Leaving a Cr100 note on the bar, the team hurried away. Returning to their ship, they decided to try going back to the office to check on some things. First; fuel.
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While Lasnus settled to work on the computer retrieved from Lehman's body, Dliiavrnt retired to his cabin for a long sleep. Nose the pilot lifted the Baranduin and flew out to one of Wurzburg's rather choppy oceans to "dip" for fuel. While the ship was floating in the sea, he and Stpierb' decided to investigate the local marine life - by fishing.
Equipping two of the maintenance robots with makeshift fishing rods and providing bait by heartlessly blasting an enchanting porpoise, the two rapidly racked up enough of the rather peculiar four-eyed local fish for a good-sized barbecue. Which they had; on the outer hull of the ship. |
Meanwhile, Lasnus was working hard on Lehman's handcomputer, trying to prise some usable information out of it. Attaching probes, he hacked in and took over the operating system, siphoning the stored data out into a quarantine area on his own computer. Next, he dug carefully into it. He managed to spot and disable the first layer of Intrusion Countermeasures, but completely missed the second layer, and the IC destroyed 90% of his copy of the data.
Not discouraged, he took a second copy and, learning from his errors, made a better job of hacking in. He found some interesting things:
(046/1105, Glisten/Glisten)The next morning, once the ship's purifiers had processed the fuel load, Baranduin jumped to Glisten. Entering the system, they scanned for Marava-class ships "out and about", and matched ninety-three, including three possibles, but closer examination revealed these not to be the Akhashuua. They returned to Pluvis and docked at the CB-LIC offices. Unfortunately, no extra intelligence was available, though Lasnus was able to secure a bonus for turning in the titbit about SphinxCorp to the boss. |
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Resupplied from the company stocks, they jumped for Aki. A world so in the grip of the bureaucrats that it's zoned Yellow, Aki is nonetheless famed for its' integrity. All the two billion population is gathered into five megacities, and ruled with an iron fist by the famously incorruptible bureaux. Heavy industry dominates, and staple foodstuffs are scarce and expensive, controlled with painful fairness by the bureaux. The world is also famed for its' lethally dangerous grav vehicle racing, held in a disused factory, weaving in and out of pipes, conduits and machinery; usually, only a third or so of the starters finish alive.
Docking at the massive highport, Team 7 started off well, by establishing that their supply vouchers were valid here; fuel was no problem. Food and water resupply, however, was firmly off the menu.
Stopping off at the Admin office, they arranged an appointment with the SPA official in charge of docking registration, one Boris Dart. Reaching his office, they managed to convince him to hold the meeting in private, and unrecorded.
Dart was willing to help, and soon accessed the SPA records of the Akhashuua's visit. Apparently, they docked on 175/1104, immediately took the interface shuttle to the surface, and stayed nearly a week. Then they returned in the shuttle, and launched immediately, without leaving a flight plan. They did no trading on the highport or the downport, other than to buy fuel and supplies.
Dart was adamant that there was no question of dubious dealings going on; "there are no discontented or subversive elements on Aki," he stated firmly, not convincing Team 7 one bit.
Thanking Dart, the team followed suit and took the shuttle down to the surface, and the downport in Third City, one of the five megacities. After some digging, and using photos of Dreng and his crew, they established which hire company the Akhashuua crew rented their air/raft from, and paid them a visit.
The manager of Zertz Air Rafts was obviously nervous, thinking that this was some kind of police raid, but when he found out what was actually up, seemed rather excited to be doing "detective work". His computer records were fairly thorough, and soon turned up the hire in question. Zertz craft are fitted with TL11 I-Nav gear, so an exact record of the vehicle's trip was stored. Out into the badlands, a half-hour stop, and then tear-arse back to the starport, keys through the door (he commented that this was unusual for a daylight drop-off), no attempt to collect the Cr5,000 deposit (this is also unusual, but he didn't make a big thing of it - guess where the money went!) and gone.
Click on this thumbnail for the full map! |
Team 7 hired a similar vehicle, and loading the I-Nav logs, set out to retrace the journey. Following the trail, they reached the canyon in which the Akhashuua air/raft halted.
Nose noticed an odd-coloured patch on the ground, and they investigated. The mark turned out to be a blast burn from an energy weapon, probably either an FGMP or PGMP. Tracing back along the "teardrop" shape towards the firing point, they found a wrecked grav APC, burned out to a shell after being shot up with both gauss and energy fire, more blast burns and odd piles of cartridge cases. All looked about a year old; about right. Nearby, they found three graves, marked by a locally-made rifle driven into the ground. After some discussion, they decided not to dig them up. |
Instead, they did something else. [Something that came as a bit of a mental shock to the players]. They called the police. Radioing the starport, they contacted the local police and reported finding a crashsite and some graves, map reference so-and-so. The call was rapidly switched up several levels of importance, finally connecting them with a Police Inspector of the Anti-Terrorist Branch called Sterling Hughes. He politely but firmly requested the team to stay where they were, and in only a matter of minutes joined them at the scene.
It turned out that they had stumbled onto an unsolved mystery for the local police. Of course, there are rebellious elements on Aki, and one of these had been planning a series of terrorist attacks. Hughes' department had managed to infiltrate the rather poorly-organized group several months before they made contact with an unknown offworld merchant who was prepared to run high-tech guns to them.
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As a result, when the gunrunners turned up at the rendezvous, one of Hughes' SWAT teams was waiting. Unfortunately, although they were entirely adequate to deal with the locals, the police were no match for Thorbad Dreng and his crew, who were equipped with powerful high-tech weaponry and a complete disregard for human life. The police grav APC was blasted to bits with a fusion gun, and in the confusion that followed, the gunrunners made it to their own air/raft and escaped. Aggrieved by the deaths of the APC crew, the police turned on the local terrorists and wiped them out almost to the last man, unfortunately killing all the leaders who knew the arrangements for the deal.
They did capture the weapons in question, though, and Hughes' description of these matched exactly with Dliiavrnt's memory - "borrowed" from the merchant on Wurzburg - of what Dreng and his crew picked up there. |
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