T20 Traveller - The Kursis Charter (complete Aug 8th 2005)

Act IV: 069-526 - After the Party, a Little Nervous Laughter

Date: 177-993 to 178-993 Imperial.
Location: 069-526 system (0721), various locations.

Luan cleaned Fish up. Sir David and Maelcum finished up on Cochrane’s Burden, grabbing a few photos for the log. They set gravity in the hold to zero with a mild centring component and evacuated the atmosphere, leaving the bodies to float in a central clump.

Silea cast off, and put Avarice Rewarded on course to match Fonnein Orbital. Sir David slouched onto the bridge a few minutes later, looking tired. He crumpled into the co-pilot seat. “Do you want to go and see Iain? I’ll take the bridge until oh-six-hundred.” She gave him a grateful nod and headed aft. Sir David familiarised himself with the flight plan then started putting reports together.

One went to Fonnein Orbital Starport Authority and Lieutenant Kharassiss of the Imperial Navy, advising that they were inbound with 19 casualties from the freighter Cochrane’s Ghost, destroyed in an anti-piracy action. It appeared that four were hijackers and the remainder passengers and crew. Doctor Derhayenne’s notes were attached. Did they have facilities for the bodies on the orbital, or would they prefer them take to a planetside spaceport?

He sent a separate note to Kharassiss, stating that they had recovered the computer core as contracted.

Well, that should raise hell.



Silea found Fish in the sickbay, towelling off the residue from Luan’s water/alcohol wipes. He was staring at the bed, in no hurry to meet her eye. He looked miserable. Something clicked in Silea, and suddenly she knew the answer to a question she’d been asking herself for the last year.

She came to a halt with a slight stamp to get his attention, put her hands on her hips and gave him a pouty smile. “Oh, my poor boy. Come on, you.” Holding out a hand, she switched to Luriani “Ehlahté, o erastairs mou. Thar’soh eh-ahn eiste pragmat’amu.”

Fish sat bolt upright, eyes wide open, jaw dropped.[1]

Silea gave him a wicked smile, grabbed his wrist, and yanked him off the bed. The towel hit the floor, leaving him naked. She dragged him out of sickbay and towards their cabin, past a grinning Maelcum.



Maelcum wandered onto the bridge to find Sir David. “Um, just to let you know, we probably shouldn’t disturb Silea and Fish for a bit.”

“Is he OK?”

“Oh, I think he’ll be fine.”



It was five-thirty in the morning, ship’s time, when Silea stepped out of the shower. She leaned over her sleeping lover for a while, listening to him breath, then kissed him on the temple and turned to take a slim box from the desk behind her. Kneeling beside the bed, she took her flute from its box and played silently for a few minutes, working the keys without blowing and listening to the music in her head. She looked at Fish all the while.

Then she dried her hair, towelled off the remaining water from the shower and put some clothes on. Leaving the cabin, she turned away from the bridge and headed towards the cargo hold. She dimmed the lights along the way, leaving a few emergency signs to cast shadows as she passed. After a look through the glass panel at the bodies, she sat with her back against the door to the hold. This time she played the flute audibly but very quietly, whispering out a long sad song.

At a few minutes before six she turned the lights back up and went to relieve Sir David on the bridge.



The Starport authority didn’t have storage for the bodies on Fonnein Orbital, so they were directed to one of the spaceports down on the planet to hand them over to morgue vehicles. Lieutenant Kharassiss informed them that he’d visit their ship to collect the computer core when they made it back to the starport.

“How long do we have before we’re back on the orbital?” asked Fish.

“Two or three hours, depending on traffic control and the unload time. Something on your mind?” Sir David raised an eyebrow.

“I thought I might get a look in that computer core before we hand it over. What do you think?

Sir David chewed his lower lip for a second and replied “Alright, I’d be interested to know.”

“I’ll be in engineering” said Fish.

Twenty minutes later he was back. “There’s no specific entries by sophs, but the diagnostic log agrees with what the second officer said in his message. They jumped, command entries from the Captain and First Officer stopped, four new users gained command access and the crew lost it. Then after another day the crew got command access back and overrode security on a few doors around the brig. Days later, they come out of jump and there’s ten minutes of sitting still and trying to route around a radio fault before the massive damage reports flood in. And then the power went out.”

“They made no effort to manoeuvre, fire or evade?”

“They were about finished putting the jump drive to sleep when the beam hit the engine room. Turrets were powered but they didn’t use active sensor fire control or anything.”

“It’s…”

“Yes” said Luan, angrier than they’d ever heard her.



The reporters were a shock.

After Silea flew the ship through a thunderstorm at 1200 kilometres per hour and landed it on the spaceport gantry in howling winds laden with spray, it didn’t seem like there would be people about. But when the spaceport extended a tube to their airlock for the morgue crew, it plugged them into the phone system.

Within minutes two reporters had put in calls to the ship, asking to come aboard, asking for interviews, asking the crew to come out to the camera and light setup, asking what had happened on Cochrane’s Burden.

Sir David told them that he didn’t have time for an interview because they had a schedule to keep, and he didn’t want to discuss events on the destroyed ship in case there were local passengers aboard whose families should hear the story first. He was apologetic but insistent.

Meanwhile, Luan followed the departing morgue crew out and made a concise statement to a camera team across a boundary rope. She told them that the ship had been hijacked, the hijackers had destroyed its communications, and the crew had then retaken the ship. When they came out of jump the Imperial Navy had fired on the stationary, silent ship killing all aboard. She said that three-quarters of the dead appeared to be crew and passengers. And she turned on her heel and walked back onto the ship, as the reporter shouted questions behind her.

Sir David got the call asking for his comment on her statement just as she walked onto the bridge and said “I told them”.

He cut the comm and swivelled to face her. She was shaking. “Well”, he said “good for you”. He eyed her with considerable respect. “Alright, let’s get out of here. Whenever you like, Silea.”

Luan shuffled up to Sir David, seeming to shrink as everyone looked at her. “What are we going to… I mean we have to… About the navy.”

“Kharassiss is the navy around here. He can do what he likes around here, but he can only escalate this to command at Sentry. We’ll be at Sentry in a few weeks. That’ll give him plenty of time to do the right thing and the navy time to do something about it. If they don’t, I know lots of people on Sentry and it’s a planet with free press. It’s not like Shanape.”

Luan gave a halting nod and shuffled off the bridge. Sir David half rose to go after her, but decided to leave it a while.

They don’t mind sonic booms on planets where everyone lives in ocean floor arcologies. They were happy to give Avarice Rewarded a priority transit to the orbital starport on request, since she had a scheduled jump to make later in the day. Silea put the pedal to the metal, and tore the clouds apart.



Lieutenant Kharassiss looked shell-shocked. As Sir David dismantled him with a stare, he took the data core and paid their fee. On his way out, he said “Sir David, I want you to know that I will do the right thing about this. It’s… terrible.”



That evening, Sir David took Luan to dinner in a restaurant ship floating between icebergs, with a big dome over the dining area, and floodlights to create a little extra sunset. Silea, Fish and Maelcum took care of fuel, cargo and passengers.

When the diners came back, Maelcum went out to hit the late bars. He came back early next morning with a spring in his step and a big grin on his face. Luan eyed the bite marks on his neck and asked him, mock-stern, “Now are you just going to show those off Major Rivers, or do you want an anti-inflammatory?”

They cleared dock, and headed out to jump for Kerin’s Tyr.

________
[1] Silea used a ritual snippet of erotic poetry from traditional Luriani courtships which might be politely translated as “OK, sure, I’ve thought about it and yes I’ll marry you. So let’s get started on the kids right now.”

The Luriani are a fiery race, on the whole.

Of course, amphibious Luriani like Silea cannot normally have children with the genetically-standard humans integrated into their society. Not without complex and expensive gene therapy. So the phrase has a double meaning between these two.
 
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Act V: Kerin's Tyr - Library Data

Kerin’s Tyr 0620 B575775-6 Ag 320 I F8 V

Geography

Kerin’s Tyr is a small to mid-sized world of thirty million sophonts, primarily agricultural, with government split into several states. Local technology peaks at level 6 (early jet aircraft, primitive computers, antibiotics, radio). Law levels are moderate, ranging up to level 5 (no concealed firearms) in the richer states and down to “not much law” in the badlands.

Gravity is around 0.6g. The planet’s surface is about 50% water. The planet has three main inhabited landmasses and a fourth “Great Arctic Wilderness” of ice and largely-uninhabited tundra stretching down from the north pole. Even on the inhabited continents, there is still a lot of wilderness remaining unexplored.

The air is a standard oxygen-nitrogen mix of readily breathable pressure, but the local flora does produce a pollen which is injurious to those not acclimated. The locals can ignore it, and resistance develops in a few months of gradual exposure. But new visitors will need to wear filter masks or risk periods of breathing difficulty which incapacitate them for a day or two at a time. There are drugs which help, but they may have side effects as bad as the pollen itself.

Governments

There are four main nations on Kerin's Tyr: The Kingdom of Harven, The Confederation of City-States, the Grand Theocratic Republic and the Liberty Alliance.

The smallest of the main continents is governed by the Kingdom of Harven (Hereditary Oligarchy, Law level 5, Tech level 6). This is the most populous state on Kerin’s Tyr by a good margin. The Kingdom is reasonably well-ordered and organized, and welcomes offworlders. It maintains a large spaceport at the capital (Tersberg), which sees considerable traffic coming down from orbit. It exports a great deal of foodstuffs and natural products; mainly grain, vegetables, fish from the coastal fishing towns, and hardwood from the abundant forests.

The Confederation of City-States (Balkanized, Law Level 2, Tech Level 5) is a loose conglomeration of independent cities scattered across the eastern side of the largest continent (the western side is frontier). City governments vary hugely – elected councils, hereditary nobles, military groups etc. A steam-powered railroad system links the cities, most of which operate small spaceports (Type D). The Confederation has no central government or capital, but each city-state sends representatives to squabble aboard a "parliament train" that travels between the cities. Little is ever settled, and politics in the Confederation is a constantly-shifting web of alliances, embargoes, sanctions and even outright conflict.

The cities nominally maintain a joint armed force and a small 'wet' navy to counter the Kingdom of Harven. These forces are little more than political footballs and they do not interoperate very well. Most cities have militias with TL 5 small arms.

The third continent is shared by the Grand Theocratic Republic and the Liberty Alliance.

The Republic is actually quite democratic (Representative Democracy, Law level 5, Tech Level 6). Only initiates of the ruling Church of Stellar Divinity (whose faithful venerate stars as gods) are allowed to stand for election, but that’s pretty much everyone. Diplomatically, the Republic is rather stiff-necked and insular.

The sole spaceport is located at an isolated "Star City". Star City is considered holy, but ships' crews are not permitted to leave the “Offworld Enclave” (not holy). Only those of sufficient "purity" - i.e. those who the theocrats don't think will cause trouble - are allowed into Star City proper where the pilgrims will come into contact with them (and gawk).

The Liberty Alliance (Tribal Government, Law Level 2, Tech level 3) is a collection of nomadic groups, small settlements and two city-states. It is home to most of the world's Vargr population. These groups have absolutely nothing in common except a desire to ensure that the Grand Theocratic Republic does not expand into their territory. Armed clashes have occurred, and for a long time guerrilla warfare was common as the Republic attempted to expand its territory. An uneasy truce now exists.

Warne Highport

The port is a private venture, owned and operated by Venture Ports LIC, with Imperial subsidy. A class B orbital starport is quite grand for a planet of thirty million that would have a hard time putting an explosive rocket in orbit. But most Jump-2 traffic passing through the Shanape Linkworlds cluster arrives or departs via Kerin's Tyr. And since the system has no gas giants and there’s no water on the other planets, visiting interstellar ships must either come to the main world for hydrogen fuel or waste time finding ice asteroids. So the starport sees a fair amount of trade passing through.

There’s probably a story as to how a classy orbital housing sixty-thousand got built around a planet like this, and somebody probably didn’t want it told. But that was over a century ago, and Warne Highport has seen better days. It is now rather seedy and run-down, with the air of a lively if rather disreputable market. The port is considered neutral ground, so merchants from the various nations of Kerin's Tyr often come to the Highport to conduct their business. Goods are usually shipped direct on-planet.

Traffic through the port is a mixture of tramp traders and regular services plying the cluster, Jump-2 vessels crossing the rift from the Reaching Arm, and Tukera Lines vessels heading in to Sentry for refit (or back out again).

Laws are liberal (level 2) and rather informally applied. Order is kept by Portside Security, a private security force that seems to believe that court cases are a needless waste of everyone's time. Minor infractions usually result in a "spot fine" payable in cash or personal possessions, or in on-the-spot justice administered with shock batons. Crime rates are fairly low.

A platoon of Imperial Marines is stationed at the Highport, protecting the Imperial trade mission and the residence of Baron Marie Iskuulii, the Imperial noble assigned to the world. The Baron makes regular visits to the nations of Kerin's Tyr, and meets with ambassadors on a regular basis. She has no desire to live on the planet.

For port security and traffic control, Warne Highport operates a force of 10-ton light fighters to back up its inspection cutters. The latter are unarmed, and crewed by professional if unenthusiastic personnel drawn from the Portside Security force.

Six 200-ton System Defence Boats are also deployed to provide immediate defence of the port. Their mercenary crews are long-service professionals. They are reliable and skilled, and so far have rebuffed all efforts by various on-planet groups to bribe them.
 

Act V: Kerin's Tyr - Another Day, Another Space Station

Date: 186-993 Imperial.
Location: Kerin’s Tyr system (0620), Warne Highport and approaches.

Sir David and Luan spent a lot of time talking about the worlds of the Ley Sector, late into the evenings, sat over drinks in the galley. Silea and the Fish wandered around the ship with big, dreamy smiles.

Fish spent time in his cabin doing sums, and started talking to Luan about how to best liquidate a small interstellar investment portfolio. His head was in a whirl.

He also borrowed the video journal they’d taken from the doomed ship Malfeasant, and the translation the Ursa of Miip had made, and watched it a few more times. He showed it to Maelcum, and gave him the story of the lost ship Vraidercalt and their tentative salvage plan. On his second view, Maelcum asked “why have they got so many of those?” and pointed to long, slender objects by the Malfeasant’s salvage bay airlock.

“What are they?” asked Fish.

“They’re shock rods, on extension poles. They’ve got a set, in the weapon rack, with their laser carbines. They’re right next to the airlock, just where you’d want one of those strain gauges they’re so fond of. Like they think they really need them.”

“Why would they?”

“Good question, let’s have another look”



They came out of jump without ado, and hailed the starport.

“Avarice Rewarded, welcome to Kerin’s Tyr. Please proceed to Warne Highport for customs inspection, vector follows.”

“Roger, control, wilco”. Silea reeled in the vectors, plugged them into nav and gave them a reality check before executing. Another planet, another set of entry procedures.

They said goodbye to the Vargr passengers over lunch on the run in. They’d been fun, joking and gambling with Maelcum (who lost) and Fish (who won). The Avaricious learned all sorts of K’Kree barbecue jokes, and made mental notes never to tell them in front of K’Kree.[1]

Then they were docked, and the customs inspector came aboard. He cleared them without problems, but said “I’m afraid you drew the short straw on random safety checks. The port engineer will be in touch about the time.”

They offloaded their cargo, which was all for delivery to the highport rather than the planet, and defrosted the low berth passengers. Luan started looking for sales opportunities. Fish got ready for the inspection. Sir David and Maelcum went off to see the starport authority about the hardcopy records for their charter. And then everything went wrong.



“They’re on the planet, Sir. Apart from the through-system transit records we keep here, which I can have sent to your ship. But I’m afraid you’ll find the nations on Kerin’s Tyr are very… proud of having their own starports, and they like to keep their own records. It’s a sovereignty issue, you see.”

“Just how many starports are we talking about?” Sir David asked the highport official.

“Well, four starports. Unless one lot are on the, um, train.”

“Train?”

“The Confederation of City States keeps the high profile parts of their government on a steam train that shuttles between the cities. Since the starport is a point of pride, I wouldn’t be surprised if they keep the records on it. I could ask them, informally, if you like.”

“Asking formally would be a problem?”

“Well, ah, maybe. You never know.”

“I don’t suppose we can get them to just forward the records to the highport?”

The bureaucrat, who’d been quite decent and helpful as un-bribed bureaucrats at a rather seedy orbital starport go, shrank within himself a little. Sir David recognised the look. “So we’ll have to visit them then.”

“I’m afraid it will probably come to that sir, yes.”

“Oh well. We’re probably taking the ship down to sell cargo, anyway.”



“It’s a stitch up!” ranted Fish. “There’s nothing wrong with the port aft fuel transfer pipe. Cracks on the x-ray, my arse! And twelve and a half thousand credits is a rip-off!”

It seemed they had a fault. Or at least the inspection said they did, and they weren’t cleared for space until it was fixed. It was a pack of lies of course, the yard was generating a bit of business in a slow patch and the inspector was earning a nice backhander. At least, it looked that way.

Sir David went to work on the officials, and Maelcum went to work on the bars. They came up with the same story, phrased in different terms: the shipyards were run by the local mob. So were the safety inspectors. So was the highport, barring selected parts of the Baron’s residence and marine barracks. And every so often, a ship failed its inspection, and a local yard which happened to have capacity would do a Cr7500 repair job for Cr12500 on a “rush basis”.

As somebody in a bar parked in an odd curved corned of the station told Maelcum: “Think of it as an extra starport tax, it’s just your turn to pay. It’s nothing personal. But it’s probably best to pay it, rather than argue with them behind it.”

They paid, and got a timetable for the passenger/cargo shuttles down to the surface.

[1] Vargr are genetically uplifted wolves, with a residual pack carnivore mentality and a chaotic society. K’Kree are genocidal militant herbivores with a rigid herd culture who would exterminate all meat eaters, sentient or otherwise. They are two of the major races on or beyond the Imperium’s borders. They mix poorly.
 



Psion said:
Nice job. Did you get the Gateway book yet? Has it changed your view of the region?

My review of the Gateway book is here. ;)

I've had it for about a year, as the pre-release PDF and now the final PDF, and I've been using it steadily. It's good stuff.
 

Shadowdancer's story got me started on a sci-fi kick, so I just polished off yours as well. Nice job; you obviously put a lot of effort into the write-ups.
 

Pyske said:
Shadowdancer's story got me started on a sci-fi kick, so I just polished off yours as well. Nice job; you obviously put a lot of effort into the write-ups.

Thank you. I stare at the screen until blood drips from my eyes and hits the keys. ;) I do envy those professional writers who can write better than me and turn out thousands of words per day.

As it happens, I recently took over playing Vasilii in the PBEM feeding Shadowdancer's story hour. Though it will be a while before the SH gets to that point.
 

Act V: Kerin's Tyr - Tersberg

Date: 187-993 Imperial.
Location: Kerin’s Tyr (0620), main world, Tersberg spaceport.

Tersberg Spaceport in the Kingdom of Harven was straightforward. They picked up the records without any great trouble, and sold half Luan’s water purification gear to an importer/distributor who had ideas about starting a new business line with it. Unfortunately he only wanted half to test the market, and if things worked out he’d be bringing any further machinery in as freight rather than buying it from traders. Still, they had plenty of time to sell the remainder on the other three quarters of the planet. The deal worked out about Cr22000 better than using that space for freight, so they were pleased.

Their next destination system, the cold and lightly populated but mildly wealthy world Adukgin, was a freight clearing house on the edge of the cluster. It had a reputation as a good place to find small freight looking for onward shipment, but it wasn’t a major destination in itself. So they spent a fair while poking around, talking to brokers, checking out the market for anything they might get to haul to Adukgin or perhaps buy as speculative cargo.

“Premium meat and fancy veneers” said Luan, “they’ll sell on a watery world like Sentry if the market’s just too small at Adukgin.”

The real travellers aboard – Sir David, Silea and the Fish – took Tersberg in their stride. Seeing a canal barge moored alongside a 50dton grav shuttle, loading crates of salted meat for transhipment to the orbital, had stopped seeming incongruous years ago. The great big diesel trucks hauling giant tree trunks gave Luan a fright by rattling past her and blotting out the sky (“and they’ve got no computer guidance at all!”); but they looked like ants crawling up to the 4000dton Tukera freighter across the field.

Maelcum looked around with interest, especially at the jet interceptors patrolling out of the Kingdom’s nearby airbase. It seemed like most of the planets he’d served on as a starmerc, except they weren’t having a civil war right now. So this was how it worked when it wasn’t going wrong.



After a long day, they decided to hit the spaceport bar and grille before catching the shuttle back up to the highport. They went in, and stood at the “please wait to be seated” sign (ubiquitous on eleven thousand worlds). There was a bit of a ruckus coming from the other side of the bar. After a moment, Silea went running towards it. “Bill!” she yelled, as she pulled a 4g turn round a startled waitress.

A grizzled old man stopped pontificating to the assembled spacers at the bar and turned smartly at the sound of a young female voice, just in time for Silea to go flying into his arms and plant a kiss on his lips. He squeezed her tight, lifted her off her feet, and spun her around as his drinking buddies dodged back.

“Hey cool, it’s the cat man” said Fish.

“Looks like he got da cream” said Maelcum, as Silea wrapped her legs around the old guy’s hips and made squealing noises.

“Mister Anderson, you will explain” said Luan to Fish.

“Yes, explaining would appropriate at this juncture” agreed Sir David.

“That’s Bill” said Fish, as if it were all they needed to know.

“So we heard” said Maelcum, arching an eyebrow.

“And Bill is…?” Sir David added.

“He’s… well he’s Bill. From Bill’s ship.”

Fish looked at three “I’m about to start tapping my foot” expressions and got it together. “He’s Sir Bill, or Sir William something-or-other, since the emperor had him knighted for flying right through the middle of a space battle picking up survivors. Everybody knows him. He’s got this Suleiman[1] that’s about a million years old and somehow still flies, and he tramps around the Linkworlds with about fifty cats and the occasional cargo. Or maybe the cats run the ship and they hired him to fetch cat food. Nobody knows, he’s been here forever. Silea’s aunt worked for him as an engineer, and cat-wrangler. She likes him.”

“So I see” said Maelcum. Silea was leading Bill across the floor by one hand.

Bill arrived. He seized Fish by both shoulders, held him at arm’s length, and eyed him up and down. “So you finally got lucky, young fellah, and pulled the wool over her eyes. Permanent trouble-and-strife.” Silea punched him on the shoulder, not very hard.

“Yep, she was putty in my hands. As soon as I drugged her and hired that hypnotist you told me about, the ring was good as on her finger.” Fish got his kneecap out of the way double quick, before Silea’s kick could connect with it.

“Come and have a drink young lad, come and have a drink.”

And there was much drinking, and good times were had, and tales were told, and Silea came away with plenty of ammunition to poke fun at her older relatives.

[1] A Suleiman class basic 100dton scout/courier starship, as built for the Imperial Interstellar Scout Service and sold on to just about everybody. It’s about half the size of Avarice Rewarded and a third the capacity. Suleimans have been modified for pretty much everything. Probably 50% of adventurers get around in a Suleiman of some ilk. It’s like the VW Kombi camper van of space.
 

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