Marital Troubles

The crew takes on a job to help a Lady avoid an unwanted divorce

Short Summary
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Detailed Summary
The date is July 12, 3200. By no one's authority but their own, the crew had just finished escorting 50 Andonian citizens from their recently desiccated planet to the Richardson Scientific moon base Gunnhild VIII-C. Looking for new work, the crew had stumbled upon this job posting:

Designate 31-882-V5

Employer: Lord Lara McCrary

Details: My imbecile husband has sent bounty hunters after me not once but twice in an attempt to intimidate me into a divorce I am utterly opposed to, morally and religiously. This cannot stand. Hiring hit-men, assassins or whatever you people call yourselves to deal with this. Consider the bounty placed - Lord Lucas McCrary, wanted DEAD OR ALIVE. (Seriously though you can kill him if you want.)

Location of Lord Lucas: Unknown

Payment: 150,000 credits

Premise
The scene fades in from black. The distant popping sound of fireworks can be heard as the camera pans across a dark and jagged mountain peak. Below the serrated edges of the mountain sits a military base formed by buildings that had once been dropped down from the sky.

Forward: Firebase Jeneva – Planet Onintza – 12 July, 3200

Another fade-in, this time to a woman hunched over a terminal. She looks to be Mediterranean. She has short black hair, an ankh tattoo under her eye, and is wearing a blue exosuit that has a white star on one shoulder and a Pfotenhauer logo on the other. She is shouting at the screen,

Miss Fate: What do you mean re-deployed? They’re called Fate’s fucking rangers for a reason! I lead this unit, I need to stay on this planet and see this thing through!

Man on terminal: This is what's happening. You can't argue with me. It's an order.

The connection on the terminal expires and Miss Fate stands up straight and slams her fist down onto the counter. She turns around and orders two men standing near her to get her ship ready because Titan says that they have to leave.

Swan Song – Fourth Fifth Annual Meeting
A Free-Merchant class ship can be seen trekking through the final frontier that is space, a depiction of a swan is spray-painted across its hull. Currently making omelets in the mess hall of the Swan Song is the ship's snooty Frenchman, Prosper Trudeau. "No, no no no!" exclaims Prosper as he throws away yet another perfectly good omelet and begins to make a new one. Due to navigational troubles, the Swan Song had been set off course and it will be about 12 days in total before the party is able to arrive at Strophios and talk with Laura McCrary about their recent employment.

Wilbur Higgins III tells everyone that the McCrary's are part of the mega-corporation Sunbeam Multistellar and that they originate from Asa (Higgins' home planet). He tells them that the law of Asa allows for divorce but that men get most of the property and also that the McCrary's have had some recent trouble with the church of The New Prophet. Before landing on the planet, Higgins receives a message from Sunbeam Multistellar in regards to the ship's owner being dead, but the message doesn't sound too urgent and so Higgins temporarily ignores it.

Strophios
Twelve days later, the crew arrives at Strophios in the Varvaressos System. Strophios is a TL4 planet that looks like the Jupiter of winter. It is so cold that its several million inhabitants have to live in extremely large atmospheric domes. The planet is inhabited because The Prophet of The New Prophet organization marked the site as holy and made it a pilgrimage site. Before landing, Piani Pic successfully masks the Swan Song as the scouting ship Benedict Arnold. After getting onto the planet, the party acquires an unmanned cab that shuttles them off to the McCrary estate.

Laura McCrary
The cab drops the party off in front of a large gate that has the golden letters L and M hanging off of it. The gate opens and the party begins to traverse atop a long brick walkway. The walkway bends and weaves through a delicate landscape of willow trees and green grass, environments not common to the frozen wasteland of Strophios. Mr. Sicarian notices that there are hidden cameras positioned everywhere as well as various defense systems designed to intimidate unwanted guests. The brick pathway eventually recedes at a very large and exquisite two-story southern-style house. The party enters the house and is guided by a robot named Jeeves to one of the fanciest waiting rooms that they have ever seen. On either side of the room are two curved staircases that lead to the upper-floor. Hanging down from the ceiling is a large glass chandelier and along one of the walls of room are large glass windows allowing for a nice view of a crystal-blue lake set in the backyard. Spread out across the room are overstuffed velvet couches and on the walls are classical velvet paintings, one of which depicting a 1969 Dodge Charger with the black numbers 01 spray painted on one side as it soars over train tracks while crashing through a white picket fence. Also in the room are busts depicting the same woman at various ages. There are also bookcases filled with blank books that have the word 'penthouse' printed on the spines of them. The party begins to hear the footsteps of stiletto's clicking on linoleum.

Jeeves announces to the room, "Lord Laura McCrary." In walks in a woman wearing glossy-red patent-leather high heels, acid-washed jeans, and an acid-washed denim jacked that has rhinestones on one sleeve that she is wearing over a white t-shirt. She is also wearing large dangling earrings, blue lipstick, and has large bright-blue feathered hair that is twinkling from some internal light-source. In her arms is a small, bright-blue chicken that gives out a cluck as the woman moves her hand across its feathers. The woman pompously extends her hand out to Higgins who eagerly accepts and kisses it. She tells the party that she is Lord Laura McCrary and after introductions are over, she asks if the party is all there to find her husband, Lord Lucas McCrary.

Inquisitions Inc.
Laura tells the crew that she wouldn't hold it against them if they needed to use lethal force in capturing her husband. She also says that the party isn't the first group of people to come see her about the job. Higgins asks why her husband hasn't tried to kill her yet and she says that her side of the family owns 3-4% of Sunbeam Multistellar, and so in order for her husband to get that money, he would have to get a legitimate divorce from her on grounds of religiosity. Prosper asks what her husband IS threatening her with and she says that he has been trying to damage her reputation and so that is why she has sent out the acquisition request of her husband, either dead or alive.

Higgins asks if there are any clues as to her husband's whereabouts. Laura tells him that her husband is originally from Cabral and that he may have ran home, that he has a substance abuse problem and that the best way to find out about that would be on Majid, and that he has a ship called the Kafkaesque that he always wanted to take to Hoveyda. Prosper asks Laura if she is religious and she tells him that she has a spiritual adviser that comes and visits her one-two times a week. Prosper then asks if there are any places that she is going in the near future that her husband may expect her to be at and she tells him that she has always been meaning to go see musician Nika Starlight before her tour leaves the planet.

Before the party leaves the mansion, they acquire a photo of Lord Lucas McCrary. Jeeves also gives them a list of recommended hotels that are completely secular which are uncommon on the planet. The party hails a cab and heads back to the Swan Song. In the cab, an advertisement pops up showing the next and last Nika Starlight concert on the planet, 'You Can't Keep Me Down', to be held on July 29, five days from the current date (July 24). Also on the Ad are accusations from the church of Nika Starlight having affiliations with Majidi criminal organizations.

Contacts for the Blind
When the party gets up to the Swan Song, Connor Wu goes over to Piani and tells her that a guy named Ephram Newton came looking for her about collecting a favor that she owes him. Piani had known Newton from when they were cadets in the military. She set fire into one of the other cadet's rooms and the blame had been pushed on Newton.

Wu then informs everyone that if they want to upgrade the ship, that they'll have to upgrade the power supply first which will take about a month and 200,000 credits. Wu also mentions that he knows that the ship has a Virtual Intelligence but that even a VI shouldn't be taking up as much power as it is. Piani finds an extra 33,000 unaccounted for credits lying around somewhere and pays 9,690 credits in monthly ship maintenance fees which brings the ship's maintenance up to date.

Prosper contacts someone he knows in The Order of Annunciation named Elana Durant. He had once gotten a promotion that she was supposed to have gotten and she never forgave him. PI had told Prosper that they are having troubles correctly remembering things in the past, and so Prosper sends a message to Ms. Durant requesting her help in the matter along with 8,000 credits. He also requests that she look into gathering information regarding Lucas McCrary.

Piani spends a couple of hours hacking through the job posting message that they had received from Laura McCrary and finds that it was originally sent by the Kafkaesque on Asa. From this message she gets the ship's unique ID tag. Piani remembers a person named James Honn who she grew up with on Majid. Piani's family was a mining family and Honn was part of the foreman/slaver family in charge of the mines. Piani attempts to send a message to Honn asking if a ship with the unique ID tag had been there within the past month but she can't seem to get the words right. As she is erasing the third revision of her draft, PI comes over the comms and asks Piani if she needs help. Piani informs PI that she never got to say goodbye to Honn and that saying goodbye is important. PI suggests apologizing and types "I'm sorry I didn't say goodbye." Piani chuckles and says that she will try to finish the rest of the message from there. [I believe that this is the only message to Majid sent, however; Piani might have also sent a generic message to the Mandarinate requesting any logs of the Kafkaesque's arrival or departure from the planet while pretending to be doing an investigation from an unknown house Ovalia]

Mustafa
Higgins receives a message from Mustafa Lee who thanks him for extracting Rajani Van Dorne from Andoni and enclosed in the message is 500 credits. Disgusted at the parsimonious business transaction employed by Mustafa Lee, Higgins abstains from withdrawing the paltry sum of money and instead sends a message back to Mustafa telling him he had thought that they were friends and that the extraction of Rajani would be worth more than 500 credits. Higgins gets a message back from Mustafa, but instead of it being about the payment, Mustafa requests that Higgins talk with Rajani.

Thinking that this may lead to further compensation for his work, Higgins meets Rajani at a local bar along with Mr. Sicarian and Prosper. Higgins complains to Rajani about the amount of money they received for her extraction and Rajani says that they are there to discuss a different matter. She tells Higgins that Mustafa is willing to pay twice the amount of money that Higgins is being currently offered if Lucas McCrary were to be given to Mustafa instead of Laura. She tells them that Lucas McCrary has friends that owe Mustafa a lot of money and that they need the location of these friends. Higgins suggests that they retrieve the information for Rajani and that he will only do it for 200,000 credits as opposed to the 300,000 credits that he would get for simply bringing Lord Lucas McCrary to Mustafa (Under the assumption that Mustafa will owe him a large favor AND that they will be able to later turn Lucas McCrary over to Laura for even more money). Rajani agrees to this proposal and says to Higgs that they also need to talk about Kalaya Bia as she is starting to put pressure on Mustafa as to Higgins' whereabouts. Higgins takes out his comm pad and sends a message to Kalaya. "Mustafa said you're looking for me. I don't want to meet you but what do you want? ~W" Having no more business with Rajani, the crew heads back to the Swan Song in order to discuss their plans of capturing Lord Lucas McCrary.

The Plan
While talking in the ship's mess hall, the party realizes that they don't know why Laura is on Strophios and not on Asa, nor why Laura and Lucas want a divorce in the first place. Prosper proposes the idea that Higgins' go out in public and buy five tickets to the Nika Starlight concert under Laura McCrary's name in order to try and lure in any hired goons sent by her husband in hopes that they will be able to catch these goons and question them about his whereabouts. Higgins attempts to spread the rumor that someone very rich is going to show up and buy tickets at a specific time in the future. He also pays off a paparazzi to act excited when he gets out of his vehicle.

After two days pass, a fancy car rolls up to the ticket booth, paparazzi are all around. One of them starts freaking out, shouting that a McCrary is here. The car rolls to a stop and a Frenchman gets out of the driver door. He runs over to the passenger side and opens the door to reveal Higgins who steps out of the vehicle and looks around at the crowd, scoffing mildly to himself at the peasantry around him. Higgins is not dressed the part as he is simply wearing his everyday outfit. Either way, as Higgins walks up to the ticket booth, Prosper rolls out a red velvet carpet in front of him and lays rose pedals at his feet. Drones swoop in from above and take pictures. Besides hurting from standing up straight, Higgins finds no quarrel as he makes his way up to the ticket booth and asks for five tickets to the Nika Starlight concert. The woman on the other side of the booth uncomfortably swallows and tells Higgins that the tickets are sold out.

Higgins stiffens up and asks the lady (Lisa) if she knows who he represents and that surely there are tickets for Lord Laura McCrary. Lisa inputs some commands into the computer and after a couple seconds tells Higgins that two tickets for Lord Laura McCrary were picked up yesterday. Higgins threatens the woman, telling her that he will speak ill about her to her boss unless she is able to give him camera footage over the person who purchased those tickets. The woman agrees to get the camera footage and takes Higgins to her supervisor in a back room while Prosper and Mr. Sicarian wait outside.

Higgins opens the door to the office and sees a man talking on the phone. The man looks over at Higgins and tells the person on the other side of the phone that he will call them back before hanging up. He then walks over to Higgins, extends his hand, and asks Higgins what he can help him with. Higgins bypasses the man's hand, walks around him, and then sits down in front of the man's desk. Higgins then says that the tickets for the Nika Starlight concert seem to have run out. The supervisor tells Higgins that there are many Nika Starlight fans on Strophois and that the concert has been sold out for quite some time. Higgins then fabricates the story that a friend of Lord Laura McCrary owns the stadium and that she had told Higgins that it wouldn't be a problem to just come and pick up five tickets for Laura. While talking, the supervisor seems very nervous and is obviously sweating out of his shirt. The man cautiously tells Higgins that he doesn't have any extra tickets, but that he will see what he can do about reallocating him some. After a few minutes of typing into a terminal, the man walks over to Higgins and hands him five holographic badges that have a shooting star on them and say 'BACKSTAGE'. Higgins then leaves the supervisors office, approaches Lisa, and asks her if she has the camera footage he requested. Lisa hands him a glossy photo of a tough-looking man who has a short mohawk and a scar on his face. Higgins tells Lisa to have a good day and then turns around and heads back to the car. Prosper rolls up the red carpet and closes the door behind him and the party leaves the premise.

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