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[UW] Missing... [Allevard 2.3]
Allevard
The security officers take charge of your prisoner and one of them takes a report from you. What do you end up telling them and do you ask them to do anything special with the assassin?
Afterward you are walking through the crowds again, back to where you started. You see the second ambulance flyer still on the ground and medics packing up their gear. You haven't heard anything from Robynne.
What do you do?
Comments
I send a comm message out to Robynne.
Robynne — I caught the guy. He's in custody, and we'll be pressing charges. Where did you end up?You see Terci’s bag on the ground near the bench where you left them.
Your comm pings.
Error. Your intended recipiant is not on the network. Please check the send code and try again.It’s both her bags really, both her giant handbag and shopping bag she had in hand when she met up with you. The send code is good, it’s rotating with the ship’s clock as it’s supposed to.
“Know who that belongs to, Sai?”
The inquiry comes from a tall solid-looking young woman in a pale blue medic uniform. One of the ones packing in the gear.
“We were going to take it with, see.” She frowns, troubled. “It’s odd that the other ones didn’t take her belongings, with ‘em. Rooks, most like, but even so.”
“They were flying before we hit dirt, Sai. Closest trauma is 5 minutes maybe, though they weren’t headed right direction for that. Could be needed somthing special, treatment wise.”
She looks you over.
“Can give you lift to the trauma if you like, it’s home base for us.”
“Aye, should, Sai.” the medic answers. “And I’ll check with dispatch too to see where they headed.
The ambulance is lifting off a few minutes later when Rajani comms you back.
“Last recorded position for their transponders or comms is in the Park, Captain. The signals went offline after that I’m afraid. Should we report it to the police?”
The medic, Shika, steps into the back from where she was calling into their dispatch system. Her expression is the one you imagine she wears when she has to tell some relative bad news.
By now the medic has returned to tell me what appears to be bad news... It's a good thing I've got a lot of experience in receiving it. I nod, and return to my comm call. "I think Mixter Archebelloch and miss Voxalter are in serious trouble... Can you connect me to the Duchess?"
“Yes, Sai. Give us a moment.”
When you look at her again, Shika speaks. “Dispatch says that bus wasn’t supposed to be there. We were assigned that call. They don’t know who they were, either. They had a ghosted transponder for a bus from across town.”
Rajani pipes back in.
“I’m putting you through, Sai. She took the call right away.” There is an undertone to the second statement.
“Captain? Have our plans changed?”
"I'm afraid I'm not sure, Duchess... A pair of my crew were attacked and abducted in the park today — I managed to track and capture one assailant, but apparently he was working with a team. I was hoping I could get your assistance in locating them."
Shkia’s eyes go a little wide. Are you really talking to who she thinks your are talking to?
There is a pause.
“Of course, Captain. I will deploy Kali and some of my security personnel to help immediately, and make sure local authorities make this a priority. Do you have any other suggestions? Is this related to our previous incident?”
This with constitute a debt to the Soyinka family/Mayaran government, Allevard.
"Indeed. I think we must assume some connection until proven otherwise. I have no idea to what extent we've been infiltrated."
"Very well, Captain. I'm giving you special access as my personal agent. If anyone should question you, have them run the confirmation. I'll have one of my best tech analysts go with Kali and her team. You'll have information within the hour. And Captain..." Her voice softens a little. "Be careful."
The call disconnects.
"I guess this is uh... higher level than I thought." Shika says a wry twist to her mouth.
Her partner comes over the speaker. "Touchdown in a minute, sweetheart."
Shika rolls her eyes. "Not your sweetheart, Gos." She says loudly in response. "Jerk" She says in a low voice, then looks at you again.
"Figure you can talk to dispatch and they can tell you anything we have that might help." She pauses a moment. "You told, um... Her Grace, that two of your crew went gone, yeah? You promised to one of them?"
I chuckle nervously, "thanks for your help, by the way — I'd probably still be at the festival, confused if not for your assistance." I send a ping to Robynne's comm, just in case...
If you can see this — we're coming.Shika smiles, slightly flushed, and shrugs, looking a bit relieved, perhaps.
"Glad to help, what I can, Sai." She says. "But I think you've seen plenty, right? You're a TXR ship captain. You'd have figured it out."
You're pretty sure you didn't say who you worked for. And you know there isn't a field office on this planet. Shika fiddles her hands a bit.
"Always wanted to go to space. You seen a lot?"
You can feel the shift as the craft begins descent.
Shika shrugs
"Cultural ignorance." She smirks. " Offworld accent, core systems if I'm any judge. You sound just like Gabriel Caro on Love and Honor." Her color deepens a bit with the admission that she follows slightly trashy melodrama. She smiles "Kind of look like xir too."
Do you?
She continues. "News about a week ago was that the Duchess going to be coming here on a TXR prototype ship. Angelique Tessalt's new design, they said. And you just talked to Her Grace, and she called you Captain. What are the odds?"
"I'm... kind of a space nerd. I love Tessalt's work. Unfortunately this" She taps a machine attached to the wall. "is probably the closest I'll get to a real Tessalt. It's a nice design but it's no starship."
You feel the ambulance land. Shika stands.
I smile as we touch down, "Aren't you a clever one? I suppose there's no hiding it then... You've figured me out. As you may have noticed, I'm a bit preoccupied at the moment unfortunately — but I would consider it a tragedy if someone as keen as yourself would go their entire life without the opportunity to step foot on an original Tessalt. If you'll give me your number, I'll guarantee you a personal tour of The Thousand Blessings before we leave the system."
Shika's eyes widen and she grins, excited like a kid on the Emperor's birthday.
"Really? I was just hoping for, you know, a drink, since you're not engaged and all. But that would be, just... amazing!"
She holds her hand out to transfer the comm code to you. It's sideways, like you would when shaking hands, except instead of gripping the hand, your hands stay flat, fingers just over the pulse point of the wrist, triggering the data transfer.
"Now let's see what we can find out."
She leads you off the ambulance. Her partner says something to her, gives you a dark look. She just shoves his shoulder.
She leads you from the landing pad, crowded with several emergency vehicles, into the building and after some twists and turns you find yourself in the dispatch center. The room is ringed in consoles, not unlike a larger ship, with a larger holo display in the center table console.
She moves to one of the half-dozen operators, a young man with a medium-dark complexion and piercing black eyes and after a few minutes of discussion, introduces you.
Tejas, as she calls him, leads you over to the larger holo table and after a few moments of punching keys the holo display, showing the whole city at first, zooms into the park and shows a glowing line in the air recording the trajectory in and out of the suspect vehicle.
"After it takes off the transponder goes offline, but it was headed south when contact was lost." He finishes.
I follow her down the hall and into the central dispatch room. I listen to Tejas' recap of the situation, and send the information back to ship dispatch so they can coordinate with the Duchess' people, and bring Rajani into a call. "Can we get access to satellite imagery of the area? It'd be nice to have eyes on them if we can get it..."
Shika looks at Tejas.
Tejas nods and he punches some buttons. The satellite imagery comes up, the trajectories superimposed, the satellite timestamps matching the trajectories. "It's not the high end feeds, of course, that stuff is classified."
Once the transponder goes offline the ambulance still gets lost in the mass of traffic.
Rajani suggests using your new access to access the high-end planetary security imagery as well as signals recording. Once Tejas has that punched in you find that that ambulance is still lost after the transponder drops out.
Ater about another fifteen minutes of analysis with the four of you pouring through imagery and signals traffic, Rajani speaks up.
"Captain, we do have one unaccounted low-level signal roughly on that trajectory. It looks like a maintenance signal for an intubator."
"Those are TXR manufacture. Tessalt, remember?" Shika says. "Like the one I showed you earlier."
It's not really a question of if you find Robynne at this point, but when. This is data analysis so you'll roll Expertise
(Rolled: 2d6+3. Rolls: 5, 3. Total: 11)
Just as you've pinned that down Rajani routes Kali through to you.
"Captain." She says with a stiff formality but it's hard for her to keep the hostility out of her eyes. "We have partial information on location, but I hear you've already discovered it. We did also get force disposition. These people have 19 combatants, Void Waster operatives. There are also a small number of doctors and technicians."
"Ninteen people," I repeat, scratching my chin. The Thousand Blessing crew is combat trained, in that they carry weapons in the event of a boarding; but breaching and clearing a defended compound is not something written into their contracts, and I don't want to throw any of their lives away aimlessly. "Thank you, Kali..." I need another favor — but mobilizing a task force while we still have time and the element of surprise? That's the job of a diplomat.
I open up a private comm to Rajani, "Can you get me a direct line to her Imperial Highness?"
Rajani pings you back a few moments later with the line. Please go here