Session 06 - Order of the Elemental Trinity

The five, comprised of Janus Alkers, Kenny Bourbon, Owen Dunda, Domingo Flores and Hundo McCleary, have recovered as many potted emberfern plants as they can carry from the ghost ship The Dawkins. The plants are for Olivia Sage, the leader of the secretive sect whose members have metaphysical powers over vegetation. The five have a vested interest in sweetening relations between Sage and sects with different, but no less mystical powers, not least because this could be a serious scoop for Domingo’s career as a journalist.

AgriHub Central is a high-tech market-garden and provider of the Genesis Toroid’s fresh food and some of its medicines. It’s also the front behind which Sage hides her group’s activities. The quintet have shown Sage evidence that the proof she has seen of other sects’ bad faith schemes is false and the result of cutting edge deep-fakes. When the five return from The Dawkins with the plants she needs, she agrees to their offer of a meeting with Forrest Zerrick. He is the prophet-leader of the air-bending cult with which the five are already friendly and the figure-head around which other, recently rival, cults are beginning to flock.

Sage will host the meeting with Zerrick at AgriHub Central’s arboretum, where she feels safest. She will also permit Scott ‘Ignatius’ Urban, the Geordie leader of a fire-channelling cult to come. Janus, in her element as a negotiator, even persuades Sage to allow Zerrick to bring a small security entourage as well.

However, back at Zerrick’s base on the less well-to-do Skid Rim, the serene air-cultist waves away the need for backup. He’s delighted by the five’s work and invites them to the meeting not as bodyguards, but because he now values their advice and opinions.

The sight of Olivia Sage, Forrest Zerrick and Ignatius sat around a round table in the arboretum would have been unimaginable a few days ago, but here they are. The last of Sage’s doubts need to be expelled and so she presents an email, supposedly from Ignatius, warning Sage of a herbicidal attack on AgriHub Central by Zerrick’s followers. Ignatius ridicules the email, pointing out several missuses of Geordie slang. Domingo frowns: he had suspected AI to be behind the deep-fakes, but bleeding-edge tech would not have made errors like that.

Either way, the three sect leaders put aside their remaining differences with relief and join hands in some sort of communal meditation. This gives the quintet time to work out what to tackle next. Janus is keen to chase up the individual behind the name ‘Telkratzer’, which was mentioned in the message from the Soviets and also penned in above the polar bears’ enclosures, on The Dawkins. If nothing else, this would get the communists off her back for a while. Ran Lambert, who guided the five onto, and back from, The Dawkins from his AgriHub Central computer terminal, chimes in: Telkratzer must be the station’s chief medical officer, Cory Telkratzer, who has his practice on the same layer and not far from the arboretum.

Janus begins hatching a plan. She finds out from Ran that The Dawkins is owned by Scientific Nationale and that Telkratzer is licensed to bring any type of animal onto Genesis Toroid, not just polar bears. Janus could pass herself off as a loss adjuster, calculating a potential insurance payment to Telkratzer on behalf of Scientific Nationale, for the loss of the polar bears. This way she could win the doctor’s trust and get him to spill at least enough beans to keep the Russians happy.

As the five work out the final details of Janus’ plot, the three sect leaders emerge from their mutual trance. Ignatius announces, in his broad Newcastle tones, “That’s it, then. We’re going to Mars.” It turns out that he, Zerrick and Sage discussed much, somehow mentally linked to one another via their otherworldly powers. Apparently, from here on the joined cults will go by the name of Order of the Elemental Trinity. Their first order of business is to reach Mars and claim the alien monolith. Explorers discovered the monolith around the same time as supernatural powers were first reported across all outposts of humanity in the solar system. Naturally, The Order will need a ship. Ran suggests The Dawkins, which, despite its extensive damage, is still technically space-worthy. It’ll need supplies and fuel, however. Getting them could be easier said than done, as The Order’s leaders, particularly Olivia sage, are still wary of putting themselves in the public eye, or leaving a digital paper-trail of the sort that could be exploited.

If The Order expect more help from Janus, Kenny, Owen, Domingo and Hundo, it will have to wait, for now. Janus and Kenny put on their most business-like clothing and make for Dr. Telkratzer’s surgery, putting into action the ‘loss adjuster’ subterfuge. Janus tries out the ruse first on Telkratzer’s receptionist. Convinced, the secretary tells both Janus and Kenny to go right on through to the doctor himself.

Janus recognises Telkratzer as soon as she lays eyes on him. He was coordinating the heavy-handed seizure of the drug-addled revellers at the back of Club Anti-Matter, when the five went to ask the help of the tech-genius Giselle Callista. Janus does not let her winning smile waver for a second, though, and dangles the bait of financial compensation for the lost polar bears as planned. Janus teases as much information out of the American doctor as she can, although she and Kenny notice Telkratzer becoming wary as his mouth takes on a mind of its own, spilling more than he would like. He admits that, yes, the polar bears were for his work and that he has facilities for keeping live animals right here, in this very surgery.

Kenny and Janus wrap up the meeting and contact the others. The quintet jury-rig a surveillance device out of day-to-day digital gear and tuck it in a discrete spot. The remote set-up shows the receptionist leaving the office at the end of her working day (in as much as Genesis Toroid experiences days), with Telkratzer himself heading out an hour or so later.

Janus, now with no need for the loss-adjuster pretence, gets to work on the front door of the surgery. It’s a good, old-fashioned mortice lock that takes an actual, physical key. No electronic wizardry to contend with. Janus is adept at dealing with both types of lock and has the door open in a few moments. The secrets Telkratzer is hiding are at the group’s mercy.