Some significant changes were started; a large concealed hangar under the ore-laced mountain to store both ships and some of the vehicles, and the installation of the Long Walk's old Autodoc in the base.
After a few days had passed, with Feng gardening and everyone practicing with their new armour, a message was received. It invited them to attend a meeting at Shadira Downport and bore the signature of the office of Goral Jamieson. Timo declined to attend; unlike the others he had no bond with either Collace or the Third Imperium and was decidedly ambivalent about supporting Collace in the upcoming conflict.
The atmosphere in the inhabited areas of Collace was subtly different to how it had been when the group were last here. Uniforms were everywhere in the streets. Casual talk was all of the coming war. Traffic at the starport was very heavy, as citizens with somewhere to go and the money to get there decided to travel off-world while it happened.
Arriving at the location specified, in the Downport section of Shadira arcology, Nevada, Feng and Wombat found themselves seated with Jamieson and two senior military men.
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Admiral Kundrak was the chair of the Anti Piracy Hearing in which they were awarded the Long Walk, and thus already known to them; he’d done well and is now in overall Naval command. He did give the air of someone preparing to go down with his ship, though.
Field Marshal Travis Mulver was a grizzled veteran soldier and looked competent but exhausted and very stressed, entirely reasonably as the defence of his whole world rested on his shoulders.
After greeting the CWG and thanking them for both disappearing at the politically appropriate moment and coming back in the nick of time with a load of high-tech materiel, Jamieson got down to business and asks the Cr64,000 question. Would they accept positions within the Collace military, at their Imperial ranks, as either advisors, combat commanders, a unit of their own if they prefer to stay together or (he glanced at Wombat) medical specialists? As a group, they had repeatedly achieved remarkable things, and Collace needs people who can do that.
It was clear that, while Collace was not short of military, they had few or none who were a product of the Imperial system, still less of former high rank such as Nevada; while Wombat was very probably the best surgeon on Collace. Accepting, the three spent some time discussing the upcoming defence with the two commanders. One thing that emerged from Nevada's enquiries about the system's defences was the strong implication that Collace possesed a Deep Meson weapon; something normally available only to Imperial worlds or those who had developed TL15.
| Deep Meson weapons are a cutting-edge technology, similar to the Meson weapons installed in capital starships as spinal mounts but much bigger. Emplaced on a planet, they can deliver devastating attacks in any direction, even through the planet itself, on large vessels as far away as Far Orbit - as long as the sensor systems required to target them remain operational. |
Nevada also asked if they could have access to intelligence and surveillance feeds for the star system. An encrytped receiver was provided for them to do this.
While his companions were away, Timo was rather surprised to receive a message addressed to him personally on his Collace PAN address. He eyed it very skeptically for a while before opening it. It turned out to be an anonymous, distorted audio message. This seemed a little familiar.
“K sends her regards, and an offer to repay a favour. Your current location has a worm in the apple. Meet our contact Polymath in the Dear Do bar in Dark City on a Tuesday to discuss details. Wear a purple wristband. Pp C.”
Timo was sunk in indecision. A Canedo tip, obviously, and intended to help him and his friends; but at the same time, probably to help the defence of Collace. He was not at all sure he wanted to follow it up.
However, when the others returned, he did explain what had happened, and the group planned to visit the Dear Do in two separate groups, Timo to make contact and the others as backup in case things went sideways.
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A few days after that, the Short Walk returned from her regular run to Tarsus, and Merrick Sturnn was very pleased to be reunited with his erstwhile crewmates. He'd done quite well in the year or so since they'd left, producing significant profits for the group even despite doing some improvements to the Short Walk and hiring on a crew member. Delilah Kicks was listed as Gunner/Steward and was an impressively skilled cook; there was more to it than that, though. Solo crewing a starship can get lonely.
He brought the news that the war on Tarsus was over. The Rancher army, aided by the Tyrex walkers the party had delivered, had crushed the wilder rebels and thrown them back into the wilderness. While not exterminated, they would not be troubling Tarsus for a long time.
With the oncoming prospect of a war, the decision was taken to load any gear not immediately needed into the Short Walk and sent Sturnn to take refuge on Tarsus - in case Collace was to fall. Feng put in an order for some of whatever the Tarsan equivalent of pigs and chickens might be. A couple of days later, he was off again.
A call went out to Vespasian, advising that things were tense and that he'd be needed. Asked if they could count on his assistance if there was an invasion, he answered - as he always did - that he was instructed to assist his temporary custodians as requested as long as it didn't conflict with his programming.
Gathering their equipment, and grudgingly forgoing their new armours for skinweave, flak and Diplo overcoats, the group set out for Dark City.
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It was almost a homecoming for Feng, Wombat and Nevada to walk the scummy streets of Dark City once more. Stearla, arguably the first settlement on Collace and now the most run-down, was at the bottom end of the social slope that rose to the newer and more modern arcologies. Here, the failed and the furtive made their homes, and the law was either a distant rumour of a very occasional visitor in massive force.
Splitting up almost immediately, the group made their way across town. Separately, they entered the Dear Do and took tables; Feng, Wombat and Nevada fairly centrally and overtly, Timo in a side booth against the wall. He had a piece of paper twined around one arm, coloured with a purple marker pen in lieu of an armband.
The bar was down-market enough that it actually had a rack of grubby paper books for the patrons, and Timo picked one up.
Some time after he had settled down with beer and his reading matter, a lone figure ambled across from the bar and - after making polite interogative gestures to request permission to sit down - sat across from Timo. Timo drew a deep breath; he hadn't expected a non-human. It was a rather scruffy-looking Vargr. Well, Vargr weren't as bad as some, he supposed.
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"Makkinen?" said the Vargr quietly. Timo nodded. "Polymath?" he responded. The Canedo Vargr's mouth opened briefly in a canine grin, and he finished his bowl of beer before putting it down and delivering his message.
“There’s a certain ex-pirate captain of your group's prior acquaintance who’s been hiding here ever since. He’s re-invented himself and now has a small, thriving electronics and sensor systems business; Harcourt Systems. It’s not a coincidence that he has a good deal of secret encrypted message traffic with Trexalon, and that his business has the contract to maintain the sensor arrays for a certain ultra-secret defence facility. Our abilities on Collace are limited; so many other players in our space here. We’re not getting directly involved. But we’d dislike to see the Trex take this place over. It’s up to you what you do with this information.”
Timo nodded. The Vargr grinned again, picked up his beer bowl, and sauntered away. Timo dropped his purple armband into his own glass and left shortly after.
As he left the bar, he heard a disturbance from down the street. Glancing that way, he saw a modest riot outside a shop. After a few seconds, a humanoid figure was hurled up into the air by many hands to crash to the roadway, and Timo winced before realizing that wires and gears, not blood, were spilling from the victim. An anit-robot riot. Rare in Imperial space, except where there had been an incident to make humans fear robots, or the disenfrachised had come to see them as a hazard to employment. He shrugged, and moved on.
Once regathered at their vehicle on the gravport, the group discussed this. "Certain ultra-secret defence facility" was a clear hint that the planet's Deep Meson facility was involved, and Nevada got straight in touch with their contacts in the Military; an immediate meeting was called.
Timo was still conflicted. He felt no loyalty to Collace, and unlike the others had no personal stake in the world's fortunes. From an ideolgical point of view as a citizen of an independent world his sympathies were rather more with Trexalon, although the fact that Trex agents had tried to kill him at least once did shade that slightly.
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Feng, Wombat and Nevada met with the military leaders and discussed what to do. Being more of a local security issue, their old acquaintance Police Commissioner Rosita Ostergaard was called in as well.
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Harcourt Systems had an impeccable record, gaining more prestigious contracts culminating in the winning of the contract to maintain the Imperial systems controlling the Meson Gun's sensors. Listed with twelve employees, including Ronald Harcourt and Livia Harley. Their identities were clean, but on seeing their file photographs, Jesse Wales' face was dark with rage. "Beefheart!" he snarled. He had past history with the erstwhile captain of the Torquilstone.
Rick is a very occasional player, but Jesse ventured out of his bubble to identify this major nemesis from his character generation!The sensor systems upon which the weapon depended were installed on six of the tiny islands that dotted the ice seas across the planet, all but one unmanned. The central control site was located on one called Tumbril Island. Records showed that most of Harcourt's staff were assigned there, servicing and preparing the systems for the upcoming war, with two travelling across the minor sites.
Plans were on file from when the site was built, and Nevada pounced on the opportunity to gain control of things remotely. Some hours of frustration later, it emerged that there were three layers of systems on the island; the actual operational systems for the TL15 sensors provided with the weapon on a 'lease lend' basis, the 'domestic' systems, light, heat, atmosphere and so on, and the security and surveillance systems. These last were Harcourt systems, and despite the military being provided with access codes, were securely locked out to all external access.
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Much discussion ensued on ways to reclaim Tumbrill island. The locals, remembering the successful assault on Slavers' Bay, were quite happy for the Cats with Guns and the police to handle the attack. Cmr Ostergaard assigned their old comrade Bertram Reddish, now a Captain, to partner with them once again. Reddish, still carrying the pink gauss rifle Feng had given him, had taken their advice and procured similar though conventianally coloured weapons for his SWAT teams.
The one major stipulation was that the weapon's sensors and their control systems suffer the very minimum possible damage, as those were Imperial systems built at TL15 and not locally replaceable. Significant damage would put the Gun out of action for long enough for the war to be over - which of course was the objective of the Trex agents. The team set fusion guns aside and equipped with stun and gauss rifles instead.
Teams of his men were set up to secure the lesser bases in simultaneous strikes, while the Cats would take the main job of Tumbril Island. The security systems and cameras were unreachable, but it dawned on Nevada that the fire suppressant systems were not. With his high-tech computers he hacked into them with almost contemptuous ease, and set up triggers in the fire system allowing him to trigger it on a single radio command.
Aimo had an early start for a trip to Exeter the next day - it's a bugger, I've done it - and packed up at this point.
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Timo, unable to bring himself to fight for Collace, had elected to remain in Botany Bay and finish his book.
Landing on the edge of the island, the strike team worked their way up through the forest of sensor masts, carefully avoiding the cameras installed at the corners of the bunker-like building. Finally in position, they sent the two signals, one to unleash the teams on the other sites, the other to trigger the fire suppressant systems in the Tumbril centre. The results were all they could have hoped for.
The heavy steel doors slid open, and clouds of gas - to Feng's delight, it was pink - poured out into the lower atmosphere of the open air. Two dim silhouetted figures stumbled out, and Wombat and Nevada opened up with their stun rifles, expecting an extended fight. They had not completely figured in the effect of their battledress, however. Interfacing with the rifles, the armours locked the pair into inhumanly steady firing positions, and Nevada's stun bolt was so precise it went in through his unfortunate victim's left eye. The beam tore down his optic nerve directly into his brain, inflicting massive neurological damage. Wombat's target was merely stunned...
Moving cautiously into the building, the strike team cleared the acommodation areas and then entered the control room. Another human in a Harcourt Systems jumpsuit lay on the floor, stunned by the fire suppressant gas. Checking the control stations, no-one else was present, and alarm bells began to ring in their minds. There should have been ten... Turning around, they noticed a sheet of paper pinned onto the seat of the command chair. Written on it was:
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A dull rumble shook the ground under their feet, and Wombat went to see what it was. Around a quarter of the sensor masts were down, toppled by explosives. A few seconds later messages arrived from Captain Reddish, announcing that the other sites were secured, but that explosions had happened, damaging a percentage of the arrays.
Searching the control centre, the Cats found a significant collection of explosive charges, enough to level the site, but still packed in its crates. Either the saboteurs had not had time to set charges everywhere, or the ones left behind had not fancied being blown up with the control room.
With a direct connection from the system console, Wombat was able to hack into the security system. He brought up footage of the Harcourt team at work, and played it through until the arrival of a message appeared to galvanize them into action. Beefheart and his second, the ex Sensor Officer of the Torquilstone Kirsten LeBlond, hastily donned sets of battledress while their minions rushed outside to set as many charges as they could. A second message arrived, and all but three set out from the building to the far side of the island. There, they embarked on a small submarine which vanished under the ice around two hours before the arrival of the strike team.
There had clearly been some kind of leak...