straight and splinted them. As Leon started bleeding from the mouth, Mort gave him a rag to stick in his mouth to soak up the blood.
Mort: Toilet is over there. There is the hose. Clean yourself. You smell.
Mort then went to Asta to get his kneecap looked at.
Mort: Oh yeah. We’ve got a new guest. Don’t go in there.
Asta: Ooookay… So, how did your knee get hurt?
Mort: Someone hit me with a barstool.
Asta: That wasn’t very nice of them.
Mort: No. It wasn’t.
She checked out his knee and medicated him and gave him generic medical advice that he wasn’t likely to follow.
Fade to Black
Wong Ba Duhn – Son of a Bitch
Kuh Wu – Despicable
Lurn Shwei Jah Jwohn – Merciless Bastard
Wei Shian Dohn Woo – Dangerous animal or person
As Asta continued to work in her medbay, she began to hear some moaning coming from the guest quarters. This wasn’t the good, ‘I’ll be in my bunk’ moaning, either. This was ‘I’m in serious pain’ moaning. She wandered over to the rooms and found the one the sounds were coming from. She found it was a bit more secure than the other rooms with the lock on the outside. There was also a small panel door on the bottom of the door.
Asta:Are you alright in there?
*Long, pain filled groan*
Asta strode over to the intercom.
Asta:Hey. Our guest seems to be a bit unwell. He also seems to be locked in. Are you sure he doesn’t need medical treatment?
Mort was quick to respond.
Mort:He’ll live.
Asta:Does he need medical treatment?
Mort:Nope. Already took care of him. He’ll be fine. He’s just belly-achin.
Asta:Is there a reason he’s locked in?
Mort:For his own personal safety.
Asta:From whom?
Mort:Daniel.
Asta:I see!
Leon: (raspy, pathetic voiced) Can I have something for the pain?
Asta got some pain meds plus some happy meds, put them in a paper pill holder, and passed them through the food slot with a thimble cup of water.
Asta:Umm, apparently you’re being detained to keep you safe from Daniel so I can’t come in right now, but if you get worse, let me know. I’ll come back and check on you later.
Leon: (raspy, pathetic voiced) Can I leave?
Asta:Um, well, apparently it’s not safe for you to leave right now.
Leon: (raspy, pathetic voiced) It’s not safe for me to be here. That maniac will be back.
Daniel, hearing this conversation, walked up.
Daniel:Safer for us, if you’re here. (to Asta) I wouldn’t worry about him right now. You can let him out later.
Asta: (to Leon) Apparently it is a good thing you’re on that side of the door and he is on this side.
Leon: (raspy, pathetic voiced) He’s not the maniac!
Leon’s voice could still be heard moving away from the door.
Daniel:I didn’t hurt him. (to Leon) Just think. It is even heated in there.
Leon: (raspy, pathetic voiced) Can I have some sheets?
Daniel:You’re gonna get them dirty. (to Asta) He is a rather messy fellow. Well, he did give me some information, so I guess he could have some sheets, if you think it is better for the patient.
Asta:I have no idea what is better for the patient considering I really can’t examine him through a food slot.
Daniel:Well, lets say his hands were fairly damaged. (pause) Do you want to take care of it?
Asta:YES! Generally, that’s sort of what I do!
Daniel: (over intercom) Hey Campan.
*Acknowledging grunt*
Daniel:Get down here.
A bleary-eyed and hung over Campan made his way down to the passenger quarters. Daniel explained to him that Asta wanted to take a look at their prisoner’s hand and they didn’t need him escaping.
Campan:Okay. You want me to guard ‘em or pistol-whip ‘em?
Daniel: Guard him unless he needs pistol-whippin.
Asta:You know, I’m HERE!
Campan:You wanna pistol-whip ‘em?
Daniel went and collected two bandanas for them to wear, since he didn’t want Leon seeing their faces. Asta asked him if she was likely to need to do surgery on the hand.
Daniel: No, I don’t think there is any hope in that.
Daniel told Leon that Asta was going to come in check on him. He then told Asta that he and Leon went way back. Asta worried for people who were old friends of his.
Asta opened up the room to have a stench smack her in the face. The room itself had a bare mattress on the floor, a toilet with a pair of pants sticking out of it, a sink, a well secured ceiling light bulb, the thimble sized paper cups laying on the floor, and Leon laying on the ground in his and urine stained underwear. They were still dripping wet, so it looked like he had cleaned them a little in the toilet. Well, as best as a man with only one working hand could do.
Campan:Should I just tie a bandana over his eyes?
Daniel: Sure.
Campan:Sir, sometimes you scare me. When I come up with good ideas and all.
Asta:Why are your pants soaking in the toilet?
Leon: (raspy, pathetic voiced) Daniel.
Asta:So he’s a good, old friend of yours, huh?
Leon: (raspy, pathetic voiced) He used to be nicer. (pause) And he didn’t have a friend.
Asta:So friends are bad for Daniel, huh?
Leon: (raspy, pathetic voiced) This one is! He broke my hand!
Asta got Leon standing and found that his pinky and ring finger on his right hand were splinted and bound together with duct tape. He was favoring one leg and keeping them together, kind of coddling his groin. And, he did indeed smell bad, but appeared to have been washing in the toilet. The splint looked very efficient and like a textbook splint.
Asta left Campan to go fetch a bucket of hot water.
Campan:Don’t move.
Leon: (raspy, pathetic voiced) Can I lay down?
Campan:I’ll kick you.
Asta:Don’t hurt the patient any more than necessary.
Campan:Can he lay down? Is he gonna die?
Asta told him if he laid down, he’d just get his bed dirty. So, Leon laid down on the floor again. While Asta was out, she went to Kenny’s room and grabbed a cleaner pair of pants and some soap. She then went around collecting a wash bucket and a rinse bucket before returning to the cell. She then handed them to Campan.
Asta:Let me know when he’s clean, I’ll be out here. *shuts door*
Campan just chucked the hot water on Leon. Leon yelped in pain. Asta fetched another pail and told Campan she expected Leon to do the Lion’s share of the washing himself.
Later, they all discussed again what to do about Claggett and Kat. They decided to focus on Claggett and release the picture and a pamphlet to the local animal rights groups and the media. They also decided on releasing false testimonials about Claggett’s romantic activities, abuse of power, and false accusations against people. This would all be done after stealing from the warehouse, of course. They kept coming back to the fact that Kat had the warrant out and they had no real way to influence Kat. Asta didn’t like the topic of her brother being brought into the conversation or the thought of talking to him.
Asta:Hi, I just happen to be here and know this stuff you’re involved in in some magical way...
Mort: (continuing for Asta) By the way, I hope you don’t remember that I deserted the military you’re currently serving in.
Asta:Or that I’m supposed to be dead. How’s mom?
Daniel said that they’d just have to leave really quickly after her conversation.
Asta looked into the local animal rights office so she could possibly fake a press release from them. Mort went and looked into local underground news sources. Campan went to the sheriff’s office to look into outstanding warrants. Take asked Mort to make him a little signal doohickey for Delilah. One with three buttons (Coming, Here, Help Help!). The Coming and Here were in reference to Garrett Sarv. Daniel worked on a letter for Claggett’s file talking about implicating Daniel in things.
At the sheriff’s office, Campan saw a bunch of wanted posters on the wall. The picture remained stationary on them while the text scrolled. In the front area, there was just a deputy sitting behind a desk.
Campan: (cheerful voice) Howdy! Are these warrants in any particular order? I’m a freelance bounty hunter!
Deputy:Eh, not really. The one with the largest bounty is a William Sanderson.
Campan: (interested voice) William Sanderson? What is he wanted for?
Deputy:Arson.
Campan: (interested voice) The bastard.
While looking at the warrants, he noticed Daniel’s face up there. Campan grunted and walked out. While Asta was on the cortex, she searched the warrant lists for local people with minimal rap sheets that ‘could’ be innocent.
Campan came back and told Daniel he was on the wall, among others. And his reward was piddly compared to a guy who did arson.
Mort:Can we go steal stuff now?
Eventually Daniel stopped by to check on Leon, telling him he was okay and Mort was going to stay away from him now. All was good. Leon was pretty loopy from the pain meds.
Mort and Campan went off to scope out the customs warehouse.
*Paul pulls up his shirt to fake putting on his bandana*
Alex:The warehouse is in a more patrolled section of the city…
*Paul pulls his head up out of his shirt to fake pulling off his bandana*
The area was patrolled by local deputies (non-Alliance). They found the warehouse itself had an electronic fence surrounding a small courtyard around the building. It looked like your typical warehouse with a guard posted at the gates and a guard posted at a normal sized door. Around the corner was a guard building and landed vehicle obscuring view, but they could infer that there were loading doors over there. They did not find any bums within a two block radius. They did find some teenage delinquents smoking cigarettes, though. Mort shared a cigar with them. One of them puked. Mort and Campan hung out with them and watched the warehouse for a while. The most prevalent ship seemed to be grey APS (Alliance Postal Service) ships with numbers printed on their side. Mort copied down the last of the numbers. The people loading and unloading were wearing brown uniforms with brown hats.
Take wandered down to talk to Deliliah. She asked him how he was, how things were going, and if he was hungry. She made him a strawberry cake. He gave her the doohickey and told her what it did. She was very grateful that he was showing interest in her safety with the help button.
Asta got a map of the area, because she thought it might be useful.
The Plan:
Step 1. Steal a ship
Step 2. Fly in
Step 3. Knock out the guards
Step 4. Take stuff
Step 5. Leave
Step 6. Ditch vehicle
Step 7. Commence Sheep-lover exposé
Mort modified two revolvers into air-powered tranquilizer guns while Asta made up the dosages for the bullets. After all, they wanted to do a non-lethal job here.
Campan got a pipe from the engine room to use as a secondary weapon. He then wrote his name on it. Mort didn’t like this and sanded the name off, explaining one shouldn’t put identifying marks on anything that might get left behind. Take, Campan, and Mort dressed in brown.
Mort and Campan visited the APS ship docking yards that Asta was kind enough to point out to them. The yards were a smallish lot with about thirty grey shuttles parked close together. The shuttles were all parked in sequential number. The lot was surrounded by a twelve foot, metal fence with a chain and padlocked gate. Within the lot, closer to the gate, was a guard shack.
Mort:Hey man, let us in. I forgot something in my truck!
Mort got the guard to come out. He was an older fellow with a large ring of keys. Mort convinced him that he was Frank Smith and only started last week. The guy checked his clipboard then unlocked the gate. Mort shot the guy then dragged him into the shack. Campan shut the gate back up while Mort swiped the clipboard, keys, some brown caps, and brown uniforms. They found the shuttle they wanted, fueled it up along with the one next to it, and took off in both of them.
They stopped where the rest of the crew was waiting in one of the Orasca’s shuttles to pick them up. They then ditched the second APS shuttle at another location before flying on to the warehouse and landing on the landing pad. There was a guard standing near the two large loading doors, looking a bit confused as to why there was a shuttle landing. Mort and Campan got out, wearing their brown uniforms and caps and with Mort carrying the clipboard.
Mort got into an ‘argument’ about whether there was supposed to be a special delivery at this time. When the guy asked to see Mort’s identification, he shot the guy. He fell back, stumbled a little bit, and hit the ground unconscious. Mort took the guy’s walkie-talkie, clipboard, and pants. When he didn’t find any handcuffs, he shot the guy again.
Campan noticed a guard patrolling the fence. He shot at the guy, but the bullet ricocheted off the fence. As the guy turned to look at the fence, Campan shot the guy in the neck. The guard went right down. While looking around, he saw a very small red light in the distance, outside the fence. Campan stole the guy’s keys and dragged him into a dark corner.
Mort snuck over to the guardhouse to find two guys napping inside. Mort shot them for good measure. He was a very thorough fellow, since now these guys were sleeping in front of the security feeds. Mort shut off the security feeds and got Asta to deal with the security system. Mort made sure all the crew were wearing bandanas.
Asta worked on a virus to send along the security feed to erase the day’s logs. She found the loading bay door control switch and flipped it.
While Mort was poking around trying to open the doors, they started opening. He snuck inside and looked around for another guard. He noticed a flashlight much farther into the warehouse. So, he snuck over and shot the guy. He took the guy’s walkie-talkie, pants and flashlight. It finally occurred to Mort to check the channels to see if he could hear anything. A guy on the other end commented that he hadn’t heard from George outside. Mort said he’d check on him. Instead of going around searching for what he figured was one more guard, he decided to set up an ambush.
Mort:Come to the loading door quick!
Guy on walkie-talkie:Okay, we’ll send a squad over.
Mort quickly realized they didn’t have enough tranq bullets for a squad.
Mort:No, no. Sorry, that went to the wrong people. I’m looking for… (looks at name tag of the guy he just knocked out) Christopher Darga to come over to the doors. Not a whole squad. Geez. Overkill.
Guy on walkie-talkie:He hasn’t been responding.
Mort:Don’t worry, I’ll go find him. (shuts off radio)
Mort walked back to the shuttle, tossed the pants inside and handed Daniel the spare walkie-talkie.
Mort:Whatever you do, don’t let them send a squad. I think their central place uses the same frequency. If you move the ship inside, we can close the doors and look less conspicuous.
Mort got out of the shuttle and walked into the warehouse and asking Asta to turn on the lights in the warehouse. Take took off and shifted the shuttle to fly diagonally to the doors and just barely squeaked through. He straightened out as Asta closed the loading doors again.
They were then faced with the dilemma of no place for the shuttle to land. Daniel jumped out and checked out the boxes.
Campan pretended to be a guard outside, walking the fence and keeping an eye out.
Take told Mort move the five crates underneath the shuttle so there’d be room. Mort ran underneath the shuttle and slammed into crates to push them out of the way (he was afraid of the downdraft from the shuttle). Two boxes were small and light. Two were medium sized and weighted. The last one was larger and felt like someone had filled it with cement.
With the stuff cleared, Take landed.
Daniel had three types of things he was looking for. Stuff for his friends and contacts, valuable stuff, and music boxes.
Mort went and found a crowbar before he remembered he had taken one of the guards clipboards. Poking through the inventory, he found that the heavy crate underneath the shuttle had, indeed, been unmixed cement.
Daniel started naming off stuff he was looking for while Mort cross-referenced and found the items. Since Campan wasn’t inside, Mort was stuck schlepping stuff around.
Campan was still disturbed by the red light in the distance. Then a rock hit the fence and bounced off, which made him jump.
Guy on walkie-talkie:Bridgers pick up. Over.
Mort looked down at his walkie-talkie before picking it back up and responding.
Guy on walkie-talkie:We’ve got a problem with the security feed.
Mort: (to walkie-talkie) Okay, I’ll go look into it. (to others) We need to move faster now!
He began looking for valuables. He found some computer panels and parts (taken), shipment of medicinal drugs (taken), antiques (taken, minus the piano), fruits and vegetables (left), geisha doll bobble heads (left), crate of a dead body (left).
Mort: (to walkie-talkie) We should have the feed back on in about five minutes.
Guy on walkie-talkie:A squad is already on the way to make sure you don’t have any problems while you get it fixed.
Mort: (to walkie-talkie) Okay. (to others) Time to go. Asta, open the door and set it up so I can turn the security feed on with one button.
Campan was inspecting the rock when Daniel ordered him back to the shuttle. He figured it was the kids. He asked mort for something small that he could plant on someone else. When Mort gave him a computer part, he hucked it over at the hoodlums.
As the loading bay doors reopened, Take flew back out, allowing Mort to walk out. Lights were turned off, doors were shut. Mort walked over to the security shack as the other piled into the shuttle. Mort turned the feed back on, walked outside, waved at the security hut, and hopped into the shuttle. They took off. Mort chucked the procured radios out once at a suitable height.
Once they got to the other APS shuttle, they transferred stuff and sent the first shuttle on autopilot to Bora Bora. When they got to the Orasca’s shuttle, they repeated the process, sending shuttle off to another place. Once they got back to the Orasca, they started stowing items. Mort sold the APS clothes to a bum for a credit.
Daniel spent the next four days getting stuff they had appropriated from the warehouse for his friends and contacts and checking in with them to make sure they didn’t rat him out.
The next morning, Campan hand delivered Asta’s press packet to the animal rights office. Daniel had made up a very convincing packet of lies to go along with the photos. Mort had previously found the location of a local live morning show for the planet cortex feed. While wearing a hat and a bandana, he took a specially made large print of the incriminating photograph with sticky ends. He did a run by posting of the poster on their window, facing the video captures inside. He got two blocks before he had to collapse from lack of breath. He lit a cigar then went a sat down at a coffee shop. The picture was only on screen for a second before they cut to their office in Bora Bora, where an APS shuttle buzzed the office. Mort also dropped off some packets at the underground news offices.
By the end of the day, the animal rights group was protesting outside Claggett’s house and the sheriff’s office. Mort went by and gave the protestors cookies (that he stole). Asta went by, attempted to act all innocent, and inquired what was going on. Mort insinuated that someone who would do that to a sheep would probably do that to a dead body too. The sheriff’s office denied the accusations, calling them vicious slander by a deranged malcontent. The Alliance Press Corp stated the local Alliance officials were looking into the case, but had already made a statement as to the unlikelihood of the veracity of the accusations. The underground press ran with it anyway.
On the second day, Asta paid hoodlums five platinum to hand out pamphlets. The Alliance Press Corp came out denouncing the allegations as fake, stating the photograph the accusations hinged on were a fake. The sheriff came on and said someone was trying to tarnish his great record and the malicious people would be caught. The accusations about him framing lots of innocent people was quietly being swept under the rug in favor of the controversy about the false allegations. Mort decided they needed to come up with some fliers that said he had stolen goods and a corpse in his warehouse.
Take visited with Delilah and returned her music box. She was very grateful and informed him that Garrett had contacted her just a little while ago to tell her he would be in in two days time. She didn’t know when he’d be coming down to the planet, just that he’d be stopping by. She said he’d be working on the investigation into the allegations against Claggett. She also paid Take twenty credits. It wasn’t much, but it was enough that he could get some fruit.
Mort had a meeting with the command crew (Take & Daniel), saying that they needed to kill Claggett, make it look like suicide, and have him confess posthumously.
Liz:You’d better have him write it in his own hand writing.
Paul:Yes. Mort is all about the torture.
Mort gave Asta the medical supplies and asked her for something that would make someone highly suggestible. She gave him what he needed and told her the dosage.
The command crew plotted to get a knocked out sheep with Claggett’s dead body. By now, Claggett’s house was under heavy guard.
On the third day they sent in supplementary, anonymous letters from various ‘concerned citizens.’ Some from enraged farmers, with live commentaries from their sheep. Pamphlets with the info about the dead body go out. Daniel leaks letter he forged from Claggett to Kat about framing Daniel to the press (Claggett warning Kat that Daniel wasn’t on that planet that day of the bank robbery he was being implicated in and they might get in some legal trouble implicating him so make sure he ends up dead). Press doesn’t even cover them. Mort remembered to feed Leon. Daniel had been feeding him everyday, but this was the first day Mort remembered. Campan and Asta sulked that they never got invited to the command meetings.
On the fourth day, about noon, it came across the Cortex that Claggett had been killed. Someone snuck into the house through security and assassinated him. They were still looking into suspects, but had a few leads. All traffic off planet was currently highly restricted with all ships land-locked. Lieutenant Kat Massie, the Alliance official in charge of this planet, was going to be personally overseeing the investigation. He stated that they were going to be going over recent events with a fine toothed comb to look for connections to the sheriff’s assassination. He was looking for anyone who had information with regards to source of the recent allegations. He was also looking for anyone with information on a break in to the Customs warehouse four days ago.
Daniel: Leon is going to be a problem. I was thinking of putting Leon in a box somewhere and giving him food once a day.
Mort:I was thinking of putting Leon in a box… in the ground.
Synopsis of 1/16/06 Session – subtitled Let’s Get the Hell Off This Gorramn Planet
The crew was more than eager to get off the planet now that the law didn’t want them to. Go figure. Asta discussed with Mort about the possibility of disabling the land-lock and just leaving, but that was ultimately decided to either not be feasible or not be wise; it wasn’t decided which. Daniel did decide that they needed to get rid of their ill-gotten goods as quickly as possible, since the Alliance was sure to check their ship.
Daniel took some time casing the port area while sitting at a scummy docks bar (different than the one owned by Glen Morshower). He found that the Alliance was actually patrolling the Docks now. Four different squads had patrols that led them through the area. Each made a loop of their patrol every two hours, with a half an hour window between each different squad. Like he remembered, the docks really didn’t have a quiet time where the streets were deserted. There were more quiet times now that there weren’t ships going in and out, though. The squads were stopping the occasional mule that drove by and checking the contents.
Mort went around to the different ships to talk with the other mechanics and grumble about their current situation. There were a couple that wanted to trade parts and hooch. Mort got invited to a poker game later aboard The Prophet.
Asta and Mort then cross-referenced the stolen cargo from the warehouse with the ships still in dock. The plan was to pick a scapegoat that had goods withheld in customs that might have wanted to liberate them. Mort decided Serina was a wonderful target. He then went out and found the bum he had given the APS clothes to and bought back the hat for ten credits.
When Daniel returned from canvassing the port, Mort let him know the plan, who their patsy was going to be, and when they were going to do it. Daniel’s part in the plan was to get the entire crew of Serina to the poker game so they could do some planting of evidence.
Daniel found the ship to be a bit larger than the Orasca. Once inside, he found the cargo hold was actually a lot smaller than theirs, though. Captain Sylvia Petrie was a slightly attractive woman of around thirty-five years with short black hair. Daniel had no problem convincing all ten of her crew that they were invited to the poker game and they should go. Even the old geezer.
A few hours later, Daniel and Asta returned to escort them to the game.
While the poker game was going on, Mort disabled the security feeds watching the docked ships. After a patrol went by, he and Campan dressed like they belonged and took the mule with some stuff over to Serina to dump some of their evidence. Campan brought along a beer to make it look like they were coming back from drinking. Mort actually had some trouble opening the door, until Campan handed him his beer and opened it for Mort. After searching the small cargo hold and finding no secret compartments, they planted some boxes from the warehouse under other things. Wandering up to the crew quarters, which were rather spacious, Mort planted the datapad manifest of the contents of the warehouse on the table in the Captain’s quarters. They then went to the next quarters, which was also spacious but a mess. Mort found an empty closet and an overflowing pile of dirty laundry. He made the mistake of lifting up about a day’s worth of laundry and sliding the APS hat in. The stench released was almost unbearable.
Campan:Oh dear GOD! What the are you doing?
Mort:Planting evidence.
Campan:That’s not planting evidence, that’s trying to kill me!
They could swear they saw that pile moving.
Mort:Let’s move before the laundry eats us.
They moved to another room, uploaded some of the Claggett blackmail data onto their computer and spread some printed out pamphlets around the room with a note saying, ‘hand out tomorrow.’
They then headed back to the Orasca by a circuitous route. Mort made sure they got stopped by a patrol.
Campan: (from passenger seat and a bit slurred) No no, it’s okay. I’m not driving.
Mort:I had to go pick him up, he was drunk.
Campan:He only held my beer once, occifer.
Mort:Actually, yeah. I saw a bunch of guys loading a whole lot of stuff onto that ship there yesterday. Might want to check them out. Looked awful suspicious. You don’t often see APS trucks parked on the side of their ship like that. Unloading boxes and stuff.
When the officers asked for their ident cards, Mort handed them his fake ID. They told him he’d need to get a new card, since he had a couple of scratches on it and a bullet hole through the photo. Campan had the officer hold his beer while he fished out his card. There was considerably less beer when he got the mug back. They told him that he was overdue on some student loan payments and he should really take care of that. They then went along their way back to the Orasca, where Mort turned the cameras back on.
A different squad did go over to the ship to check it out.
Because so many people showed up at The Prophet, a few poker tables had to be set up. The old geezer opened with his teeth. After several hours, the game wound down. The old geezer now had three sets of teeth, some vodka, and a nice pile of platinum. Daniel’s winnings were mostly in credits and platinum, though he did end up with a packet of spices. Most of Asta’s credits had been lost, but she won a leatherman and a pair of glasses (there was one person at the table that was squinting really hard at his cards after that). Daniel chatted with a few of the people at the game and learned some choice tidbits that he kept to himself. Captain Petrie seemed to take a liking to him. Daniel and Asta left before the games ended to ‘beat the crowds.’
Gabe:We’re doing our good dead for the episode by not killing Leon.
Leon:I’m hungry!
Gabe:I feed him.
Watching Captain Petrie and her crew going back to their ship, Mort and Daniel saw them meet up with the Alliance officers outside the ship, go inside, then get hauled off in official vehicles a while later. Two officers stayed behind outside the ship to guard.
The next day, the residents of the ships were getting more angry, since they had been kept from doing their jobs (and the whole getting paid part). Daniel mingled with the crowds and convinced a few key people to be grumpy enough to complain. A group of Captains for eleven of the twelve ships in port headed off for Port authority to complain about the detainment. Daniel quickly told Take to go with them, so it didn’t look suspicious. A couple of hours after the captains returned, each ship received a wave saying that they after they underwent a proper ident check to make sure they weren’t harboring anyone with a suspicious background they’d be allowed to leave and to make sure they had their ship manifest and crew’s ident cards ready. One ship volunteered to go first and two ships volunteered to go last. The crew then scrambled to deal with this because their ident cards did not match the manifest they docked with. Eventually, Daniel decided to scrape together whatever and all cash they had and put it in a bag with the ident cards. One drama point later, the official who came to check their ship was corrupt enough to take the bribe and tell them they could go on their way shortly.
Once they took off, they headed about two days out of town and touched down in a canyon. Mort went in to Leon’s cell. Leon backed away from Mort. Once he was in a corner Mort told him not to struggle or he’d hurt him. He blindfolded him and grabbed him by the collar and the belt and dragged him out of the cell.
Mort:I’ll hurt you if I have to.
Daniel:Mort, please don’t hurt him.
Mort: (outraged) Why’d you have to say my name? *slams Leon’s head into a metal wall* You didn’t hear that, RIGHT?
Daniel:You do realize he is completely drugged up and won’t remember this anyway.
Mort: Cause if you did hear that, you’re going to end up in a shallow grave. Right?
*Leon whimpers and nods*
Mort: Good.
Mort took him outside and set him down on the ground. Drawing an arrow in the ground pointing towards town, he then handed Leon a back with water, a food bar and some happy pills in it. Mort didn’t care what the engines draft would do to the arrow.
Mort: Towns the direction of the arrow. You have water and a food bar. Start walking when you hear the ship take off. I’m even leaving you with a handkerchief.
Campan: (waves) We’ll see you next time we drop bye.
Mort: (patting Leon on the back and whispering) If you tell anybody about this and I find out about it, I might get angry.
Everyone but Leon then got back on the ship and they took off. The Orasca left orbit and flew past the space station and the alliance cruiser in orbit and headed off towards the Georgia System.
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