Operation Orange Watchtower - two revelations and a training montage

Begin A Session
When you begin a session you may review last session, set the scene, set the scene by envisioning your character’s current situation and intent. Take +1 momentum as you return to the present.

After last session, I spent some hard-won experience to add to my infiltrator so that when I Face Danger or Secure an Advantage to establish a false identity I add +1. If I get a hit establishing it, I can get +1 using that identity to deceive or manipulate others (that would have been useful BEFORE this session!). A miss with a match causes the false identity to fall apart.

During the session my “Mongoose” identity let herself get seduced by Tinker. Thanks to an accident with some coffee, we ended up naked and in my bed while her clothes got cleaned. Thanks to an accident with some dice, the bugs got replanted but from an unexpected source. I was going to decide who, but you have an option in consulting the oracle for “Influential character or faction is introduced or given new detail” and the types lend themselves to my choices with some twisting, so I’m rolling.

89 Fringe Group: Band of outlaws, outcasts or rogues.
This suits a criminal organisation (guild/specialists would have been the heddlu, dominion would have been a different branch of the Service if you’re interested).

So today’s session is going to consist of realising who I’m being surveilled by, and finding out a little bit about them and a training montage with the Honshu Insurrection to advance that story line a bit.

On to the story…

Tinker eventually leaves my bed. I watch her cross the room, glorious in her nakedness, and put on my robe before heading out to the bathroom and then to retrieve her clothes. I get up, slip on some baggy clothes, barely remembering not to slide into my ship suit, and smile as I go to make de for me, goffi for her. As we finish them, her comm buzzes and she goes vacant as she answers it.

“Trouble with work,” she says. She kisses me and takes her leave, promising me that we will do this again, soon. I press against her and return the kiss, sighing happily but not clinging. I surprise myself by realising that the happy sigh isn’t at all an act.

I make another cup of de, and go for a shower to wash away the sweat and aches. Tinker is considerate but enthusiastic and demanding lover. I’ve got bruises and bite marks and I want to shower (the joys of being planet-side, hot running water!) to ease the aches from my muscles before they get too tight.

That done, I surreptitiously dig out my electronic counter-surveillance gear and realise I’ve been bugged again.

Gather Information: roll+wits
Miss: 1+2 vs 3,4
Burn Momentum: Strong Hit
You discover something helpful and specific. The path or action you must follow to make progress is clear. Envision what you learn, take +2 progress.

I put my cameras somewhere that it was hard for whoever was bugging to see. They managed to get one, but I can safely recover the footage from the other. I do that, and play it back, making sure to giggle as if I’m watching silly gath flicks on the Weave - I actually have one playing in a split screen so the sounds are there. I wonder if they watched the little furry critters chase laser pointers before the Exodus?

I’m surprised at first that the people I see are not the other members of the Tinker’s strike group. I capture and blow up their faces and search against social media, pushing a bit deeper for more information as I uncover matches.

Gather Information: roll+wits
Strong Hit: 4+2+1 (infiltrator) vs 5,2
You discover something helpful and specific. The path or action you must follow to make progress is clear. Envision what you learn, take +2 progress.

There are a team of four people, they’re very good. A superficial look suggests that they’re part of a company called Gorchymyn Haearn, Iron Order in standard. But pressing deeper into their private connections there are a lot of people in their friends who are doing time in garchar, mostly for embezzlement, blackmail, Weave-based crimes. It’s not clear if Gorchymyn Haearn are a criminal front or these four are just bad eggs but it looks like I have attracted some unwelcome attention as well as the attention I wanted from the insurrectionists. I guess being a data specialist and down on my luck sounds like I could become, if not already be, a hacker or a cop cudd, a plant from the heddlu looking to try and get undercover with them.

These guys are not my priority and enough of them are getting arrested that the heddlu are obviously on to them. However, while I’m military intelligence, not an officer of the law, I did swear a vow to defend the clan, it’s peoples and its territory by any means necessary. These people may be criminals from within the clan but they’re preying on the clan. I consider my way forward.

I go for a run, that’s normal for me, and while I’m out, I comm Rhiannon, sending her a typed message rather than a video call. I spin her a pack of partial truths, I was staying in a rental apartment here in Prism for a few days, I visited a seedy pub with some of the workers from the factory I’d been visiting (she thinks I’m touring with a contact to see his manufacturing base) because I wanted to get their view of the working conditions. As I was packing up to go, the person from across the street told me that four guys had parked a hover van and gone into my apartment, it seemed fishy. I gave her a passable description of the Gorchymyn Haearn logo, and mediocre descriptions of the four guys. They were about 60% correct but about 30% incorrect - better than you might expect from an untrained eyewitness. I also gave her an entirely wrong address, but one that was close, in spelling terms to where I’d been living, so if she queried it I could pass it off as a slip of the fingers if she chases me up on it.

Civic duty done, I run back.

Develop Your Relationship
When you reinforce your relationship with a contact by… giving them something of worth (like a lead on a group of criminals) you may mark progress.

On the way my comm buzzes. I answer in the more normal way, pulling it from my pocket and looking at the screen. Training tomorrow. 10 am. Bring flat shoes and loose clothes. Joy.

I dutifully turn up for what I suspect is going to be combat assessment and training. I made sure to be up early and stretch out, running through the stretching and basic hand to hand routines we use in the Service. Even though I’m not good at these, I have been trained and I know they might save my life and it’s better to be loose and have them available to me. Then I sit down and meditate. “Mongoose” doesn’t know these things, has no reason in her cover story to know any of them. I can’t entirely suppress them but I need not to be beating people up with unexpected combat training.

Feeling ready, I head off.

The day starts with a different set of limbering up and stretching exercises to the ones I’m used to. Honshu special forces use a different regime to AWJ. They put more emphasis on blade work, less on archery so that makes sense, likewise they put more on duelling, facing your foes in honourable ways, AWJ SF is much more about skulking striking from the shadows, small blades or unarmed combat.

Battle roll+edge
Weak hit: 3+1 vs 9,2
You achieve your objective but not without cost. Pay the price

I honestly find it really hard to get through just the preliminary exercises. This is about fitness and mobility, but they give us practise swords and I’m just not used to, I feel constantly off balance. By the end of it, I’m shattered and not at all ready for what’s about to come next. I’m definitely in the weakest set of trainees here and I can see people watching me.

I get paired off with Tinker for… oh great, sword sparring. She’s going to leave me covered in bruises, again!

Battle roll+iron
Weak hit: 5+1 vs 2,7
You achieve your objective but not without cost. Pay the price. Mark -1 Health.
[There are many other options here but I know how this day is playing out and that this is the only time I’m going to get injured, and that I can get first aid soon, so I’m taking it.]

That wasn’t as bad as I expected. It helped that I have had some combat training so I could take the instruction and that Tinker is actually not only really good but a really good teacher. In the early passes she barely moved, encouraging me to attack her and just defending, correcting my footwork, posture and how I handled the sword. The bok more precisely, a kind of set of canes bound together to mimic the weight and shape of a traditional Honshu blade. Once I had that, she gradually went more and more on the offensive as I got better, teaching me defensive moves as well. She didn’t actually hit me anywhere hard, but I landed one lucky blow. She, on the other hand, hit me anywhere she wanted to, whenever she wanted to, and I probably have dozens of welts, bruises and scrapes.

Looking around at various points, I see not all the sword play is going so well. There are three of us left standing after an hour, and I saw several people being carried out with what I suspect are broken limbs or concussions. If you’re stupid and don’t listen, then you charge a soldier with a three foot long stick in their hand, it’s going to hurt…

Tinker walks me off to a private room.

“Let me look at your bruises, and there’s some water over there for you,” she says, reaching for a big field medical pack. She does very well not to leer as she says it, but as she turns back to face me and I’ve just stripped my top off, leaving me naked from the waist up, sweaty and bruised, one arm up as I swig the water I hear her gulp. I wouldn’t have done this if we hadn’t have had wild, slightly kinky sex together yesterday, but now I figure it’s fair play.

She gets her revenge by playing her fingers, sometimes her tongue over every mark before applying the cream, and stroking me in all kinds of places that aren’t exactly medically necessary, but I’m not complaining at all.

It’s apparent to me that Tinker may not be ready for the full honey trap, turning her back on Honshu, but she’s certainly very attracted to me. It occurs to me that she’s quite possibly pretty lonely, the rest of her squad is male and the rest of the people training with me are male. She’s probably had the training, like me, to be able to seduce anyone, regardless of preference, in the line of duty, but I think she likes the ladies, or femme-leaning NBs.

Reach A Milestone
When you make headway in your quest by… gaining meaningful insight… you may mark progress

Under Tinker’s careful ministrations I recover. It takes longer than perhaps it should, but it’s worth it for the time we spend together cementing our bond.

After we emerge, and the still walking wounded, we’re down to six now, gather again, it’s on to firearms training. Strictly low powered laser training, but their training lasers are set up, in a very similar way to the first ones I used, to mimic the Honshu assault rifle, the Howa Type F112. Unlike my companions I’ve fired the real version of one of these. Perks of training in the Service, I’ve fired all the military hardware from all the clans, although the AWJ probably 10x more than the rest put together. But I stop, listen carefully to the briefing and do what I’m told.

Battle: roll+edge
Weak hit: 3+1= 4 vs 2,9
You achieve your objective but not without cost, pay the price.

I manage to shoot moderately well. They’re not going to employ me as their sniper, and that’s ok, although there’s one guy here who has the aptitude for it, probably not the attitude though.

By the end of the session I am feeling decidedly funky. I can’t work out what is up at first but when Tinker touches me, correcting my stance a little I get a bolt of pure lust that has my nipples tightening, a warm glowing feeling that can only be the start of love and a sense of unhappiness, that she signed up to make her [unclear parental figure] proud, not to make the fat cats richer. Why did [unlear, disliked authority figure in uniform] send them to line the pockets of the wealthy in this peaceful place? A little later I get a flash from Gutshot, who I think is their team sniper, that he too is deeply unhappy about this mission but I can’t read more.

A few moments later I take another shot at the target, knowing in my heart that I’ve missed because I get a sense from Cleric that they should see signs now and the target seems to move. Not far, it’s not a bullseye or anything, but it turns a clear miss into a hit.

Cleric is the team medic. Imaginative callsign there. But his feeing and thought is enough to let me realise what’s going on. It’s not clear to me whether anyone has noticed. Tinker is the most likely to have done, she’s pretty much behind me and looking at the target I’m looking at.

Ask the Oracle: fifty-fity
Roll: 52
No

As luck would have it, she’s just turned away to talk to Gutshot about lunch. She didn’t notice, nor did he.

Now I know what’s going on, I can feel the signs. I should have been warned by what happened to Steffon and his break out psychic powers. Something, presumably in the water, is amplifying any latent psychic powers we may have. I’ve been through this before. Puberty for psychics is hell, all those hormones don’t only cause our bodies to change, they cause our powers to manifest. Fortunately there are techniques we all learn to keep them under control, or we die trying. Sometimes quite literally. Firestarters who don’t learn can burn themselves away.

These new powers probably won’t become usable for some time but, eventually, they’ll come through and judging from what I’m seeing I’ll be an empath and a kinetic to add to a shade. Won’t that be fun.

Face Danger: roll+shadow
Strong hit: 5+3+1 vs 8,8
You are successful, take +1 momentum.

Because I still meditate for all kinds of reasons, it’s part of the combat training, it’s part of how I maintain cover and it was a huge part of my life for nearly three years as I learnt to control my shade abilities, I can parcel off part of brain to run through the meditations for controlling these bursts of psychic energy and still shoot their gun. I don’t want to reveal myself as a psychic to them, I get the strong impression (even without empath powers) that would take things down a different route. Just was we’re breaking for lunch one of the other people, Buzzard - a large, eccentric guy, who’d struck me as unhelpful, stubborn and indifferent starts muttering. It’s hard to make out his words clearly but I’ve worked around Seers and this sounds a lot like a prophecy. It’s too jumbled and distant for me to hear it clearly but it sounds pretty ominous. He’s rapidly taken away and I wonder if we’ll ever see him again.

After lunch we’re told training is done for the day. Tinker tells me that she has to stay and discuss the result of the morning’s work but can she see me that evening? I say of course she can, but warn her to call first to wake me up! She smiles, walks me to the door, and kisses me goodbye.

I head for home, pausing for a goffi and shooting off a report on the psychic enhancer, that I’ve been dosed and latent empath and kinetic powers emerged but are not currently controllable and did not break my cover. I also report that Buzzard broke out as a seer and was sequestered, and on all the injuries. I additionally report on the feelings that I picked up from Tinker and that I’m honey trapping her.

End a Session
Reflect on the session, develop relationships (done at the time) and reach a milestone - I think I’ve taken another step towards establishing myself as a double and to furthering the overall investigation into Honshu. Next session, more training, this time sneaky stuff and Weave/Data Hub stuff. Shit I’m good at!
Take +1 Momentum

Operation Orange Watchtower - a new resolution and a seduction

Begin a session: Flashback reveals an aspect of your background or nature.
Take +1 Momentum when you return from flashback.

Flashback

Society in the Forge is very widely accepting. Being a non-binary pansexual like me barely causes a blink in even the tiniest, most backwater settlements you can find. Within the Service that’s not true. They have all the right tick boxes on their HR forms of course, but they teach classes on seduction, honey trapping and the like and to say they’re antiquated would be polite. I don’t think they’ve been updated since before the Exodus. They talk in really gendered language, he, she, him or her and it doesn’t take much of a scratch to see there’s a great deal of heteronormativity and sexism there too. How a many seduces a woman, how a man is at danger of being seduced by a woman. There is an appendix written for a woman, how she might seduce a man, how she might be seduced. I kid you not, it’s an appendix. Nothing about lesbian or gay experiences and if you get further into the rainbow alphabet, forget it. Our instructors at least had the grace to look ashamed. By that point there were 25 of us left. 10 women, 11 men and 4 NBs and I swear the straights were in a very small minority in our cohort. Maybe a few were only “gay for the stay” - the Service still had single sex dorms (fun for the four of us like me that weren’t either) - but hardly anyone wasn’t getting some. Tomas, Ari and maybe Charlie. The actual training, the practical element, was much better than the manual. We had actors and agents of all genders and romantic inclinations come in and they practised on us as much as we practised on, and learnt from, them. We didn’t know who was who, so we had to learn how to tell the actors (who were looking to brush up their craft but present their true selves, at least at first) from the agents (who were looking to learn secrets about us and practise their tradecraft with false identities and sexualities) but we had the whole gamut. Over time, the actors moved on to having scripted secrets to protect and personas to try.

I didn’t expect to enjoy it, but I absolutely loved it. It was a battle of wits, understanding and sneakiness. It came after a load of brute physical stuff where I sucked and while this wasn’t pure stealth, suddenly I was in an area where I was much stronger than those in my cohort who had been (literally) running rings around me with heavy packs on during endurance training and combat training. Ari and Alun were the best of us, but I was a close third and that was good enough for then.

Flashback Ends

I woke up with a smile. I pulled out my dagger. I would have to word this just right, Tinker would have to go down, and that might mean her death depending on how this played out, but I was determined to honey trap and try to turn her.

Swear An Iron Vow: roll+heart.
Honeytrap Tinker, Try to make her a double agent for AWJ against AWJ if she can be pulled out rather than killed.
Strong Hit 5+2+1 vs 1,3.
You are emboldened and it is clear what you must do next. Take +2 Momentum.

I have Tinker’s contact details, we exchanged them so she can call me in for the next round of training as “her” recruit. It’s almost certainly a burner, and it’s probably monitored but she hadn’t said not to call her and they haven’t given us any op sec training. I sit down and weigh up my options. Yesterday was the assessment, I figure probably next weekend for the training, so she’ll contact me on Thursday. So tomorrow, I’ll call and invite her for goffi and see how that goes.

I spend the rest of the day cleaning the flat. I take advantage of the cleaning to destroy as many of their devices as I reasonably can.

Secure An Advantage: roll+shadow.
Strong Hit: 1+3+1 vs 4,4 Mark Progress, gain +2 momentum and +1 on the next roll.

I haven’t got them all, that would be too hard for a normal clean, but I’ve given myself some space to plan and move in safety.

Next I plan to what to wear to impress Tinker. I didn’t really come looking to seduce anyone, but there are always a few bits tucked away.

Check your Gear: roll+supply.
Strong Hit 5+5+1 vs 3,3
You have it and are ready to act. Take +1 momentum.

With everything ready, I head to bed. In the morning I run, head off to not get a job, come home and dress to impress and then call Tinker. She’s free and would love a goffi. This afternoon is fine… I let her pick the place - she likes to be in charge and “Mongoose” likes letting her be - and note it’s not too far from my flat. I wonder if that’s so she can drop someone off to replace the bugs or if she thinks she’s going to get lucky?

I decide to plant a coupe of devices to passively record anyone coming in through the door. Much harder to detect than the bugs they had, which had to transmit over the Weave.

I wonder what, if anything, they’ll reveal?

Tinker and I meet up. The flirting begins almost instantly.

Begin the Scene: Name your objective - Seduce Tinker into a relationship. Set rank as formidable, choose the tension clock 6 segments.

I have a tricky path to walk. “Mongoose” has to let Tinker take the lead, but give her enough signals to say “I’m here, take me.” I’m not really that passive normally. But I remember the classes in the Service, and it’s fun to be wooed. I remember the coy looks, the licking of my lips, smoothing my hair down.

Face Danger: roll+shadow
Strong hit: 5+3 vs 5,2
Mark Progress

Clearly Tinker likes what she sees and moves her chair closer. I lean forward, and smile, encouraging her.

Face Danger: roll+shadow
Strong hit: 6+3 vs 8,5
Mark Progress

Soon enough she’s reaching out, taking my hand and stroking my fingers. I’m mixing the coy looks with staring into her eyes, then looking away with a giggle. I’m not good enough to blush at will, I wish I were, but this is working just fine.

Face Danger: roll+shadow
Miss: 2+3 vs 10,6
Burn Momentum, Weak Hit.
You are successful and mark progress but also encounter a complication or setback. Envision what occurs and fill a clock segment.

Just as things were getting interesting there’s a buzzing and Tinker’s eyes go glassy. I’ve seen this before, she’s got a military comms implant, although “Mongoose” wouldn’t know what’s going on. From the way things were playing out I was initially thinking we were heading back to mine for an afternoon of hot sex. Now I’m wondering if that call was to say they’d installed fresh bugs.

Tinker smiles and squeezes my hand.

“Another goffi?”

I nod and smile back at her, watching as she goes up to the counter. She’s definitely easy on the eyes and I’m rewarded when she turns back, catches me checking her out and gives me a positively sinful smile and then a shake of her finger in mock admonishment. I find myself blushing. I rarely do kinky stuff, but with Tinker I think I could, at least sometimes, and enjoy it. Just as I’m considering that, she comes back and slides into the seat next to me. I gasp and make room, looking up at her.

Face Danger: roll+shadow
Weak Hit: 2+3 vs 8,4
You are successful and mark progress but also encounter a complication or setback. Envision what occurs and fill a clock segment.

“I’m sorry about that,” Tinker says, “Mimic called.”

Mimic is another member of her strike group. Gay man, tall, shifty looking with a skin colour mutation, bright green. It’s hard to say if he’s called Mimic because he’ll find it impossible to blend without makeup or his mutation is more of a chameleon thing and he’d chosen to be bright green for some reason. He’d come over as rather indifferent during the assessment period, like we weren’t good enough. I wasn’t quite sure about his position in the hierarchy, but I thought he was subordinate to Tinker.

“He’s having family trouble, wanted to bend my ear,” Tinker continued. I could see something darken her eyes.

“But I didn’t see you say anything, answer a comm?” I say.

“Augment,” came her not totally accurate reply, along with her eyes clearing. She was wondering why I hadn’t asked how she’d answered without seeming to react when “Mongoose” doesn’t have anything military in her background. Squeaked by there.

“I think he’s good to go but if he can’t sort it, he might call again,” Tinker kept going. “But I told him I’m not available for at least the next two hours. So we shouldn’t get any more interruptions unless he burns the place down.” With that she puts her arm around me and pulls me close.

I smile up at her and nestle close.

“What are you going to do with little old me for two hours?” I ask, in a small voice.

Face Danger: roll+shadow
Strong hit with a match: 4+3 vs 4,4
You are successful and mark progress twice.

Tinker lets one hand roam down over my flank and uses the other to tip my head up so she can kiss me. I moan softly and open my lips.

Secure an advantage: roll+heart
Weak hit: 3+2 vs 10,3
Take +2 momentum

I kiss her back, remembering to keep it soft, submissive and I’m not entirely surprised to feel my whole body responding. I’m happy to feel her pressing me close against her and feel her body responding to the kiss and the pressure of my body against hers somewhere in that little bit of my brain that is still Bagpipes, still on mission, even now.

Face Danger: roll+shadow
Weak hit: 3+3 vs 4,10
You are successful and mark progress but also encounter a complication or setback.
Envision what occurs and fill a clock segment.

As the kiss carries on, Tinker turns in the seat and there’s a crack that I can’t quite place, then a yelp and she pulls away, swearing. If I didn’t already know she was Honshu born, the jig would be up now as she mixes a variety of Honshu with AWJ choice curses as her leg is covered with hot goffi… that crack is clearly where she kicked the table and spilt out drinks over herself. I do my best not to giggle and reach for the napkins, dabbing her leg dry. I can’t help strong her leg as the worst of the moisture is gone.

Secure an Advantage: roll+shadow
Strong Hit: 4+3 vs 1,4
Take +2 momentum and +1 on your next move.

“Would you like to come back to mine?” I offer, putting just enough hesitancy into my voice. “I can wash the goffi out of your trousers. You might have to wear my robe though, I don’t think I’ve got anything else that will fit you.”

“Are you trying to get me naked already?” Tinker smiles roguishly at me. I blush. She holds out her hand as she stands up and pulls me close. “No pressure, but getting these clean before they stain too badly sounds wonderful, thank you.”

We walk back to my flat hand in hand, chatting nervously. We both know in a few minutes Tinker is going to be undressing in front of me. All those old jokes about lesbians technically don’t apply to me, but they are threatening to come back and bite Tinker in her very shapely arse.

Too soon, or not soon enough, I open the door and invite her inside. She stops on the threshold and again says “no pressure, beautiful.” I lean into her and kiss her.

Face Danger: roll+shadow
Strong hit: 4+3 vs 2,6
You are successful and mark progress

I tug Tinker inside, still kissing her.

“Don’t be silly, I want this as much as you do,” I whisper against her lips.

She undresses first, unashamed. Her clothes go into the wash. Then she undresses me.

And as we fade to black, neither of us are aware of the eyes of a third party watching us.

End Scene: When the events lead to the scene’s conclusion, roll the challenge dice and compare your progress.
Weak hit: 8 vs 2, 10
You succeed by not without cost. You must pay the price.
Make this a minor cost relative to the scope of the scene.
End Session
Reflect on the events of the game, and opportunities to mark progress.
During this session it seems fair to say I developed my relationship with Tinker, so mark progress there.
I also reached a milestone in the attempts to honeytrap Tinker, so mark progress there.

My cost for ending the scene was “a surprising development complicates your quest”. I haven’t thought about who, but I have decided that the people who planted the bugs are not Tinker’s strike group or my branch of the Service. The heddlu would be one possibility. A criminal organisation would be another. A different part of the Service would be a third. I will think on it, they all have interesting potential ramifications.

A Change in Style

I’ve been reading a few other play reports. While not everyone does this is, quite a few people record their rolls (what they do, outcomes, etc.). While it spoils the narrative flow, I think it makes it clearer why there are weird results and diversions. So, going forward, I think I’m going to do the same.

It should look something like this:

Gather Information: Strong Hit 8 vs 6, 2.
Envision what you learn. Then, take +2 momentum.

I’ll see how it goes for a while, but hopefully that will show some of the underlying reasons why the story jumps around.

Operation Orange Watchtower - Getting Recruited

I got a message back from Conductor. There was grumbling about the amount of paperwork they were going to have to do but, the message finished with praise for a job well done. Also an official commendation. I can tell you it was hard to go and grumble that night but it’s a good job I did because I was approached by Tinker.

Tinker is more clearly of Honshu origin than the team I saw in Welkin, although she doesn’t say she’s recruiting for Honshu, just that her parents moved from Honshu to AWJ when she was a brat. She presents as femme. She’s friendly and sympathetic, which you’d expect from a recruiter, I suspect behind that she’s a leader-type, probably a senior NCO, and I wonder if she’s been sent specifically to appeal directly to my cover identity or if this bar is just her regular rotation. It would certainly make sense for her to be sent specifically to try and recruit me, “Mongoose” is presented as someone lost and who reacts well to authority figures. Physically Tinker is poised and has an augmented left arm. It’s hard to be sure but I suspect she’s got weapons fitted, and maybe something else in that arm. On a different level, if she wasn’t the enemy, I, as Bagpipes, could woo Tinker. Because sexuality is hard to fake I wonder if they’ve sent Tinker here to potentially seduce “Mongoose” as well?

The conversation goes like a dance. Neither of us want to come on too strong and tip our hands, she she wants to recruit me and I want to be recruited. As the conversation goes along it’s clear she’s attracted to me as well and so we have a sort of double flirtation going. I am a professional, I manage to get recruited, result, and keep the sexual flirting down to dull roar. I won’t say no, pillow talk still works to gather intelligence after all, but a part of me expects she’ll remember I’m cannon fodder for the insurrection and not take it any further.

At the end of the evening we agree to meet again, in the capacity of recruiter and recruit. We don’t use those words of course, it’s all very tentative at the moment, Tinker doesn’t know that I’m a sure thing, it’s my duty to be recruited, but we’re off to a good start.

I report my first contact and my next meet. The next three days are tricky. I need to maintain a basically similar routine for “Mongoose” but with enough of a change for that ‘I’ve got a secret’ that it’s not obvious I’m a spy. The very real attraction to Tinker makes that easier than it might have been. Young, unrequited, lust is just as real a secret as ‘I’m being recruited’ after all.

The weekend rolls around, and it’s recruitment meeting time. I was expecting a Friday chat in the back room of a pub and, indeed, I’m taken into the back room of a pub. I can tell, instantly something is up, there are about ten of us, eleven as I count more carefully, but the whole Honshu strike team. They’re mingling but their body language is off.

It takes me longer than it should to realise what’s up, while we’re all being offered drinks, and there are a mix of drinks, they’re all drinking what looks suspiciously like bottled water. Just as I wonder what the deal is, I slump to the floor, along with a couple of the other smaller people. Just as things start to go dark, I hear the thump, thump of the bigger bodies.

When I come round, I try to act like a civilian. I check I’m dressed, check I haven’t been raped, robbed and the like. While my hands are moving, doing that, I’m surreptitiously looking around, assessing the area. It’s not that I don’t care about what my hands find (I haven’t been robbed, I’m still dressed but some of my clothes have been at least undone and refastened, maybe removed and redressed - one fastener patch hasn’t been done up properly. No aches, so no rape, no groping) it’s more that I can panic about it later, knowing if I’m about to get shot is more urgent. I’m in a small room, sat in a comfy chair. I figure I was searched for listening devices. I refasten my top properly.

“Why did you take my clothes off?” I put a mix of indignation and panic into my voice. I’m sure they’re watching me and the door opens. In walks Tinker.

“I’m sorry, we had to be sure that you aren’t a cop cudd, a spy sent to infiltrate us. Our medic undressed you and she’s very professional about bodies. I stop and smile, putting some doubt and wavering into it but nod. Honestly it’s far, far gentler than a lot of what I went through in training, but I’d volunteered for that and while some of it was a surprise in detail broadly we knew what we were letting ourselves in for. This was more of a shock but equally understandable.

“We’re going to do basic fitness and aptitude tests over the next little while, see how you can best help us, if you’re still in?” Tinker continued, smiling back at me reassuringly and reaching out to stroke my cheek. I pressed myself into her touch. I won’t lie, I wasn’t entirely professional in that moment, I’m not a complete control freak, not yet anyway, but being knocked out in a room full of the enemy like that freaked me out. Taking comfort from the touch of a cute woman, even if she’s an enemy cute woman, helped steady me.

“Fitness? Aptitude tests?” I asked, looking up at her.

“You’ll be fine,” she reassured me with another smile and stroke of my cheek. “We’re not doing military tests or anything, it’s not like we want you to be a secret army, we just want to be sure you haven’t got any heart defects or bad legs, that kind of thing.”

I nodded, and tried not to let my thoughts “Liar, liar” show in my eyes.

“Come on then, lets get you into the first test,” Tinker drops her hand from my face and offers both hands to help me up. I take them, stand and smile as she gives me a gentle squeeze before letting go. I follow her out into the corridor, noting that the “rooms” were much rougher and readier on the outsider, pressed wood boards bolted into place, the insides looked much better. Maybe some kind of projector onto white painted walls? There are only eight other recruits who join us. I wonder what happened to the other two, did they refuse at the mention of fitness tests or were they carrying listening devices? I make a mental note of everything I can remember about them so I can pass their details on.

First up is the fitness test. Not military my left foot. I was always borderline on these in the Service, but here I realise I’m doing rather well. I keep it up, it would look more surprising to suddenly dip in form. The Service basically requires a level of fitness equivalent to a special forces soldier, not with the full pack, we’re not going into battle, but we are a military intelligence unit, se we have to pass basic combat fitness and several extended fitness tests with our normal “spywear” kit. But if they’ve had me under surveillance, they’ll have seen I’ve been running and the like to keep up those standards.

Next is a test of coordination. It’s not military, it’s those pesky buzzer bars. I could probably do better, but they haven’t seen me do anything that would suggest I do anything like this, so I deliberately come in the bottom half of the group. Not bad enough to look like I’ve got a tremor or anything, but nothing outstanding.

We’re then given a break for goffi and food. I carefully eat like my cover rather than like I’m a spy after a military fitness exercise. I’m still hungry, so an extra piece of fruit is all I allow myself.

I join the conversation as the people around chat, trying to work out what I can about them. I get names and bits of backstory, partial descriptions - quite a lot of these people don’t have much in the ways of distinguishing features - and I can’t help remembering the first few days of spy training when everyone was doing the same. Remembering that, I make sure I share enough of my cover that I don’t seem stand-offish. I’m sure someone is watching us, observing how we interact, still looking for signs that one of us is a spy or undercover cop.

After eating it’s an afternoon of aptitude tests. Numerical reasoning, computer skills, report writing, all very ordinary. I decide to let some of my data security skills show, it’s line with the jobs I’ve been looking for. I don’t think they’ll employ me to handle their data but they might look to train me as a hacker and put me into a data retrieval role. Last up is a mixed bag of other skills. I almost relaxed as I realised one was an infiltration and stealth skill, it was going to be a breeze but I caught myself and kept a tight rein on my ability to slide into the veil and breeze through that. I think I did better than they expected after my coordination tests earlier, but I could have let rip and really breezed through.

At the end of the day I copy everyone else and collapse, eating the next batch of food, sticking to the fruit juice though - most of them are on the beers.

The strike team come out and mingle. One by one our new handlers take us out and break the news, then let us out. I don’t know how anyone else has done, but I was accepted. I’m part of the revolution.

I would say part of their operational security sucks. I’m left to find my own way home. But that means I know where they’ve had us doing the training. I call for a cab and head straight home.

I very, very carefully go through all of my gear. If I was recruiting them, I’d be planting bugs, putting software traps into all my electronic devices and so on. Judging by the time I got out, they had long enough to bug my home as well.

I check my electronics during the drive home. The firewalls kept them out, it looks like they tried some very basic stuff like a thumb print but enough people use a voice print these days that the fact they couldn’t get in shouldn’t have unduly alarmed them. It’s not exactly what I use, but they’ll assume it what is. Electronics safe, I use them to check for bugs on me. All clear.

When I get in though, the flat I’m renting is so alive it’s unreal. Audio, visual, electronic sniffing. There are ways to defeat all of it - the simplest is just to create and drop off a report from somewhere else which is what my operational security requires - but I need to make sure I never break cover now. I’m not an exhibitionist but I catch myself hoping Tinker enjoys watching me in the shower.

I feel like I’m starting to make genuine progress. I hadn’t expected to like Tinker. I will take her down with the rest of the strike group if I have to, but I wonder if I can honey trap her and turn her. We’ll see how that develops. Technically I am now a recruit within the Honshu Insurrection. There are several more stages to go before that starts to pay off but I have my feet under the metaphorical table. I can’t relax yet, but at least I’ve started the process successfully.

Shower, sleep. Fail to get a job in the morning as usual. Head to get a goffi and check for close surveillance. Double check for electronic tampering. Compose and send a report to Conductor so they can look into the other recruits and those that disappeared after being knocked out. Then I settle down to wait for the next phase.

Operation Orange Watchtower - the read-in and preparation, plus a twist

Being a spy, technically a counter-intelligence agent at the moment, is nowhere near as exciting as the entertainment industry makes it out to be.

Yes, I get cool gadgets, I get to quasi-legally break into places and hack their computers. Sometimes I get to break into buildings where enemy special forces strike teams are being tossed around by out of control emerging psychics and rescue them, although strictly that one was off the books.

However, mostly it’s about doing the mundane things really well to maintain your cover and reading big fat dossiers.

The last few days are a case in a point. To save you the real tedium, let me summarise.

I need to get back to Boreas, pdq, to meet the courier. So it’s off to Medwyn, strike a sweet deal for some more brandy, shoot on over to Boreas, no problems.

En route, I consider my options. Welkin, the main settlement, and stamping ground of Detective Rhiannon Jones, is probably not a good place to get recruited. Their strike team has just had an unfortunate encounter with Steffon, and then the heddlu, they’re not going to be recruiting. Prism is the next largest settlement, and almost exactly antipodean to Welkin. If I can find any evidence in the files for Operation Orange Watchtower or the local activity for Honshu recruitment, I could set up a cover there and try my luck. I start sketching out plans for cover identities and what I’ll need to do to set them up. Nothing concrete yet but I know the sorts of profiles I need to create and I can readily find the data about Prism to locate the kinds of places I might need to try and insert myself.

Even with that very cursory look at the public data it suggests that there’s a serious problem in Prism. In fact it’s so big I jot some notes wondering why someone hasn’t noticed it and done something about it. We have seers at the Service who are meant to spot this kind of thing and report it. I’ve seen them in action and it’s scary. That means someone is either preventing the information they need from reaching them, either from Prism, Boreas or internally, in the Service, or blocking their reports from being disseminated internally so people like me can go and act on it. Those last two are really alarming but I need to wait before I start accusing people - 99% of these cases are someone local being bribed to sit on the reports. The other 1% are seriously bad news. But another week won’t bring down the clan. Crying “wolf” on my second mission might kill my career.

I land, sell my brandy, meet Rhiannon, check in on progress in Steffon’s missing person case. She says they’ve got nothing. No surprises there, he was spooked off planet by yours truly. I make a note to ask Conductor to squash the investigation soon. I tell Rhiannon that I’m meeting a new potential business client, and that I will be here for a while, looking at their manufacturing plants and discussing terms. I don’t think she’s watching me, but if she keeps an eye on the Skirl that will explain why she doesn’t leave port for a while, breaking my normal pattern.

Then I meet the courier. It might seem odd to you, in these days of the Weave, but the Service uses couriers a lot. In the flicks you still see paper dossiers stamped “Top Secret” and “For Your Eyes Only” and stuff like that. It looks really dramatic. In practise, there’s a fingerprint, retina-scan and DNA locked box. Inside the box there’s a data crystal. I’m told the data crystal has some extra layers of protection too, I just know it’s got a set of layers of encryption on it, but when I plug it in to my reader, they handshake, I go through the various logins, and I can read the files. For anyone interested, the courier and I meet for lunch, and she just hands it to me. It looks like a normal itinerary, nothing to attract attention. All the security to open the package with the data crystal is conducted well away from prying eyes, back on the Skirl.

True to my word, I set out from Welkin and rent a property in one of the regions of Prism I’ve earmarked for a potential recruitment site. I start on the cover story in soft ways, frequenting the sorts of bars where I think it’s likely I’d get recruited, using a false name, sending out the right sort of signals. I register as looking for work and turn up to the hiring posts, always just a bit late so the jobs I’m qualified for have gone. I grumble and bitch about it, head for home, then do the job I’m really here to do - analyse the data in the Operation Orange Watchtower dossier.

It takes a while to go through everything. That’s not entirely fair. It takes nearly ten days. The first read through takes three days, there’s just that much data. Then I go through it again. Specifically looking for two things - patterns of data flow off Boreas and recruitment here in Prism. It was pretty easy to confirm there was a recruitment cell active in Prism and set aside time to work on my cover identity. What took longer was to conclusively find the evidence that the data that Boreas should be reporting was being, within reasonable limits, reported to the right places.

When I say within reasonable limits, some of the data was a bit wrong, some was a bit late, but this looked like human error rather than corruption and suppression by enemy action. Well, it did for the data I was looking at. There was evidence that Boreas was fixing data on its population growth, claiming more pregnancies and a higher miscarriage rate. I wasn’t clear to me why, probably some tax scam, but I made a note of it in the report I was preparing. That shifted the balance of probabilities to a mole in the Service. It wasn’t certain yet, but more than 50% likely. Time to establish a solid cover, and dig around in the rest of the dossier.

One of the benefits of working for the Service is that a lot of government agencies, when you have the right credentials, role over and play nicely. What takes criminals long, long hours of sweat and tears and typically raises all kinds of alarms is, for me, a matter of accessing the right package, filling in some details and pushing the go button. It’s absolutely that simple.

Operation Orange Watchtower makes reference to other operations that I don’t have clearance for. This is common. I’m in the field, investigating activity on Boreas. If I get captured, Conductor and their superiors don’t want me to be able to tell the enemy anything about what’s going on elsewhere in this sector or in other sectors. However, the activities in Prism and Welkin have given me something to search for in publicly available databases. I can append this to the report I send to Conductor so they can use their better position to determine whether any of this data has been acted on by the Seers. I can also, with a bit of finesse, determine whether the data from Prism ever reached the Service Seers and so identify the level of the problem.

First things first. The publicly available data is totally risk free. I take a little while to move around, so not all the searches are coming from one place, create a series of spoof searches, so I’m looking at ten thousand sorts of data - this is pretty common for a bot mining for a commercial operator - and extract the data for each of the settlements in this sector. Of those with more than 10,000 inhabitants, nine of the twelve show clear evidence of recruitment across the three planets with clear routes to the rest of clan space. Artemis has no settlements over that limit.

Bolstered by that, I dive into the Service and start trying to look for what is happening with the data that is coming from Boreas. It turns out that I need a higher level clearance than I have, that data requires a different access than Operation Orange Watchtower. Do I press on, or try to hack the Service? I decide I can try one more approach in safety.

I pause, regather my wits and think about how to do this. I eschew the local goffi, fruit juice is better, the sugar rush keeps me more focussed. Unlimbering skills I didn’t expect to need here I find a backdoor into the data handling stream that doesn’t ask for an operations code. Not a great piece of data security but so far I’m borderline legal, here on my login and not doing anything I couldn’t have reached without permission.

I pause again, deciding what to do next, I don’t want to copy the data, that would set a million alarm bells ringing. I want to determine if the data is ever being passed to the seers, or if the reports are being suppressed. Although I was always destined for fieldwork with my talents, everyone spent time tagging data and entering it, tagging reports as well. For people going into data analysis it’s a huge part of their daily life, and ask you can see from the exciting time I’ve had, even for field agents it’s a time consuming part of our lives. But it’s equally important for us in terms of writing clear reports so that they can be readily entered into the data stream and acted upon.

I never directly dealt with the data going to the seers, but I know what the tags look like. So it’s relatively easy to determine the tags for the data that should have alerted the seers to the pattern I’m seeing and to the reports they’re generating. Then compose a report.

I carefully compose a search to tell me the number of items with both those sets of tags. I stop to consider the implications of setting it loose.

Advanced data security, there’s a way to detect if a certain search has been performed. This would be an obvious search for someone with my suspicions, and I’m logged in using my own user name. I don’t start the search. I set up a different search instead. Is there a data flag set to show if either or both of these searches is performed? Success, there is. Ok, that’s more evidence that there’s a mole. I quickly double check. There’s no evidence that there’s direct Honshu activity on my home world, and lo and behold, there’s no evidence of data tap on searches for those tags. That goes into the report too.

Where next? I could retreat at this point. I’ve got good evidence and I could let the data security people run with it. I decide to stop and consider the alert and what I know about it. I change the ways the alert information is displayed and look at the support for it. Although it’s not currently shown to me, the system stores the data for who created the alert, so it can let them know someone else has triggered it. I wonder if I can find out who that is?

I again pause, take a sip of juice and consider what I’m about to do. This is definitely naughty, not approved activity. But it’s so close I can feel it, taste it.

I stop to consider how. Then I notice that the alert has been triggered. Not recently, not by me, some weeks ago, before I even completed my training. Just once, a few minutes after it was created. I know what that is, that’s the creator checking they’ve done it right. But it’s also a mistake. Whenever an alert is triggered there’s a log. It’s held separately, and it records the id of the account that triggered it and the address the alert was sent to. These kinds of details are important to know if you’re a sneaking person like me. Off I go to the logs, armed with the ID# of the alert. I double check no one has been ultra sneaky and set up an alert for this, then check the log for the alert and record the id of the user who triggered it and the addresses, plural where the alert was sent. One is the account that created it, that’s ok. One is a random public burner account. I just created a whole electronic identity using the same service when I created my cover ID. It might mean the user is a field agent but it might, equally, mean they’re alerting someone in the Honshu SF. No way to tell from just the address, but a mystery to look into later.

I withdraw and sign out. Then I compose my report and send it priority to Conductor. The probability is well over 90% that there’s a mole in the Service. I won’t be the one investigating it, but I will get credit for uncovering them. Tradecraft and being a nasty, suspicious person kicks in. Before I send it off, I double check that Conductor’s user ID is not the same as the one on the alert…

It isn’t glamorous, I’ve done a lot of reading, a lot of data analysis, and I’ve queued up deliberately late for jobs I didn’t want to get. I’ve been to a seedy bar and sounded disgruntled and pushed a few buttons to create a fake ID. The most nerve wracking thing I’ve done in the last fortnight is hack my own Service to reveal that there’s a mole and report them to my handler. However, I’ve made steady progress. I’ve established there really is a problem here, in the whole sector of 7AB. There’s an insurrection being planned, it’s quite widespread, and there’s a mole in the Service helping it go unnoticed [Thank you dice, when I was sketching out a plot for this, I really wasn’t expecting it to go that way!]. I’ve also got a cover identity and established I’m the kind of person they might be interested in recruiting. These things take a while, so I will give it a bit longer and see if they bite of their own accord but that has to be my main priority for now, unless the ruckus back at 5MI calls me away.

Oh, and for those of you wondering how a double agent, which I will be soon, all being well, operates in land dominated by unbreakable Iron Vows? Well the answer is, it depends on what you swear. You learn to say one thing and mean another, swear your vow in secret even as you speak it aloud. This is not considered honourable of course, but I have a pre-existing Iron Vow to defend the clan, its people and its territory by any means necessary. Deceiving enemies of the clan by mouthing one vow while internally swearing a second vow upholds that original vow. I feel no qualms about that. Not at the moment anyway.

Some mechanics

It might be obvious to you, but it wasn't obvious to me, that the main move to use for this sort of narrative adventure is going to be Face Danger. You start a scene, face danger, with some gather information and seize and advantage, then end the scene.

In my run through Operation Green Steamroller I wasn't doing that (new system, new environment (I was using the Foundry client instead of pen and paper) and an early morning start) and I made some dumb choices. I think it's a mark of the strength of the system that I could still tell a decent narrative (I mean, my story telling needs work, but the mechanics still supported it) even using the tools suboptially. In the Rescue Steffon story, the system didn't clunk along, it purred and although I faced many more complications it felt like the system was supporting me so I could concentrate on telling the story I wanted to tell rather than wondering what the mechanics were up to. That's a nice feeling.

I still have to get to grips a bit better with narrating the story as I go but I think that will come. I'm still getting used to juggling both the rolling and the storytelling alongside each other but it's much easier this way, and it will only get easier as I get used to do it.

UPDATE: When you make a scene, the reason everything is a formidable challenge and you use the clocks is to set the ultimate difficulty of completing the challenge. With a formidable challenge you fill a box every time you mark progress. But if you have a four sector clock you're likely to fill the clock with a lot of progress left unfilled and so get a poor result on the Finish the Scene roll (although I lucked out on a four sector clock to rescue Steffon yesterday). If you have eight sectors, you're much more likely to nearly or completely fill the progress bar and so get at least a weak hit or even a strong hit when you Finish the Scene.

Rescuing Steffon

[Picking up on my early note, I roll for my vow now]

I sit down to try and work out how I’m going to even go about finding Steffon. I’ve got a picture and some bare details from Medwyn, but it’s not really much. Although I’ve traded here on Boreas it’s been 100% legit trade, no spooky stuff, to establish a rock solid cover. I’ve looked at stuff on the fringes of the law, that’s expected, but nothing over the edge, nothing too dangerous.

A couple of avenues present themselves, I can either break out my professional skills and start data mining the Weave, try to find images of Steffon, first in publicly available data hubs, then in more private ones. Or I can do what my cover would probably do, go to the local cops, whatever they’re called here, and see if they know anything. Or, first of all, just look him up in the local directories and see if he’s there.

I decided I’m going to take those approaches in reverse order. Look him up, approach the Heddlu, then break out the spy craft.

It’s a little worrying when searching by name and image in the local contact directories don’t show any signs of Steffon. Either Medwyn lied about him being here or someone has erased him. But I have reasons for my search that are above board. I’m not going to search to see if I’ve set off alarms because if I have, poking now will only alert those already looking at me.

To the Heddlu it is. I report what I’ve done and why, and that I can’t find any trace of Steffon. They repeat my actions and then hit up the tax records. Steffon Price, husband of Medwyn Price, arrived five years ago. Paid his taxes last year. Still paying his utilities bills three weeks ago. No record in the public directories for the last six weeks though. As the detective is taking me through to open a formal missing person’s case, someone walks up to the desk and talks to the officer on duty. He, or maybe they, announce in a too loud voice that they’re here to report Steffon Price missing. Fortunately the desk officer is elderly and just starts making notes, the detective is clearly suspicious and I was half through the door and act like I didn’t hear. I’d caught enough of this new person as I was waiting to be buzzed through and in the accent to realise something though. This person is very good, but they’re a native of Honshu space, not AWJ space. It could all be a coincidence, but I’ve been taught not to believe in coincidences. How are Honshu and Steffon mixed up? Does this relate to Orange Watchtower at all?

Detective Jones is very good, I’ll give her that. She takes down all my details, all the case pertinent details and, on the way out, casually slips in a question about the Honshu person who came in. My mind races, I know how to answer it as a spy, but have to stop that instinctive answer answer and respond in line with my cover. I think she takes my thinking time as shock and believes that I really hadn’t heard the citizen, she certainly seems to take my deliberately shaky voice and stammer at face value although I feel unexpectedly shaky at this. I should have anticipated such a question and thought about how I’d answer so I was ready.

Something clever is going on behind the scenes, I’m pretty sure that the Honshu person is in the station somewhere, but we’re kept apart. I step out and head into a nearby eatery. Goffi might not taste like it did back in the home galaxy, heck, it doesn’t really taste the same, settlement to settlement, but Heddlu still drink it wherever you go. I get a cup and look around, checking to see if anyone is interested in me.

After a while I’m sure there’s no one directly surveilling me, so I look up the address for Steffon. Detective Jones mutters as she enters data into the Weave, common when people are used to a voice interface instead of a manual one, and I’ve overheard the address. While, officially, psychics are full citizens, many smaller settlements have psychic quarters still. This dates back to the time when seers were tightly controlled and all psychics were kept together, encouraged to interbreed to make more seers… It’s not a proud episode of our history. But it suggests Steffon is a psychic of some sort. Why wouldn’t Medwyn tell me? Why wouldn’t Jones ask about it?

Before I have to order a second cup of the rather revolting goffi here, the Honshu being leaves the station, looks around and heads off. I tail them. This seems too easy, they appear to have no tradecraft and I wonder if they are leading me into a trap, however I follow with renewed caution as they lead me to a middle-sized residence, where I start to surveil the site.

I settle into another goffi shop, my bladder might hate me, but on a cold planet like Boreas it’s better than outdoors surveillance. Over the next few hours, far too much goffi and cakes, I notice three people within the building, moving around as if they’re following a guard pattern. Two others enter, and about an hour later, two of the “guards” leave, and there’s a new three person guard pattern. Tucked away in my memory is the fact that Honshu special forces operate with a senior NCO or officer and five troopers. If Steffon is alive it’s reasonable to assume that the most senior person is with him, the troops are mounting a guard on the building. They probably can’t install military grade security, mines and the like into the approaches, so they need a higher state of alert on guard duty.

Now I have a better idea what’s going on, I need to think about how to tackle the situation. I jog back to the Skirl, careful to leave the goffi shop on the far side to the residence of interest. At the edge of the spaceport I stop and adopt a more careful approach, remotely checking through the Skirl’s camera’s for signs of surveillance, then signs of electronic intrusion.

There are signs someone tried to hack into Skirl but failed. Fortunately for me, they failed at the levels that a normal free trader might have, rather than the more exciting levels that go with my more covert activities. Free traders don’t want to be stopped in space by lazy raiders, so we often have surprisingly deep firewalls.

Feeling bolstered, I get back onto the Skirl, reset the defences and then very, very cautiously start probing the defences of the residence and remotely surveilling it.

It’s obvious something is up almost as soon as I start. The Honshu troopers, and it’s clear they are troopers from how they’re reacting, are running around. Not in panic, but they are being thrown out of the house and catching fire, then time is jumping and they are back to being in midair, flying out of the house. Steffon is clearly multitalented, Firebrand, Kinetic and Looper are all on display. And I’m a good twenty minutes away! I grab my gear, run to the nearest hire point and rent a hover bike.

Even though I’m probably breaking the law, the streets are clear, and I get there really quickly. I don’t like this, but I’m going to just dive in and try to rescue Steffon before he burns himself out.

I pull the veil around me and sneak into the house. At first it goes well, even Steffon seems to ignore me but his Looper ability doesn’t require him to know I’m here… once I’m in the residence it grabs me and tries to shift me back through time. It doesn’t get a full grip, It looks like the troopers were running back about three seconds, I’m running back less, one maybe, but definitely running back. This is going to be a challenge. I press on. Knowing it’s coming, I plan my route so it’s all in cover and when I get skipped back I’m going to land somewhere safe. I’m crawling too, pretending I’m climbing, three points of contact at all times, so whenever I get jumped back I land in a balanced, stable position. It’s slow, but it stays silent. As I turn to enter the room where it’s pretty obvious they were holding Steffon, something goes wrong… I think it’s our powers clashing. My veil and the power to stop Steffon noticing me clashes with his power to loop back through time and for what feels like an eternity everything just freezes. I can’t tell if that’s just me or everyone else experiences it. I gather my focus and slowly, incredibly slowly, I feel my power force his from my mind and body. Time starts running again. It’s not normal, I feel like I’m moving through treacle but Steffon and the Honshu trooper standing over him remain frozen.

With a final effort I reach Steffon and just grab him, pulling him away. I don’t know how this works, but everyone, including Steffon remain frozen, even as I’m pulling through the house. I can feel his powers weakening and I head for the roof. I know I can get up there, and there are steps up so that home owners can clean the ice from the roofs to prevent them collapsing in the winters. I think it will be a struggle, but I’m pretty sure I can get Steffon up there, under the cover of the veil, before his looping collapses.

Sadly my optimism was misplaced. We’re about half way up the stairs and the looper field collapses. The shock drags my veil down too. I swear under my breath and collapse under Steffon trying desperately to muffle the sounds. Fortunately for me, the Honshu troopers are a right state. They’ve got impact damage, burn damage and they’re in shock, both from being tossed through windows and into walls but also from looped through time repeatedly for the last five minutes or more.

I try to go and retrieve the hover bike, but it’s been impounded by the Heddlu. That’s not good. What to do next?

I wonder if there’s a vehicle attached to the house, and if I can get it out before the building is totally surrounded and locked down?

Back to the residence, there is an underground garage, common on Boreas because of the foul weather, and with two exits, again common because of the weather. They’re at 90º to each other so if one is blocked by drifting snow, the other is usually accessible. I settle Steffon over my shoulders more carefully, wishing briefly I was one of the more muscular members of my cohort and head down to the garage. I get about half way there and Steffon slips from my grasp. I decide to leave him, he’s heavier than he looks and he won’t freeze in the next two minutes, retrieve the vehicle and come back for him.

Fortunately that plan is successful. The heddlu are very cautiously moving into the garage, having only secured one entrance and having their hands full of armed, burnt, shocked soldiers above. Like most electric gravity vehicles the car is silent, so I’m out before the heddlu enter the garage, although I can hear their footfalls, and seconds later I’m loading Steffon into the back seat and covering him with a blanket. Tradecraft kicks in. Rather than what should be a short drive back to the Skirl, I drive away at an odd angle, take the time to stop and destroy the license plates some distance away, and spoof the transponder. I do that, and I’m just putting my kit away when I notice something odd… there’s a signal I wasn’t expecting. What I thought was the transponder actually a suppressor, presumably fitted by the Honshu commandoes, and I’ve just turned the transponder back on. Oops. Out with the hacking tools and to work again. This time I’m sure I’m successful, I double and triple check, swapping my transponder code for code in the data web that’s in a vehicle marked for destruction. It’s not foolproof, but it’s a legal code still and will work for tonight.

With all of that done it’s a short drive to get Steffon back to the Skirl and aboard.

I don’t have a sick bay, but I put him into a berth, hook up my med kit and follow the instructions it gives. There’s a whole cocktail of medication, which fortunately I have, although some will have to be replaced if I’m going to keep on giving it to him, and the med kit reports he’ll be out for 8-12 hours.

Dump the hover car… that’s successful and easy. Probably made easier because the heddlu are all over looking at a special forces unit that’s suddenly appeared in the posh bit of town…

Finally it’s time to go home and rest.

Steffon is rescued, safe and sound, and going to sleep for another six or more hours. Time for me to rest too.

I kip for six hours, although I’m tired after yesterday’s efforts, I’m not too bad. A relatively decent night’s sleep in my own bunk has let me sort out the shock of not having thought through the way to react to the detective’s questions and although I haven’t got a whole set of answers lined up, I can feel my subconscious is churning away at them, I trust in the process.

Speaking of the devil I call Detective Jones and inform her that I’m leaving, but I would like to be kept informed of progress. For a trader like me, leaving port is not that unexpected. She can easily check that I usually turn around in a day or two, and I tell her that while I’m not sure when I’ll be back, it will probably be within a week. That’s not entirely true, I know I’ve got a date with a courier in four days. But I can burn to Optima, drop Steffon off with Medwyn if he wishes, or to Perchance in 6 Tau Nu en route if he doesn’t want to go back. We add each other to our comm units, I just hope she never finds out I rescued Steffon from the Honshu strike team and whisked him off to a different planet while asking her to keep me updated on the missing persons enquiry!

I lay in a course for Perchance, and potentially Optima.

A few hours later Steffon wakes up and I give him breakfast, then gently ask him about what was going on, does he want to go back to Medwyn and Optima and the like.

The first step is really to explain that I’m here to rescue him at Medwyn’s request. I can always make things turn to a harder route from the soft approach if I need to. It’s clear that Steffon still loves Medwyn but doubts my word. It turns out he and Medwyn had a huge fight, which is why he moved to Boreas, and they’ve never really resolved it, although they’ve been in touch intermittently. When I tell him I swore an Iron Vow and the precise terms of the vow, Steffon breaks down sobbing. I comfort him, there’s a whole module in how to do that as part of an interrogation, and sneak in a couple of questions about why he was in that residence. The first answer doesn’t really surprise me, he’d expressed bitterness towards Medwyn and 5MI, only to be expected after such a lovers’ tiff, and someone, somewhere had thought he might be willing to turn that into a more direct action. It’s a hard card to play, there’s a big step from “Gods, I hate my husband and I hate where he lives” to “I want to blow the whole planet up” but usually you can tell after a quick chat over drinks and investing an hour or two that way doesn’t cost much but has great rewards if you hit the right person. It’s pretty clear from the second answer that Medwyn wasn’t the right person though, he didn’t realise he’d been approached until six weeks later, when he woke up in the house and this guy who’d offered him a sympathetic ear one night was one of the people keeping guard over him. But what was scary was that I’d hypothesised that Medwyn felt threatened living with a triple-talent psychic. He might, they’d have to work that out, but Steffon had had a really weaker firebug talent. He could light candles on birthday cakes. That was literally the limit of his strength. He had a looper and a kinetic somewhere in his extended family, but he’d shown no sign of these talents. Not until about a week ago. They’d started growing stronger and stronger within him until last night he hadn’t been able to contain them any more. He’d felt another talent nearby - me presumably - and his control had slipped.

I could feel this conversation was heading into dangerous territory, and really didn’t want to have his talents explode again so I steered the conversation into descriptions of his guards. He’d been there for weeks and although at first he wasn’t good at it, I teased out decent physical descriptions, then went back over these and teased out names and habits for each of them. This was a long, slow process, interrupted by frequent crying bouts, cups of tea and the like. It’s important not to push the interrogation, in fact it was pretty important for Steffon not to realise he was being interrogated at all, so we stopped for lunch at this point and I amended the course to head for Optima after checking in with Steffon.

Over lunch we chatted about Steffon training his new talents. I carefully hid the fact that I was psychic, it wasn’t at all clear that Steffon remembered his rescue with the trauma of his breakout and whatever had happened around it and the damage he’d done. I’m not ashamed of being a shade, but when you’re stealthy, you get used to keeping the fact you’ve got a psychic edge to that a secret. Steffon seemed happy to know he had a way forward, and that it wasn’t automatically in the military in some form, although I’m sure there were mercenary groups that would snap him up if that’s what he chose to do.

After tea, when he was relaxed again, I asked Steffon if he’d heard his kidnappers talk about what their plan were at all. This kept us up until long into the night. He was sorting through everything he’d heard and it spilt from his lips all out of order. That was ok, the Skirl was recording it all, even though he didn’t know it. There were three main areas of interest to me, and a number of other areas where I had to listen and take interest, express support and sympathy.

Clearly Honshu is looking at the disaffected and disgruntled, looking for people in the more distant sectors with reasons to travel to more central and more interesting ones to strike. There were discussions of grooming, entrapment, a list of planetary targets that didn’t mean anything to Steffon but included a number of military supply sites, the Service HQ, three critical nexuses for the Weave and two major critical industrial centres. There were a few other target planets that had no obvious strategic value that immediately sprang to my mind but I scribbled down too. What’s the value of 8GU and 9IZ? They’re on the wrong side of AWJ space for Honshu?

As we approached Optima, I wrapped up the conversation and couldn’t help feel I’d missed something important. Whatever it was, it was eluding me. I landed and took Steffon to meet Medwyn, then arranged an emergency data drop for Conductor.

I got a message back. My vow to unravel the details of the Honshu Insurrection just got a lot more troublesome. I’m going undercover as a double agent. Eeek.