Paying the Price

The party picks up a mission that takes them to a research station on Subhadra and Higgins learns the hard way that he is wanted by some very bad people

Short Summary
The date is April 3, 3200. The crew has recently salvaged the Pizza Party and the Swan Song is fully repaired. The crew upgrades the Swan Song's computers in order to supply Pi with a better processor and the potential for cognitive development. The instillation is done by a cyborg named Odette Rainier and her crew from a ship named the Voltaire. While the instillation takes place, Pi is temporarily held in a reserve core. The crew then heads to Anaximander University in the Anaiansi System in order to get a job from Professor Omar Ibn Sa'id. Piani stays on the Swan Song while the party goes down to meet the professor. The professor tells the crew that his team has been having difficulties on their research station Al'Farabi on the planet Subhadra due to smugglers and pirates. He says that their job is to transport him and some of his research equipment over to the research base  to be used for studying an indigenous species known as the V'ad which are an insectoid-like species with ape-level intelligence. Meanwhile, on the Swan Song, Piani is contacted by some people outside of the ship that claim to be a repair crew sent to repair the (undamaged) ship. Piani gladly opens the cargo-doors and is met with four people with guns pointed at her. One person from the group says over the comms to Higgs that he pissed off the wrong woman and that his employer won't stop unless she gets her money. Over the comms, Mr. Sicarian says to Piani, “This is the cook. We will be coming back on with your meal in just a moment.” Higgins and Mr. Sicarian meet with two of the bounty hunters at the ship and one of them tells Higgins that he is worth 100,000 credits to a member of the Madari Syndicate. When one of the bounty hunters goes to handcuff Higgins, Mr. Sicarian lunges at one of them with his monoblade, Higgins pulls out a grenade, Viktor starts attacking with his fully semi-automatic pistol from above, and an all-out fight breaks loose. Mr. Sicarian slits the throat of one of the bounty hunters, Higgins knocks unconscious the bounty hunter that tried to restrain him in handcuffs, the grenade that Higgins was holding ended up getting tossed on the landing pad 20 feet away and blows up, damaging the pad and causing a panel inside the ship to fall on top of one of the bounty hunters who was holding Piani captive. Mr. Sicarian runs into the Swan Song and kills the remaining bounty hunter. The unconscious bounty hunter wakes up, but provides the crew with no additional information and Mr. Sicarian slits his throat. Security officers arrive at the scene and take the crew in for questioning. The crew is told that there were warrents for the bounty hunters and are allowed to leave. The Swan Song takes off, arriving at Subhadra while damaging their scoops and sand-thrower along the way.

Detailed Summary
Fifty-eight days have passed since the last session and during that time, the crew salvaged the Pizza Party, Viktor Kovacs took a course on basic theory of Maltech at Anaximander University (cost 2000 credits), and Kovacs also fully repaired the ship (cost 1100 credits).

The date is currently April 3, 3200. The crew makes a deal with a previous contact, Mr. Lee, in order to upgrade Pi with a faster processor and potential for 'cognitive development'. The upgrade costs them 125,000 credits in total (70,000 from Piani, 30,000 from Kovacs, 13,000 from Mr. Sicarian, and 12,000 from Higgins). Shipped out of Cabral in the Forrughi System, a medium-sized cargo vessel named the Voltaire hails the Swan Song in order to install the upgrade. The Voltaire and it's eleven crew members dock with the Swan Song and a cyborg (human that has cybernetic parts) named Odette Rainier (portrayed as Natalie Dormer) comes on board with some of her technicians. Odette mentions that it will take about a day to install the hardware and while the instillation is in progress, the Swan Song's computers will need to be shut down and all data (and Pi) will need to be transferred elsewhere. The Voltaire crew brings over one of their reserve cores to temporarily store all the Swan Song's data onto it. During the instillation time, Wilbur Higgins III grabs Odette's personal number much to Viktor's displeasure. Once the instillation is complete, the Voltaire leaves and the crew notices that the Swan Song is now running sub 10% of its total processing power.

After receiving a mission, the crew heads to Anaximander University in the Anaiansi System. Upon arrival, Mr. Sicarian, Higgins, and Viktor go to meet Omar Ibn Sa'id and leave Piani Pic back at the ship. Dr. Sa'id tells the crew that his team has been having difficulties in their research of the Vad on Subhadra due to smugglers and pirates and that the crew's mission will be to transport him and his supplies to their research station. Dr. Sa'id starts to brief the crew on the insectoid species of the Vad, mentioning that they have ape-level intelligence and communicate through pheromones, and that their research group has synthesized a pheromone substitute and wants to test its effectiveness. Viktor uses this obvious opportunity to ask Mr. Sicarian if he will teach him how to dance, where much to Viktor's surprise, Mr. Sicarian agrees.

Meanwhile, back on the Swan Song, Piani hears over the comms of the ship that a repair crew is there to, you know, repair their undamaged ship. Piani puts on the smuggest face she can find and opens the loading doors of the ship and is greeted by four people with guns pointed in her direction. One guy standing medium height with pale skin, freckles, and a shaved head asks her where Higgs is. Piani broadcasts their interaction over the team's comms and Higgs pipes up and says, "Hello, you need me?" The guy with the shaved head tells Higgs to come back to the Swan Song and Higgs nonchalantly responds saying that he's just gonna leave Piani and the ship and take the next flight outta here. The shaved man tells Higgs that his employer has a lot of money and won't rest after this interaction, saying that Higgs pissed off the wrong woman. At this point, Mr. Sicarian speaks up and says one of his more famous quotes, "This is the cook. We will be coming back on with your meal in just a moment". Piani quickly responds warning the team about the four people in the loading bay.

While the crew heads up to the loading spire, they devise a plan. Viktor is going to fire upon the enemy from above when Mr. Sicarian puts his hand on Higgins' shoulder to signal that they are about to enter combat. Upon arriving at their destination, the elevator opens and Higgins and Mr. Sicarian are greeted by a woman holding a gun to them. The woman quickly whistles and man with another gun comes over. The two of them start to escort Higgins and Mr. Sicarian across the main platform over to the Swan Song. Higgins, realizing that they are bounty hunters, quizzically asks them how much he is worth, and seems fairly content with the answer of 100,000 credits. When the male bounty hunter pulls out handcuffs and goes to restrain Higgins, Higgins responds by pulling the pin out of the lone grenade by his side in an attempt to use it as leverage for his escape. While he does so, Mr. Sicarian attacks the female bounty hunter, pinning her hand to her back with his monoblade. Ignoring his previous comment of waiting for the appropriate signal, Viktor starts taking shots from a heightened vantage point towards the male bounty hunter.

Piani, and the two bounty hunters still with her, start to hear gunfire from outside of the ship. One of the bounty hunters runs out and joins the fight while the other points her gun at Piani and tells her to stay there and to keep silent. Meanwhile, Mr. Sicarian ends up slitting the throat of the female bounty hunter and throws her to the ground. The male bounty hunter with the handcuffs tries to grab the grenade that Higgins is holding and as a result, Higgins ends up dropping the grenade and it rolls to the edge of the platform and the two of them start to grapple. Shortly after, the grenade explodes and inside the ship, Piani uses her passive precognition ability called terminal reflection to preemptively duck behind a crate right before a panel on the ceiling falls down, pinning the present bounty hunter to the ground. Using this as an opportunity, Piani pulls out her laser rifle and kills the helpless bounty hunter. The bounty hunter that previously ran out of the Swan Song to join the fight on the platform quickly returns back to the Swan Song, sees that Piani shot his companion, and shoots Piani with his stun gun, knocking her unconscious. Mr. Sicarian then runs back into the Swan Song and pulverizes the bounty hunter that had just previously knocked Piani out. The only remaining bounty hunter that is grappling with Higgins starts attacking him with the baton and so Higgins steals the baton away from him and starts attacking the bounty hunter in the same manner. It is at this point that the bounty hunter puts up his hands in surrender and then Higgins hits him over the head to knock him out.

Viktor notes that the swan song took some damage from the fight and takes a stun rifle off of one of the bounty hunters. Now that the action has calmed down, Higgins grabs his wanted information from the unconscious bounty hunter and sees that it is from the Madari Syndicate. He then chains the bounty hunter in the hold of the Swan Song and strips him to his undergarments, noting a bunch of prison tattoos. Once the bounty hunter wakes up, Mr. Sicarian threatens him, demanding info. The bounty hunter asks for Mr. Sicarian's name, and after receiving it responds with another more famous quote, "Sicarian is it, that's a name I'll never fucking forget". The bounty hunter then says that the Madari Syndicate is a lot scarier than the crew of the Swan Song and that his family could be killed, so he abstains from providing any information in regards to Higgins' bounty. In an attempt to get more information, Piani takes his comm pad and let's Pi try and decrypt it. Much to Piani's surprise, Pi responds back completely in French. Three university officers then arrive at the scene and question the crew about what happened. The crew tells them to sit tight and then head back into the Swan Song. The incompetent officers wait outside of the Swan Song for them.

After a remark to Mr. Sicarian about how they would meet again in the future, Mr. Sicarian goes to slit his throat. Seeing this, Higgins steps in between the two and is brought down to 1hp. Mr. Sicarian goes to slit the bounty hunter's throat again and Mr. Sicarian ends up puncturing the arm of the bounty hunter, bringing him down to 1hp. Viktor decides that now is as good a time as any and starts prepping the Swan Song for liftoff. Not wanting to get in the way anymore, Higgins simply allows Mr. Sicarian to finish the bounty hunter off. Viktor then decides that taking off is not as good of an idea as he initially thought and kills the ignition sequence.

The security officers then take the crew to their main station to question them about what happened. As the questioning takes place, a medical team takes all the bodies away from the Swan Song and a maintenance crew goes to patching up the damaged platform. Higgins and Mr. Sicarian use their sly words to convince the questioning officers that it was all in act of self-defense. The officers explain to the crew that warrants were out for these bounty hunters. The crew gets back to their ship and Wilbur decides to stay the night in the medbay even though there is no doctor to attend him because he thinks that the medbay is where he should go when he gets hurt. Taking Higgins' initiative, the rest of the crew spends the night in the medbay with the overlooking physician Kovacs whom explains the details of the healing he is performing for Pi's sake. French Baroque music plays throughout the night in the style of harpsichord music.

The next morning, Dr. Sa'id arrives at the Swan Song with his equipment. He complements to Higgs about how well the crew took care of business and that he is looking forward to them working together. Dr. Sa'id mentions that he ran background checks on the crew and notices that one of the crew members has MES and that the doctor's pheromone cargo has a small possibility to interfere with Piani's condition.

The crew begins to head from the current Anaiansi System to the Stavrou System (8 hex's away). Along the way, the ship incurs some damage to its scoops (refueling supply) and sand-thrower (weapon) systems and both are taken offline until they can be repaired. Fifty-four days of travel later, the Swan Song arrives at the Stavrou System. During the down-time of the trip, Mr. Sicarian practices yoga in his room. Pi teaches Piani French and reads her Discourse on the Method by René Descartes. Piani notes that Pi must have gotten this French influence from their stay in the temporary data core from the aforementioned Voltaire. Viktor learns about French romance from Pi. Higgins asks Piani to hack the previously collected bounty hunter's comm pad. Piani asks Pi to decrypt it and Pi says that they probably shouldn't do that because the comm pad doesn't belong to them. Higgins explains that if you find something, that it belongs to you, just as Pi found the crew and that now the crew belongs to Pi. Pi then agrees and unlocks the comm pad. Looking at the comm pad, it had previously belonged to a Jarred Crane and there had been previous communication with an anonymous employee of the Madari Syndicate working out the details of the 100,000 credit bounty of Higgins.

The crew arrives at Subhadra where the research station of Dr. Sa'id is located. They are met with an extremely large amount of industrial pollution and a rocky desert wasteland.

Crew Status

 * Casualties: None
 * Wounded: Higgins and Piani
 * New Passenger: Professor Omar Ibn Sa'id

Ship Status

 * Hull Integrity: 17/20
 * New Malfunction: Fuel Scoops - Offline
 * New Malfunction: Sand-thrower - Offline
 * New Hardware: Improved Processor and Cognitive Development potential

Criminal Activities

 * New Bounty Placed On The Crew: Higgins - 100,000 credits (Madari Syndicate)
 * New Crime: Multiple homicide (self-defense)
 * New Crime: Destruction of private property
 * New Crime: 1st degree murder of Jarred Crane (evidence destroyed)

Business

 * Credits acquired: 0
 * Credits spent: To be determined
 * New Job: Transportation of Professor Omar Ibn Sa'id and his pheromone equipment to his research station on Subhadra
 * Debt Paid On Swan Song: 0 credits
 * Current Debt On Swan Song: 742,120 credits