Jam Session #7: Hard Luck Two-Step

Outer System Rhapsody Arc Theme Song: “Dawn of the Dead” by Does It Offend You, Yeah? // Session Intro Song: “Too Handsome to Be Homeless” by Babybird

If you would like a recap of the previous session, check out Jam Session #6: Canticle in Crimson!

The camera pans down from a Neptune-dominated sky before settling on the Crew - Sirius Wang (Captain), Kuru Toga (Enforcer), Scruffy (Janitor), and Courtney (Official Designation Within Crew TBD) - scanning the Junker’s Guild scrapyard from the top of a nearby parking garage. Kuru’s cybernetic eyes functioning as binoculars while the other three pass around a pair of more mundane magnifying implements. They’re checking out a Mozhaysky-Nesterov DSS-9 "Skopa,” an out of production transport ship much-beloved by smugglers across the System for its unassuming appearance and dozens of nooks and crannies perfect for stashing illicit materials.

They pause for a moment, exchange nods, and prepare for their next move.

Flashback to the Cremisi Family safehouse a few klicks outside of Pharos City’s natural stone walls. Scruffy, Kuru, and Courtney sit around a tiny table drinking coffee and playing poker with a tattered deck of cards. Sirius enters the room, having just wrapped up a call with Shrimp Boy, their Fu Syndicate handler for a kumo running operation. The old man sympathizes with the Crew’s plight, but business is business and he’ll cancel the contract if they don’t have the kumo back in Lassell City within four days.

Four days to sneak past the Jojang Motive blockades, find a space-worthy ship, acquire said space-worthy ship, and pick up the shipment waiting for them. Their own ship, The Mississippi Queen, is little more than a smoking husk a few dozen klicks south of their current location, having been shot down by members of the Heathens less than twenty-four hours before.

His communicator carrying the weight of a collapsing star, Sirius closes eyes. He might have a way to get the Crew back on track and make up for the loss of their ship, but it would involve digging up a past better left buried.

“I’m gonna need a minute…” he says to his assembled Crew. “I gotta… make another call.”

Sirius takes a deep breath, grappling with his emotions. No… it was better to face the past, he figures, earning a Blues.

“Hey Aurelio,” he says when he hears the other end pick up.

Aurelio Lupo, his best friend growing up on the streets of Ceres. Burglaries, pickpocketing, vandalism, message and drug running. You name the crime (especially if it was petty) and those two kids did it. Until a job went south and Sirius got away while Aurelio was picked up by the cops and served ten long years at the Palermo Penitentiary.

“Well, well, well, look what the dog dragged in,” Aurelio says, kicking off his side of the conversation.

Despite their difficult history, the call between Sirius and Aurelio goes fairly well. In a twisted sort of way, going to jail worked in Aurelio’s favor, getting him connected with the Cremisi Family, where he quickly climbed the ranks until he was overseeing their rackets and territories in the Neptunian System. The urchin-turned-mobster decided to keep tabs on his childhood friend and was impressed by Sirius’s track record, which in turn convinced him to contract the Crew of The Mississippi Queen for the gunrunning job.

After apologizing for the fate of The Mississippi Queen, Aurelio offers up an olive branch: he knows of a ship in decent condition that Sirius and his boys should be able to steal without too much difficulty. An old DSS-9 "Skopa” from Mozhaysky-Nesterov in the hands of the Junker’s Guild right here on Proteus. It even came equipped with a modified mining laser, although until the Crew could get a new systems core installed the ship wouldn’t be able to do much more than fly (without sensors) and maintain basic life support. Not ideal, but the Crew did have an AI processor in need of a new home. If they could just get through the Junkers’ Guild security and fly the Skopa past the Jojang Motive blockade…

Sirius thanks his old friend for the information, but before he can hang up, Aurelio informs him that they’re only even for the fate of The Mississippi Moon. As far as the mobster is concerned, Sirius still owes him for the jail sentence. Sirius and his crew can finish their current job, whatever it is, but once that’s done they had better beat feet to NoBo on Ganymede or Aurelio would drag Sirius to the city kicking and screaming.

With his past successfully dredged up, Sirius ends the call and turns to the rest of the Crew, who politely pretend not to have eavesdropped the entire time. They agree to get moving and meet back up with Aria, who had offered to lead them through the sewers and into Pharos City. As everyone gets their gear ready for the upcoming job, the Crew ask Aria about The Mississippi Queen and the rest of the smuggled weapons. She informs the Crew that she’s sending some soldiers to collect what they initially left behind and that she’ll leave some men to guard the wreckage until the Crew has the chance to collect the rest of their goods.

“Oh, and if you find a guy in the brig you can have him,” Scruffy tells Aria. “Maybe he’s got a bounty. I dunno.”

“He works for Baumbach Pharmaceuticals,” Sirius adds.

“If that’s his employer, he’ll be worth something,” Aria replies, somewhat unsettlingly. “We’ll take care of him.”

The trip through the city’s literal underbelly is uneventful, and before too long we find the Crew back at the parking garage where the session started.

Scruffy and Sirius decide that they’ll sneak into the scrapyard via an employee entrance currently guarded by only two men and steal The Lucky Sun while Kuru and Courtney keep an eye on things from across the street - figuring this plan plays to everyone’s strengths. Without further pomp and circumstance, the duo makes their way to the ground floor via a rickety elevator while Kuru and Courtney plan their rapid exit - should one be required. It doesn’t take long for them to uncover a pair of hoverbikes that probably won’t be missed by their former owners and after a few minutes spent hotwiring both engines were purring like diesel-powered kittens.

Back on the ground, the captain and the maintenance man had closed the gap to the guarded employee entrance. A few squeezes of the tranquilizer pistol’s trigger and a bout of fisticuffs from Janitor’s Guild lightweight champion (Class of 2222 A.D. and don’t you forget it) and the guards were incapacitated and their bodies hidden in their security shack. Sirius ran Aurilo’s access codes through the computer to unlock the door and after a few minutes of searching through various files discovered that the keys and title to the Mozhaysky-Nesterov DSS-9 "Skopa” were in the foreman’s office along the northern wall of the compound. Figuring they’d probably have a better time stealing the ship with the keys, the pair decided to make the office their next destination, but not before Sirius found the maglock control for The Lucky Sun and made sure their new home wasn’t bolted to the ground.

Meanwhile, Kuru and Courtney spent most of their time shooting the breeze and planning out their attack. Kuru, a little more trigger-happy than Courtney, wanted to start shooting now and create a distraction, but Courtney recommended patience - let the Sirius and the Scruffman get as far as they can go quietly before the two heavies open up. Their conversation is interrupted as the radio of one of the stolen hoverbikes squawks and a city-wide announcement is made for citizens to take cover as Jojang Motive bombards the city with artillery fire. Merely seconds later the air raid sirens around the city go off, filling the air with a sharp droning sound that rattles the brain.

Inside the scrapyard, Sirius and Scruffy head up the stairs to the foreman’s office, which is elevated to allow for an unbroken view of the myriad items in the possession of the Junker’s Guild. As the sirens kick up they break into a run, using a security key lifted from one of the unconscious guards. On the other side of the door their met by a surprised foreman and her six guards. Thinking fast, Scruffy claims that he’s one of the maintenance men and he found this civilian in the yard who was claiming to want to buy something. The foreman, Lora Warders, rolls her eyes and tells them to stay quiet and stay out of the way while she coordinates with security around the scrapyard. Sirius, playing along with Scruffy’s ruse, mutters about poor customer service, but otherwise follows the woman’s instruction.

As the camera cuts back to Kuru and Courtney we find the men growing concerned at the sudden disappearance of their companions. Worried that they may be in trouble, Kuru decides to open fire on the nearest guard tower - after all the Junker’s Guild isn’t going to pay as much attention to a random pair of strangers as they are a pair of snipers taking potshots at their walls, right? Courtney, having little else to do, joins in and they start picking off guards along the walls of the scrapyard.

Inside the foreman’s office, Lora Warders dispatches most of her men to assist the guards outside and check on the employee gate, which hasn’t checked in for quite some time. With only one guard still in the office, Sirius and Scruffy take their shot, opening up on Warders and her guard. Sirius gets hit and is forced to take cover, but Scruffy keeps his cool and not only takes out the guard, but manages to hit Warders in the side, forcing the woman to duck down. Taking advantage of the opening, Sirius runs up to her command station and shoots her point blank with a tranq dart before rummaging through her pockets for a key to the safe on the back wall. Within the safe are the goods he and Scruffy are looking for: the keys and the title to one The Lucky Sun. They radio Kuru and Courtney and begin making their way downstairs toward their new ship.

Before Courtney and Kuru can kick off step one of their daring escape, a trio of punks pops out of the elevator, demanding to know what’s going on. Kuru ignores them, but Courtney casually turns and puts a bullet into the biggest of the three before drawing a knife and racing across the top of the parking garage. The punks (rightfully) freak out and try to get back into the elevator. One of them slips through the barely-opened doors, but the second isn’t so fortunate as Courtney’s knife crosses the man’s throat, showering the cowering survivor in blood.

The elevator begins its slow descent and Courtney briefly considers sliding down the cables to take care of the last witness, but decides against it and runs back over to his hoverbike. They wouldn’t be on Proteus much longer anyway…

The enforcer and the former cartel bodyguard rev the engines of their hoverbikes as “The Immigrant Song” starts playing. They kick the bikes into high gear and rip across the top of the parking garage, gunning the repulsor lifts just before the concrete falls away beneath them. Time slows as their bikes soar across the street below and begin their descent, passing over the scrapyard’s walls with ease as they continue shooting at the guards chaotically scrambling beneath them. The bikes both crash into piles of junk and refuse, but Kuru and Courtney manage to tuck and roll to avoid anything worse than a few scrapes before running toward The Lucky Sun. Naturally, the crashed bikes explode majestically behind them, and our heroes refuse to turn back and watch.

They quickly join Sirius and Scruffy on board The Lucky Sun and strap in as Sirius prepares to fly blind. While the ship can fly, the systems being down prevents him from accessing any scanners or cameras. They take off without a hitch, knocking back dozens of laborers and guards that had attempted to swarm the ship and keep the Crew from stealing it. The old DSS-9 “Skopa” climbs into the skies to join the chaotic dogfights taking place between Yapo Conglomerate and Jojang Motive, using the battle to their advantage. Unfortunately as Sirius tries to avoid the stray bullets, clouds of flak, and errant missiles he scrapes the side of the ship against a building and the shock of the impact (combined with the gunshot wound he had sustained earlier) is enough to knock him out.

As Scruffy moves to apply first aid to the captain, Kuru casually takes the pilot’s seat and quips “I’ve driven my share of getaway cars in the past” before secretly hoping the DSS-9 handles even remotely similarly to the hovercars and trucks of his youth. “That Lucky Old Sun” starts up as Kuru masterfully navigates through the battles raging around him before finding an open lane past the Jojang Motive blockage. He takes everything he can get from the ship’s dusty old engines and they fly over the natural rocky walls of Pharos City and the Jojang Motive forces arrayed on the opposite side before finally returning to the crash site of The Mississippi Queen.

Once the ship is landed the Crew, rejoined by a concussed but conscious Sirius, gets to work on moving Monty over to his new home. They boot up the AI and download instructions on how to remove his operating core from the wreckage and properly install it into The Lucky Sun. While Courtney and Kuru work on extracting Monty’s core, Sirius and Scruffy spend their time taking what parts of The Mississippi Queen’s hull they can salvage to patch up the scrapes and holes on The Lucky Sun - including the crumpled nameplate of their new ship - thus properly (or at least temporarily) christening the new ship.

It takes several hours to get everything in place and the Crew takes a moment to prepare themselves on the bridge. None of them are engineers and there’s no way to know if they set everything up correctly. Sirius takes a deep breath and pushes the power button to jumpstart Monty. Seconds crawl by like so many Mercurian rock snails before Monty’s cartoon face pops up on the screen.

“Well this is different,” the AI says. “It’s going to take three hours for me to finish rebooting everything, so sit tight. Oh and captain, you’ve got some Heathens knocking on your door."

Roll credits.

You can listen to the full Orbital Blues: The Mississippi Sessions playlist on Spotify.