RECAP Omnibus: Traveller! September and October

Somewhere in jumpspace between Cymbeline and Tewfik…

“I did it for the money, of course,” said Keev Smitchy matter-of-factly. “I got my position at TILA and they posted my to Cymbeline – outside of the core systems, away from the action, away from everything. It wasn’t a post, it was a punishment.”

“So when the Ursae came calling, I was willing to listen. The money was excellent and the work was minimal. All I had to do what ensure that certain vessels – some Ursae, but mostly others – were able to pass through system with, shall we say, minimal examination. It was simple. But I learned that taking the bear’s money came with certain penalties…”

At this, Smitchy wheeled into a recitation of history – a hidden history, and for good reason. The Ursae systems and civilization had only recently entered the club of space-faring species, about 150 years ago, and had since been a bit of a red-headed stepchild within the club. Like all space-farers, they were apex predators on their homeworld, warlike and contentious. This was overwhelmingly the rule amongst space-faring races: the evolutionary pressures that predation instigated would result in, at first, the emergence of a dominant species and, then, the systematic capture, exploitation and ruination of the local environment. Wars fomented technological advancement, and the victor routinely took the spoils and capitalized on them. Eventually, environmental and cultural pressures would loft the species into space. It was the preface and first chapter of the story of nearly every spacefaring species, Terrans included. Terra was considered first among (comparative) equals simply due to the fact they’d emerged from the gravity well first, and were the progenitors of the jump technology that folded the space between systems otherwise too remote to ever realistically consider outside of the lens of a telescope.

The Ursae were the latest to this tradition, and they’d entered the club at a poor time: Ursae culture was martial, expansionist, acquisitive – no surprises there – but they’d joined the galactic civilization at a time when two other species of similar qualities and worse proximity were hellbent on disrupting the peace of the volume in some really ugly ways. One side, the Kzinti: three meter tall samurai born of tiger stock, with plasma katana and a sense of honor that the most innocent slight would stir generations-long animosity. On the other: the Affront (technically, the Issorilians but no one in known space referred to them as anything other than the Affront in living memory), a species whose gleeful animosity, casual sadism and militaristic outlook shocked even the most jaded spacefarers. And fortune put these two species within two parsecs of each other. Natural, each desired nothing so much as the complete eradication of the other, salting their homeworlds with cobalt, and consigning every last bit of their DNA to raw vacuum.

Into this, the Terrans found the Ursae and listed them under “things we’ll get to after we make sure that this war doesn’t drag everyone and everything within 40 parsecs into it,” especially the Terran worlds which, as cruel fortune would again have it, were quite close to the whole mess. Naturally, the Ursae felt underappreciated, ignored and dismissed.

Once the Ursae had acquired jump technology, however, their motivations changed (and it was there that Smitchy returned to more recent history). The Ursae had always been stifled by the seemingly arbitrary restrictions associated with jumpspace travel, and recognized immediately the tremendous military advantages that would be gained by violating them. So, they began, rather quixotically, devoting enormous amounts of resources into jumpspace technology and testing its limits.

Then, Smitchy, explained, the found something.

“There have always been legends of creatures that were native to jumpspace, even from the first days,” Smitchy said. “Stories of machine ghosts, beasts of the infraspace, beings made of gravitons… mermaids, bigfoots, chupacabrae. They were haunt-tales, myths. No one paid any attention. But the Ursae, torturing the corners of jump technology? Well, the word was that they’d found creatures, native to jumpspace, extraplanar, and not only found them, but were talking with them.”

“This was their real breakthrough,” Smitchy continued. “They hadn’t gotten far with their research, but the idea that their work could now continue with native guides? It buoyed their efforts considerably. But still, the Ursae scientists didn’t have the expertise to capitalize on this, and rather than abandon their efforts, they began to kidnap scientists. It was all very covert, but it was Kykbandirz that was put in charge of that effort.” Hence, the payoffs to allow the ships to pass through Cymbeline on their way out of the core worlds.

Once captured, they scientists were taken to a station, somewhere in deep space, known to Smitchy only as “Orobus.” The location and defenses of the station were unknown (and highly secret: Smitchy said that he’d heard of a ‘purge’ that had taken place at Orobus when a group of kidnapped scientists attempted to transmit information about their location and the work they were doing via subspace. Smitchy heard that dozens, perhaps hundreds, of scientists were killed as a result.

The Ursae had no idea what to make of the G&T. “You came essentially out of nowhere – a long-haul cargo vessel registered out of Tau Ceti, crewed by a bunch of former military but nothing too fancy, and all of a sudden you kill one of their couriers, ambush a turnover and take the kidnappee all the way to Mirabilis, where you hand him back to Spofulam Corporation. They felt they sussed you then: corporate agents for Spofulam, and they assumed you had somehow gotten onto the idea they were making advances in jumptech and wanted to steal them. You disrupted their operations at Greenpernt – they didn’t like that at all – and once you’d arrived here, they tasked me with capturing you. They wanted to find out what you know.”

Later, Djinn alerted Dr. Wagner to the existence of two anomalies inside Smitchy: the first was a 1mm spherical power source, very small, embedded in tissue behind his kidney. The other was a larger item, 1cm in diameter, and attached to his first cervical vertabrae. Djinn identified this as a field generator, capable of emitting a field of about 1m in diameter – impractically small, from Djinn’s point of view.

Dr. Wagner took the opportunity to sedate Smitchy and conduct him into medbay, where he and Bishop Hawke removed and secured the two items. The first turned out to be a small but powerful subspace location tracker; Bishop disengaged it’s power source, and neutralized it. The second was much more interesting: an energy field generator that could be remote activated. Based on it’s size, the field would likely incinerate or vaporize anything within the 1m field – which, based on it’s location, would include Smitchy’s head, neck, about half his spinal column, his heart and lungs, essentially everything from the sternum up. Once conscious, Smitchy was at first aggrieved at the liberties taken with him… then chastened by the nature of the surgery.

Smitchy finally admitted what were his instructions from Kykbandirz:

• Using TILA men and under an easily manufactured pretense, capture both the Gin & Tonic and its crew, and hold them ostensibly for transport to Ember to face a TILA magistrate there.
• In reality, they were to be transported to parsec 2728, an empty parsec, to link up with Captain LaMonte of the Penny Dreadful.
  • LaMonte is also employed by the Ursae, at least as long as Smitchy and likely longer, as a troubleshooter and courier. He has many connections and a loyal and capable crew.
• Once on the Dreadful, Smitchy wasn’t sure what was to become of them, although he imagined that interrogation via drugs and technology would be his expectation at the very least.

While Smitchy was still recovering, the G&T emerged from jumpspace in Tewfik system, and quickly moved to geosynchronous orbit above the planet. After announcing their arrival, several of the crew take the Slice of Lime to the surface, where they arrange a deal with the Tewficker elders to take the 87 tonnes of beef and 3 tonnes of medicines in exchange for scotch whiskey and local ale. But since the G&T can’t enter a gravity well (and even if it could, Tewfik has no starport, only a rudimentary shuttle pad about five miles from the primary city), they have to port the cargo in 2-3 tonne increments using the Slice. Estimate to finish: 13 days.

Thirteen days is a long time, and everyone is well aware that, by now, LaMonte and the Dreadful have not only realized that they’re not getting their delivery, but they’ve gone back to Cymbeline and learned that Smitchy had escaped from TILA custody on the G&T. But the hope is that Tewfik – out of the way, low tech, largely overlooked – will serve as a good hideout. Plus, the denizens of Tewfik know and are friendly with the G&T, due to their help only a month previously with the cordyceps outbreak that threatened their harvest. All goes well for several days, until Bishop (who has stayed on the ship and is remotely coordinating the cargo deliveries) receives a proximity alert from Djinn: a ship has entered the system.

Djinn scans as a matter of course: 300 ton vessel, jump capable, at least one hard point about twice the size of the G&Ts dual laser arrays (probably a larger gun emplacement of some sort, but equally hidden. It’s otherwise a standard configuration: crew of 12, 180 ton cargo space, civilian vessel historically but have been used in military support on occasion, especially by smaller forces. This vessel is called Outstanding Contribution and the captain’s name is Nyco Blake Aequatorius. Vessel is registered out of Barnard’s Star. AI is registered there as well and is named Rhodys.

The Outstanding Contribution approaches Tewfik pinging away with active scans, which Bishop attempts to avoid by breaking out of geosynchronous orbit (once the remaining crew has come back up on the Slice) and keeping the planet between them and the new ship. At about 3.5 hours out, the ship launches two small gravity rafts, which the G&T tracks to the planet’s surface. Both vehicles land at the shuttle pad, and the G&T‘s orbital cameras reveal personnel have disembarked at taken up overwatch positions on the pad.

After warning the Tewfickers to avoid the area, Tamm, Mallory and Dr. Wagner decide to take the Slice back down to the planet and see what the visitors want. It turns out, they want the G&T, and advise the crewmen to surrender. Mallory answers with blasts from his automatic shotgun, ably supported by Tamm’s maneuvering the Slice off the pad and Dr. Wagner providing covering fire with his cryo-rifle.