Session 7. Take a break, fix some damage.
Score: 581 | 8/10/19 |
422/2/12.
Lynx agreed to go with Mira to be dropped off at deep space refueling station Reflex 9, where there was a modest untended housing module and Void shrine; she was having headaches and trouble thinking with so many minds jammed in such a small space aboard the Witching Hour. The station was near a black hole, with scientific monitoring equipment aimed at it.
Crayfish Point
The crew headed to Crayfish Point Logistics Transfer Station to fix up the ship and get supplies. Flavius and O asked around and did some research to turn up defunct Dozen Eyes contacts who might be able to connect them to reserves and possibly one or more ships that their original owners no longer needed after the Iris Point incident. Vizor supervised the repair crews working on the ship, and Tasha handled shopping for the resupply.
Kojiro sought out a high-end luxury evening, complete with tech to mask his cybers and an environment with cooked once-living food in hand-built structures in the presence of grass and trees, over a thousand credits for a night of not being in space (with all the conveniences of being in space.)
Unfortunately, even though O was subtle in probing his contacts, he wasn't subtle enough and he accidentally and unknowingly alerted agents of another Gestalt Digital faction that he was at Crayfish Point. Even more unfortunately, the Caliphate of Starsand had a presence there, and took vigorous action to track down and apprehend Dozen Eyes members and sympathizers who could potentially give them information and resources to consolidate their takeover of all Dozen Eyes interests.
A Night Off
Kojiro had the temporary graft of the holochip tied to his nervous system to conceal his cybers from him and others, and he had to do a soft reboot. He would fall asleep, and wake up in thousand-threadcount silk sheets.
He woke up naked hanging from one ankle from the ceiling in some maintenance corridor, threatened by a masked agent who spoke in sign language translated by monocle, named Masket Vermillion. He said he was an agent of the Strata Collective, which ruled the Caliphate of Starsand, and he demanded Kojiro's cooperation in capturing the rest of the crew. He also had thugs, and additional prisoners; they rounded up Vizor and Tasha, also hanging upside down.
Kojiro was not inclined to cooperate, so Masket prepared to start slicing off limbs large and small from the other hostages first before getting around to Kojiro. As an admitted coward, Masket planned to only strike with surprise and overwhelming odds, and he wanted to round up Flavius, O, and the Wolf Legion deserters in as sneaky and underhanded a manner as possible.
Furious, Kojiro used his braided muscle to bounce up towards the ceiling and kick off, tearing loose and assaulting the thugs. He took their weapons and dodged wildly, injuring the thugs as Masket threatened Vizor. Kojiro targeted his gun hand, blasting it, and Masket tried to escape. Kojiro shot his leg, stopping him. The thugs retreated, and Kojiro focused on subduing Masket. Kojiro forced him to take off his mask, revealing a gooey damaged visage with corroded bone, a real mess. Kojiro told him to put his mask back on.
Also, Vizor and Tasha had been scored by some of the gunfire that Kojiro dodged, and Vizor especially was in awful shape. He had been in profoundly deep meditation so he would not feel pain, but now he appeared to be dying; Kojiro demanded healing medication from Masket, who gave him an ampule but refused to swear it was a regenerative agent.
Desperate, Kojiro tried to activate his long-standing telepathic link to O, which had to be opened by O (since Kojiro was no psycher.) In the desperation of the moment, he managed to open a link, screaming into the already-linked minds of his teammates that he needed help making the decision of whether or not to inject Vizor with the mystery ampule.
Wolf Admiral
Meanwhile Flavius and O took a leader among the Wolf Legion deserters, Lars, and two other bodyguards. They went to a meet with Silknet, a Dozen Eyes sympathizer who responded to O's inquiry. Silknet was a cybernetic lion with a brain-dead human assistant he could jack into remotely in case people needed to deal with a humanoid. He lived on a fantastic life support module in a freighter, an information trader and contract broker.
The spacers enjoyed his hospitality, and Silknet agreed to sell them a Starhook Combat Hub. This excited Lars, who had a logistical focus, and figured he could take the Wolf Legion deserters and steal a transport, recruiting deserters and supplies from the Baraylia Conflict front. Silknet wasn't charging for the ship, so much as a completely scrubbed and reconstructed history for the ship. Flavius agreed, and also contracted with Silknet for construction of a front corp to do business without being connected directly with the spacers.
As the freighter traveled to the docking location where the combat hub was stored, they were accosted by a Transit Authority patrol ship that demanded they lower their defenses so the TA could check the travel logs of the ship. As Silknet moved to comply, O realized the TA ship was a later model from the wrong area, and he told Silknet it could be a trick. Silknet stalled, and the TA ship spun up its miniguns to tear the ship apart. O already had the psychic network active, and as the spacers scrambled to escape, Kojiro screamed into their minds. He was still screaming as they snatched the dangling escape pod pull cords, and O managed to focus through the psychic noise and rescue Flavius (whose escape pod cord was decorative, so he risked being stranded on the craft under fire.)
Flavius and O launched in a pod built for one, and their three Wolf Legion deserters also made it to escape pods, firing away from the craft as the TA impostor gunship cut it to flinders with streams of fire.
O and Kojiro managed to normalize communication as Flavius desperately pumped the airbrakes so the escape pod did not slam into the wall of the space station, maneuvering towards an airlock. Kojiro cut Vizor and Tasha down, discovering Vizor was dead and had likely died roughly the same moment his latent psychic talents exploded. Had Vizor somehow taken refuge in his psyche? Tasha was not too badly hurt, and they resolved to escape. Masket was long gone, squirming away the moment Kojiro's attention was elsewhere.
Separated and under threat from the Caliphate of Starsand, the spacers had to figure their next moves.
422/2/17.