Nutty Dark

(053/1105, Wurzburg/Glisten)

Weighing up the team, Hughes judged they were quite capable, and an idea came to him. He made them an offer.

He pointed out that he wants to track down the leaders of this terrorist organization, Red Action, and that the PCs could very possibly learn more about their own quarry from talking to these same people. As the PCs are obviously investigators of some skill, what he suggested was this: The PCs should pose as a small merchant crew, in the same general line as Dreng's, and try and let it be known through the underworld that they, too, have a cargo of arms for sale, no questions asked. As the PCs are unknown on Aki, they were unlikely to be rumbled as a police covert team might. There was also, of course, a convenient cargo available as a prop; the original five cases of gaussrifles captured the first time around. He could provide any level of police "record" and "harrasment" for the characters, from outright arrest-and-escape to mild rumours. Once a deal had been set up, he reasoned, a similar ambush could be organized, but this time the "gunrunners" would be on the law's side, and with luck, what he calls "the whole bunch of loonies" could be rounded up. The team considered this, but Nose was for holding out for financial reward, and Dliiavrnt wanted to push on with the hunt. Hughes accepted this, but pointed out that the offer still stood; if the team wanted to try later, he'd arrange to set things up.

Back at the Baranduin, Dliiavrnt, Nose and Gvn pored over the known movements of the Akhashuaa and the subsector maps. Dliiavrnt became convinced that Sorel was the best place to go; it was right in the middle of the known pattern of the Akhashuaa's movements, and it didn't seem to have been visited; it was a low-tech planet with a poor starport and no Imperial bases. The perfect base? Nose disagreed, and the pair nearly came to blows over it, but they went to see.

(060/1105, Sorel/Glisten)

Jumping to Sorel, the crew landed uneventfully at the starport. Sorel is an agricultural "breadbasket" world, very low-tech and high-law, but with four very rich trading combines successfully regulating a massive interstellar trade flow in agroproducts.

The combines, Kelarthril, Varlith, KarridCorp and Vladimir Mason Associates, control the trade with an iron hand, but they do tolerate small farmers dealing with tramp merchants. The main trade is so big that one, ten or a hundred little ships pootling back and forth with fifty d-tons each is less than a drop in the ocean.

The starport proved quiet and sleepy, the staff friendly and helpful, if not very sophisticated. The landing records showed the Akhashuaa had been there nearly a month, and had jumped out for an undisclosed destination six days ago! Fred Nose retreated into a sulk as the Zhodani renegade smirked.

Asking to question the cargo loaders who had worked on the Akhashuaa, the crew were told that they were all on lunch; either at the Blue Duck or the Red Hen taverns, two and five miles away respectively. While Dliiavrnt and Stpierb' waited at the starport to talk to the ones from the Red Hen, Nose and Gvn took the gig down to the little village and the Blue Duck Inn.

Entering the inn, they found it rather odd, but rather appealing. In most respects a typical inn straight out of old Earth's 17^th Century, the Blue Duck sported a clientele made up of about half yokel farmers in homepun tunics, knee breeches, hose and bucked shoes, and half men in starport coveralls with smartcard ID badges and datapads. The welcome was sincere, though, and dCr10 was enough for two pots of the best ale in the house, the Nutty Dark.

Having sampled this brew approvingly, the pair stood a round for the company, and talk started to flow smoothly. Most of the loaders were the same as cargo-loaders the galaxy over, uninterested in anything but their paycheques, but one or two were more alert and remembered Dreng and his ship. They'd helped load several loads of fruit and vegetables into the hold, and had fetched them with "that new-fangled lorry thing" from Blacksmith's Farm, six or seven miles out from the startport. Blacksmith's, it seemed, was one of the farms willing to deal with the "little guy".

Gvn and Nose, liking the place more and more, rented rooms for the night and stayed to get hammered.

Meanwhile, the Zhodani brothers had met the other group of loaders returning from the Red Hen. These drove up, to the surprise of the travellers, in an internal-combustion engined vehicle - the famous lorry. They got talking, and confirmed the same information as Gvn and Nose, plus a recollection from one of the men of having overheard two of the Akhashuaa crew talking about "rome". He was unclear as to whether this was "New Rome" or "Romor". Also, two of them recalled that three of the Akhashuaa crewers were heavily bandaged when they returned from their twenty-odd days off the starport.

Feeling their job was done for the day, the rest of the crew repaired to the Blue Duck and partied well into the night, hiring rooms there for the night, room, board, breakfast and "a bucket of clean water in the morning" being major local selling points, apparently.

Next morning, the team set off for Blacksmith's. Flying down in the gig, they landed some way away and approached on foot. Stopping three hundred yards down the lane, they did a quick recce.

Nose scanned the farmyard with his PRIS, discovering horses, cows, chickens and, hidden in the barn, some heat sources and glints of metal through the gaps in the wall. Dliiavrnt extended his psi senses across the farmyard, picking up the expected animal traces, plus four human minds in the farmhouse and one out in the fields, at the limit of his range. Tightening his probe, he skimmed the surface of one of the minds in the house, and was rewarded by images of bacon and eggs frying, with flashes forward to making beds, washing, cleaning, mending.... He announced that there were four people in the farmhouse with such firmness that Nose glanced at him curiously; but after his lucky guess with going to Sorel, nose was beginning to feel that Dliiavrnt was a lucky guesser, and put it down as that - for now...