Sentinels:
Nikki
RedDog
Sleeve-o
Demi

Most of the crew, in their upgraded gravity-resistance morphs, stock up on gear at the various outfitters shops on Pandora and prepare to crash. PJ and Paz hang back to run the op and make sure their corrupt gate tech doesn’t sabotage them. Nikki decides to join up on the first checkin after taking some time to track down heavier weaponry that the team can’t initially access.

RD, Demi, and S-O head through, the first time using a gate for most. They emerge on the other side seemingly instantaneously, but S-O isn’t with them. Meanwhile he’s in some sort of strange liminal space and witnessing some difficult to process imagery, seemingly involving some sort of ELE. He emerges 10 minutes later, and finds the other 2 launching recce bots and setting up a base camp.

Demi ID’s some relics of past terraforming that looks non-human (and ancient), and some subsequent geological violence which has disrupted the planet’s surface. They also spot some strange mobile plant life with symbiotic blobs attached that seem similar to the streange blob morph Nikki wound up in on Extropia, suggesting this was their origin point. Hearing some haunting music on the wind, they follow it and find some strange carved spires with pathways between them.

They engage in a fight with 3 exhumans who are collecting small discs there, and defeat them in an ambush. They collect their stacks, and the discs, and head back to the Gate for their first checkin. They also determine that the ruins are likely Iktomi, a supposedly spider-like alien that has never been encountered, and no remains have been recovered. S-O has strange dreams, and realizes the discs are Iktomi artifacts that are supposedly benign but effect dreams in nearby biomorphs. They plan to sell or trade them later if FW doesn’t seize them.

Nikki comes through in the middle of the night, just as they come under attack from a horrifying predator exhuman. Luckily they’re mostly in synths, so the deadly poisons the predator attempts to use have no effects. They eventually defeat it, with S-O providing some critical distracting taunts. Nikki’s heavy weapons prove very useful as well, once she figures out which end is the dangerous one after burning herself.

They manage to track the predator back to another Iktomi ruin, and find the rest of AW’s exhumans there, including some horrifying limb monsters seemingly assembled into flesh drones from spare parts. They do some clever hacking and sneaking, and manage to mostly trigger another solid ambush. AW is in a weird expanded brain morph, and nearly kills both RD and Demi before they manage to drop him, his 2 guards, and the limbwalkers. They collect the stacks again, but see that AW burned his with an emergency farcaster.

Nikki does some fast hacking and pulls the destination coords, to pass to FW later. Demi cuts an Iktomi mural out of a wall to sell or trade later. They also appreciate more weird sculptural music. They head back to the Gate but get lost badly, and miss their pickup. Luckily, they brought an emergency blue box, and got some info on the Gate from Nikki’s hack.

Failing to understand the Gate interface, they plug in the one destination they can: the Ultimate-controlled Discord Gate at Xiphos. They emerge and Nikki manages to use her previous encounter to keep them from being killed, by trading a lot of info on the planet and the exhumans. The Ult’s try to recruit Demi and RD, and seize Demi’s morph due to various contaminations. Beyond that, they offer to trade the team for morph costs if they want to cast away, or allow them to fly if they prefer, but nothing’s free…..

The team reports into FW as well with AW’s cast coords and the rest of the news, and get a “job well done” from their server.

Sentinels:
Nikki
PJ
RedDog
Paz
Sleeve-o
Demi

The team egocasts to Glitch to keep following the trail, but does no research ahead of time, and are surprised to find themselves in a massive and elaborate infostate host. Some of them are especially unhappy about this, especially Demi who values “real” life over other options. They do some social and hacking-based investigation, and find that Glitch and Bright exchange a lot of research data. Glitch also communicates frequently with Brinker extremophile scientists on Ilmarinen, the only other location Glitch maintains a dedicated Farcaster link to, besides Bright.

Nikki calls in some favors and finds out that AW, who the team ID’s as the wanted exhuman smuggler, war criminal, and TITAN tech hunter Abandoned Weakness, apparently arranged a trade with scientists on Ilmarinen, using the Unfettered Geniuses and some Mercurial extremists on Glitch as cutouts to obscure his tracks. Nikki tries to hack the Mercurials to find more info but gets spotted, and is horrified to find they seem to be engaging in recursive infostate self-improvement experiments.

She jumps through the Farcaster to Ilmarinen, and when chased flees through another open link from there to Xiphos, the Ultimate stronghold. She quickly pleads her case to suspicious Ultimate bots (they don’t trust AI’s), and gets through to a supervisor who she convinces to help her. Ultimate mesh security blasts the pursuing Mercurial infostate when it comes through and fragment it. Nikki manages to convince the Ultimates that she’s on their side (i.e. hunting Exhumans) but got in over her head, and convinces them to eventually cast her back to Extropia.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team calls in some more favors and does some more research between Glitch and Ilmarinen, and finds out that AW gave the Mercurials a program for their help (likely dangerous and linked to their upgrade experiments)- PJ calls it in to their server and the team is told another local operative will look into it. Similarly, AW traded the Ilmarinen scientists some experimental morph mods for a bunch of tech customized for a high gravity environment- PJ also flags this for further investigation for Firewall, and once again is told a local operative can handle it so the team can stay on task.

Based on this info, the team calls in some more favors to find out where a high gravity exoplanet has recently been found, and finds that Pandora Gate, on Pandora, has one recently flagged as “dangerous” and not worth further exploration currently, which seems like a perfect cover for an Exhuman tech smuggler to do something sketchy. They decide to finally go track down Frank Streibog/The Designer and cast to Aarhus.

Firewall pays to cover the high gravity morph upgrades they need, so they get into some weird new bods and spend some time getting accustomed before surveiling Streibog and setting a trap for him. He seems to be disgraced and a bit paranoid, and after a little B&E they find he has an emergency farcaster hidden on his apartment roof. They redirect it into a massively sped up infostate server they set up offline, and route him in there when he tries to flee and RedDog and Demi spook him on purpose.

They run it for a while to cause his some psychological discomfort, and then prepare to question him. They get a local safehouse in an abandoned power plant in one of the adjacent domes, and get ready to get some answers. After driving him slightly made with time dilation in a blank void, they get the info they seek: there is a corrupt Gate tech on Pandora who manages to smuggle AW’s crew in and out, and deleted/corrupted the original probe data at the Gate address.

They plan to pass infostate-Streibog off to FW, where he can continue his sketchy research under extreme supervision at the Toybox, and promise him that he will be safe from AW’s retribution there, however their mission goes. They next track down AW’s ship- it did make an orbit of Pandora, though didn’t dock or land, so they assume AW must have jetted down personally or in a small craft. It then went to Phelan’s Recourse, the Scum Swarm, and switched it’s transponder ID and drive sig.

They track it down with Night Cartel assistance aboard Phelan’s End, and contact a local FW sentinel to keep an eye on it. They give him the contact info for the Ultimate Purifiers aboard Bright, to send them after AW’s ship as soon as it moves out of the Swarm, to avoid collateral damage but insure it’s elimination. One of the lifesigns aboard appears to have melded with the ship, which seems too X-risky to let slide.

They then head to Pandora and start gearing up for a Gatecrash with limited data, and also contact the corrupt tech. Posing as additional members of AW’s crew, they convince him to let them through as well, and arrange with FW to seek them out if they go missing.

Agents:
Nikki
PJ
RedDog
Paz
and introducing: Sleeve-o and Demi

The team prepares to egocast to the Hamilton Cylinder Bright, in orbit of Saturn, to continue their investigation into the non-standard, x-risk morphs. They decide to darkcast in to bypass Bright’s “intelligence” screening for visitors, and make some contacts with a Titanian Commonwealth intelligence cell aboard Bright via their Firewall server. Nikki gets diverted briefly for a hacking task for the server elsewhere. They also link up with a new potential Sentinel, Sleeve-O, a former xtreme XP prank indenture who Firewall is interested in recruiting.

They cast in, and find plentiful options for resleeving. They also meet their on-station contact, a merc named Demi, who proves to be quite good at recon. Paz makes some local researcher contacts and gets a little info, and Demi does a very sneaky recon pass of the Unfettered Geniuses turf, spotting some Ultimates doing security. RedDog gets updated about an active bounty against an Ultimate last seen on Bright, and does a little research.

He finds out about their Fall-era war crimes, and also that they are a member of the Ultimate interior group called “Purifiers”, who hunt exhumans and x-risks, and view Firewall as weekend warriors (at best). The team decided to try to hire this person to help them dig into the x-risk, and then probably backstab them for the bounty later. RedDog also checks out the station exterior and finds the UG’s airlock is upgraded from station standard with better locks and sensors.

Sleeve-O uses his morphs connection to the Parallel Processor aug to make new friends and find some info. Nikki finally casts in and joins them, but has some trouble adjusting to her morph for some reason. She does some data mining and analysis as the team all gets used to the new members. Demi doesn’t think much of XP-casters like Sleeve-O (or more specifically, their fans) as he thinks renting experiences instead of having them is for losers. Nikki spots another individual surveiling the UG’s airlock, but is unable to ID them.

She also tracks some Ultimates around the station, and confirms the Purifier is on station, and finds their main base of operations. However, Sleeve-O participates in a mass cosmic dance via the processor link and makes friends with one of the UG’s, who offers him an experimental upgrade and a tour. He accepts, and the team makes plans to gear up in case a rescue is needed. Nikki ghostrides along in Sleeve-O’s head in order to provide hacking and social assistance, and the rest of the team finds a rarely used fabber, and hacks and programs it to print camo cloaks and rifles, as well as a brainprint scanner to check Nikki and Sleeve-O post op.

They make backups and head in. Sleeve-O accepts the implant and keeps the UG’s distracted while Nikki uses the surgery equipment to backdoor into their system. She gets a bunch of data, and comparing it with footage and docking records manage to confirm the ID of The Designer (a somewhat disgraced TAU academic based in Aarhus though they can’t find better details), and also ID “AW” as someone named Abandoned Weakness- who seems to be the source of the strange/x-risk tech that both the UG’s and The Designer have recently had access to. They have also been sharing anonymized project data with another station called Glitch.

Nikki uses her override to take over Sleeve-O’s body after they leave the UG’s, having found out that their expanded processor aug can fully override the human brain to add power to projects rated as “more imortant”. The UG’s are also paying the Ultimates in a military version of the processor aug, meant to synthesize with a TacNet. They brainscan both egos and find them unchanged, so they get both re-embodied, while Sleeve-O sets up a stunt failure to explain how his Hyperbright morph got decapitated, in order to send the head to Firewall so they can examine the tech, not trusting anyone else to do more thorough scans on station.

FW also warns PJ that a Project Ozma cell is likely operating on Bright. FW wants more info if possible, but wants them to prioritize not blowing their op, so they leave it up to PJ. The team assumes this may be the other morph surveying the UG"s airlock. For now, PJ decides the implant itself doesn’t seem like an x-risk, though the upgrade and the military application for the Ultimates could be problems. They decide to look further into Glitch and The Designer, and try to use them to track down AW, who seems to be the ultimate source of the x-risks here.

Agents:
Nikki
Dr. Ship
PJ
RedDog

The team begins looking into Triton Design Studio, having heard that the experimental morphs they’ve been occasionally releasing are getting worryingly exhuman/alien to Firewall’s watchful eyes. It is currently “recruitment week”, when all the morph designers looking for work show off their skills to try to secure corporate and private contracts, so the team poses as a debutante, security and a reporter to infiltrate. Nikki manages to use her body as collateral to sleeve into Triton’s newest design, a strange sphere covered in cilia. Dr. Ship, observing via a hidden nano-swarm, spots a menton morph performing the actual procedure, who the front of house assistant refers to only as The Designer.

This new morph causes quite the stir in the watching crowds, and the team quickly heads for the pits to try to avoid any potential contamination. PJ and Nikki call up a researcher friend, and rent a room in a love hotel to run some experiments. RedDog and Dr. Ship keep an eye on the various fashionistas who interacted with the NikkiBlob to watch for potential transmission (of what they don’t know) but it seems safe for now, so RedDog, worried about the potential for outbreaks, acquires some flame grenades.

Via experimentation, they discover that NikkiBlob has a strange processing core, and can divide into multiples of herself who all still think collectively as one. The cilia also seems to be able to consume any material, given time. RedDog has heard enough, and calls in Das Frettchen, their server’s Eraser. DF takes a shine to RedDog’s burgeoning conservatism and tells him he might make Eraser someday if he sticks with it. They get to the love hotel, and PJ manages to convince them not to kill him since he hasn’t touched anything (At least until they test him), but they burn the other two and the room to sterilize.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ship breaks into Triton Design via a back entrance that RedDog found, and finds an empty menton morph next to a farcaster. He pulls a destination code off of it before he is killed by a gas trap. RedDog and DF follow up on the hotel by hitting Triton, and destroy the receptionist as well as everything else inside, fearing infection (including Nikki’s morph).

Firewall requests further investigation, but luckily PJ is clear of infection, so they only need 2 new bods. They also find Dr. Ship’s ego, which he managed to cast out to a local criminal drop point. The team does some research on the farcaster coords, and finds that they are for an abandoned Fa Jing mining asteroid in the Belt, only a few days flight away. They arrange to act as security for a Bahala Na smuggler who’s headed that way, and he agrees to take a detour to their local after his deal is done. They meet a Hidden Concern ship and receive a package, and then make a stealth approach to the target.

Unfortunately, they aren’t quite stealthy enough, and some repurposed mining lasers destroy some of their morphs on the way down. Some of the team makes it though, and breaks the laser, before heading inside through a fortified emergency airlock concealed in a crater. Their researcher friend, who they brought along again, is vaporized by a plasma rifle shot before the team kills the menton morph responsible- The Designer! However, his stack is melted and the remains of an emergency farcaster are detectable, so who knows where he wound up.

However, they find more clues. Apparently this was his experimental lab, and he would only do final assembly and ego uploading on Extropia. He was in touch with an outré design collective on the station Bright called the “Unfettered Geniuses”, and apparently one of their suppliers, ID’d only as “AW” has started supplying The Designer as well, with all sorts of strange things. They take a few samples for Firewall and then allow RedDog to plant charges and destroy everything else. Next up: Bright!

Agents:
Nikki
Dr. Ship
PJ
RedDog

The Sentinels, minus RedDog who’s hiding out after tangling with Medusan Shield last time, start digging into the “murder party” rumors they have been hearing. They also find out that the soul trader they ripped off has hired Ultimate Security to look into the raid, but believes it was 9 Lives still. Nikki burns her fake ID, as does RedDog, to cover their tracks. They get approved for new ID’s and some new gear based on their recent successes.

They find some Jovian refugees in the Mutualist district of Proudhon Terrace, and Nikki befriends them and helps get them some self-defense equipment and lodging in the burned scratch space in The Pits. She also gets a lead on who smuggled them in- there’s a few people missing from their group, but they don’t know if they got snagged by Jovian security, in transitm or on this end.

The cell finds out that the Shui Fong triad likely moved the people in via the Stars our Destination swarm, using a local Big Circle contact to get them to relative safety with the Mutualists. They also find out that their is conflict brewing aboard TSOD between the Shui Fong and the Bahala Na.

They hack into some comms servers for the Rational Individuals gang, who they’ve heard might be involved, and find that they’ve been rolling folks who show up at the docks/farcasting ports with no security contract, but that some sort of boss within the gang has a private circle that she uses on certain individuals who she tells the others to leave alone. They convince one of the Jovians Nikki befriended to take a contract for a sketchy party gig and track/follow her there, as this seems to all link up.

They almost lose the two RI goons who show up, but manage to follow them to a mansion in Bernoulli, where they see 2 wealthy banking twin heirs sleeved in perma-teen morphs eagerly awaiting the drugged Jovian’s arrival. They have a dastardly look about them, and the RI leader is there as well, so the team decides to call in backup and make their entry. While waiting, they spot some sort of cyber-ronin in the trees, also surveilling the mansion.

RedDog rejoins Nikki at the entrance to the district, and Dr. Ship contacts the cyber-Ronin. He is there to assassinate the twins and seems to have beef with the Ultimates working security, so they agree to team up. Dr. Ship sneaks around back and hacks open a surface access airlock, which PJ enters to after fleeing the security that spotted him up front. Nikki and RedDog decide to pose as a suicide/murder comedy duo and social infiltrate into the party.

They manage to get the twins interested enough to watch their act, though they don’t feel super safe doing so and get into more and more extreme scenarios including Nikki editing RedDog’s mind, and him being commanded to shoot various people and things in the room. He loses patience and starts shooting Rational Individuals, which delights the twins. Nikki plays it up as part of the act.

Meanwhile outside, the other group quickly gets spotted and Dr. Ship runs off and hides while PJ gets KO’ed. The ronin out front starts taking out drones and Ultimates, as the firefight inside escalates. Dr. Ship eventually emerges once the gunfire outside dies down, recovers PJ, heals him as best as possible, and begins looking for evidence inside. RedDog gets blown apart by a lucky shot from one of the RI’s, and Nikki takes cover behind his body as the doors to the room blow in and a massive gunfight erupts.

When Nikki glances out, she sees a camo’ed form using dissolver nanites to melt the twins’ stacks, having executed everyone else who had survived. She says she’s Dr. Ship’s friend, and the form tells her they better get out of there as reinforcements will surely arrive soon. Nikki manages to mix up a drug cocktail to unparalyze the 6 future victims, and get their spy out of there. They flee and manage to catch a ride onboard the Ronin’s ship- he parks them in an asteroid field, where PJ heals and they lay low for a few days. He’s a member of the Shugyosha, a wandering warrior cult with a dojo on Mars that has beef with the Ultimates.

Dr. Ship has to hide in the mansion since he doesn’t have a spacesuit to get to the ship, but manages to stay sane for a few days in a secret compartment in the wall and also finds a stashed server with data about the twins’ nefarious activities. Firewall sees them as a potential x-risk due to their continuing escalation in thrill-seeking, though they might not be there yet, and says they’ll keep an eye on them if/when they resleeve. Nikki social hacks her way into the mansion, posing as an interested renter, and rescues Dr. Ship.

Next up: an experimental morph designer has some designs that suggest exsurgent contact, and that needs examining…

Agents:
Nikki
Dr. Ship
RedDog
PJ

Paz splits off to get some serious scans to ensure no pink slime infection, and the rest of the cell starts looking into rumors that a local news agency is looking to expand into investigative journalism and has some secret info on Firewall.

They find that this is true, and piece together the story: an ID Crew-affiliated soul trader acquired a stack from a sentinel that wasn’t properly reported lost to Firewall. This was one incident that lead to the previous Extropian server’s deletion, and the mind-wiping/alteration of most of the sentinels and a few of the proxies, many of whom were believed to have become far too Extropian in outlook and loyalty.

The soul trader, eventually recognizing that he had valuable data, has been parsing it out to the reporter without revealing his ID or location. The team tracks his safehouse/lab down with some clever tracking, hacking, and social engineering. They raid it and ko the soul trader, recover a number of additional stacks as well, and destroy his onsite backups and data storage.

They report it all to their Filter, who with Nikki’s help spins it to the reporter as Project Ozma being the real threat, with Firewall not really being a serious player. He buys it. They also spin the action at the soul trader’s place as being a 9 Lives action vs. their foes, the ID Crew, which plays well locally and catches on. Yemaja is very excited about their acquisition of extra stacks, and takes possession of them via courier. RedDog nearly gets captured/killed by Medusan Shield while fleeing, but PJ successfully ambushes the security drone and they get away.

PJ, newly promoted to Proxy from Sentinel due to his survival instincts and reliability, gets tasked with being the router for a new server based on Extropia, called “Invisible Hand.” He gets a feeling from the other proxies assigned to the server that this may be a dumping ground for some of Firewall’s more controversial or difficult members. They seem like a skilled and interesting bunch though so here’s hoping….

PJ is tasked with training and managing a new cell of Sentinels (Dr Ship, Nikki, Paz, RedDog), all recently recruited, who either live on Extropia or have travelled or resleeved there, including 2 who were aboard the recently arrived “Stars our Destination” swarm. They make contact and get their Firewall “starter pack”: fakes ID’s, VPN, anonymizers, etc. The new arrivals adjust to the strangeness of Extropia and sing up for the various serrvice contracts needed to exist there.

They all get quickly called up for a possibly x-risk- a local chef has acquired some unknown biomaterial from an exhuman rarities dealer who Firewall has been keeping an eye on. They manage to finagle tickets to the event, at the Helm Hotel in Progress Plaza, and try to figure out how to intercept the package. They swing by a scratch space first to grab gear left by the last team of sentinels active here and lose the chance to intercept before the package is in the kitchen, however.

After a series of aborted attempts and light failures, they eventually make their way back into the kitchen and get into a brawl with the various forks of the chef, as well as event security, but have stirred up the crowd outside with memetics so security is pretty distracted. They rig up a flamethrower out of kitchen items and burn and then explode the extruder room along with the 5 morhps (3 chefs and 2 sec) who had the misfortune to come into contact with the pink slime from the package.

During the explosion there is some worry that Paz might have gotten infected, but he scans clear and it looks like he didn’t ingest or come into direct skin contact with any on playback. Their server gets a slight rep boost, and they get leads on the next couple things Firewall wants them to look into.

Sentinels:
Charlie Alpha Delta
Frederik Bo Severin Falk
Iyspick

Working on a lead from Amrita Shah, a few of the sentinels decide to contact Kalbir Singh, the de facto security head aboard the Swarm. He has intel that a Stellar Intelligence agent managed to secret themselves aboard during the stopover on Venus, and wants them to fish him out. Singh’s plan is fairly simple: using the sentinels, since they are new/relatively unknown locally, to act a an ultra-radical cell planning anti-corp strikes during the swarm’s voyage. if they play their parts convincingly enough, they should be able to lure out the SI plant.

They agree, and begin an agitprop campaign on social media, attracting attention both positive and negative. They post a “shit-list” of people aboard the swarm who have done the most trading with hypercorp entities, and get a flashmob to meet them and shut down one of their stalls. This gets them a lot of followers, especially some from Dr. Mindfuck’s camp, around whom opposition to the EDF Collective seems to have congregated. They also receive some negative attention from EDF and other swarm members who are trying to keep the piece, and view their actions as problematic to the social integrity of the swarm (as it was never fully autonomist, though it has always been guided by their principles).

They brashly bluff their way through a sort of staged intervention, with Singh working behind the scenes to prevent any serious sort of disciplinary decision. This gets them more followers from the more extreme groups, who appreciate them standing up to the somewhat entrenched EDF (who seem worried that this group’s shock tactics may distract from their more serious work of subverting hypercorps ideologically/memetically). The sentinels stage a protest art piece, with Iyspick operating a mock clinic to cure people of the hypercorp “sickness”, and Fred doing a faux-suicide piece where he blows everyone’s minds about the corps’ evil ways.

Meanwhile, Alpha films the whole thing and manages to get good facial reads on the various trolls, protesters, etc who show up (including the merchant they targeted earlier). Fred manages to shout down the opposing voices, netting them yet more followers, and hints that their next piece will be some sort of explosive direct action. Alpha runs facial recognition, and compares it to mesh traffic to their personal pages and their cell’s blog, and manages to determine that the SI agent has likely used Triad connections to gain a spot on one of the big cargo haulers.

The team makes a deal with the Triad to help them gain a foothold in the swarm (taking turf from the entrenched Bahala Na hasn’t been going very well), in exchange for subtly informing the SI agent that the sentinel’s faux-cell has a bomb-making workshop set up, and slipping him the location. It seems the SI agent isn’t an actual Triad member, so they are willing to sell him out for that price. Alpha also offers to help them crack any encrypted data they encounter.

They set an ambush, and still barely manage to defeat the SI agent, who is using some kind of electrical pain-inducer, seemingly attempting to incapacitate them (for questioning?). They manage to take him down without killing him, but Alpha notices some kind of quantum pulse as he passes out, so he may have had an emergency farcaster or the like. They pass him along to Singh, and brace themselves to do whatever the Triad asks….

Sentinels:
Pran Jai Neelam Ajit Avninder
Frederik Bo Severin Falk
Charlie Alpha Delta
Iyspick

Days 87-88

IP and PJ bail on the Cognite prisoners, leaving them drugged in the brothel after they disassemble the server and ego bridge setup. They link up with Fred and Alpha, sleeved in their new morphs and getting adjusted to them. The Scum Swarm known as The Stars Our Destination has arrived in orbit, and people are shuttling back and forth freely. Ben Johanssen tells them to get aboard, and enjoy the 4 month journey to Mars, where they are to go gatecrashing.

Having dealt with the AWE threat (for now at least), they are cleared to leave Venus with no expected repercussions, and it might be best to get aboard ASAP in case Cognite starts looking, or Nine Lives comes looking for Pran. They look into influential figures aboard the swarm, and each picks a promising target to get in good with. Iskra parties hard, as is her wont, which fits right in with the scum.

IP get in good with a chimp uplift named Jane Erdos, and helps out in her med-bay, after failing at a few different social attempts: it seems like her socialite and criminal connections aren’t the best for gaining passage. She also makes contact with a petal/drug dealer named Barking Dog, who seems to have purposefully uglified her expensive morph. PJ claims sanctuary with uplifts in the swarm, who are tied in with both Erdos and the avian art critic Francois LeClerc. He gets assigned to a wrecker/salvage ship.

Fred joins up with intellectual anarchists aboard the swarm flagship, members of the EDF Collective, the original Chinese agitators who organized the swarm with a large number of vac/dockworkers. As a proud Barsoomian he is seemingly welcome essentially anywhere aboard the swarm, which has smuggled supplies to the movement, and even provided discreet transport for Barsoomian hit squads on occasions. Alpha gets a job on the factory ship in the swarm, and gets involved with nanofacturing and cracking hypercorp schematics. He eventually gets a meeting with Lena Andropov, the main engineer aboard the swarm.

With all aboard, they link up with their Firewall contact Amrita Shah, and get the lowdown on some possible jobs to do while aboard. Some various low pressure threats and issues, but nothing major/pressing yet. They agree to check stuff out and see what they can get done, and stay in touch. Shah makes Fred incredibly uncomfortable due to her extremely open sexuality. Pran, fearing 9Lives pursuit, swaps for a synth morph in the creepy cargo container lab of Dr. Mindfuck, who seems like a real nutjob.

Sentinels:
Pran Jai Neelam Ajit Avninder
Iskra / Nataly
Frederik Bo Severin Falk
and introducing:
Iyspick
Slen
Charlie Alpha Delta

Days 86-87

The team successfully takes out the crew of the Cognite shuttle, using their purloined/forged Nine Lives ID’s to fool the ship AI before disabling the sensors on board and taking off. Slen, feeling compelled, makes a bomb out of the precursor chemicals they are resupplying Thought with, after stuffing one of the unfortunate shuttle crew in a barrel and melting him. The rest of the crew end up in a simulspace time dilated to a much slower rate, so they all think they’re still stocking up/resupplying. Icepick and Pran stick around Octavia to manage that whole situation while the rest of the team heads to Thought.

They trash the ship AI and sensors after it gives the appropriate permissions to the station, and they dock. Most of them bypass the security station with no trouble, but Slen gets stopped and flagged for further inspections. Iskra tries to help, but maybe makes the guards more suspicious. She heads outside to pretend she knows how to do vacwork and try to figure out how to help. Slen tries to make some trouble, but gets ko’ed by the guards quickly after they try to question him about the half-assembled bomb and the body in the barrel on the busted up shuttle.

Fred and Alpha make their way to the server they’re “supposed” to be working on, and manage to secure some secret info about what Cognite’s been up to: namely, experimenting with the AWE virus in various forms, feeding it piles of egos much as Roland Nazon was doing on Legba. They also appear to be tracking Lost Generation survivors including Iskra, as well as continuing some sort of experiments along those lines. They also manage to falsify some evidence of system corruption coming from the “secret” hab core, and get approval to send Alpha in to check out the conduits.

Fred sneaks off while they’re getting Alpha situated, but gets spotted by a lab tech, who he ko’s with a surprise psychic stab. He manages to get some more info off the next server block before triggering an alarm, alerting the already keyed-up security to his presence. Fred manages to take out 2 researchers in stripped down bots in the central hub, after breaking in, and scores yet more proprietary data, including that they have some actual Lost Gen kids in lockup, 1 of whom is badly mutated. He also manages to overcome the AWE virus, which luckily seems to be a “younger” iteration, which seems to be named “Austin” or “Augustine.”

He trashes the isolated server it was running on to make sure it can’t be reloaded, and tries to make his escape. Unfortunately he finds breaking out is harder than breaking in, and poses as a cleaner bot using his flexbot morph. He gets the security to believe he’s a bot, but also believe he may be corrupted by exposure to the core, so they take him to be incinerated. Meanwhile, Fred gets ko’ed by the same guards, and Iskra manages to sneak back into the shuttle after welding a hole through the thinner airlock tube, and taking some damage from the explosive decompression.

Fred tries to scare the guard carrying him by starting to talk to him about how he’s infected now too, but it works a little too well, and the guard calls for an emergency cleanse in the docking bay, which is quickly flooded with plasma, killing them both. Luckily for Iskra, this causes the shuttle to flop loose and begin a completely uncontrolled descent into Venus’ atmo. Iskra manages to handcrank the airlock open and jump free before the craft vaporizes, and sends out an emergency signal. Ben Johanssen manages to get ahold of her before Cognite does, leaving her the lone survivor. Unfortunately, she doesn’t know exactly what happened aboard that station, having been blacked out on comms the whole time.

Cognite has Slen and Fred’s cortical stacks, Alpha’s was melted in the plasma burst, or lost in space presumably. They also might be on the lookout for Iskra, not exactly a subtle type, so Johansen asigns them to take a ride aboard The Stars My Destination to Mars, to look into some Pandora Gate issues, as well as scope out some potential x-risks aboard the swarm.