Challenge Accepted

Fighting Fang is seemingly dealt with once and for all, Fate's Rangers finally confront the crew, and findings regarding Pfotenhauer and Titan bring peace to Mr. Sicarian

Short Summary
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Detailed Summary
The date is July 31, 3200. The crew is currently on the bridge discussing what they want to do about the deadly bounty hunter, Constantine Fang. They had been shown mercy by Fang after Wilbur Higgins III shot him with the ship’s sand-thrower (unsuccessfully killing him) and Fang withheld from blowing up their ship. Now that Fang knows that Mr. Sicarian is on the Swan Song, (and due to there being a million dollar bounty on Mr. Sicarian’s head) Fang has requested that the crew hand over Mr. Sicarian peacefully, and in return, he will split the bounty with them.

Preparations for Dealing with Fang
Higgins suggests that they put Mr. Sicarian in a casket and give it to Fang so that when Fang opens the casket, Mr. Sicarian will jump out and kill him. Mr. Sicarian tells Higgins that there is no way Fang will willingly take the casket without being sure that he is sedated inside of it first. Higgins then suggests to simply tell Fang the truth, that there is no way that the crew is going to hand over Mr. Sicarian. Prosper Trudeau suggests sending Pi over to his ship to try and take control of it since Pi seems to be the crew’s only advantage. Higgins tells Prosper that he doesn't trust Pi to not just turn on the crew once he gets control of the ship. Piani Pic suggests going to a nearby Exchange fueling station to discuss things there with Fang because it will act as a neutral meeting place that neither parties would dare harm each other at due to the powerful influence that the Exchange has on the sector. Higgins calls Fang and tells him that they have Mr. Sicarian sedated on their ship and that Higgins wants to talk to Fang face-to-face at a nearby Exchange station in two days. Fang agrees to the plan so long as it is only Higgs that meets him. Once the conversation is over, Piani says that she can overlay fake vitals on a sedated image of Mr. Sicarian to further support the lie. Prosper then asks if there is any way to get info on Fang’s ship, The Gacy. Hearing the ship’s name, Connor Wu speaks up and says that he did some maintenance work on The Gacy 8-10 months ago and that he still has old schematics of the ship. Upon seeing the schematics, the ship appears to be of similar size to the Swan Song but in-place of the cargo area that the Swan Song has, the Gacy has a level-3 spike-drive, a plasma-beam weapon, two torpedo launchers, and a handful of counter-measure weapons. Mr. Sicarian suggests that Prosper accompany Higgins, against the wishes of Fang, as to distract him from the truth that Mr. Sicarian will not actually be sedated.

While waiting two days for the meeting with Fang, Higgins gets a message from Sunbeam Omnistellar Limited explaining that the old corporations, Sunbeam Multistellar and Ximinez Shipyards, have merged into one company. Prosper gets a message from the Two of Wands saying that they have arrived in-system and that they are on their way to the Swan Song’s location at Strophios. Prosper tells the Two of Wands that they will have to postpone their meeting for a little bit while they get some other business sorted out.

The Meeting
Two days finally pass and Higgins and Prosper head down to the Exchange station to meet Fang. The two of them enter a bar and Fang is sitting at a table alone wearing a military-gray outfit with a bandolier strapped around him. After the two greet each other, Higgins sits down and tells Fang that he didn't feel safe after shooting him with the sand-thrower, and so he brought Prosper along. When Fang seems like he is indifferent on the matter, Higgins pulls out his comm pad and shows Fang a "live"-feed of Mr. Sicarian sedated on the ship, and explains that he is in his armor because the crew couldn't figure out a way to get it off of him. Fang asks how they got him sedated and when Higgins tells him that they filled his room with gas, Fang doesn't buy it. He tells Higgins that Mr. Sicarian's exo-suit has a built-in atmosphere that wouldn't allow for him to be gassed and leaves, saying that he will find more money elsewhere.

Ms. Fate
Piani’s intercom comes on in her room and Pi tells her that someone is outside of the ship. Piani opens up the cargo-bay doors and in front of her is a female in an exo-suit (similar to that of Mr. Sicarian’s) as well as two other people in military garb who are standing next to her. The woman asks if she is at the Swan Song and Piani says yes. The woman then asks if Piani is in any danger and Piani tells her no somewhat curiously. The woman then says that she shouldn't be alarmed, but that there is a member of her crew named Mr. Sicarian that is a wanted criminal. Piani seemingly convinces the woman that a person named Mr. Sicarian is not on the ship and the three strangers leave.

As Prosper is walking back to the Swan Song after having the meeting with Fang, he recognizes the same woman in the exo-suit that Piani had been talking with. As the woman walks past Prosper, he hears her say, “I don’t care what that twat said, he’s in there and I’m going to get him out, and then I can fucking go back to Onintza and finish the job I started last month.” Prosper notices that the woman has an ankh under her eye and after telling this later to Mr. Sicarian, Mr. Sicarian tells everyone that the woman is named Ms. Fate and that she is a Pfotenhauer military agent who owns her own squadron called Fate's Rangers. Mr. Sicarian then says that he had hoped to deal with this problem at a later date, but that it looks like they will have to deal with the problem now.

Lucas McCrary and the Kafkaesque
Childhood friend, James Honn, responds to Piani on spacebook, saying that he found the Kafkaesque for sale on a black-market site. Looking at a picture of the yacht, Piani finds it to be pretty damaged. She can just barely make out the letters ‘Kafk’ on the side of the ship because the rest of the name is burnt off. Piani contacts the sellers and says that she is interested in purchasing the ship. She quickly receives a message back that gives an offer of 300,000 credits [Piani knows the ship costs at least 1 million credits even in the poor condition that it is in]. Piani responds back, saying that she is interested in meeting up with the sellers as well as the previous owner of the ship. Again, they quickly respond back, this time with a set of in-sector coordinates. From the messages, Piani deduces that the ship was hit by pirates and that Lucas McCrary is possibly being held captive by the pirates, whether they know about his bounty or not.

Challenge Accepted
The crew decides that their best advantage will be to wait for Ms. Fate to come to them on the ship rather than trying to seek her out on unfamiliar grounds. Looking at the news, the majority of Fate’s Rangers are on Onintza dealing with the civil war and they seem to be winning. The crew also obtains the name of Fate’s ship which is called the Hand of Fate. Mr. Sicarian tells the crew that Ms. Fate was sent by Mr. Titan and that she is new and probably not super high up on the chain of command, but that even so, they should still be prepared for a decent fight. While the crew waits to see what will come next, they receive a live video-feed request from the Hand of Fate. Mr. Sicarian video-connects with the rest of the crew standing by. Starting off the conversation, Ms. Fate says that Mr. Falcon is dead and that he gave up a lot of information regarding Mr. Sicarian right before he died. After a pause, Ms. Fate continues, saying that Titan wants to have a conversation with him face-to-face. Mr. Sicarian tells Ms. Fate that the Pfotenhauer Society are based around hundreds of years of tradition and that in order for Pfotenhauer members to deal with irreparable situations, they duel to the death [During the duel, the combatants are limited to blades and power-armor]. Mr. Sicarian offers Ms. Fate a dueling invitation and Ms. Fate accepts. The call disconnects and about one day later, Mr. Sicarian gets a message from Mr. Titan. He opens up the message and inside are the words, “I accept”. Seeing this, Mr. Sicarian leans back in his chair and says, “So be it” as he begins to play with black tendrils that bounce around in his hand.

Upgrading Pi
Prosper messages the Two of Wands, telling them that they are clear to meet up. It takes six hours for the ship to arrive and dock with the Swan Song. Once connected, eight people wearing lab coats walk into the Swan Song’s cargo area, all of them recording notes into notepads. The captain of the Two of Wands, Dulac, gets introduced to the crew and then everyone heads down to the core room. The people from the Two of Wands get to work running diagnostics on Pi. Their ultimate plan is to separate out Pi’s BIOS systems from their memories, delete their corrupt memory, and then re-integrate their BIOS under the hope of clearing away any amnesia that Pi may have due to the corrupt memory. They also plan on injecting some source code directly from Le Fantôme herself that will act as a kind of ethical guide for Pi (reminiscent of bible verses). Alone with Piani, Prosper says tells her that an AI must be left alone so that it can grow by itself. He says that not everyone in the Order believes in such a thing and that he does not want this extra code from Le Fantôme because it goes against his ethics. Hearing this, Piani simply warns Prosper that if anything is to happen to Pi, she will be coming after him, and then she blocks out the sections of the code that has the Order’s influences in it and executes the remaining files.

Crew Status

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Business

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