Previous Episode: Wasteland

Karla Krace was awake, and requesting to be returned to Velke. Relena consulted with the rest of her crew, and it was agreed that the Shark would return. In return, Relena requested more information about the Shanask. Karla allowed three questions.

Relena's first question was about the Shanask Moon and its purpose. Karla answered that the Shanask live there.

Her second question was whether there was anything in particular that they could do to defend themselves against the Shanask. Karla answered "no". She did confirm that they are indeed mortal beings as opposed to superpowered gods or something like that.

The third question was "what do they want?"

Karla asked if Relena was sure she wanted her to answer that question. Upon receiving affirmation she said that the Shanask's long-term goal was to prevent the galaxy from being consumed. "By what?" "You don't want to know."

Not entirely happy, Relena ordered that the ship return to Velke. The ship dropped from hyperspace, performed a 180, and returned to hyperspace back along their previous route.

The return to Velke was a little off, but it turned out to be a good thing, because there appeared to be an Imperial fleet in-system. There were also Guild ships in-system, and they were not shooting at each other. Karla scanned the system and determined that the Imperial fleet was a delegation - usually sent by the Empire to negotiate surrender terms. The fleet consists of an Imperial Swordship (destroyer-class) escorted by four Lancers (heavy cruisers with huge spinal-mount beam weapons) and four Ramships (light cruisers designed to ram larger ships and offload marines). The Guild forces appeared to mostly planetary defence forces, with no House of Defiance present. There was also another ship in system, that Kelda recognised. It was the Paradroid. In fact, the Imperial delegation appears to consist of the same ships that jumped in to Aerris when Karla first came aboard the Shark.

The Imperial fleet hailed the ship, requesting general status update and identification. They were given a pass to dock at the spaceport.

There were no other ships in system at all, strangely. Karla suggested that Relena and the crew "try not to get involved". She instructed them to tell the House of Defiance what they saw on the previous planet. Tell them about the supersoldiers, show them the sample of cybernetics, and tell them that this is what has happened to the worlds that the Guild has lost contact with. Karla was not going to be able to facilitate or assist the crew to contact the House of Defiance.

The Shark docked, and the crew debarked. Karla disappeared - literally. Relena turned around and she was no longer there. All the shops were closed. An Imperial squad inspected the ship and crew, but they did not find Kelda. Noumalia gave Lance a shopping list and he went out looking for a crew.

A woman introduced herself to Lance. Her name was Chang, and she offered a surprisingly large sum of money for a lift to the other side of the planet - fast and discreet. She advised that she would be bringing a briefcase. She was not wearing an Immaculately Tailored Suit. Lance agreed, and contacted Relena, who expressed reservations, but they needed the money. Lance continued shopping for spare parts and a cargo to take offworld. When he started suggesting that they would pick up cargo from the other side of the planet if necessary, it was very clear that there was nothing on the other side of the continent.

Velke is a rainforest world - its atmosphere is very high in carbon dioxide, cities are domed, and carbon in the form of diamond was a primary construction material.

He did eventually find a cargo of trinkets - souvenir pin, stuffed toys, and bobblehead geisha dolls. He also was able to get the story about what has happened here. Apparently the Imperials appeared and blockaded the planet, allowing only registered merchant vessels to come and go. Nobody knew what the Imperials were doing here, but they weren't hurting anybody at this stage, so most of the Velkians were happy to live and let live.

The cargo and Chang arrived, escorted by two tall men wearing Immaculately Tailored Suits, who were not going to be accompanying Chang. They handed her the briefcase and Chang boarded. Lance filed a flight plan, requested clearance, and dusted off. Their destination was a location deep in the middle of the rainforest. There wasn't anything there, but Chang advised them to land and wait half an hour for her to return. Unity exited the ship, looking for medicinal plants (watch out for carbon monkeys!) and noticed a concrete bunker a little way off. Kelda scanned it and found that there was an underground complex. There were traces of radiation and encrypted comm transmissions, but they were unable to get any additional information about the location's purpose.

Noumalia took a nap.

After half an hour Chang returned, and the Shark returned her to the spaceport. Chang handed Relena a couple of wads of cash out of the briefcase. Back at the spaceport, Chang is met by the two Suits, to whom she handed the briefcase. They were about to leave, but something interesting was actually going on.

There was a global media event occurring. An Imperial who called herself Swordmaster Dalla De Foure was accusing the Guild of harbouring and supporting a covert terrorist organisation which has made attacks against civilian targets in Imperial-controlled space. There was a recording of a ship bombarding cities on Etabak, a world inside the borders of the Empire. The ship was identical to the Paradroid.

In response, a freakishly tall and thin Anthropos answered the charges, saying that there was no such terrorist organisation. The House of Dha does not support terrorism or attack civilian targets, and the footage was manufactured for purposes of propaganda. The two had an argument on stage of a large theatre. Then the cameras focused on the Mace, who was coming on stage (The government on Velke consisted of a ruling council, known as the Cabinet, and a ceremonial position that reported back to the Great House of the Guild, known as the Mace). He was an elderly gentleman, and acknowledged that he had been in contact with the Great House and President Val Markala, and he was authorised to confirm that the secret military organisation known as the House of Dha exists. However, they are still not terrorists. The House of Dha was set up in response to the reports of Imperial super soldiers and have been training in secret for hours. Dalla denied the existence of the super soldiers.

Just at that moment on the screen displaying De Foure's image, Karla Krace appeared, fired up a strange energy blade, and attacked De Foure, who defended with an identical blade of her own. They started duelling just as the transmission was cut off. The Imperial ships started to clear orbit, and Relena discussed with her crew what they were going to do next. They did have a charge to deliver the information about the super soldiers to the House of Defiance. Relena and Lance decided to deliver the message to the Guild officials, in the form of the offices of the spaceport.

Relena held a meeting with the harbourmaster and requested information about military cargoes. He replied that he may have a cargo for her, to return to her ship and wait for a contact. In the meantime, Lance and Relena hit the bars. The buzz was all about the broadcast - who was lying, whether Dha existed, or whether it was a sanctioned terrorist organisation, what link the freakishly tall and thin man - whose name was Drake Kerns had with the House of Dha and what the Guild and Empire were going to do about it all now. It turned out that there was very little House of Defiance presence in this system. The nearest Defiance base was at Gefe.

The Harbourmaster gave them an assignment to collect a cargo from a familiar location on the other side of the planet. After Lance let slip that they knew the way, he became suspicious, but Relena was able to reassure him by saying that their ship's medic went to the region searching for a rare plant. They were instructed to go to the location, where a team would load the cargo, and they were to deliver the cargo, conveniently, to Gefe.

The Shark landed in a clearing, where the ground opened and teams of people loaded two large shipping containers (approx 7m x 3m) on board. They were mostly anthropos, plus one or two Zin-shee and even a Draca.

Noumalia noticed that there was actually a Shanask standing in one corner. She noticed that it noticed her notice you. She telepathically informed Relena. The Shanask appeared to be doing nothing other than observing, but its presence unnerved them.

The crates were loaded, and they dusted off. It was only a short hop to Gefe, and the crew were curious about the "military technology" that they were being paid a substantial amount of money to transport. Lance examined the containers with his x-ray eye. Each of the containers contained three long cylindrical objects, rounded on one end and a propulsion unit on the other. Torpedoes.

Lance, Relena and Kelda considered this - the ship on the vid broadcast all over Velke appeared to bombard the imperial city with several of these very torpedoes, and they appeared to have a much larger yield than regular torpedoes. The harbourmaster had advised them that the cargo was perfectly safe - unless they happened to come under fire from ship-class weapons, in which case the explosion would be much larger than otherwise, and their deaths would be mercifully quick.

The trip to Gefe took about a day. They dropped out of hyperspace into the middle of a battle. Lance activated his preprogrammed evasive course. Scan showed that an entire Imperial subfleet was laying siege to the Defiance base. Relena ordered the Shark to exit the area before they were accidentally shot.

Relena sent a message to the base, indicating that they had a cargo. Shortly thereafter they received two coded burst transmissions. At that point some Imperial ships broke off in their direction. They decided to quit the system and decode the messages later. The Shark made a random jump out of the system.

The computer was set up to decode the message - the first of the transmissions was the encryption key to the second. After some time, the message was decoded, and was an instruction to deliver the cargo to the House of Defiance base at Ka, beyond Ehlak. The crew agreed to charge them extra.

Ka is the base for the 6th Fleet of the House of Defiance - the Rimward Frontier - the most mysterious and unexplored region in Guildspace. The trip took a couple of weeks.

Arriving at Ka, they were immediately challenged by Guild officials. There were no Imperial ships here, but a lot of Guild ships were out of port. They transmitted the security code that the encrypted message had contained. The return transmission indicated that two Imperial subfleets just went straight past the Defiance base without stopping. Gefe was still under siege but had not fallen. They were given docking coordinates to a Guild Warmoon.

They were interrogated by military intelligence - an officer of the House of Dha - who received their Gefe report. They knew about Gefe - under siege while the bulk of the Imperial fleet made for Guildhome. The crew also made their report about the wasteland planet and the Imperial supersoldiers.

Each of the crew was very thoroughly and separately debriefed by Zin-shee telepaths from House Dha. In Karla's case, very thoroughly debriefed. House Dha found out pretty much everything about her background. She was clearly not a friend of the Empire, so not a person of concern to the Guild.

Relena had an interview with a steely Anthropos named Nelos, who offered to retain the Shark on a subcontract. They were able to pay well, although their liquidity was somewhat compromised right now. But there were very few anonymous civilian captains around right now who knew as much about what was going on. Relena's mercenary inclinations were made very clear. Nelos agreed, and offered occasional sensitive courier work for Dha. Relena signed a standard "your soul belongs to us" non-disclosure agreement, and said that when she was ready they would send Captain Lavander to contact them.

Nelos suggested areas of the Guild to stay away from, and although she did mention that they were interested in opening negotiations with the Dark Alliance. After making their next payment on the ship, the Shark was free to go.

Next Episode: The Curious Case of the Agent and the Cat

Quote of the week:
GM: She is offering a surprisingly large amount of money for a lift to the other side of the planet - fast, and discreet.
Sage: I know I'm not involved in this conversation, but seriously - can we do either of those?