Compromise and Conceit

The PCs are trying to find Lavim Tamm, a young man who is in possession of a valuable statue that their employer, Merez, hopes to buy. They visited the White Tugur and the owner told them that they could find Lavim at a boarding house called the Quiet Eunuch. So they set off along the promenade to find his flophouse.

The promenade is a broad and beautiful thoroughfare, but as one climbs higher up its walls the beauty fades, first to functional and practical walkways lined with lawyers and computer businesses and recruiters and other practical, sensible but unromantic businesses; and then to a narrow, shabby and cramped line of dubious cut-rate opportunists. Up near where the arc of the promenade reaches its apex the shops are small, grubby and sometimes indecent: barber shops, cheap masseurs, cyber doctors, flophouses, the occasional capsule apartment, brothels and pawnshops. Up near the arc the two sides of the promenade are close enough to almost touch, or to jump across if one is desperate, criss-crossed frequently with bridges and festooned with cables and conduits. Outside the shops shifty-looking men lounged and argued, chewing kat and smoking cheap tabak to pass the time. In between these sections of bustling but despairing business the promenade would fall into disrepair, and the walkways would pass into dimly-lit and unpopulated stretches through which people hurried, looking around carefully as they stepped through the shadows.

At the edge of one of these patches of blank steel wall the PCs found the Quiet Eunuch, a boarding house with a narrow door and a single reception room looking out over the promenade through a grubby window. They ventured inside to find a small reception at the foot of stairs leading up to two floors of narrow rooms. The receptionist was unhelpful until they flashed some birr, then gestured them up to a room on the third floor. They took the stairs carefully, listening at doors and checking for trouble. Finally they found Lavim Tamm’s room, and knocked on its flimsy door.

Lavim Tamm’s Story

Lavim Tamm was suspicious, and refused to let them in at first, arguing with them through a viewing slot in the door. After they spent a little time convincing him of their good intentions – and flashed him a bottle of Fire Kohol – he let them in, and they found themselves facing off with him in a narrow room with a bed, a screen and a tiny shower booth. It stank of Kohol, and Lavim was drunk. He stood swaying in the middle of the room, wearing the dirty hotel gown and looking worn and tired. Adam noticed that he was obviously sick, his hair shaved to hide the possibility that it was falling out and his skin sallow and almost jaundiced. As he dragged out some plastic cups for them to pour Fire Kohol into, the pilot Saqr noticed that he had bundled up a worker’s uniform of some kind and thrown it onto the floor of the shower room, but from the door Saqr could see it had been burnt in places and was bloodstained.

Over Fire Kohol they slowly put Lavim Tamm at his ease, and learnt his story. He had been part of an archaeological dig on the surface of Kua, a simple worker lifting and digging, when something happened and they were attacked by creatures from the Dark Between the Stars. He could not explain the beasts he saw in any other way – they attacked with fire that was made of shadow and cold, and tore his comrades apart with contemptuous ease. Lavim hid and somehow escaped the battle, carrying a single artifact from the dig, the weird black statuette he had been dusting off when the attack started. Now he was back on the station and wanted to forget the whole experience, but he was convinced someone was watching him, and that people were after the statuette. He was terrified, but had no idea about how to escape his situation. The overalls in the bathroom were the only clothing he owned, and it was covered in his comrades’ dried blood. He was in trouble.

The PCs offered to escort him to their ship, and told him they had a potential buyer for the statuette. If he would trust them they could give him medical care on the Beast of Burden, and then he could negotiate the sale of the statuette, and be free of all his worries. Lavim Tamm agreed, telling them he had hidden the statue in a bridge over the promenade, along with a tag that contained the coordinates of the dig location, and if they agreed to take him to the ship he would collect the statuette on the way. They set off.

Merez intercedes on his own behalf

The bridge where Lavim Tamm had hidden the statuette was a level down from the flophouse and some distance away. Looking over the bridge the PCs could see down the dizzying heights to the base of the promenade, busy and cheerful far below, but the view was obscured by layers of conduits, cables, wires and nets. They accompanied Lavim onto the bridge and stood patiently while he dug around in a loose panel of the bridge and pulled out a small sack and a tag. Adam took the tag, while Saqr and Siladan Hatshepset investigated the statuette. Neither of them saw anything worthwhile in it, and in fact Siladan – who had some training as an archaeologist – was convinced it was a fake, of no value at all. Still, somebody valued it, so they figured they could sell it for Lavim Tamm anyway, so they turned to leave the bridge …

… and found themselves facing Merez, the man who had employed them to find Lavim, accompanied by three goons. The goons were armed, wearing light combat armour, and quite obviously hired Syndicate muscle. This situation did not look quite the way they had envisaged their reunion with their employer.

“Well done boys,” Merez congratulated them. “Now, I want to take possession of that statuette, and I don’t want to pay market price, so I’m going to cut a deal with you. You hand me the statuette, I pay you the 3,000 birr for finding it, and nobody gets hurt.” He waved a tag at them. “This is all the money you’re going to make today, my friends, so I suggest you make the most of my good mood and do as I ask.”

Behind him the Syndicate thugs flicked aside their coats to reveal Vulcan pistols and knives. They appeared to be ready to commit serious violence if things went awry. With most of the PCs back on the ship and only three on the bridge[1] they did not feel they were in a position to argue. With a resigned shrug Adam handed over the statuette and took the tag, quickly transferring its contents to his own.

“Good, very wise,” Merez crooned as he pocketed the statuette. Then he turned, waved his hands to the thugs, and ordered them to kill the entire group in an airy voice. They drew weapons and moved in for the kill as he walked away into the darkness.

The fight was brutal and over quickly, ending with two of the goons bleeding on the bridge, and Adam choking the third into unconsciousness and banging his head on the rails. They waited for him to come around and asked him a few pointed questions, from which they received little joy. He and his mates were hired guards, with no interest in whatever Merez wanted the statuette for. They had been paid and as far as he was concerned their job was done. He happily told the group where Merez was based in exchange for being allowed to drag his friends away for medical care, and they agreed to let him go.

They returned to their ship to recover and fix the teeth that Saqr had lost in the fight, and then decided to pay Merez a visit and ask for the statuette back, or for proper payment. Before they left Siladan spent a little time investigating the area where Merez was based. Saqr, the ship pilot, also had a mystical power, and he decided to use this to locate the statuette. To everyone’s surprise, it was not in Merez’s office – it had somehow been moved in just a few hours to a location near the docks under the Spring Plaza.

Confused, they decided to see if they could steal the statuette from wherever Merez was storing it.

The Draconites intercede on their own behalf

Unfortunately the statuette was not in any warehouse belonging to Merez. When they arrived at the location that Saqr’s mystical powers identified, they found themselves staring at the locked gate of a Draconite compound, guarded by two heavily-armed soldiers. Was Merez working with the Draconites, or had he already sold it on to the Draconites? They decided that if he had sold it on already they would force him to pay them the money for it. They had promised to keep Lavim Tamm safe, and now he had basically been robbed while they were trying to help him.

Angry and determined, they headed to the small Souk near the Spice Plaza where Merez had his office. His office was a small demountable building in the centre of the Souk, reached through winding paths through mercenary brokers, Syndicate fronts and gambling dens. It was a nondescript affair, a building with no sign, a simple door flanked by large tinted windows, and no guards. The door was open, the view inside blocked only by a beaded curtain. From inside they could hear Merez on his phone, yelling at an underlying:

“What do you mean they’re not at the ship? They have to be!”

“… I don’t fucking care! They stole my statue! Get in there and find it!”

“How can I fucking know?! I know the fucking things big, you’ll just have to search it you useless fucking mook! And make it snappy, I pay you no good shits by the hour!”

“… Yes! And if they come back I want you to fuck them up! Those fuckers stole my statue!”

He was still yelling on the phone when they entered his office, but their entrance stopped him dead. After a moment he said, in a desultory voice, “Forget it. They’re here now,” and put the phone down. Adam noticed he probably tripped an alarm of some kind as he stood to meet them.

“Where’s my fucking statue!?” He demanded. From there the conversation did not improve. Merez was certain that they had stolen the statuette, and they would have been sure he was bluffing if they had not overheard his instructions on the phone. Someone had stolen his statuette almost as soon as he returned it to his office – and that thief was either a Draconite, or a friend of the Draconites. Not a pleasant prospect.

After about a minute of pointless low-grade gangster dialogue the PCs noticed Merez looking over their shoulders, as if someone was standing outside. They dropped to the floor in the nick of time, as two guards outside opened fire on full automatic. The PCs rolled in to cover near the door, covering themselves as the windows fell all around them in shattered piles, and watched and winced as Merez’s guards turned the room into a killing zone. Merez himself had ducked behind his desk, which was obviously bullet proof, and was laughing maniacally as his guards shredded the room.

None of the bullets touched the PCs, and when the guards had exhausted their magazines the PCs returned fire. A short battle followed, in which Saqr leapt over the desk and destroyed Merez’s knee before he could run, one of the guards shot Siladan’s foot into a bloody mess, and Adam fought with ruthless efficiency from the cover of the window. In just a few moments both guards were dead, and their relationship with Merez was finally and irrevocably finished. They took what they could from his belongings and left him bleeding and squealing behind his desk.

To the asteroid belt

The PCs decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and that it would be better not to enter the lair of the Draconites for a statuette that their archaeologist was convinced was worthless. They had the tag with the coordinates of the dig, and the promise of further Firstcome artifacts if they were willing to brave it, so they decided to cut their losses with Merez and find a way to make money.

Before they met Merez they had been told a rumour about a mining colony in the asteroid belt that had been sabotaged and was about to become desperate for spare parts. They had also heard about a shipment of spare parts on the Divine Grace, that was so large it had pushed down prices in the station. They decided to buy a large supply and head for the asteroid colony, to profiteer from the misery of belters. What could possibly go wrong with that plan?

They bought the spare parts at a good price and organized their delivery over the next two days. By the time the parts were safely in their cargo hold the Beast of Burden had been fully refit, and was ready to leave Coriolis station. They set off that same day, heading to the mining colony Rockhome 3, six days’ travel through the Dark Between the Stars.

Their journey was uneventful until the last day. As they neared Rockhome 3 they were ambushed by two small fighters, which refused to identify themselves but fired torpedos at their ship and threatened to blow them away unless they jettisoned their cargo and left the area. They refused to do so and instead turned to join battle, trusting to their larger size to win out over two class I fighters. This almost proved to be a grave misjudgment, and their ship was heavily damaged by repeated attacks with an Accelerator cannon before they could finally destroy their attackers. In the frozen darkness of the belt, flying through clouds of dust and ice, lines of hyper-velocity metal shards glittered like stars in the dark, their torpedo counter-measures spread like squid ink in a starry sea, and torpedos streaked past their ship like vengeful demons. Finally they closed on the torpedo ship and rammed it, tearing it apart so thoroughly that the pilot’s ejector pod exploded in its mount, and the ship tumbled away in shattered chunks. The second ship would not relent and closed for the kill, damaging their weapon systems and tearing holes in their reactor, before they managed to score a lucky hit that blew away its engines and sent it spiralling off into the darkness. The pilot ejected and disappeared amongst the detritus of the belt, leaving their ship limping and bleeding oxygen in the cold and merciless Dark.

They had survived their first space battle – just. Ahead of them lay the sanctuary of Rockhome 3, and the mystery of its sabotage. Ignorant of its politics and uncaring of its politics, they headed to the asteroid to profit from whatever petty feud had brought it to ruin.

fn1: A bunch of players had to cancel …