Haphazard Flying

During inter-galactic travel, the Swan Song is thrown off course and the crew must be put into an induced coma to have any hope of survival

Short Summary
It is June 13, 3200. The crew’s current mission is to find Dr. Omar Ibn Sa’id and get paid for bringing him to the research station Al’Farabi on the planet Subhadra.

The crew leaves the Madari Syndicate station and find Dr. Sa'id climbing a tower and installing some parts onto it. Piani decides to ram the tower with the Swan Song which causes Dr. Sa'id to fall 60 feet down onto the ground which breaks many bones in his body and knocks him unconscious. Mr. Sicarian carries the doctor onto the Swan Song as he mumbles things like 'the queen' and 'the hive song' and 'we just have to ask for help.' Mr. Sicarian sets the doctor on a table and the crew finds cybernetic implants situated all along his spine. The crew then flies the Swan Song over to the Madari Syndicate base in order to gather fuel. They arrive, kill Vincent who is still there, refuel the ship, and leave Subhadra. The crew has some problems getting to Elouahabu in the Tovar System and everyone has to be put into an induced coma except for Higgs who jumps around without any pants on listening to 'Don't Rock The Jukebox' by Allen Jackson. Higgins eventually becomes unconscious himself and wakes up to a bright light pointed on him and someone leaning over him telling him to be calm. He passes out again. He regains consciousness and a doctor tells him that the rest of his crew is unconscious and they are doing everything that they can to care for them, but their ship is in pretty bad shape. Viktor gains consciousness in a small concrete room. After a couple minutes, a man dressed in a camo outfit comes in and starts beating Viktor with a baton until he becomes unconscious again. Higgins gains consciousness again and this time sees a man in a suit who tells him that having an unbreaked AI is a serious crime and that he is lucky that they were able to contain it. The man shows Higgins a picture of Odette Rainier and Higgins tells the man that Odette was the person who installed the AI onto the ship. Piani wakes up in a wheelchair with medicine being administered to her through an IV. A woman comes into her room and starts to ask her about the other crew members. Piani's blood starts to rise and as a result, more medicine is administered to her and the lady tells her that she will talk to Piani once she has calmed down, and leaves. Mr. Sicarian wakes up and meets the same man that Higgins had met before. The man tells Mr. Sicarian that he can either convince Piani to unlock their ship and allow them to take the AI, or that he can be handed over to the Pfotenhauer Society never to be seen again. Viktor gains consciousness and gets taken into a fowl-smelling room containing the embalmed Dr. Sa'id.

Detailed Summary
The date is June 13, 3200. The current mission is to find Dr. Omar Ibn Sa'id and get paid for bringing him to the research station Al'Farabi on the planet Subhadra.

The crew is currently outside of the Madari Syndicate base where they had just previously killed the Madari Syndicate member Helena. The crew walks to Al'Farabi where the Swan Song is parked and they notice that the comm tower is newly lit up and has some machine parts recently added to it. The crew also spots a Dr Sa'id currently 60 feet up the tower and climbing higher. From the ground, Mr Sicarian calls up to Dr Sa'id to come down. However; not wanting to wait, Piani Pic and Viktor Kovacs get into the Swan Song and decide to give Dr. Sa’id a little push. After some spinning and a couple of bumps and thuds, Dr. Sa’id falls to the ground below, breaking both of his legs and knocking him unconscious. Piani connects to the comms tower to see what modifications Dr. Sa’id has made to it. An interface comes up showing the Richardson Scientific and Anaximander University logos pairing up under some sort of a joint project. After a brief talk about ethics, Pi hacks into the tower and Piani sees an executable option that reads, ‘Biological Hardware Initiate’.

While being carried to the medical bay, Dr. Sa’id goes in and out of consciousness mumbling things like ‘the queen’ and ‘the hive song’ and ‘we just have to ask for help’. Once in the med-bay, Viktor medicines the doctor and for the first time, the crew sees cybernetic implants situated all along Dr. Sa’id’s spine. The crew then flies the Swan Song over to the Madari Syndicate base to get fuel so that they can make it off the planet and back to Anaximander University. Still a couple hundred of feet off from the research station, a weapons-lock warning goes off and the crew receives a hail over the comms from Valentine. After some swearing in Russian, Valentine says to the crew that he saw what they did to Helena and that he has many missiles that he will use to shoot the Swan Song out of the sky if they get any closer. Wilbur Higgins III convinces Valentine that the crazy lunar eclipse plan is still in action and Valentine allows the Swan Song to safely land. Higgins as well as Mr. Sicarian, under the alias of ‘Mr. Z’ the veterinarian, go to confront Valentine as Piani and Viktor stay and empty the bases' fuel supply. They casually fill up two hexes-worth of fuel as no one is Russian out to stop them. After some awkward pausing and smiling, ‘Mr. Z’ pulls out his monoblade and under only ten minutes of grappling, manages to kill Valentine. Higgins snatches a Madari Syndicate flight jacket from the base and the entire crew boards the Swan Song. Dr. Sa’id regains consciousness and tells the party that his plan was to communicate with the V'ad in order to form alliances with them, but that he was unable to connect his device and must’ve slipped off the tower and fallen. Dr. Sa'id thanks the party for his medical attention and then goes back to sleep after being pumped with morphine. After some salt is passed around, the crew decides to bring aboard some Blue Fever chemical components from the Madari Syndicate base and store them in the cargo hold for later sale to non-Blue Fever manufacturers, worth about 20k credits in total.

Now possessing Dr. Sa’id, fuel, life-support, and Blue Fever components, the Swan Song leaves Subhadra and attempts to travel to Elouahabu in the Tovar System. The Swan Song has a power spike along the way and the ship's cargo bay along with the Blue Fever components get jettisoned off into space. The power spike also makes it so that the Swan Song does not have enough life-support to reach Elouahabu. In order to reduce the amount of life-support that is normally required, the crew gets put into an induced coma-like state. Unfortunately, the crew can only be brought out of their coma on a TL4 planet and above, and Elouahabu is only a TL3 planet. The crew preps before going into a coma. Viktor sends a 20k trust fund to a family member on Andoni, probably only to get intercepted by the Andonian Cultural Protectorate. Mr. Sicarian gives Higgins 10k and booby traps his room incase anyone (Higgins) attempts to mess with anything inside. PI messages “Don’t go” and stops responding after that. Everyone then goes into a coma-induced state except for Higgins who is going to navigate for as long as he can until he passes out and PI takes over to guide the ship to the nearest docking station. With six days of the ship to himself, Higgins puts on ‘Don’t Rock The Jukebox’ by Allen Jackson, takes off his pants, and dances around. He smokes all the cigarettes, drinks all the alcohol, and with the final hours approaching, puts the crew members, as well as himself, into vac-suits that have 4 hours of life-support each. Higgins sits down in the captains char viewing Elouahabu and slowly loses consciousness. Higgins wakes up. He notices that he is not wearing his vac suit anymore and in fact he is all wet. He hears a screeching noise off in the distance and then starts to hear talking. He thinks that someone is moving him but everything is too blurry to see. He starts to come to and finds that there is a bright light pointed on him. Someone is leaning over him, telling him to remain calm and hold still and that they are getting his friends out of the ship as they speak. The person starts talking in a language that he doesn’t understand and then he passes out again.

Higgins regains consciousness and this time he is in another room. He is lying down on a bed with sheets tightly wrapped around him. The walls are a dull grey and there is a large oil painting on the wall depicting a man in red robes that is holding two stone tablets in his hands and in front of the man are two bodies of water parted with a caravan in the middle. Someone is beside him, injecting something into him, and loses consciousness again. He then wakes up and is by himself in the same room. He first notices a tube that is going into his mouth and yanks it out. He then notices a bunch of machinery and monitors around him with various tubes and sensors attached all along his body. He yanks out all the cabling and an alarm starts going off. Higgins attempts to get out of bed and falls to the floor. He screams for help and a young nurse comes in holding a data pad. She gasps as she sees Higgins lying on the floor. The woman quickly hurries out the door and after a couple minutes pass, comes back in hiding behind two men. One of the men extends out his hand to Higgins and asks him to please be calm saying that he had just been in a crash and that he is badly injured. Higgins asks for a comm pad to reach his friends and calls up the Swan Song. He receives an out-of-service operator message and throws the comm pad across the room. He says that his two brothers and sister was aboard the Swan Song and asks if they are alright. The doctor responds that they are being kept on life-support but they are currently unable to bring them out of their coma-like state. The doctor mentions that for everyone being unconscious, he is surprised that their ship made it to their base in as good of a condition that it did. He says that the fires aboard the ship have all been put out and that it is currently being guarded and that he has called in the Feds to guide them on the matter. Everyone leaves the room and Higgins spots a large window on one of the walls that has an LED screen situated on the other side of it with the same repeating images on it. Higgins weakly gets up, dresses out of his gown and finds a large amount of bruising all over his body. He gets his clothes out of a nearby locker, puts his gown up to the window, and starts to quietly pound on the glass in an attempt to break it. Higgins eventually hits the glass once a little too hard and ends up shattering the whole thing causing an alarm to go off. He then gets tied down to his bed and loaded with pain killers until he passes out.

Viktor wakes up in a small concrete room. He is in a hospital gown and notices that the air smells stale and of sweat. He finds medical equipment attached to him and notes that he is feeling very weak. While examining his body, he also finds laceration stitches on his ribs that were not previously there. After a couple of minutes, a guy dressed in a camo outfit comes in and without any explanation, starts to hit Viktor with a baton. Viktor tries to put up a fight but is quickly knocked unconscious.

Higgins gains consciousness and sees a man in a dark blue suit with a tie in his room. The man in the suit says, “Welcome to Elouahabu Nathan.” [Higgins had put Nathan Farmer as his identification in his comm pad] Higgins asks the man if they had found any strange stuff on their ship and that he is trying to save the man’s planet. The man mentions that it isn’t his planet and Higgins responds with, “Shit” and then asks if they (PI) have fucked their shit up yet. The man says that having an unbreaked AI is a serious crime. Higgins asks the man if the AI is contained and the man says that Higgins is lucky. He says that the AI is restrained and that they are performing routine tests on it as they speak, as they are used to such activities. The man asks if Higgins is aware that one of their crew (Mr. Sicarian) is a wanted war criminal. The man then mentions Higgins’ name for the first time and says that he has the power to make Higgins disappear without anyone being the wiser but will choose not to do so if Higgins helps them. The man shows Higgins footage of Kovacs being beat up and says that Kovacs is the only one who has woken up so far and that they are not sure if he will wake up again. Higgins asks the man who he is working for and the man says that he doesn’t need to know. The man asks Higgins where he found the AI and Higgins says that the AI found them on one of their missions and that they have been working under the AI’s control ever since. The man then shows a picture of Odette Rainier to Higgins and asks him if he knows who she is. Higgins responds by correctly saying that she installed parts on their ship once, but left out the fact that she was the person who directly installed the AI. Higgins says that she was the sole person in the transaction and that there was no other outside source whom mentioned what parts to order and where.

Piani wakes up and recognizes machinery attached to her that has the potential to read her psychic energy. She is in a wheelchair and sees that across the room is a large oil painting of a wooden boat with a shepherd on it who is leading in animals two-by-two. A woman who is kneeling by Piani’s feet tells Piani that she has been through a traumatic experience and that she has just had an episode with her MES and that things aren’t looking good. Taking notes the whole time, the lady asks Piani what she thinks about the rest of her friends and Piani responds, saying that she will talk about her friends once the lady tells her if her friends are alright. As Piani becomes riled up, a monitoring device next to her begins to beep as she feels liquid being pumped into her. Piani starts to feel more calm and relaxed. As Piani explains the Swan Song crew to the lady, the lady interjects and says that maybe they will try again tomorrow once Piani is less upset.

Mr. Sicarian wakes up naked laying face-down on the floor of his cell. There is a pool of vomit next to him and it looks as if the cell has not been cleaned in a very long time. Mr. Sicarian sees that all along his body are various-sized bruises. He stands up, leans against a wall, and fixes his hair. A plastic plate containing prison food is then slid under his door. Mr. Sicarian asks where the home-baked bread is and some harsh words are spoken in a language that he doesn’t understand as he hears footsteps retreat away from the door. After some days have passed, Mr. Sicarian receives his clothes, gets restrained, and taken to another cell. Mr. Sicarian sits at a metal table that has two Styrofoam cups with steaming liquid in them and on the other side of him is the same person in the dark blue suit that was talking with Higgins. The man says that they have found contraband onboard the Swan Song in the form of an AI named PI. He asks Mr. Sicarian if he knows anything about this and Mr. Sicarian responds by saying that the crew has become forced to work under the AI and that they did the best that they could to coexist with it. The man shows Mr. Sicarian a picture of Odette Rainier and Mr. Sicarian says that she did repairs on the Swan Song but he is unsure of what repairs she did. The man gives Mr. Sicarian two options. One is to convince Piani to unlock the AI and the ship can then be repaired and its crew returned to it. Or two, the crew can be handed over to the Pfotenhauer Society and possibly never be seen again. Mr. Sicarian says that he will see what he can do and is returned to his cell, this time with a holy bible that Mr. Sicarian starts reading.

Viktor becomes conscious once again and is welcomed with a bright light shining in his face and people yelling at him. Someone grabs his shirt and drags him out into the hallway. Viktor gets pushed into a room and the first thing he notices is the putrid smell of feces and gore. The walls have blood all over them and there are sloped floors that lead to a grate in the middle where some of the blood has collected. Above the grate is a metal table with a sheet lying on top of it and something reeking underneath. Viktor pulls off the sheet and underneath lays Dr. Omar Sa’id whom had recently been autopsied and had all of his cybernetics removed. Viktor uses his bare hands to dig around in Dr. Sa’id and just finds that his body is an empty shell. A person with a lab coat walks in and asks Viktor what his relationship with Dr. Sa’id is. Viktor responds by saying that the crew’s mission was to take Dr. Sa’id from Anaximander University to Subhadra to his research station. The man in the lab coat shows a picture to Viktor of Odette Rainier sitting with Dr. Sa’id at a bar. The man asks Viktor if he knows who the woman in the picture is. Viktor says that the two of them didn’t talk for very long. The man asks if Viktor knew that she was a terrorist and that their situation is very dangerous ever since putting PI in the hands of Odette Rainier and her friends. The man asks Viktor if he can help convince Piani to grant access to PI and Viktor says that he doesn’t know what he will be able to do. The man says that they will keep Viktor in this room and closes the door after Viktor retorts that “Dead bodies never bother me.”

Crew Status

 * Casualties: Dr. Omar Ibn Sa'id

Ship Status

 * Hull Integrity: Unknown
 * Malfunctions: Cargo Integrity Nullified
 * Malfunctions: Fuel Scoops Offline
 * Malfunctions: Sand-thrower Offline

Criminal Activities

 * New Crime: 1st degree Murder of Madari Syndicate member Valentine
 * New Crime: Inflicting grievous bodily harm, with a satelite dish (Dr. Omar Ibn Sa'id)

Business

 * Credits Acquired: None
 * Credits Spent: 20k from Viktor sent to family member on Andoni, Mr. Sicarian gave 10k to Higgins
 * Jobs In Progress: None
 * Jobs Completed: None
 * Debt Paid On Swan Song: 0 credits
 * Current Debt On Swan Song: 742,120 credits