05 - Do the crime

Johan Barleycorn

On Genesis Toroid, the AA Team are still waiting for the mechanic outfit, Rocket Salad, to finish the upgrades to the party's ship, the Cookie Cutter. Rather than waste time kicking its collective heels, the crew decides to chase up a lead. During a vid link to a nearby asteroid, Colin Decker, the party's reliable fixer said the AA Team could do worse than track down the Lock Syndicate. This criminal organisation is bound to be able to help the party with the two gadgets it recovered from the pirates attacking the space freighter the Crispy Wolf: one being a universal docking umbilical override and the other a nav-comm jammer made by the Soviets. Interplanetary treaties ban the use of both items, so the party will need to make a deal with the underworld to get the gadgets working on its terms.

The AA Team follow Decker's tip to a seedy section of the toroid's outer ring. The gravity in this section is good enough to be liveable, but the slum-like conditions, fairy lights strung between close-packed shops and ever-present steam all set the stage for an encounter with the Lock Syndicate.

The party members are surprised to be invited in when its members introduce themselves via the intercom next to a sturdy door in a side alley. The door swooshes open and a draft of air pushes a set of wind-chimes a-tingle in the gloomy space inside. Terry sneers at the obstruction, yanks it from the ceiling, and hurls it to the floor. A rasping voice complains from further within, to which the party responds by filing into the room beyond the doorway.

It's dark and there are beads and bits of ceramic covering the floor, which crunch underfoot. A shaven-headed, suited and booted goon eyes the party from a dim-lit bar. Terry makes straight for the bar and orders a pint - with a slice of lemon. However, the raspy voice belongs to a man sat behind a desk, in almost complete shadow. As their eyes adjust to the gloom, the AA team sees the man's face is withered by age and some sort of awful accident to the colour of dried leather. Both eye sockets are empty and have healed over.

If the owner of the wrecked face is annoyed about the wind-chimes, he doesn't show it. He introduces himself as Johan Barleycorn and asks the party's business. Mazen answers straight out, asking Barleycorn if he can help the party get the two gadgets up and running. Barleycorn smiles and replies he'd be glad to help - as long as the party can do something in return for him.

Interplanetary shipping firms have been deploying unmanned cargo vessels to ship goods to and from Genesis Toroid more and more in recent times. Barleycorn says this is bad for business, because he cannot bribe or threaten a crew-less ship. The crook wants the party to discredit AI piloting by attacking an unmanned cargo ship and staging an accident. Barleycorn doesn't care which ship gets attacked, and even waives any claim to any cargo found on board. The party are welcome to it. What the criminal wants is some sort of accident, maybe have the cargo ship crash into the station itself - not near his part of it, of course!

Barleycorn and the party strike a deal - the job is on. Terry attempts to annoy the goon at the bar - Quality is the name Barleycorn gives him - by ordering another pint. However, this time he asks for a half with lemon, another without.

The Pretty Bus

Whilst the mechs of Rocket Salad are putting the finishing touches on the mods for the Cookie Cutter, the AA Team are going to need a new ride in order to get amongst the stream of cargo vessels flowing in both directions from the station's entrance, at its hub. Genesis Toroid houses several shuttle rental services, however. After a few calls, the party has chartered a crate which, judging from its hot pink shell, transparent floor and

☆♡☆Girls on Tour!!! ☆♡☆

stickers, was a hen night limo in another life. The AA Team tools up with everything it will need for a space-faring adventure outside the relative safety of the space station. The party gets clearance from traffic control for their hire ship, which its members dub The Pretty Bus, and launches into the great, black yonder.

The shipping lane is busy with cargo vessels and the party chooses a promising-looking target far enough from Genesis Toroid's scanners to make its play without detection. Ripley uses her IT skills to hack past the gaudy, party-themed interface that greets her when she fires up the console aboard the Pretty Bus. In a moment, she's swimming in lines of code and accesses the Pretty Bus' core systems. Ripley exploits these to scan the prey vessel and determines it is AI-only. No human crew. It does have a name, however: the Van Buren. Ripley gets the cargo manifest of the Van Buren open and sees the freighter is carrying spices to Genesis Toroid.

Ripley hacks further into the Van Buren's systems and finds a way to open the ship's cargo bay doors, winning access for an AA Team boarding party. There's a collective groan of disappointment from the party, though, when it sees several cargo containers blown out of the airlock into space, when the opening door releases the air inside.

Mazen is already suiting up for the space walk across to the target ship whilst Terry secures a reliable cable via a carabiner clip to the luggage rack in the passenger area of the Pretty Bus. Ripley flies as close as she can to the Van Buren and the boarding party, Mazen and Terry, makes the hair-raising leap across, to fix the far end of the cable to a stable point inside the Van Buren.

The unfamiliar cargo bay is black, even in the lights cast by the boarding party's space helmets. The only illumination in the Van Buren comes from the strips of red LEDs which follow the ship's simple, practical lines. Cargo crates similar to those lost to space when the door opened are secured with clamps along the walls. Mazen spots a touch-screen terminal set into the wall and taps it with his gloved hand. The screen lights up with a tasteful sepia glow and issues a prompt for a username and password. Despite the inconvenience of the visor protecting his face, Mazen can see where grubby hands have typed on the virtual keyboard below the login prompt and deduces what he needs to enter. Username: dickhead, password: 1234.

Having logged into the Van Buren using its own systems, Mazen gets access to more features than Ripley can hack into from her remote terminal on the Pretty Bus. He gets into the freighter's security settings, opting to turn off everything related to them. Via a different sub-menu, he soon has the clamps on the remaining cargo crates open, as well.

There's a four-bay storage area beyond the cargo area, each bay with its own door. With the security system turned off - at least if the terminal is to be believed - Mazen and Terry push their luck and try one of the doors. The bay is empty except for a large crate, bulkier in size than those used to store cargo and with a technical readout on the side. Above the readout the word

METALHEAD

is stamped into the casing in aggressive, no-nonsense letters. Mazen prizes the crate open. Inside, dormant, is a black, angular construction, with jointed plates, as if it could expand and fold out into something mobile and dangerous. After a few moments making sure the thing won't jump out at him, Mazen returns to the cargo hold to help his comrades load some of the most choice cargo crates onto the line back to the Pretty Bus. The AA Team has a fine haul: saffron and nutmeg amongst other spices, with a handsome market value. Mazen adds the Metalhead crate with the sleeping device inside it. He pries open a crate from one of the other bays and takes its inhabitant as well. Two such gadgets, with the means to store and charge them, could be useful and valuable in themselves.

Barry the butler bot and Faux Hawk, both of whom stayed on the Pretty Bus when Terry and Mazen went across, receive the goods after the boarding party secure the spice containers to the cable slung between the two ships and whizz them across. After the party stashes as much spice as it can in the passenger area of their hire ship, it sends a final command via the link to the Van Buren set up by Ripley. The AA Team tweaks the freighter's docking calibration, so that it perceives Genesis Toroid several kilometres beyond its actual location in space. The party huddles around the Pretty Bus' console and watch as the Van Buren resumes its journey. Will the station's defensive lasers destroy the ship when the shipping authorities notice something is amiss? Will the freighter miss the station altogether?

The answer is neither! The freighter, dwarfed by the space station in the ship's final moments, slams into the hub, not far from the entrance of the docking bay. The Van Buren shatters on impact, but the station is unharmed. What damage has been done to the reputation of AI piloting, however?