Chapter 01 Session 09 Wrap Up

Narrative Recap

The crew of the Albatross found themselves deep in the maintenance tunnels beneath the capital city of Aethel, crouched in the dark with the unconscious body of Peter Goodwin strapped to Six’s back. The sewer system stretched out around them in a labyrinth of catwalks, industrial pipes, and flowing waste, and the spaceport loomed just beyond a heavily fortified perimeter. Rock Lavey intercepted security signals and determined that while the party were listed as persons of interest, their true identities remained unknown to planetary authorities — the only damning image was a blurry shot of Six in full body armor carrying another person out of the Firetemic Tower.

The crew assessed their options carefully. The perimeter between the city sewers and the spaceport was no simple wall — it was a layered gauntlet of fencing, no man’s land, and defensive systems designed to catch exactly the kind of people they were. Shackleton used a handheld scanner to probe the walls and identified a dense network of vibration and noise sensors embedded throughout the earth. The best approach, he determined, was to dig slowly and carefully near one of the large sewer pipes, using the constant rush of flowing waste to mask the sound of their work.

Six set his vibro-axe to a low pulse setting — the sonic equivalent of a toothbrush on its gentlest cycle — and began carving through tile, then concrete, then packed earth. Shackleton ventured further down the tunnel and returned with scraps of corrugated metal sheathing and old pipe pieces, materials that appeared to have been left there by someone else entirely, someone who had clearly been through this passage before. Together, the crew fashioned a crude shoring structure to keep the tunnel ceiling from collapsing on them as Six pushed forward inch by careful inch.

Their progress was interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps on the metal catwalk. A small, circular security drone rounded the corner and swept its searchlight down both sides of the tunnel — and found Shackleton standing in the open. Without hesitation, Shackleton turned and ran in the opposite direction, drawing the drone away from the others and buying Six and Rock Lavey precious time to continue their work. Rock Lavey spotted the flashlights of a planetary security squad advancing from a T-junction, their lights bouncing off the far wall as they moved with tactical precision.

Shackleton led the drone on a chase through the catwalks. As the drone went past in pursuit of Shackleton, Rock Lavey hurled a chunk of concrete at it in a desperate bid to knock it out of the air. The rock connected with a satisfying clang but the machine didn’t even register the impact, continuing its pursuit without pause. He then pulled out an electromagnetic pulse device, waiting for the drone to close the distance before triggering it. Knowing the blast would knock out his own unhardened gear as well, Shackleton set off the device; the pulse successfully disabled the drone, sending it tumbling into the sewer water below while also temporarily blacking out Shackleton’s own electronics. For several agonizing seconds, he was blind and deaf to the world around him as the Aethel Safety Bureau officers closed in.

The officers were armored, disciplined, and armed with sonic stunners and blaster rifles. They ordered Shackleton to his knees, and he complied — but only just, keeping his hands visible while his mind raced for options. When his electronics flickered back online, he deployed his smart rope, sending it slithering through the sewer water in a convincing imitation of a large, venomous snake. He warned the officers in a perfectly calm voice that there was a very poisonous sewer snake between them and him. The bluff worked long enough to halt their advance, the officers training their lights on the water while their companions radioed in encrypted reports from back at the tunnel site.

Meanwhile, Six and Rock Lavey were fighting their own battle in the dark. Security forces had pushed a thin wire tube through the tunnel wall near Rock Lavey’s face, and gas began seeping into their sealed excavation. Rock Lavey shoved the tube into the dirt and retrieved a surgical mask from his medical kit, buying himself a measure of protection, but the gas had already begun to fill the cramped space. Six, characteristically, registered the threat and kept digging, dragging the unconscious Peter Goodwin behind him with single-minded focus.

The officers eventually tired of the snake gambit and opened fire on Shackleton’s smart rope with their blasters, destroying it in a burst of energy. Shackleton used the chaos to sprint further down the catwalk, scattering debris and corrugated steel across the walkway behind him to slow their pursuit. He reached a large sewage discharge room at the end of the corridor — a collecting chamber where pipes from various directions terminated — and spotted both a standard maintenance ladder leading to a manhole cover and a crude set of stone stairs that appeared on no official map. He chose the stairs.

The stairs led up to a hidden floor panel that slid open to reveal a basement beneath a busy building, filled with tarp-covered crates stacked on rollers. Through a nearby door came the muffled sounds of clinking glasses, shouted kitchen orders, and the whoosh of open flames. A heavy metal fire exit door on the opposite wall bore a warning that opening it would trigger an alarm — but when Shackleton pushed through, no alarm sounded. He emerged into an alleyway below street level and climbed toward the city above.

Back in the tunnel, Six hit a hard concrete barrier and realized with a cold jolt that his spatial orientation had been completely wrong. He had been digging sideways along the station wall rather than toward the ship, meaning he had spent hours of grueling labor moving parallel to his destination rather than toward it. He briefly and dispassionately calculated whether leaving Rock Lavey’s body behind might buy enough time to complete the mission, ultimately deciding against it only because the DNA evidence could be traced back to the Albatross. Instead, he turned his axe on the concrete wall itself, carving a careful circular plug out of the cinder block until the battery of his vibro-axe finally gave out. He swapped in a fresh cell and prepared to push through.

Shackleton, meanwhile, surfaced onto a crowded street lined with bars and automated cabs near the Bamboo Union 103 Lodge. He moved through the crowds and back alleys with practiced ease, breaking his trail and staying off the surveillance cameras as planetary security vehicles screamed past in the opposite direction. After a series of evasive maneuvers through the city, he was confident he had lost them entirely.

Six silently popped the concrete plug free and caught it before it could clatter to the ground. He peered through the opening into a vast, dimly lit industrial space beneath the spaceport’s landing platforms — and found himself looking at eight federal soldiers in military-grade armor and two towering Dreadnought battle suits, the kind of heavy mechanized infantry that could shrug off most weapons the crew carried. The soldiers were focused on a maintenance drill boring into the wall some distance away, apparently searching for the tunnel from the other side. Six signaled Rock Lavey to move carefully.

Rock Lavey hauled the unconscious Peter Goodwin out of the tunnel and made for the nearest cover, slipping behind a support pylon just as one of the guards glanced over. It was an agonizingly close call, but the guard’s attention drifted back to the drilling operation. The two of them moved through the shadows, following conveyor belts and staying low until they reached the storage sector and found Storage B-342, where Roselyn Monroe was waiting with a hose and a look of profound exasperation.

Six dumped Goodwin face-down onto a stack of boxes without ceremony and went to hose himself off outside. Shackleton arrived not long after, having slipped through a service gate on a false identity just seconds before the entire area went into lockdown. Monroe confirmed the delivery, then stepped outside to speak with someone. Rock Lavey, listening carefully, heard a man’s voice asking whether the job had been done quietly. Monroe replied that they had gotten who he wanted.

The man who stepped through the door was Major Leonard Romeijn, the commander of Federal Fleet Base Aethel and the highest-ranking Federal Navy officer in the entire system. Rock Lavey recognized him immediately — he had appeared in news footage at the Firetemic Tower during the initial response to the kidnapping. The crew watched in silence as Leonard Romeijn confirmed Goodwin’s identity, had him loaded into a crate on a hover cart, and wheeled him away. Before he left, he turned back and told the crew they had twenty-four hours to leave his station before he would be obligated to turn them over to the planetary authorities.

Six waited until Leonard Romeijn was gone, then said flatly that the man had deployed federal troops — including the Dreadnought battle suits — against them while they were completing his mission. He had been willing to let the whole operation collapse rather than call off his own forces. The crew absorbed this in silence. There was nothing to be done about it now, and they had a ship to catch.

Roselyn Monroe arrived at the Albatross an hour later with a bag of equipment and a legal federal transponder, which she installed beneath the hull and registered under Shackleton Magellan’s name. The ship was now officially the Albatross in the Federal Republic’s records — a real vessel with a real identity, as long as no one looked too closely at the paperwork behind it. Before she left, Monroe handed Shackleton a frequency code granting access to a restricted network of unofficial job postings, told him she expected them to come when she called, and wished them luck with the weary tone of someone who doubted they would need it.

The local news that evening credited four Aethel Safety Bureau officers with dismantling an underground smuggling operation run by the Bamboo Union, their tunnel network discovered during a routine patrol. One officer had sustained a knee injury in the line of duty. The crew said nothing, but the irony was not lost on them.

With the transponder installed and their options laid out before them, the crew debated their next move. Two jobs were available through Monroe’s network: a modest thousand-credit cargo run to Peric IV D, a moon of a failed star known for violent weather swings and low-stakes opportunities, or a five-thousand-credit contract to Betelgeuse II, a high-end ocean world with underwater settlements — but that job required two armed guards to travel aboard the ship with their cargo. Marlo Petrak, brought into the conversation as a provisional crew member, advised caution and recommended the safer run to Peric IV D. The crew agreed. Bamboo Union workers loaded the cargo hold with crates stamped with Firetemic logos, the contact codes for delivery were exchanged, and the Albatross prepared to leave Aethel behind.

Memorable Moments

Six tunnels through twenty yards of packed earth beneath a guarded starport with an unconscious billionaire dragged behind him, sewer filth and all, while planetary security drills through the wall after him.

The end of a grueling multi-hour dig, with Six focused on finishing the job.

“Watch out. There is a very poisonous sewer snake between you and I.” — Shackleton

Shackleton slithers his smart rope through the sewer water and delivers the warning to armed Aethel Safety Bureau officers in a perfectly calm voice.

Shackleton fires his EMP knowing it will black out his own unhardened electronics.

The drone tumbles into the sewer water. Shackleton spends several seconds blind and deaf as the officers close in.

Six realises mid-tunnel that he has been digging sideways along the starport wall, not toward the ship.

He weighs leaving Rock Lavey behind as a tactical option and rejects it because the DNA would trace back to the ship. He carves a plug through the cinder block instead.

Six pops the plug out silently and finds eight federal soldiers and two Dreadnought battle suits within yards.

The stealthy exit replaces the violent breach he had prepared.

Major Leonard Romeijn walks into Storage B-342 to collect Peter Goodwin and gives the crew twenty-four hours.

Rock Lavey recognises him from the news footage at the Firetemic Tower.

“That guy pulled troops on us, and even though we were doing his mission, he was willing to let the mission go down in flames.” — Six

Six sums up the Dreadnought suits and the federal squad after Romeijn leaves.

The local news credits four Aethel Safety Bureau officers with busting a Bamboo Union smuggling ring in a routine patrol.

The tunnel is the crew’s. One officer picked up a knee injury.