Flyover Country: Chapter 6

"Exodus" by Sparth

 

Continued, incredibly belatedly, from Chapter 5. It's a good thing our campaign moves slowly, because I am way behind on this! Thank goodness for my semi-decent note taking.

* * *

Having extorted a thousand credits from poor bewildered Orlando Ilunga and decided not to throw him to the Najeeb-syndicate wolves, at least for the time being, the crew hastily fills Quora's hold with cargo (more on that later), blasts off from Freeport, and heads out of the Betharan system for the first time ever. Transit downtime means opportunities to study the data they pulled from the terraforming facility (Mustang identifies all the sites on Morrow climatically likely to grow delicious truffles), the culinary arts (Sarai potters around in the galley), and each other (we learn that Roman has siblings; we learn absolutely nothing else about them or him). Orlando they leave stewing in his bunk (there are six on the ship and BQ has opted to eschew the use of one, preferring to sleep in the pilot's seat).

Quora arrives in Marquez, the outermost system in the Commonwealth of Free Worlds, around midday on the 11th. An encrypted message from Leila Pak awaits the crew. She explains the terms of their ship lease, their working relationship with ValuDyne, their company's merchant license (including that they're not bonded for travel outside of hazard level-0 and level-1 regions, as defined by the Commonwealth Ministry of Public Safety), and her expectations regarding the crew's availability for intelligence-gathering tasks; she also directs them to her office in the city of Satu Mare on the planet Rustam. Her tone is chipper, and she's clearly excited about the opportunity to meet the crew in person (especially Mustang). She's arranged transit and landing permits and a berth in Satu Mare.

Even with all their figurative paperwork sorted out by IRIS, the process of entering the Commonwealth and going through customs is time-consuming; traffic is heavy, and several ships are in the queue ahead of them. They are routed to Sarkar Station, where a punctilious customs officer logs the ship's registration, business, flight plan, crew and passengers, and cargo (confirmed with a scan). As they wend their way through Commonwealth bureaucracy, news arrives from Betharan with the next several ships to drill into Marquez: Gang warfare in the Collines, a scandal in the Najeeb organization, a territorial push by the Bautistas, and so forth. Nothing about the PCs, Manny, or Orlando, at least not by name.

Once they're clear of Sarkar, with their flight path down to Satu Mare preapproved thanks to Leila, things speed up, and by the afternoon of the 12th, they've made planetfall. More news—of the latest turns in the emerging Penrose Crisis—reaches them shortly before they set down.

* * *

Together with Gombad, Marjan, and Opis, Rustam is one of the four signatory worlds of the Commonwealth Charter. It's the most Earth-like of the four, but that it's saying much; it isn't nearly as lush as Morrow. Rustam's seasons are harsh, water is scarce away from the shallow equatorial seas, and agriculture is a challenge. Large stretches of the planet are covered in steppe grasses rooted shallowly in weak soil; elsewhere, bare desert prevails.

Still, the air is breathable and, with irrigation, crops can be grown throughout the lower latitudes. Consequently, and in stark contrast to the other three major Commonwealth worlds, Rustam's population is widely dispersed; whereas nearly all of the population of Gombad, Marjan, and Opis is concentrated in a handful of densely populated urban areas, and the largest settlement on each is home to tens of millions, Rustam has hundreds of settlements, the largest of which are home to only a few million people each. Being less dependent on the state for the most basic of necessities has given rise to an independent, somewhat recalcitrant character among the Rustamese people.

Whereas Gombad, Marjan, and Opis bring the Commonwealth material advantages, particularly production capacity (food and medical technology; starships and astronautic equipment; and arms, tools, and consumer goods, respectively), Rustam's contributions have always been less tangible. The planet is a center of academic and cultural power, home to the Commonwealth's finest universities and some of its most popular entertainers. Tradition holds that, in the days before the Scream, Rustam was the administrative capital of the fledgling Sector.

Animal husbandry is better established here than plant agriculture. The Rustamese taste for red meat is seen as something of a cultural oddity on the other Commonwealth worlds (some Marjanis do raise goats and sheep, but eat their meat sparingly). Some wheat is cultivated, as are grapes; bread is another Rustamese peculiarity, but wine is a significant export.

* * *

The crew's first order of business in Satu Mare is to meet Leila, receive codebooks and other spycraft materials (encryption keys, manuals, etc.) from her, and get briefed on several situations IRIS would appreciate a low-profile look into:

• The Rustamese livestock company Enderlein & Sons has long been rumored to be hiding a huge hoard of pretech from the authorities. Probably baseless, says Leila, but do put some feelers out while you're planetside, see if anybody bites on the wares you're offering. Could be a straw buyer for Enderlein, or somebody who has or can establish a connection to Enderlein's pretech operations, if they exist.
• Pretech cultists are always a nuisance on Marjan, but they mostly confine their activities to scrabbling around in the dirt planetside. There seems to have been some infiltration of the workforce at the Marjani Arsenal's orbital works lately; could be nothing, could be they're making some kind of move. Leila wants them to put out feelers there too, and make it known that they'd be interested in buying as well as selling (ship parts, weapons).
• Rustamese separatists are plotting to bomb government offices at Port Kyungu. Leila doesn't need the crew to do anything about it, just a heads up.
• Foxglove Pharmaceuticals is a Gombad-based company owned by Perez-Enciso Capital Management (PECM). There are reports that they're using a secret lab on the PECM-owned station above Morrow, Lopez Ring, to conduct illegal experiments. The first of the aforementioned cargoes the crew took on in Freeport are plants grown on Morrow that provide raw materials for drugmaking (daffodils, poppies, borage, echium, etc.). Leila asks the crew to shop the drug components around, see if anybody from Foxglove bites and whether they can make any kind of connections to supply their operations on Lopez on their way back to Betharan later.

There are protests going on all over Satu Mare; Leila explains that there are always protests going on somewhere in pretty much any Rustamese city—the Rustamese love protesting, marching, going on strike, occasionally rioting—but this is an unusually intense period. There's a “Day of Indignation”: protests against the anticipated annexation of Morrow, against the draft, in favor of at least two different separatist movements, against the Orthodox Church, against PECM, and related to some relatively minor local issues, like working conditions at local universities. Mostly a unified expression of displeasure with the Commonwealth and other institutions, but there are some major fault lines among the protestors. Nothing to worry about, just be aware and stay alert.

When it's the PCs' turn to ask Leila questions, BQ pipes up. He knows of a trafficker in antiquities who operates from Rustam, somebody who might be able to give the crew a lead toward alien ruins or interesting artifacts—a fellow by the name of Nobu Stephanidis. Can Leila direct them to him?

She can. He's 16 hours away by high-speed rail, though, in the city of Porto Seguro; if the crew wants to fly rather than take a train, a similar amount of time or longer will be taken up by filing flight plans, securing landing permits, and whatnot. (They'll take the train.)

At this point, the crew splits up, with Sarai leading one group to arrange some commodity transactions (including a successful sale of those drug precursors they bought on Morrow—they make a tidy 10k credit profit—and the purchase of some ludicrously expensive wine, a bottle of which Batias promptly steals) while Roman and the others take the tram out to Satu Mare National University of Engineering (SMNU). Among the commodity brokers, Sarai connects with a man by the name of Danus Ragar, who might be able to find them a job shipping something to Lopez Ring on their return to Morrow. Roman, meanwhile, has an in at SMNU with Dr. Abdul Lei, a geoengineering professor who's able to offer them some potential leads on selling their pretech stuff and their terraforming data.

SMNU isn't the only institute of higher education in Satu Mare, though, and the whole crew soon reconvenes at another: Philip Asuni College of Science and Technology (PACST). Here, Roman is on a personal vendetta against a scientific rival (i.e., he wants to yell at somebody who wrote a journal article he thinks was stupid), but Sarai is still wheeling and dealing.

* * *

The second item the crew loaded in Freeport? A hundred pallets of Hoop Cola.

See, Sarai (whose player took the Henchkeeper focus) is always on the lookout for lost souls and hard-luck cases she might bring into her orbit. She met Hoop Barrett in a karaoke bar in Freeport; he was drinking away his sorrows after the business venture he poured his heart, soul, and life's savings into—the eponymous Hoop Cola, a carbonated beverage flavored with gentian root extract—was ruined when a larger competitor flooded the market with a cheaper alternative. Sarai is also always on the lookout for business deals, of course, and the opportunity to score a whole warehouse full of high-quality knockoff Moxie was too good for her to pass up.

And now it's time for that wise investment to pay off. Gentian-root soft drinks may be old hat on Morrow, but on Rustam? An exotic luxury import. The crew laid the groundwork for Hoop Cola's conquest of the Commonwealth at the Satu Mare spaceport, luring several security guards into an impromptu sharpshooting competition with Mustang, passing out free Hoop Colas to the spectators and awarding a case of the stuff to the runner-up and a whole pallet to the winner. The town is abuzz.

Now Sarai switches tacks. An exotic luxury import? Why not a performance-enhancing sports drink? While Roman is berating poor Dr. Isabel Johar in the biochemistry department, Sarai buttonholes PACST's athletic director and spins some nonsense about the curative properties of gentian root and Hoop Cola's proprietary blend of high-quality electrolytes. She secures a contract: 150 credits per one-ton pallet for the entire cargo, with a standing resupply contract at 125 per ton. Now she just needs a local liaison. She recruits another lost soul—Jenny Beck, an unhappy PACST engineering student on the verge of dropping out—and puts her to work as Hoop Cola's Satu Mare brand rep.

* * *

Next, it's off to Porto Seguro. After snoozing on the train while the dun plains of Rustam whip by outside, the crew splits up again. Sarai goes shopping for trade goods. Roman, troubled by a guilty conscience over the death of Donald Nunes, mulls over the possibility of establishing a Donald Nunes Memorial Track and Field Scholarship via their new contacts at PACST, and in the meanwhile decides to take Orlando under his wing and teach their not-quite-a-prisoner the rudiments of university-level chemistry.

Batias and Krissa follow their unerring instinct for trouble to a gun shop where, in a dark back room, the proprietor sells Batias a black-market thermal pistol, which Batias immediately uses to menace said shopkeeper. They wander around outside looking for food, try taking combat stims for fun (a half-dose each), smash the empty bottle of ludicrously expensive wine Batias has been toting around all day, and get scolded by a couple of public security officers, who issue each of them a 10-credit citation for littering and public nuisance. Batias vows never to pay.

Mustang and BQ head off to meet Nobu, who turns out to be a gruff and very cagey old man who's loath to give up any information without a quid pro quo. He does, however, have some work the crew might do to get in his good graces, if they happen to be on their way to Opis…