Now their business with Ben Kilmer has concluded (for now), the adherents turn their attention to other matters.
Storm’s Eye
Autumn Fall, and her companion Alani, seek out the slab of ENLIL at the heart of the ancient ship Belerophon. They wish to commune, and ask for answers from the enigmatic god-entity.
ENLIL appears to them, at the mountaintop at the heart of the storm, and reveals in signs and shadowed speech that something is listening. Something feathered & greyed furred lurks out there, peering in through the skein.
Dead Heart Lost
Lonnie sweeps the ship for bugs, after their encounter with mysterious forces he’s on edge. The memory of that ship pilot, ah, What was he called? Alex? Anyway, yeah that was weird when he was just forced into the path of a ship, even weirder that someone managed to contact Lonnie seemingly out of nowhere, leaving no trace on his mech’s computers.
This is weird, and shouldn’t be possible, so Lonnie is spooked, but (perhaps confusing him further) the Belerophon is clear of any outside interference.
In another part of the ship, Yumai & Bill are peering through the frosted glass into the sleeping face of Catherine Hallow. Yumai hesitates over the cold-sleep sarcophagus controls, eventually stepping away as he deems the risk simply to great.
Left unsupervised, Bill immediately hits the button to flash-waken Catherine. The sharp hiss of escaping nitrogen has Yumai hustling back into the room to admonish him, but the words barely leave his lips before a dry groan of pain and confusion emerges from the now open sarcophagus. Catherine Hallow, bearer of the Corona Mantle, is awake.
In the dark-lit canteen Catherine hunches over a bowl of spicy noodles as the rest of the crew tries their best not to crowd her. They have questions, and as she finishes her first meal in some months, they launch into them.
Catherine is, as they already knew, a member of the mercenary group the Dead Heart Liars. She was on a standard escort job for Octopotenta BioTech, and that’s the last she really remembers. As the conversation continues, her gaze continues to flick to the back corner of the room. After a while she waves everyone to quiet to ask, “Hey, at the back, you’re being awfully quiet, what’s your deal?”
As the crew turns to the empty corner she continues, “What’s with the feathers?“. The crew, and especially Bill, whip their heads back and all start shouting at once.
By all accounts, it appears that ENLIL has manifested, although remains visible only to Catherine.
Get the Bag
It is clear, over the next couple of days, that Catherine Hallow’s presence within a cold sleep sarcophagus was not simply to keep her still and quiet. Her health is deteriorating rapidly. While re-freezing her seems to slow the process it is clear that it is only slowing the process, not halting it. If the ENLIL adherents want to keep their prophet alive, they will need to find answers and means to do so.
They decide their best lead for now (having badly burnt the Octopotenta connection by murdering Revel Hour) is her mercenary outfit, The Dead Heart Liars.
The gang organise a meet and intend to stuff the outfits leader, an aging pirate named Ullio (mononym), into a large black bag for “questioning”. They scope out an abandoned habitat dome on Cruet’s surface and prepare their sturdiest bin bags.
In the ruins of the old habitat dome “Paradise At Last” they stage an ambush as Ullio and a small bodyguard team land in the swirling dust. After terse greetings, and an initial sizing of each other up, Gorn has had enough niceties and lunges with the bag. This takes Ullio entirely by surprise, but regrettably his bodyguard is already on edge. Robert “Twinkle” Hernández has recognised Gorn since arrival, as he was one of the people he thoroughly pissed off during his great night out. He knocks Gorn flat on his back with a pretty brutal haymaker, and rips the bin bag from his hands.
Bill defuses the situation, and fortunately Ullio is still willing to talk. Gorn asks them if they could possibly deign to stand in the bin bag anyway, which they exasperatedly do1. Questioning and negotiation can now begin, although the crew have lost the opportunity to gain the upper hand by actually kidnapping the old pirate.
Ullio relates that Catherine did indeed take a job from Octopotenta BioTech, making a deal with one of the Revel Hours.
Ah, one of? It becomes clear after some clearer explanation, that Revel Hour is not just one person, but a group of Revel Hours that comprise the Octopotenta BioTech leadership. The one the crew killed is not the only Revel Hour.
After further discussion, Ullio promises to provide assistance to the crew, they would like to see Catherine Hallow live as they do care for their crew-members. They can offer informational assistance, and having dealt with Octopotenta BioTech before, a line of communication with the corp. The information they can provide right now is that another pirate crew, the shadowy operatives of The Group recently kidnapped a V.I.P. from Octopotenta.
This seems like a good way to gain some leverage, or a bargaining chip, to help secure the medical supplies or expertise necessary to prevent Catherine Hallow from succumbing to the life-draining effects of the Corona Mantle.
What About This One?
The mission then is simple: hit The Group’s underground stronghold on Tabernacle 2.5 and kidnap a hostage from the original hostage takers. A classic double-trouble kidnap-bonanza. The chief obstacles to this will be The Group operatives, about whom little is known, and the natural defences of the moon 2.5. It’s unique atmospheric and surface makeup, coupled with its relative closeness to the star, mean that the surface is unbearably hot almost all the time.
There are brief windows of cooler temperatures, when a planetary eclipse from Tabernacle II blocks the light of the star. At these times, ships can land safely on the planet’s surface, but the crew (correctly) assume security will be well-prepared for any unauthorised landings to be quickly shot out of the sky.
To solve this problem, Lonnie decides to see if he can wrangle up some kind of solution during his downtime. A long afternoon through the hazy, hot scrapyards and junk vendors on Baldachin Station he eventually stumbles across an asset sale from a now-failed mining business. It seems like more of the same junk he’s seen all day until he sees a very large tarpaulin covering a hulking monstrosity of a machine. Underneath it is exactly what he’s looking for, at a frankly unreasonably good price, it’s a (very worn and well used) extreme environment mining rig or colloquially a “leech” in the mining industry.
These behemothic machines are typically dropped from orbit, making atmospheric entry and landing on a gigantic plume of solid-fuel retro thrust. While solid fuel is largely considered to be crude, and a deeply unfashionable way to accelerate or decelerate anything, in this case it serves a dual purpose. The excess heat from the rocket motor super-heats and melts the crust of whatever stellar body you’re trying to put a hole in, just as the titanium-tungsten tip of the spinal drill descends. The upshot of all this is a drill assembly capable of drilling a primary mineshaft up to half a klick deep in just under a minute. In atmosphere the sound is deafening, although as the leech also comes equipped with a sizable (although spartan) sealed habitat and engineering bay for the operating crew to use, atmosphere is not a given.
The scorched blast plates on the outside of this giant machine speak to many years long use, but it if you want to put a hole in a planet and not care what’s going on out the windows you couldn’t ask for better.2
Suit Up
As for other preparatory measures, Gorn makes connections within The Group itself, identifying a possibly sympathetic pirate who wants out of the life called Mike The Spike. The crew will be able to call on him for assistance, in return for securing his escape along with them.
Mi-Tenz secures smart ammunition from the (almost certainly blind) scrapyard owner she appears to be befriending, and Bill reaches out for information from Kilmer to get some intel on who they’ll be up against, in turn for an agreement to assist Kilmer again on his next job.
Ben sends over the average HASE scores of The Group leadership known operating mechs, and some useful information that they are all capable of using at least some form of limited cloaking or stealth device.
With this complete, the crew is ready to go.
- Gorn gets reserves - Mike The Spike
- Mi-Tenz goes to the scrapyards
- Lonnie gets a big drill
- HASE Scores power at a cost for Kilmer