06 - The spice must flow

The members of the AA Team rejoice on their gaudy, pink hire ship, The Pretty Bus, after their plan to rob an AI-piloted freighter, The Van Buren, and crash it into Genesis Toroid goes as well as could be hoped. There's very little room amongst the crates of spice and the charging dock for the dormant but intimidating Metalhead units the away team took from the Van Buren. The saffron and nutmeg could fetch a handsome price, assuming the AA Team can find a way to fence them without the Genesis Toroid authorities tracking them.

The crew decides their fixer, Colin Decker, is the man to give them advice. He's still on the asteroid, Olympus Mons, where the party left him, after its members used their insurance money to buy the Cookie Cutter. The asteroid is well within the flight range offered by the paltry fuel tanks aboard The Pretty Bus. Leaving The Pretty Bus docked at Olympus Mons' small, single terminal, the AA Team finds Decker in the bar Mag-A-Loft. He doesn't have anyone in mind to fence the spices just now, but he knows the ship dealer Boris, owner of Boris' Star-Lot, will stash black market loot, for the right price.

Boris, who sold the AA Team the Cookie Cutter, has a number of unsellable heaps of junk tucked in the shadows cast by far more promising space craft. He lets the party store their stolen spice crates in the hold of a dust-gathering, ugly junker after agreeing a daily storage fee.

With the hot goods offloaded for now, the AA Team pilots The Pretty Bus back to its owners on Genesis Toroid, handing back the keys well before the hire period runs out. Screens showing the latest news are dotted around the busy, zero-G environment of the space station's hub. The news outlets are showing the impact of the Van Buren against the superstructure of Genesis Toroid, which was captured from multiple angles. The stock market value of Avalanche AI, the firm which provides the technology piloting the AI freighters, has nose-dived. Meanwhile, firms which provide good, old-fashioned human crews, such as Eddie Stobbart, are enjoying an upward spike in value. Word travels fast in the world of finance.

Faux Hawk notices there is less activity at the mechanics' shop, Rocket Salad. When the party passed by to collect The Pretty Bus before it attacked the freighter, the yard around the AA Team's ship, the Cookie Cutter, was alive with noisy, industrial activity. The vessel is still there, however, and the mechanic at the reception desk tells Faux Hawk that the work on the Cookie Cutter is finished. He hands her the keys and tells her how to use the new features installed on the ship, including its new shuttle.

Once Faux Hawk has told her crew mates the good news, the AA Team heads up to the outer ring of the station, whose spin relative to the hub provides its inhabitants with something approaching acceptable gravity. The crew shoulders their way through the slum district leading to the lair of the blind crime syndicate leader, Johan Barleycorn. Via the intercom, Terry and Barleycorn exchange insults until cooler heads persuade the criminal to let them in.

Barleycorn is delighted with the staged crash of the Van Buren and makes good on his half of the deal, explaining how the party can use the remote docking umbilical controller the AA Team took from the pirate ship, Yo' Momma's Ass. The crew still doesn't know how to use the navcomm jammer, though, and asks Barleycorn what he wants in return for a primer on how to use the second device. The crime boss pauses, then asks what the AA Team found aboard the Van Buren. The crew tell him straight: crates of spices, nutmeg and saffron in particular. Barleycorn offers to take the spices off the AA Team's hands in return for a tutorial which will bring them up to speed on the nav-jammer and the party accepts.

The party makes its way back to the hub to take the Cookie Cutter to the asteroid, get the spices back from Boris, and fly them to the rendezvous point set up by Barleycorn away from the station. En route, it gets a call from Captain Cass Thorne, of the Crispy Wolf. His is the freighter the party rescued after the pirates on Yo' Momma's Ass attacked it. Thorne has been in contact with the Crispy Wolf's parent company, Eddie Stobbart. The company agreed to pay him, Thorne, and his crew extra money to complete its mission to Neptune Prospect. However, it refused Thorne's request for extra funds to pay the AA Team to accompany his ship as extra security. Thorne still wants the AA Team after it proved itself against the pirates. During the call with the crew, Thorne suggests that their convoy should fly via Jupiter's moon, Callisto, where a research ship, the Atwood, is in orbit. The Atwood is a source of royal jelly, a much sought-after commodity milked from DNA-engineered social insects. Thorne could make more than enough money from a delivery of royal jelly to Neptune Prospect to pay the AA Team for the extra security provided during the journey.

The crew accepts this offer, too, and soon both ships have the Atwood on their scanners, sure enough in orbit around Callisto. However, the lab and habitation modules, which rotate around the ship's main fuselage to provide gravity for its personnel, much like Genesis Toroid's outer ring, are silent and still.

Captain Thorne relays his concerns via a call from his freighter: this is not a good sign.