Reply To: Freetrader “Destinys Child”: How It All Started

[Mike Headden]

Mike Headden wrote:

After a month, or so, of life being “interesting” I hope I am now able to get back to 5 Parsecs and the exploits of Destiny’s Children.

Hah! Little did I know. Alas matters medical, legal and funereal have combined with work fixing all the little jobs needing done in the house and garden, that have accumulated during the pandemic, which are now proving beyond my slowly declining abilities have consumed my life in the interim and don’t show any sign of slackening off. However I have managed to write up the set-up for the next adventure so, though I’m not sure when the game itself will take place, here is the continuing saga.

Campaign Turn 8: Same old, same old.

Freyja was sitting on a bench outside somewhere that it’s sign said was Inspiration Arcology … she wasn’t sure what an arcology was but it seemed to involve immense amounts of glass, steel and vegetation.

She was wondering if it was worth returning to the Destiny’s Child.

Mila had sent her out to look for work for the crew.

Her visit to Jethro Gibbons had been cordial and he had a job for them if they wanted it. Make their way to a remote area of the undercity and check if rumours of an increase in the number of void rippers there were true. Didn’t sound like fun and the pay wasn’t great so she said thanks but no thanks. Besides surely House Rimush would have something better.

However, she’d been given short shrift by the House Rimush majordomo who told her brusquely that if they had work for the crew they would be in touch.

So here she sat, her first job for the crew and she’d blown it!

“What we run from and what we run to are often one and the same.”

Startled, she hadn’t noticed the man sit down, she turned to see an elderly Zensufi monk, wrapped in the, slightly frayed and grubby, white robes of his order.

“If I wanted vague and ambiguous advice I’d have bought a fortune cookie,” she said tartly.

“Ah, but what you want is a job.”

“What, how do you .. who are you?” she asked sharply.

The old monk grinned and inclined his hooded head,”Not all are who they seem. Indeed, are any of us who we seem?”

Exasperated, she said,“You really are irritating, you know that?”

He took her hand gently but firmly, his grip stronger than she’d expected from this bent old man, turning her hand palm up he dropped a data crystal, seemingly plucked out of thin air, into her hand and folded her fingers over it.

“For Mila,” he said,”I’m afraid I really must go, good to meet you.”

She glanced down at the crystal and tucked it safely away. When she glanced up the monk was gone and the only figure in sight was a tall ramrod straight figure with grey hair, dressed in a black coverall, walking up the steps of the arcology. Of the monk, no sign at all.

******************************

“Well,” thought Mila,”Freyja Keggisdottir, there was an enigma. Brought up on an Ice World, in a commune, by The Cult Of Elrond to be a baby-making machine. Escaped aged fourteen and on the run ever since. More dangerous with those steel shod boots of hers than with the blade she carried. Sent out to check with Gibbons and House Rimush if they had work for the crew she comes back with a job for OSI instead.”

“Smart enough to turn down ‘Walking with Voidrippers’ too, bless her.”

The data crystal from Aquilaos had complimented them on their record of safe deliveries of VIPs needing escorted and offered decent pay for safe escort of an Imperial Ecologist to a spot in the underhive where a fellow researcher had set up a Micro-Hab, a sort of semi-permanent tent, in order to study the local hydrology. If the ecologist got close enough his data-pad would download all of the info from the hab’s own data-store.

“All so easy,” Mila thought,” were it not for the gangers and their recently acquired stash of military rifles and shotguns. Half a dozen gangers wouldn’t usually be a problem for the crew but these had serious firepower.”

“Ah, well! Time to pick up another little lost lamb and escort them into the field and try to avoid them getting their dumb head shot off.”

 

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data