star-port. Laberv had been appropriated by the Zhodani navy and there
were three destroyers and five frigates docked there.
Belter (Darryl) went to the Scouts Office and asked if the Zhodani
would let them explore the system. The scouts' agent asked the local
Zhodani supervisor if this was possible. She checked with Colonel
Hayak, and confirmed with "so long as Lollipop's jump drive is
disabled."
Asking the Scouts, they said the typical way to disable the drive was
to remove the jump capacitors - these were each the size of a
full-height fridge. Lollipop had one. Belter agreed, and the
technicians would be around in two days to do it.
Dr Worthington (Chris) (only person in the group with Streetwise) made
some surrepticious enquiries through the Laberv underworld and found
he could source a black market jump capacitor for 90,000 credits. It
would be delivered to them out in the Badlands in three days time, a
day's journey from Laberv's rendezvous city Scunthorpe. Scunthorpe was
the only place on the surface that the Zhodani would allow lighters,
shuttles and air-rafts to land from the Laberv star-port.
The group spent a few heady days watching the security searches in the
docking station where goods from the surface arrived. Searchers were
pretty cursory, so the party decided risk it. Worthington gave the go
ahead and paid the money (using Scout Service promisory notes and 50K
cash from the group)
The next day, Zhodani technicians arrived and removed the jump
capacitor, the magneto-hydrodynamic actuator and two cans of elephant
beer. Luckily, actuators could be bought in the space station itself,
so they replaced that one quite fast; for 10K credits.
Bad Pitt (Shane) sneaked off and, in an act of justified treachery,
told his Zhodani minder that "it might be a good idea to check on any
large items delivered to the Lollipop".
The purchase was made out in the Badlands, and the jump capacitor was
bought, and trucked in to the Scunthorpe. It was loaded onto the
air-raft and ferried up to the space station, with a whole lot of
other similar-sized supplies.
On cue, Zhodani security swarmed over it like a bad rash, and found
the jump capacitor. They arrested Worthington, Standage (Ian) and
Bobby (Jeff). The capacitor was confiscated and the three were beaten
senseless by Zhodani grunts. They were deposited, unconscious, outside
the door of the Lollipop.
On board and several hours later, Worthington (who has Medical-3)
happened to notice some strange electronic interference when he walked
past the ship's UHF bread-oven. So he did an all-frequency scan of
himself, and discovered he was packing some kind of low-power Ka-band
(satellite) transmitter in his head. He scanned the rest of the crew:
Standage, Bobby and Bad had similar implants.
Suspicions were beginning to form against Bad, so Worthington
surrepticiously took Standage and Bobby back down to the planet and
they found a back street abortion clinic. Here, Worthington performed
an operation on the back of Bobby's neck and found he had a
spider-like device, the size of a new-born's hand, sewn in, under the
skull, next to vertabra C2. It was Zhodani "liquid technology" and had
a multi-directional Ka-band antenna. Using his best Electronic-1
skill, Worthington gambled that it had no nasty booby-traps like
lethal cocktails of sarin and botulism, nor capsules of hydrofluoric
acid, nor even packages of C4, so he deftly removed it from Bobby. A
freq-scan revealed it was no longer transmitting.
Standage was next, and Worthington removed his implant - they kept it
warm after removal and that seemed to keep it transmitting.
The Worthington bravely asked the back-street clinic director himself,
Dr Blind "palsy" Pew (medical-1), to operate on him. Luckily, Dr Pew
turned out to be more deft than blind, and did a magnificent removal
of Worthington's bug. They kept that one warm too.
In order to shake off the worries from stopping Bobby's transmitter,
they faked Bobby "Blade" Morton's death, claiming he was MIA, and
reported this to the local police. And returned to the space station
without him.
A new pilot, Dobby "Spade" Dorton, of Laberv, would join the Lollipop
a few days later.
Suspecting treachery over having seen their jump capacitor found, they
planned to do the whole thing again and made sure Bad overheard them.
This time a real fridge was shipped up. And sure enough, it was
searched. But before they could confront Bad with claims of treachery,
he vanished
The next day, after much pleading and wheedling, they convinced the
Scout Service to get them another capacitor: "Meet us on Harbour
(planet nearest the sun) in two weeks time."
So, ten days before this date, the Lollipop plotted a trip to the 2nd
planet (Mercury size) to "examine some Ancients sites there". The
Zhodani authorities gave their consent (since the Lollipop can not
jump). Too, a Zhodani scout ship was sent to escort the Lollipop "for
safety reasons". On the planet, the Lollipop flew into a cave "good
archeological remains here" and waited two days, transmitting
regularly to the Zhodani scout ship which orbitted on a one day orbit.
They snuck out in the shadow of the planet, and kept the planet
between them and the scout ship, slowly spirally out and accelerating
to maintain the shadow.
The eventually got out to one light-minute (1.8M km), the limit of
short-range scan, and skulked off to planet 1. Here they met the
Scouts, who haad just jumped in, and they got their capacitor,
installed it, and then successfully jumped out.
Two weeks and two jumps later they arrived inTrifuge. Thank fully, Zhodani free
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