Chapter 1: We're No Heroes.

"The local laws regarding protecting one's property and self are odd on this planet. Rest assured, Mr. Runo that we will get your nest-egg safe and true to its location, collect our fee, and make berry liquor with what's left."

Hypokrates smiled and absently chewed at a piece of candy he had opened up somewhere in the midst of the conversation. He made sure to find a place to sit, high and out of the way while the heavy work was going on.

Runo smiles and shakes his head lightly. "They'll find you not guilty, or rule in self defense, of course, but the investigation would take long enough that the crop would spoil. If anything does happen out there, just don't hang around too long." As you all finish loading the hauler, Runo gives one last goodbye, wishing you the best on your travel before closing the loading door behind you all. With your job clear in front of you, you all begin to make the drive back to Ship's End.

The city is a constant buzz. Spacecraft hum in nearby docking facilities and zoom overhead while merchants and crowds of tourists chatter; the rumbling engine of the cargo rig below merges seamlessly into the urban symphony. As the spaceport comes back into view, up ahead, and old woman pushing a cart across the street yelps in alarm as her cart tips over, rusty tanks of petrol spilling out, scattering in every direction over the road. Traffic stops and drivers in nearby vehicles shout, but the old woman ignores them. Instead, she walks slowly to one of the rolling tanks, picks it up, and carefully cradles it in her arms as she returns it to the fallen cart.

Cloud-9 pulled to a stop as traffic did and leaned out of the window to see what was causing the obstruction. "There seems to be a roadblock up ahead in the form of an elderly woman and her dropped tanks. Shouldn't be too long, but there will be a slight delay. If we are worried about thieves, I recommend keeping a watch for anyone trying to climb aboard."

Cloud-9 stayed in the drivers seat and watched the road so that they could move forwards the moment it was possible, trusting the others to manage anything else that occurred.

Grulgorz his mind on his signature on the contract was concerned about the pirates or indeed any fool who might try and steal even a single crate of berries. A choreographed 'accident' was a fine chance to do just that.

"I'll keep an eye at the rear, likely be nothing but this would be fine distraction"

He opens the cab door and steps out, his Doshko held relaxed in one hand. The back of the vehicle was a blind spot so he heads down one side, he looks about suspiciously and eye balls any who meet his gaze.

Hypokrates stayed put atop their shipment. The higher view was a perfect vantage point for him. Absently, he slipped out his needler rifle and slips in a basic booster. If something did happen, he would make sure his room mate and best friend in the universe (according to him alone) had the edge.

Grulgorz clocks Needles and gives him an approving nod as he sees the needle rifle at the ready. His gaze then returns to any who would threaten their cargo.

The woman carefully cradles a tank back to her cart, but stops in front of the car. She suddenly jerks up from her hunch to stand upright, her torso turning 90 degrees at the hips to face your vehicle. She hurls the petrol tank on the hood of the vehicle, the collision igniting the barrel in a massive explosion!

*** IC CLOSED. Please roll initiatives and post actions OOC. Also, Grulgorz and Needles may roll me Perception checks if they like.

*** IC OPEN. This combat has taken too long.

Grulgorz moves to the back of the trailer, keeping their eyes open for any assailants. As he rounds from the left side to the right side, he immediately notices three green, small humanoids covered in ramshackle, jury rigged tech and patched space suits. They turn to face him with a snarl, and he recognizes them as goblins as they take a box of Yaro berries and make a break for three nearby bikes!

Needles fires another shot at the goblins as Grulgorz takes after them, while Cloud-9 and Raia lock their attention on the junkbot. One goblin crumpled before Grulgorz arrived, a hand reaching for its neck as a sliver of blood ran down from where Needles shot them. The remaining goblins were clearly not expecting the hulking lizard to be so agile, their wide eyes staring back at him as he closed the distance. Each swing from the doshko left the scent of ozone in the air and blood on the pavement.

Another explosion rocked the cargo rig as the junkbot breathes fire over the hood, another canister exploding. Cloud-9 and Raia are looking worse for wear. The extreme heat is exhausting both of them, sweat beading and evaporating off Raia's skin and Cloud-9's skin drying into leather as they fire. One of their shots must've landed true, as the gas chamber inside the junkbot marks one final explosion in the robots short life. The intersection dulls to the sound of idling engines, explosive canisters still littering the street.

A police siren begins to sound in the distance, and the party makes the decision to head out before they are made subject to a long questioning. Cloud-9 and Raia are both quite shaken by the explosions, leaving Needles to strategically drive the cargo rig out of the traffic jam. Once safely returned to the ship, the four of you make short work of a daunting task, unloading the trailer. It takes about four hours of work, and you're off-planet and back in the drift by bed time. Four days in drift space should've given you plenty of time to ease the minds of Cloud-9 and Raia, but the two have yet to get over their near death experience.

As you exit the drift, your communications update as you have all grown accustomed to, a light on the bridge denotes an incoming message. Once activated, a Brenneri with sleek brown fur appears on-screen, wearing an olive-green flight suit emblazoned with the EJ Corp logo and fidgeting with a worn wrench. You recognize her as Tarika, your Company dispatcher and, for some of you, an old friend. She's based on Absalom Station, so this transmission must have been sent days ago. Tarika looks anxious, and her image is barely visible before she blurts out,

"Howdy team! I'm just checkin' in on y'all. If you're receivin' this, you must have arrived at Akiton. Your drop-off site is in Hivemarket. Now, you can't miss that place - just look for the biggest damn mountain on the entire planet. That''ll be Ka, the Pillar of the Sky, and Hivemarket is around its bottom. There's a business the called Ka Imports, and Siski, the manager, is your contact. You can collect payment from her and maybe get a nice little bonus for rapid delivery. Be careful on that dustbowl of a world, though; there's no real law on Akiton, and the desert is no place to go explorin'. I'm lookin' for your next job, and I'll send a transmission when I have somethin' for ya. If you haven't heard from me byt the time you're done on Akiton, come on in to Absalom Station."

After the fight with the goblins Grulgorz turned to Needles and gave him an enthusiastic pat on the back. Grulgorz was pleased with the Ysoki's performance in the brief fight with the goblins. He gives Needles a toothy grim "good shooting back there"


The encounter with the goblin thieves had left an unsatisfactory taste in Grulgorz mouth. They were  punny and had no honour, there was no glory to be had in cutting them down. He had given them a brief chance to surrender before ending them. The big red lizard was bored and grumpy.

Still he was honour bound on this enterprise so dispite his dislike for the work so far he didn't let his boredom affect his performance... at least much.

Grulgorz listened attentively to the recorded message. It all sounded simple enough and it would be good to get this job done with so they could hopefully get more interesting work.

He turned to his crew mates "Lets get this done... "

Somewhere on Akiton

The table showed signs of wear as well as of careful maintenance.  Its smooth but dimpled surface held both its own stories and the hallmarks of having borne witness to countless others.  It was a quiet, comforting presence for the young Telian, who had not felt simultaneously warm, dry and free of discomfort in recent months.  She did not want to be unappreciative of her experiences on the streets of Downside, but saw no harm in acknowledging that it had not always been pleasant.

When Roper joined her at the table, Sridakshin was lost in thought and it takes a moment for her to become aware of their presence.  Before long, the Witchwarper is happily chatting with her new colleague, grateful to her friend Tarika for making this possible.

The bar was the kind of place to find associates, not marks. Well, unless one fancied getting stabbed. Having recently gotten away from incarceration, where shankings were a constant danger, Roper was in no rush to end up on the wrong side of a sharp object. They had therefore decided to stick to business and simply meet their new colleague.

Sridakshin was easy to talk to. Not that Roper had ever struggled to find ways to fill any silence, but some conversations were chores. This one was delightful. Over the last hour, Roper had told her many stories about themselves. Some had even been true. Well, loosely inspired by the truth, at least.

Roper is wearing the skin they had been hired under: a skinny, androgynous Damaya Lashunta with elaborate sleeve tattoos and a panoply of piercings, dressed in simple, but stylish clothing. They sit in a relaxed posture, as close to lounging as the narrow chairs allow.

Roper was just getting to their favorite part of a tale about an encounter with some Vesk gangsters. They had heard it from a fellow inmate during their first stint in prison and had made it their own, with some much needed embellishment. "... I dove over the crates, seeking to get into cover, but my watch got caught on the lid's corner! It jerked me to a stop." Roper pauses for dramatic effect, taking a sip for their drink. They lick their lips before continuing. "So there I was, exposed, stuck, with a bunch of trigger happy crooks who wanted nothing more than to fill me with holes! And all because some clerk logged the wrong ship in the wrong bay," they say, parroting the excuse the other inmate had used to claim their innocence. Roper shakes their head, putting on a rueful expression, the picture of an honest person victimized by fate.

"To think that a simple clerical error could be so eventful, or that a watchstrap could be the source of such peril..." Sridakhin slowly shakes her head, appreciative of the intricate interplay of seemingly mundane occurrences. "Please continue, if you would, Friend Roper. Clearly you survived the encounter, else we would not be together, but I am at a loss as to how that could be.  You are a very skilled individual," she opines gravely.  Roper had already experienced several lifetimes worth of adventures, getting out of countless scrapes with body and good cheer in tact. It was remarkable and she felt fortunate that they would get to work together.

She sat silently, hoping that Roper would continue their tale, but satisfied to reflect on the many stories that they had already been kind enough to share if they chose not to.

"There's an old Human saying I heard.... I forget when and where. It goes: 'Better to be lucky than good'. I'd love to be able to claim it was skill," and Roper had in other retellings, "but truth is, I got lucky. My pursuers missed with their first volley. I swung my legs up, and then sharply down and flipped the crate to its side. I was now behind cover,. Well, most of me was. Their second volley ricocheted on the crate's front, now its top, and nearly took off my hand at the wrist!" Roper holds their right hand up, showing off the scars they had manifested there when they'd taken the shape that morning.

"That's when the authorities finally showed up. Better late than never, eh? My pursuers were taken into custody and I to the local hospital where they did a piss poor job of sowing my hand back together. But, at least it still works," Roper says as they flex their 'scarred' fingers.

The young Telian nods sagaciously at Roper's facile grasp of one of the fundamental tenets of how navigating universes; the valency, prevalence, and prevalence of valences in systems... or was that valency of prevalence? She would have to refer back to her great-aunts lectures, but she was sure that some combination of valence and prevalence affected initial conditions, including what could be considered an initial condition and the degree of sensitive dependence on initial conditions which... 'Better to be lucky than good' does sum it up quite nicely, she had to admit.  

"Your fingers look very mobile. It is fortunate that they were able to preserve so much mobility. Lucky again! Was it that same luck that got you this job?"

Roper smiles. They had made a mistake with their fingers, one which could have cast doubt on their story. Had they been working a mark, this could have been costly. Luckily (hah), the young Telian was a generous soul. Roper wondered how they could take advantage of it. "You know, when I took this job, I wasn't sure. Now that I've met you, I'd say yes. It was luck, indeed." They raise their glass to toast their new colleague.

"What about you? How'd you end up with this gig?"

"I hesitate to call it good fortune and yet I do feel fortunate to be here, now. And if I am here now, it is because I once was in Downside... A curious place, Downside that is; many more interactions are mediated by credit than one would expect. As my ready access to credits waned, I was liberated to meditate on what kind of story my time in Downside could be a preface to."

She paused, looking past Roper at nothing in particular and sighed gently before continuing.
"With that freedom came a growing sense of inefficacy as I sought and failed to grasp the narrative thread...  Until Tarika," a genuine smiled brightened her face when she said that name. "There is a certain symmetry in Tarika bookending my time in Downside; she both is and is not who she had been."

Sridakshin looks at Roper, suddenly very aware that this was her first telling of this story. She has a growing concern that tale had not been sufficiently cared for; she had certainly not been as engaging as her newest friend.

Cloud-9 nods to Grulgorz, "Of course. We will make our descent." They say before flying the ship down into atmosphere. It only takes around an hour to fly to the largest mountain, as your onboard navigations directs your atmo-thrusters. Once you make your way to Hivemarket, anyone on the bridge notices there are no contacts for flight control. As you get in range for the ship's sensors, an image of the market is displayed on your screen. You see multiple ships landed in the desert, and find yourselves and empty spot to park yourselves. Once arrived, Raia gathers the crew for a brief.

"I've been doing a lot of thinking, about the state of the crew, the company, and what we've been getting ourselves in to. I've spoken a lot with Cloud-9, and we're both in agreement. We're terminating our contracts on Akiton. Neither Cloud-9 nor I are prepared to risk our lives for EJ any longer. We're calling a shuttle to take us to Arl. There should be plenty of ships there that can get us off-world. Grulgorz, Needles, I don't expect you to drop the contract. You can keep our shares of the pay as soon as you deliver the cargo. I assume EJ won't let you run with just the two of you, so expect some new crew to come your way. Thank you all, for the time we spent together, if it weren't for this crew, I would've left The Company some time ago." She gives you all a deep bow.

Cloud-9 stands and looks to the rest of the crew as well. They smile, and give a deep bow,"Misk Grulgorz, Misk Hypokrates, thank you. The two of you have been great friends, and I have enjoyed our short time together. I hope we cross paths again soon."

Once you've said your goodbyes, Raia and Cloud-9 gather their things, and head into Hivemarket together, disappearing into the crowd. The two of you are left with a half crewed ship, and a cargo bay full of berries on the edge of spoiling. If you can't close the contract within a day or so, you presume the cargo will spoil. You have a buyer, a location, freight, and no time to waste.

---

The EJ Corp outpost in Maro has long been downsizing. With the sudden destruction of the Thasteron market, the once prosperous mining town has fallen into poverty. EJ Corp jumps at every opportunity to move employees to off-world contracts, and it is no surprise when Sridakshin's comm unit vibrates in her pocket, showing a new contract opportunity aboard a small freight vessel. What may surprise you is that Roper receives a correspondence at the same time, for the same vessel. The ship is an unassuming freighter, BD514, and is slated to deliver cargo in Hivemarket before being assigned another contract and heading off-world. The contract comes with a signing bonus of 500cr. and is slated to ship out within three hours.

When their comm units signal at the same time and for the same job, Sridakshin is seized by a fit of laughter; it is a soft laugh, mainly exhalations and the occasional shaking of her shoulders. Unaware that the Operative may not have been entirely accurate in their narratives, she was simply taken aback by the degree of convergence in Roper's life.  This 'luck' borders on the anomalous', she mused.  

"As we are now crewmates and our fortunes are shared, I have a vested interest in hoping that your luck continues to be beneficial! Shall we settle up and go find BD514?"

Whether predestined, coincidental, or an augur of things to come, it would seem that Roper was to be a deuteragonist.

Roper's smile grows wider. To their genuine surprise, they are actually pleased at the thought of working with Sridakshin. It was said that Telian had an exceptional memory. It would be good continuity practice. As an added bonus, Roper had found her company quite enjoyable so far. "Let's!" they say enthusiastically.

Roper settles up. It wouldn't do to be arrested now, after all. Besides, they were supposed to be going clean. Legal schemes and backhanded deals was their future, not shortchanging, pickpocketing or playing the false Samaritan.

The odd pair make their way from the bar towards the starport, chitchatting along the way. Roper has to fight the urge to relieve some of the shopkeepers of some of their well less observed merchandise. Keep your eyes on the prize, Roper. Be a good little corporate citizen.

They book passage on a shuttle for Hivemarket and settle in for the long trip.

saved for later:

Grulgorz was not happy with Raia's little speech and had raised a threatening eye brow at the mention of the state of the crew as one of their reasons for leaving. His behaviour had been exemplary so he wondered what Needles had done. Regardless their 'captain' and Cloud-9 were deal breakers so at the end of the day he was at least glad to be rid of them in case they abandoned ship when there was more than berries at stake.

Once they were gone he turns to Needles "Good riddance, we can close this deal without them. More credits for us little buddy." Grulgorz mood started to brighten at the thought of a bigger share, he could replace the what he considered his paper thin ceremonial armour. "Lets get a move on yeah, find someone likely to know the location of Ka Imports."

Hypokrates was rather impressed with his performance: moving targets, small size, both taken down with a neck shot and a shot to the eyeball. He smiled at the big Gurlgorz as he hopped down and was patted on the back.

"Ah yes, a rather lovely day for killing indeed. You see the one I shot in the neck? blegghhhh blegghhh," he mimicked the goblin and grabbed at his neck, giggling after. The adrenaline was clearly still pumping in the lively Ysoki's bloodstream.

[Back in the Ship]

Hypokrates had made every attempt to not bother Raia and Cloud-9, both of whom had clearly dealt with their encounter poorly. In reality, that simply meant that he spoke to them a fewer amount of times... but for longer durations. He could tell they were still unwell, but had no clue how to approach the situation any differently than normal.

Hypokrates busied himself with tinkering and obsessive cleaning and arranging of their gear. Everything needed to be in order and accounted for, after all. Once it was, they made ready for the descent and took their place in the jump seat.

It was a complete shock when Raia and Cloud-9 made their announcement. "I don't... you're term... after all the fun we just... but the candy! I bought us candy and you never tried any and I was going to make wine out of leftover berries and you never will be able to try that either. Tsk. Oh. I cannot... you... this is most unwelcome news. Most unwelcome news indeed."

There was a small quiver in his little Ysoki lip as they disappeared into the crowd. His feelings were well and truly hurt.

He looked up at Grulgorz as he attempted to make him feel better. It surprised him how much it was working.

"Was it my shooting do you think? Was it not up to Cloud-9's robotic standards? I thought it was quite good myself. Thanks for being my best friend Grulgorz. I am going to make you some fabulous wine. If you go blind, that means it's good. Want some candy? More money is a good thing. We can buy more things to turn into alcohol. Oh, and more candy. I maybe should have shot better, but my aim was excellent given the condition..."

It goes on like this for a moment.

Grulgorz managed a weak smile at Needles' rambling, this was probably what Raia was referring to. But while Needles most certainly annoying he wasn't a deal breaker and he was a good shot, these things were very important to the big lizard. "Don't you be worrying about them, Raia and Cloud-9 are the ones with the problems. Just excuses because they couldn't hack a bit of dirty work."