04 - Soviet Reunion

Best Ham

On the space station Genesis Toroid, Faux Hawk is on the run from the police. The psychic tried to get bounty money from the authorities for defeating the pirates of Yo' Momma's Ass, but couldn't resist pinching a Post-It note with a password on it. The desk sergeant dealing with Faux Hawk's claim spotted her in the act, rallied a handful of his colleagues, and sprinted in pursuit as fast as his middle aged paunch would allow. Faux Hawk channels her teleport ability, increasing her lead where she can by blinking out and reappearing way ahead.

The psychic and the cops behind her barrel through the Concourse, where the other members of the AA Team are waiting for Faux Hawk's return in the open-plan coffee shop dominated by a huge, gothic window looking out onto the asteroid belt. Barry the butler-bot does what he can to break up the pursuit by pretending to ask one of the cops what's going on. However, in his haste, Barry trips up the policeman, who is even more enraged when he struggles back to his feet. Barry holds out his wrists for the officer's handcuffs, but slips free before the second cuff can be secured. He bolts after Faux Hawk, the loose handcuff jangling as he runs.

Mazen joins in the subterfuge. He sees Faux Hawk is heading towards the 'dexter' entrance of Best Ham tube station, so, timing his move with the passing pursuit of his comrade, he sets off at a jog towards the 'sinister' entrance of the same station, some several yards in the other direction. The cops assume this is part of whatever crime is being committed, and half of the chasing police posse splits off to catch up with Mazen.

Faux Hawk rushes down the stairs leading to the platform of the tube station. She curses her luck when a digital sign board over the track tells her the next train, which would take her to Mingefosters station, is four minutes away. Instead, she opts to teleport to the platform on the other side of the track. One of the three cops who bluster down the steps into the station in time to see the psychic rematerialise on the other side draws his pistol and fires. His shot is a wild miss, and he hits one of his nearby colleagues in the arm. So set on catching Faux Hawk were the policemen, that even the cop who tried to arrest Barry fails to notice the butler bot, who is standing to the side, hiding behind a broadsheet newspaper he bought from a handy vendor near the station.

The cops chasing Mazen are running at a full sprint, whilst the Cookie Cutter pilot maintains a steady jog. The police catch up with him and, as soon as they catch their breath, demand to know what Mazen's role is in all this. The denim-clad pilot responds in his best innocent-sounding voice that he was just out for a jog. Seeing their colleague nursing a bullet-wound to his arm walk back towards the police station in the company of his very apologetic partner, the cops surrounding Mazen take the space jockey at his word and leave him in peace.

All would be well, but Ripley and Terry are mid-way through their own plan to divert attention from Faux Hawk's escape by escalating matters. When Barry and Mazen got up to tangle with the cops, the remaining two members of the AA Team sauntered from the Concourse to the police station where the chase began. Whilst Ripley files a report of a bomb threat via the station's computer interface, Terry sneaks round the back and finds a hobbyist's collection of bonsai trees and other plants - maybe an off-duty cop's private passion. A security camera above the collection guards the area with a slow, back-and-forth sweep. Terry times his move with precision, placing a small but powerful C4 charge under the bonsai arrangement, and retreats without being seen by the camera. Everyone in the party, even Faux Hawk and Barry down in the tube station, hears the thump of the detonation. Via a group message, the AA Team agrees to meet up several stops down the line from Best Ham, at Gooch Street.

Gooch Street

To confuse the issue somewhat, not only does Gooch Street station have a nearby coffee shop, just like Best Ham, but also another police station, Highland Park. The coffee shop is owned by Cosmos Coffee, where quantity trumps quality in each giant cup. As the party reconvenes at the coffee shop, its members notice Faux Hawk has made a diversion to buy a full-face motorbike helmet, to hide her signature bald head. By the time the wait staff bring the AA team their bucket sized servings of coffee, reports of the pursuit at the Concourse and the subsequent bombing of the Best Ham police station have already made it to Genesis Toroid's media outlets.

The party, nothing if not ambitious, still has its eyes on the bounty for the pirates killed whilst coming to the rescue of the Crispy Wolf. Unlike Barry and Faux Hawk, Mazen and Ripley haven't tried their luck in getting the money yet. Ripley sets up a remote link to the computer on the Cookie Cutter, which is still at dock in the gravity-free environment of the station's hub, whilst mechanics fit upgrades ordered by the AA Team. Ripley gets footage from the Cookie Cutter's onboard cameras, which show both her and Mazen running the ship whilst it blasts Yo' Momma's Ass from afar. Later in the reel, the camera captures the moment where one of the boarding party's foes is blasted out of the pirates' ship's cockpit screen into the pitiless expanse of space, where he suffers a messy death by explosive decompression. Faux Hawk and Barry, now wanted by the police, were members of the Cookie Cutter's boarding party, and so the film from the ship's cameras does not show them. Ripley flashes the footage across to a USB stick and both she and Mazen take it to Highland Park station.

En route to the station, Ripley's phone rings. It's Captain Cass Thorne of the Crispy Wolf. He says the Soviets, based out of the Novgorod capital ship at bay outside of Genesis Toroid, have been sniffing around his freighter. It's pretty obvious they want to get Thorne's cargo, the cryo-suspended war criminal Grigory Krovozhadsky. So far, interplanetary law has kept the commies from muscling their way onto the Crispy Wolf, but they have gone to Genesis Toroid's administrator, Hamish McLean, looking for a warrant. Ripley understands the subtext of what Captain Thorne is saying: when the Soviets don't find Krovozhadsky on his ship, they'll go looking for the Cookie Cutter next. If the reds look hard enough, they'll find the frozen war criminal, as the AA Team have him stashed in their cargo bay. Ripley promises to get back to Thorne soon, but she and Mazen want to get the pirates' bounty sorted first.

Whereas the station from which Faux Hawk fled was noisy, sweaty and caffeine-fueled, Highland Park is clean-lined, spacious and calm. At least, the reception area gives that impression. Mazen launches into an innuendo-ridden account of the AA Team's assault on Yo' Momma's Ass to the officer at the desk. It takes a moment for the poor copper to realise the pilot is not talking about his mother's backside in literal terms and agrees to survey the material on Ripley's USB stick. Satisfied, the policeman sends the two up several floors via a fancy lift to DCI Olyffia Tremen, to collect the reward. The DCI's office area is one of many in a large expanse of glass partitions and purposeful-looking people wearing suits and official badges. Tremen greets Ripley and Mazen, peering up from the reports on her computer over the top of her half-round glasses. She's ready to hand over the 40 credit bounty on the pirates' heads but wants to know why there's been two attempts to claim this bounty today already. She also wants to know why one of the claimants - a bald-headed woman - fled the police station where she reported the defeat of the Yo' Momma's Ass crew moments before a bomb exploded at that station. Mazen and Ripley counter that she, the bald-headed woman, could have been a stray member of the pirates' gang who, knowing her comrades had been killed, requested the bounty before the pirates' foes could stake a claim. DCI Tremen buys the argument, signs over the bounty, but wants to see both Mazen and Ripley's identification in the none too distant future.

Central Hub

40 credits the better, the AA Team takes a lift along one of the two shafts connecting the main ring of Genesis Toroid to its low-gravity hub, where interplanetary ships are docked and maintained. The mechanics the crew commissioned to make upgrades to the Cookie Cutter are hard at work on the ship, sparks reflecting in the black visors of their welding masks. However, the team are here to meet the captain of the Crispy Wolf, Cass Thorne.

That's to say, most of the team is here for the meeting. Faux Hawk notices one of the mechanics at the rival mechanics firm, Rocket Salad, has an excellent set of dreadlocks. Seeing an opportunity to improve her motorbike helmet disguise, the psychic braves the ever-present fug of marijuana smoke surrounding the repair shop and makes the stoned grease monkey a deal. Faux Hawk offers a laser knife designed to toast bread as it cuts, in return for the mechanic's dreads. The grease monkey, a native of the Earth city of Plymouth, agrees in a broad west-country accent. Faux Hawk stuffs the dreads under the helmet with the ends poking out so that anyone searching for the bald-headed woman in the news reports will, with a bit of luck, overlook her.

By the time the psychic rejoins her friends, the rest of the AA Team have convinced Cass Thorne to try to convince the authorities that the Crispy Wolf has been infected by some kind of disease and to request a quarantine, before the Soviets can get on board. The party goes through the corridors and rooms inside the Crispy Wolf, scattering a variety of spices and hoping the dusting looks like contagious spores. Ripley comes up with a convincing-sounding name for the infection: savouritic lice. Cass Thorne makes the call to station administrator McLean. When he puts his phone down, he gives the AA Team a nervous smile and a thumbs-up. The station official bought into the ruse.