Session 01 - The Concourse
On Genesis Toroid (sometimes colloquially known as "The Steering Wheel”) one of the space stations that acts as a hub between the mineral-rich asteroid belt and the hungry markets back on Earth, things are about to get ugly.
A cultist, regurgitating well-known dogmatic tropes, is being observed by the Guardian reporter, Domingo Flores. Although there's nothing new about this particular zealot's rant, Flores' research into the "Enders'" beliefs have lured him to this remote and crime-fraught outpost.
A rival cultist, similarly dressed in the full length, dark robes that is common to all such adherents draws a gun, fires and kills the other, citing some obscure scriptural disagreement.
Travellers and residents flee from the Concourse, amongst them Janus Alkers, a dealer in corporate intelligence who was waiting for the arrival of the Soviet ship Novgorod, to complete her latest deal. Getting to safety, she's the first to recover her presence of mind and call the police.
Whilst the second cultist fumbles as he reloads his gun, the engineer, Kenny Bourbon, whose feet were replaced by wheels following a workplace accident, successfully confuses the zealot by using a telescopic pole from relative safety. Hundo McCleary, an explorer even more badly mauled and thus further prosthetically augmented, takes a more direct approach. He renders the cultist harmless with a blast from his Taser.
The police arrive and cordon off the crime scene. The stunned religious maniac is carted away. Domingo Flores has captured the whole event on video, packages the report and transmits it to the Guardian offices on Earth. After the blood has been cleaned away and albeit muted commerce returns to the Concourse, Janus awaits the arrival of her Soviet contact, Boris Goncharov.
The communist agent makes his usual wordless ploy, taking a seat at a neighbouring table, setting Janus up to switch two identical briefcases: one hers and one his. Thus, she provides the Soviets with the intelligence they want and they provide her with her next valuable assignment.
Unbeknownst to Janus, Domingo has been observing the exchange from a nearby table. Chance has brought the two to the same coffee outlet again, but Domingo's finely-tuned journalistic senses pinged into action the minute Goncharov appeared onto the scene.
Domingo tails Janus as she makes her way back to her quarters to read the contents of the Soviets' micro SD card. She pauses near a slushy counter to off-load the now redundant briefcase with professional nonchalance. As luck would have it, Kenny Bourbon and Hondo McCleary have bumped into each other again here and are about to swap tales of old injuries and the wonderful world of prosthesis over a slushy.
However, a gang of ne’er-do-wells going by the badly thought-out name of The Spunks barges in, demanding to be served before Kenny. The slushy seller smells trouble, pulls the concertinaing security lattice shut over the sales window and makes a hasty retreat.
Tempers flare between Kenny and The Spunks. Hondo defuses the situation by wrenching open the security lattice, which doesn't put up much of a fight, and helping himself, Kenny and The Spunks to a round of sugary, slushy goodness.
This endears Hundo to the gang, but the hoodlums cannot resist one last, barbed dig at Kenny. He snaps, grabs his hammer, pirouettes on his feet-wheels and slays three of The Spunks in a glorious flourish of violence. Hondo draws his trusty Taser, stunning another ganger. The remaining Spunk flees in terror.
Amid the chaos, Janus keeps focused on her evolving mission and slips away to read the SD card in the quiet of her quarters. The Soviets suspect one of the companies exploiting the asteroids has a nuclear weapon on one of its ships. The asteroid rush is lawless and often bloody, but proof of the ante being upped with nukes would be a propaganda coup for a regime hoping to discredit capitalism.
Whilst Janus digests the details of the assignment, the law is on the heels - or the wheels - of the man responsible for the slushy hammer killings. Kenny considers going to ground and hiding, but realises his leg-augmentations will make disguise very hard to pull off. Hoping that CCTV footage of the slushy outlet will vindicate him, he hands himself into the police. Sure enough, the cameras recorded the whole bloody showdown with The Spunks. As witnesses, Hondo, Janus and Domingo all receive visits from the police, who request that they give statements at the nearby station.