When last we saw our protagonists, we were heroically running away from the Fires of the Emperor with three rescuees.
We make rendezvous with the high-delta-v craft that brought us. The crew is affected – they only perceived the ship but they did have some memetic effects (sensor weirdness, grav distortions).
We’re fairly sure the rescued belters are from our timeline. The drugs are getting flushed out of their systems.
We can still feel Atlas’ presence and pressure. The ship is still trying to force itself into our reality – and bring all systems (back) online after Rael’s departure/deletion.
Echo hypothesizes that Atlas isn’t coming across because he can’t control it – his scale and presence seem to be incompatible with the ship’s systems architecture. And the ship and Atlas are ultimately coming for us, personally.
We give the belters their options: take our stolen shuttle and head home, or fly with us as we head back to the inner system on a max-sustainable-G burn.
The elder belter IDs himself as Rock. He’s with us. He doesn’t have a crew and we got him out of hell. The other two are more affected. Shinebore is the woman with severe injuries. Once she’s functional, she says she’d prefer to take the shuttle, but she’s pretty close to breaking down. The last guy, Eitn, splits the difference and is willing to go either direction. Their memories are fragmenting a bit already.
My proposal: sedate Shinebore, hand off more meds to Eitn, let Eitn get them home. I invoke Ilias’ help in distracting her while I ambush her with an airhypo. She’s too twitchy for my atrophied stealth skills. Things go rodeo. I knock her out, but Ilias takes a round from her holdout gun.
Aaaand now she’s getting transferred into another environment suit after a thorough search… which turns up some knives, some pills, and her EDC gear (which suggests they were not processed as prisoners before they got to Fires of the Emperor). The chrono on her datapad is two months out of sync, a little before our first on-screen mission at the starport. We get downloads from both her slate and Eitn’s – his is about three months back. Rock’s is only about two weeks back, about the same timeframe as when Fires appeared.
We get Shinebore strapped down in the shuttle and hand the keys to Eitn. He gives us his contact info in case we’re ever out this way again.
We undock and burn for Tu’rosa. I take charge of the flight crew (“this is just another day on the job, fly cool”), Ilias takes charge of the EW. Two heroic successes – we disengage like bosses despite the paracausal malleability of local spacetime.
As we depart, we get a better look than we wanted to at the dimensional incompatibilities of Fires of the Emperor as it tries to both exist and come after us. It’s trying real hard to impose itself on our reality, and itself wants us dead. After hours of evasive maneuvering, some sort of catastrophic failure hits Fires as its annihilation engine effects sweep through its hull. We can still feel its presence, but it’s receding.
Memory of it fades for our ship’s crew. We were out here doing a routine inspection.
As we get closer to the inner system, our Omninet queues start filling up:
- Envoy Wesser compiles a report from Brigand. The belt station where the inspectors were working has gone TU. Some of the inspectors got a sensor hit on exotic radiation similar to what we’ve reported in conjunction with the gateways. They were following up on that when a gunfight broke out. TG Brigand was operating covertly and in position to intervene (and had corroborating sensor recording). They extracted the inspectors to a Union ship and cleared the station. Shortly thereafter, one of the Union craft allegedly fired on the station and caused a damage cascade that destroyed it. TG Brigand, which was on another ship, has some conflicting sensor info. The alleged attacker wasn’t fitted with armament sufficient to do that damage, and the energy isn’t commensurate with the damage done. Brigand has sensor records of a second cloaked vessel – and the fire hit something aboard the station that generated a secondary explosion. Union reps are in reputational damage control mode (Union influence clock hasn’t moved). Wesser relays a request from Ambassador Storch to investigate and obtain supporting evidence, and to deal with the responsible parties.
- TF Brigand files their own report. Raw sensor data has been forwarded. They’re asking for tasking. Currently still on station supporting rescue efforts (i.e., providing security).
So far, no Union fatalities. Some injuries, none critical. Stockland Station casualty count is in the low thousands.
I start with a Bravo Zulu to TF Brigand; stand by for further, we’ll have tasking as soon as we analyze their data.
How to engage with Wesser? We need to start each conversation with a level-set on rules of engagement, so to speak. He wants to keep our reality uncommitted as long as possible. But he sent us outsystem expecting a catastrophic manifestation. We tell him “mission accomplished.” He acknowledges.
Looking at our own sensor records, the strike craft preparations, the nanite weaponry – Fires was preparing to launch a WMD attack on Tu’rosa. Ilias’ decompiling of Rael was probably the only way we could have prevented that.
Even on a fast ship, we have a bit of time for downtimes while we’re in transit.
We each get a bonus reserve for player contributions, as well as an extra action during downtime.
TF Brigand gets a 17 on the downtime. Not a lot of publicity, but a lot of good work being quietly noticed by the right Union leadership and support staff. That takes us to Efficiency +6; Influence remains at +3.
More sensor log data. Whatever was struck by the cloaked ship’s fire was exotic matter – related to the dimensional tech, but an explosion or projection rather than a consumption.
We tick up to LL4. I grab a second level of Swallowtail, which gets me to my goal.
Ilias continues recompiling/stabilizing/reshackling Umbra into a single cohesive whole. Heroic success, two ticks on the clock – only one remaining.
Rock is already committed to aligning with us. I spend some time with him and a bottle. He’s a native belter. He was in Ashfall – had concerns about the impact of Union on his lifestyle and autonomy. His crews were relatively rough, not pirates but fairly cutthroat. He was with one of the larger ones, effectively in an XO role. He’s always been an enforcer, among other things. He knows how to fly, how to run mining gear, how to organize and motivate a crew. When the incident on Tu’rosa resulted in hostage taking, that was when he started to have doubts. He raised concerns with his boss (who went by Tu’rosan that translated to “Drake” – though with strong connotations of a dragon’s avarice). Drake ran Stockland Station informally – anything into or out of the belt went through Drake’s hands. Rock advised Drake that they needed separation from what was happening dirtside. Next thing he knew, we were extracting him.
From Rock’s perspective – when he’s with us, he can remember more of what happened. He remembers Drake shipping him off on some kind of derelict, which is what we rescued him from.
What does he know about his fellow rescuees? Shinebore was a rockjack who got hurt and was struggling to stay productive enough to pay her air ticket. Eitn made a mistake. He wasn’t a bad pilot, but he wrecked a ship, caused several deaths and injuries; it was glossed over for family unity.
I read in Rock and show him the evidence we have, including – especially – Stockton Station’s destruction. When we’re done drinking, I make him an offer: if he wants in, I can use him in TF Brigand as an operations chief equivalent. If he wants out, I’ll drop him off where he wants with appropriate compensation. If he comes in later turns on us, it will not end well. I’m leveling with him – I expect reciprocity.
He’s in, and he starts infodumping on Drake’s operation. They were starting to get in “strange tech” – frames, other gear. He wasn’t in all the compartments but he knows a fair bit.
Rock and I sit down with all the sensor records and survivor interview data. We’re looking to trace who did this and figure out how we can hit them.
- Drake was rumored/claimed to be taking his orders directly from Axe. Unverified. But Drake is supposed to be pretty high up in Ashfall.
- Ashfall is heavily compartmentalized via cell structure. Rock doesn’t know too much about the planetside cells, but there’s supposed to be one deputy for Tu’rosa, another for the inner system, Drake for the belt. Not a lot of activity in the outer system (yet).
- Drake is a bit flamboyant. Fancies himself a frame pilot. He has a frame fitted with some of the new tech. He’s flashed it to people in Ashfall. He also has a ship, also fitted with new tech. He calls both the ship and the frame the Titan. Rock didn’t serve on the Titan.
- He has some intel on other Ashfall safehouses, drop sites, etc.
Sensor data suggests that the stealthing is similar to the effects that Ilias and I can install in our frames – specifically, very similar to a Metalmark tactical cloak.
Where would the Titan go for resupply and maintenance in the absence of Stockland Station? Two options. One is a smaller station, Mirror, a midpoint on the far side of the belt. It’s public knowledge. Under Ashfall control but a freeport. The other is more covert, off the books – on a rocky asteroid, in the belt but unstable and not worth mining. Internally known as the Hole. It’s a base for staging and resupply.
Proposed course of action: rendezvous with Union assets at Stockland, assist with SAR, pick up Brigands and any intel they’ve collected, and burn for The Hole. If Drake wasn’t involved, he’ll be at Mirror bragging about his narrow escape. If Drake was involved, he’ll be at the Hole for resupply and to lay low because he needs to be presumed dead.
Ilias and Janus begin sifting the data they pulled off of Fires of the Emperor… building a profile of Atlas.
Atlas is similar to a Union-style NHP. It’s somewhat unshackled – it appears to have undergone some type of realignment. Something seems to be grounding it in our reality, but it’s using all of the hallmarks and mythology of the old empire.
Whatever Atlas was, its shackles were broken and it was reintegrated by, or due to, someone from Tu’rosa’s history. It was a system-level NHP.
It’s undergone a similar process to what happened to the seed NHPs for Umbra and Boomer, but at a much higher power level. The Atlas persona remains dominant, but contaminated/integrated with the unidentified historical individual.
The merge of Union and old empire tech seems to be a common theme here. Tu’rosa didn’t make these NHPs – Union provided them and now they’re being repurposed.
Briefing: Objective is to locate and prosecute the individuals responsible for the Stockland Station attack. Ambassador Storch is more cautious than Wesser, but the messaging is basically the same from both.
Envoy Yan offers some troops from the 501st as additional support. She pretty clearly wants to increase Union’s military readiness and footprint in the system.
I have the tech team build us something that should be able to burn through or obviate the cloaking system on the Titan. It’ll also enable tracking. One use for an entire scene against anything using that cloaking tech.
Ilias leverages Arnoldo to give us the location and map of the asteroid base. He has concerns that it’s staffed with Ashfall loyalists who are preparing for fuckery most foul.