Leaving Regina

 

The crew of the Skylark continues to investigate the death of Fig's Uncle Vlen and pay a visit to Harlen’s Station.

This chapter is based on Carl and Kay's notes from our December, 2021 session. Since we are scattered around the country, we use Discord for voice communications and the Roll20 online virtual tabletop to connect with each other.

Continued from: On Regina - Part 4.

Location: On Regina in the Regina Subsector.

Date: 215-1110

Our cargo will take about three more days to load before we can jump out, and we discussed whether or not to go up into the orbital storage area and try to meet the Gang Lord Harlen.

We know, Harlen’s boss, Ven Yasha, deals in politics and power, not drugs.

"So the tusal in Backet's system is a head-scratcher", Kipenzi says.

Our plan is to go to Roup next, then to Alell, to drop off Uncle Vlen’s remains, as per his wishes.

With nothing decided beyond where we go when we leave Regina, we decided to take a break and see if we can find more information. It was 1500, Startown is open 24/7, so bar hopping was on order since it’s party time now on some planet.

Medicus, Kipenzi and Fig went out to look for rumors, the others stayed with the ship.

Fig went back to the weapons shop where he got the leg-mounted hand crossbow made, and told most of the story. Asking about Harlen and Ven Yasha, the folks at the shop had no recommendation either way.

This was higher risk than what we usually do, but the data tape and the statuette are dangling out in front of us...

Medicus and Kipenzi tried to elicit rumors on the street, but came up empty.

Evening found us bar hopping and looking for street information. Kipenzi learned:

“Here’s a weird tale for you. A ship showed up at the highport a few weeks ago, the Alahir. Registered to the Scout Service but it’s not a standard scout design. The captain of the Alahir had a lot of meetings with Inspector Norrim and I’ve seen a lot of off-worlders running around in POC uniforms since then. "

216-1110
Fig did some research on the Alahir - Scout service, Intelligence division.

According to the registry of Imperial Scout Ships, the Alahir is officially a “heavy scout” designed for extended missions into perilous regions of space, mapping pirate sectors, performing observations of hazardous stellar phenomena and other tasks that a basic scout ship could not accomplish. There are only two other ships of this design in the Spinward Marches.

The Alahir is 1,000-ton jump-4 ship, capable of 5-G thrust. She carries four smaller craft – a modular cutter for fuel scooping and cargo transfer, and three light fighters (on some scouting missions, these fighters are replaced with more probe drones or a 50-ton surveyor in a docking cradle). The prow-mounted particle bay gives her surprising punch for a scout ship, while six turrets give ample coverage. Armor is augmented with radiation shielding and her computer systems are hardened.

On board, the ship carries enough fuel for more than a month of standard operations and a single jump-4, as well as extra fuel for the fighters and cutter. The Alahir has 20 staterooms; her usual crew includes three pilots, one navigator, six engineers, seven gunners, 12 marines and six scientists, along with other deckhands and specialists.

We also talked about Inspector Norrim and what we knew about him.

·         He was one of the first people we met when we got to Regina, a portly man in a Public Order Commission uniform. He spoke slowly and carefully, someone used to making himself understood to people with off-worlder accents.

·         He dealt with the grey area between Imperial and planetary law.

·         His office was blandly functional except for antique wooden desk that would have cost a small fortune.

·         He has a reputation of being by the book as well as a bureaucrat more interested in closing cases rather than finding answers.

·         Exceedingly Discreet said that there was friction between Norrim and the captain of the Alahir over jurisdiction on the Vlen Backett murder case. How did the Dandelion know this?

·        Speaking of Backett, he had a ticket stub from Rhylanor on one ship, the Great Eastern Liner, middle passage, multiple stops, and also he has his own ship. So why use the liner?

Noon.
We decide to try for Harlen on the hidden station. We asked Exceedingly Discreet for its coordinates and access codes so we can use the Skylark.  We were also thinking about maybe arranging to be on shuttle with an appointment for Harlen.

Afternoon
More bar-hopping for rumors.

Fig gets one – “Ven Yasha’s dead, shot a month ago and his organization is in disarray, he was shot by one of his own men. His people are jostling for position.”

The timeline matches Beckett’s death, the Alahir came in, just arrived, or just after that.

217-1110
Another rumor: “Ven Yasha? I’ve heard he travels the galaxy and that he’s got organizations on every world from here to the Outrim Void. He shows up every few months and if you don’t have his cut ready for him, you’re dead. He’s completely ruthless.”

Kipenzi says, “This tends to correlate with Backett’s travels.”

Fig replies, “Uncle Vlen was not Ven Yasha. He might have been a little shady, like us, but no way was he a crime lord.”

Cargo was being delivered and loaded into the Skylark. Sam says he checked the math and the air raft will work in the container storage yard. The station is made of 1,200-ton cargo containers, each one bigger than the Skylark.

218-1110
Cargo loaded, finally got some rest after hunting rumors and such. We got the access codes from Exceedingly Discreet so we don't get shot on the way in. We decided to make an official appointment with Harlen instead of just showing up. We go an appointment for 0900 on 219.

219-1110  0600
We finally say goodbye to Credo Down Starport and head for orbit.

0830
We reach the container yard at the La Grange point following our coordinates and guidelines.

There were few ships here except for unmanned tugs. The area is marked hazardous.

Sam parks the Skylark behind a nearby line of 400-ton containers and Kipenzi, Leon and Medicus take the air/raft over to the station coordinates.  We were wearing our hardened vacc suits.

Fig brings up the gunnery console while Sam watches button cams and scanners, keeping the pilot console ready in case it is needed. 

The coordinates for the station held three large cargo containers, just normal containers to all appearances.

There was supposed to be a hidden docking port and defense turret, all concealed.

Sam on sensors scanned the containers; it showed just three empty containers, no sign of power or life. We were starting to think we may have fallen into a trap.

Either we were at the wrong place or they had some GOOD masking on the emissions. 

As we approach a hatch opens and allows the air/raft inside, there is light. They have amazing shielding.

Once the bay door closed, the signal from the button cams were cut off.  No radio contact either, just a long wait at the Skylark.

Inside the station the crew leaves the air/raft and floated up to an airlock.

Once past the airlock, there was grav and pressurization, we opened our face shields.

A man greeted us and opened an iris valve in the ceiling and led us through. On the upper deck, another man was sitting at table in a break room, he politely waved.

There are several hallways with doors, our guide indicates a doorway.  Kip steps though and sees that the walls are covered with a lot of news feeds and security cam feeds, he blurs all of the screens out with one switch located on the desk.

Harlen’s office looks more like a scientist’s work room than a crime lord’s hideout. There is a curious statue on the desk, a winged pillar with a pile of data tapes on desk near it.

Perhaps THAT was the statue of note, and maybe one of the tapes was 'the' data tape stolen from Vlen’s room when he was killed.

He was wearing a gauss pistol on his belt.

The statue looked like a pillar made of some kind of ivory material, about 1/3 of a meter tall, with round cross section, mostly smooth, with wings.  The data tapes just had numbers on them.

Kip asked if there were any debts from Backett for us to settle? Harlen says no debts, and quickly glances at the statue.

When Kipenzi asked about the statue, he says that it’s an Ancient artifact found on an asteroid.

Just after that, Harlen looked like he was listening to something that only he could hear. He blinked twice and then said, “This is suboptimal”.

After that, he just looked straight ahead, not paying attention to us.

In the distance we heard a synthesized voice announce, “Destruct sequence activated”.

Followed by, “Detonation immanent” and “All hands to re-entry capsules”.

Medicus reached over and hit the spot on the desk to turn on the screens, and a lot of it looked like Imperial Navy internal data!  There were also data feeds from corporations, including Oberlindes instructions to their captains. There was a feed from a Zhodani spy package, with a translation. One window had a tab labeled Skylark, but it was not opened.

Kipenzi swept the data tapes into a pocket and ran for the door as Medicus did a slow turn, making sure he had a good view of all of the screens on the button cam.

Leon also got his own button cam recording and then picked up the statue and walked behind the desk and pulled Harlen’s gauss pistol out of the holster and shot him in the head with it as he sat there motionless, eyes focused straight ahead.

Stepping out into the hall, Kipenzi put down her visor and sealed her helmet, with Medicus and Leon following, pocketing the gauss pistol.

There was a woman in the hallway who said, “The drop pods are down next level”.

We thanked her and said go on, “We’ll be right behind you”, and continue to go to the air/raft.

Kipenzi got there first and started it up. Medicus got to it next and strapped in. Leon, less skilled in zero-g threw himself toward the air/raft and Kipenzi maneuvered and caught him.

There was a door pull lever on the wall. While Kipenzi maneuvered, Leon reached out of the air/raft window and pulled the lever, and the door slid open. We exited the cargo container.

As soon as we got clear, we contacted the Skylark and warned them to start moving away.  Medicus started downloading the button cam recording in case we didn’t make it back. Sam moved the Skylark behind a row of containers.  

Kip accelerated as fast as she could in the low gravity field, and parked in the bay.  Not a moment too soon as the station exploded.

The containers in the area all lit up from the blast and the containers we’re behind started moving toward us, Sam accelerated away to avoid a collision and turned on the hologram of us as wreckage. He cut the engine and we moved like debris with the rest of the wreckage.

None of the drop pods looked like they got away from the station.

Hopefully the investigation to follow will conclude that we were destroyed and no one will remember us when (if ever) we come back to this system.

A few minutes later we got a traffic alert, “Explosion in container storage yard, debris in system, coordinates to follow.”

While we floated, we looked at the button cam video of the displays in Harlen’s office. All of that material should have been encrypted with the best encryption available at Tech Level 15. It they could break this, they could break any encryption codes in the Imperium and beyond.

Looking at the Zhodani spy probe, it looked like it was stuck onto an industrial satellite in orbit over Regina… it was being decoded and translated in real time by what looked like some kind of AI.

Fig drooled over it and cried at the loss.

Exceedingly Discreet had said that Ven Yasha seemed to be a pre-cog or has very high-level contacts in the Imperium with the kind of info he was getting. With this kind of technology, he wouldn’t need contacts or psy powers.

One of the data tapes describes the curious statue, resembling a winged pillar made of a substance like ivory. It was recovered from a trader in the Boughene system centuries ago.

The statue is of unknown, possibly Ancients origin but it appears to be a work of art. It was valuable for its age and origin but not as a technological device.

The tapes describe how the trader found the statue on a metal-rich asteroid in orbit of the system’s gas giant; they also note problems with the ship’s transmissions in the G-band, just as Professor Ujinka theorized occurring in the vicinity of an Ancients site.

There is also a note from Vlen, reminding him to acquire the professor’s G-band sensor system and use it to scan the Boughene system.

Scanning the ivory-like material of the statue, Kipenzi found that it was over 200,000 years old and had been exposed to vacuum for a very long time.

We started working on a plan to give the information we got to the Navy.  We would drop it off by hand at the Scout base on Roup and send it by the X-boat. We would also send one to the Dandelion showing Harlen blanking out and the self-destruct starting. Kip suggests we delete the screen with Skylark on it, just in case.

The broadcasts in system did not mention Skylark at all, so concerns about being the last ship in the vicinity were alleviated.

We let the Skylark drift over 24 hours with the transponder off and then we fired up and headed to the jump point at full speed.

221-1110  1000
We jump for Roup.

Continued in: Homecomming

See Also: Dramatis Personæ, Skylark 2, Campaign Starts, The 2nd Adventure, The Chamax Plague, Horde, Shadows, Research Station Gamma, Twilight's Peak, Prison Planet, Leedor on Aramis, First Call at Zilla, Trade War, The Bloodwell, ANNIC NOVA, The Kinunir, Kesser's Return, Justice, Mission to Mithril, Outback, Skylark and the Pit, Last Flight of the Amuar and One Crowded Hour.