05/02/2015 – Prison Break (4)
They spend the next day lying in bed, arguing and gathering the resources required for the ship. They start to ferry their purchases up to the ship, which turns into a hard labour task to load the shuttle up and then unload it and transport the pallets around the Liberator. They need to re-stock the ship’s auto-repair centre with vital materials to replace destroyed parts.
Cyrus looks into getting a cargo loader, but the 75,000 Credit cost puts him off. He suggests they go back to the Red Queen at some point and recover the one from they had on that ship.
Dirk asks Orac if he wants anything. He doesn’t but states he wants to go to the Phosos system at some point.
Cyrus spends some time having his cyber implants repaired, which costs him 500 Cr.
The next two days are spent continuing these activities. They load up the resources in the auto-repair centre to Zen’s specifications, as well as add obtaining 24 conventional missiles and load them on the ship. They also stock up the food, water, recycling and life support systems and get some basic supplies for the medic bay.
Four days after they arrived, the loading is done and the hard graft has left them tired. They discuss hiring more crew to help things out, but they don’t know who they can trust with this rare and advanced ship. Cyrus suggests getting slaves vs hiring professional crew.
Wanted
They spend next the day resting. Dirk is on the Flight Deck duty when Zen reports six pursuit class ships closing in on an interception vector. He instructs Zen to prepare for a jump to the nearest planetary star system, which Zen reports is the Dyentastra system.
Grant comes onto the flight deck in his new, silk dressing gown. Drent and Cyrus follow.
Drent talks to the incoming ships. Captain Lytton of the Gauda Prime Interplanetary Police Force tells them they are wanted by the Dyvers authorities on drug running and terrorism charges and will be detained for extradition. They should surrender or his ships will open fire with plasma bolts.
When they delay, one of the Pursuit ships launches a plasma bolt. Grant instructs Zen to jump to the pre-determined location. Zen points out the bolt will hit before the jump will complete. They raise the force wall and the bolt does little effect. Three more plasma bolts are launched and still the force wall holds them off.
The ship then jumps to Dyentastra. This will take two hours.
Dirk asks Orac to investigate where the arrest warrants came from when they arrive, to which he agrees.
Dyentastra
They arrive in the Dyentastra system after a few hours and the ship establishes orbit around the primary planet.
Orac reports the warrants against the Liberator were issued four days ago by the Dyvers authority, reporting the ship as wanted in connection with terrorism and drug running offences. The relevant warrant was issued by the Dyvers Attorney General. Gauda Prime has a treaty of co-operation with Dyvers.
Dyentastra II’s Space Traffic Control requests communications and they have taken a stationary orbit without consent. Permission to approach the planet is withheld, they must withdraw immediately.
Orac points out if the warrants had reached the Gauda Prime system then they would have reached this system as well. It is only two parsecs away from the Arkon system. Dirk realises he gave Zen the wrong instructions and had intended to jump to a system further away from Arkon.
They ask Orac if he can locate Bill Kennedy, he says he needs to be in the Arkon system to do so. He can communicate with other computes, but it takes time if they are not in the current system.
They leave planetary orbit and wait around away from the planet, waiting for the power cells to re-charge. They want full power when they arrive in the Arkon system.
Cyrus asks about jumping between systems and Drent realises that as Liberator does not need fuel. It can jump between star systems and can never be found, because Federation ships must jump to somewhere with a fuel source. A few ships may be capable of it, but they would also need to know precisely where Liberator was.
Origins of the Liberator
They continue to wait until the power banks are pretty much fully re-charged.
Tarrant discusses with the others what they are going to do next. They are not sure and it probably isn’t safe to sell the ship, even if they could find a very wealthy buyer.
He asks Orac where the Liberator comes from. He says it was constructed as a replica of the original Liberator, which was in possession of a group of Federation fugitives lead by Roj Blake. The original Liberator was constructed by a mysterious group known as “The System” the origins of which were unknown. The first Liberator was destroyed 107 years ago. They ask how – an unknown organism slowly dissolved the ship from the hull inwards.
Orac then goes on to tell them in painful technical detail the brilliant way in which he was able to work out how to construct a ship like the Liberator, which took him nearly 100 years to calculate. Most of them lose interest at this point.
Stealth Manoeuvres
Dirk programs the Astrogation console to take them to the edge of the Dyvers system and they jump. When they arrive, Orac is soon able to them the history of the arrest, trial and imprisonment, escape and handing over of former Dyvers Continental Governor William Kennedy of the Democratic Party. He is currently incarcerated on asteroid PA17338, although the records suggest he has been moved recently to hospital, although for an unknown reason the records are incomplete. His current whereabouts are therefore unknown.
As Liberator has stealth hull plating, it should be difficult to detect except at short range. Drent plots the ship slowly towards the co-ordinates Orac gave them, keeping the energy signature low to reduce the chances of detection. However his inexperience at piloting such a large ship means the ship goes in the wrong direction and the journey takes longer than he planned.
They hold off on the edge of the Department of Justice and Correction exclusion zone in the Asteroid belt, where so far there is no sign of the ship being detected. Sensors show the personal transport shuttle of Governor Marz Pellen is currently docked at an asteroid near to PA17338, which Orac confirms is the location where William Kennedy was being held.
There are also a number of gun emplacements on the edge of the exclusion zone,
After watching for a while, the shuttle disembarks and heads towards asteroid PA17338, which has a dozen penal “pods” with approximately 10 inmates in each. Orac confirms William was held in pod 7.
Asteroid PA17338
They discuss what to do next. Whether to go in with the Liberator, a shuttle or use a teleport probe. They discuss with Zen launching a probe to PA17338 and he projects a 3D holographic image of the terrain on the asteroid based on sensor readings. They choose a site 50 meters away and ask Zen what he can do with operating the teleport. The only computer setting available is pulse retrieval, which will cause anyone stepping into the area of the probe wearing a bracelet to be teleported back to the ship.
They launch the teleport probe towards the asteroid. It is decided to leave Tarrant behind to operate the teleport, which he is happy to do for now. Drent asks if Orac can re-design the Liberator controls so teleporting can be controlled from the Flight Deck, but Orac dismisses his request.
They vac suit up and get ready to teleport over, taking extra bracelets and a vac suit for William. The probe will take a few minutes to arrive, but will still be sooner than the shuttle. They teleport over and space walk over to pod 7, getting the access code for the pod from Orac to open the airlock.
William Kennedy Missing
The wait in the inner airlock for the Shuttle to dock. An important looking man and his assistant, plus four armed guards, disembark and are surprised at gun point. The lead man introduces himself as Governor Pellen. What do they want?
Grant tells them they want William Kennedy and he is Grant Kennedy. Pellen laughs – William Kennedy is in demand. He has disappeared, taken by an unauthorised transport in a fake prison transport shuttle. He is still investigating exactly how it happened but William Kennedy is missing, assumed escaped.
Grant and the others are a little surprised by this and question the Governor for a while about this, but he seems quite convincing. He is going to be in trouble for a prisoner escaping so he would like to find William Kennedy as well.
They make a deal with the Governor that if he gives them the information he has on the disappearance they will investigate it further and find someone who he can pass off as William Kennedy. Governor Pellen agrees to this and has his aid pass on the information in a data wafer.
The Governor then departs, rather confused as to how they go here undetected, but Grant gives him no clues other than that their ship is nearby.
The crew wait until the Governor has left and consider what to do next.