Running Dark
Session 13 - Albatross Security LLC - The Zenith Job
The crew of the Albatross found themselves docked at Dinon One, a sprawling orbital station perched at the top of a massive space elevator, surrounded by the constant buzz of independent operators and supply ships. Their situation was dire — the last of their emergency rations had been eaten, their credits were nearly gone, and the ship’s hold held nothing worth selling that wouldn’t raise uncomfortable questions about where they’d gotten it. Six, the crew’s combat specialist, had been scouring job postings but was unable to even find the local equivalent of an employment board, so he had to go back to Shack to scan it for him. Once Shack scanned the board, they found something that seemed almost tailor-made for them: an open call for security contractors with no upper limit on the number of hires.
Marlo Petrak, the crew’s security specialist and reluctant conscript, took charge of the situation with quiet efficiency. He gathered the crew and laid out a plan: they would present themselves not as a ragtag collection of former MacMillian Security employees on the run, but as a unified firm called Albatross Security LLC. He advised everyone to keep their recent history vague, letting the timeline blur around the moment Kinetic Logistics absorbed MacMillian, so no one would think to ask why they’d left so abruptly. He also made one additional recommendation, delivered with the kind of diplomatic firmness that only a man surrounded by armed eccentrics could manage — Six was to keep his mouth shut around anyone who wasn’t on the crew.
Before they could go anywhere, however, the crew needed food. Marlo pooled twenty-five credits from the group and tapped a request into the ship’s supply terminal. Within minutes, a drone activated from one of the orbital supply hubs, retrieved a sealed crate, and delivered it directly to the Albatross’s outer airlock. The crate smelled like dinner — not yet, but soon — and Marlo spent the next hour doing research while the crew ate their MREs with something approaching gratitude. When he returned, he set a vid tablet on the table and walked them through what he’d found: the planet below was preparing for an event called the Zenith, a rare citywide festival that occurred every few years when the planet’s eccentric orbit aligned to produce a single day of perfect weather. An entertainment company called Apice Entertainment was hosting a pop star named Adelina Feliciano for a massive concert at the heart of the city, and they needed security. The contact was a woman named Phoebe Dennell, the local head of security for Apice.
Getting to the planet required money the crew barely had. Marlo calculated the cost of transport — a cheap orbital taxi to the elevator station, then the elevator itself — and the numbers were tight. The crew debated finances, briefly floated the idea of a shared fund, and ultimately decided the most important thing was to simply get moving. Six, characteristically, solved the problem of the taxi fare by stepping directly out of the ship’s airlock and waiting in the open vacuum of space for the vehicle to arrive, standing on the platform like a man waiting for a bus, completely unbothered by the void around him. The rest of the crew clipped in and joined him, and the open-air taxi zipped them across the orbit toward the elevator station, weaving through a swarm of vessels and cargo drones.
At the top of the elevator, the crew passed through a small changing area and made their way to the queue. What greeted them was something closer to Mardi Gras than a transit hub — a massive, festive crowd of travelers in colorful outfits, wealthy tourists with robot butlers, and everything in between, all waiting in the same slow-moving line. Security was visibly elevated, with cameras and turrets deployed and undercover officers moving through the crowd. Six, however, was not focused on any of that. He had spotted something far more important: a group of elderly tourists he recognized from a previous jellyfish tour, now wearing Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts and straw hats, looking like they were ready to have the time of their lives. He walked straight up to them and began greeting them all by name.
Six introduced Frederick, a widower of twenty years who was, in his own words, currently involved with Flora but harbored deeper feelings for Milang, a Chinese widow in the group. He introduced Viola, who explained the rules of shuffleboard — both the floor version and the table version — in thorough detail during the elevator ride. He introduced Miriam, and Bob, who was obsessed with his golf handicap and had purchased a special adventure package to go out and operate the massive harvesting machinery in the planet’s outback. Six relayed all of this to Shack and Marlo with the earnest enthusiasm of a social coordinator, and the elderly tourists were delighted to have someone to talk to. Marlo, for his part, spent the elevator ride trying to quietly extract himself from the conversation and failing entirely.
The elevator itself was a massive glass-walled box, and as it descended, those near the windows got their first real look at the planet below. The landscape was extreme — vast fields of enormous stalks stretching in rows across the terrain, being cut down by workers wielding what amounted to laser chainsaws while automated machines followed behind to collect the fallen material. Industrial pools of indigo-colored fluid sat near the city’s outskirts, with massive mechanical arms churning and pressing whatever was mixed into them, and enormous processing buildings billowed steam from their smokestacks. The city itself was a dense sprawl of tall buildings, and hovering above it were massive atmospheric ships equipped with retractable shades and fans, actively managing the local weather to keep the streets below dry and comfortable. At the center of it all was the Meridian Esplanade, a circular plaza nearly half a mile wide, where a gigantic stage was already being assembled for the upcoming Zenith celebration.
The crew landed on the planet’s surface and immediately felt the difference. Dinon I had a gravity noticeably heavier than standard, and the effect was immediate and unpleasant — movement was slower, gear felt heavier, and the simple act of walking required more effort than it should have. Six, already encumbered by his full combat armor, found himself moving at a pace that could generously be described as deliberate. The crew adjusted their loads as best they could and followed Marlo toward the public transit system, stepping onto a high-speed conveyor belt that carried them through the terminal and down to a monorail station. The train zipped them into the heart of the city, past screens running a constant stream of Zenith Day advertisements, consumer sales, and programming from Apice Entertainment’s extensive channel lineup.
Six spent most of the monorail ride attempting to order things. The screens were full of Zenith Day merchandise — commemorative cups, action figures, limited-edition items — and Six tagged everything that caught his eye, sending a growing wishlist to Shack’s device. Every attempt to actually purchase anything returned the same result: no balance. He showed Shack the string of failed transactions with the quiet desperation of a child in a toy store, and Shack gently reminded him that they needed to get the security job first. Six sent back a single acknowledgment and returned to watching the advertisements.
When the monorail deposited them near the Meridian Esplanade, the scale of the preparations became clear. The plaza was ringed with tents bearing corporate logos, bleachers and raised platforms were being assembled for better sightlines, and the central stage was a growing structure of scaffolding and rigging. Camera crews were setting up high-definition rigs in covered positions around the perimeter, and drone operators were running test flights with light and camera drones above the stage. Dancers and performers were already rehearsing their routines. The whole operation was enormous, and it was all being done under the watchful eye of a significant security presence — checkpoints, scanners, and red-lit boundary lines built directly into the concrete of the plaza’s edge.
As the crew passed the Apice Entertainment building, Six stopped. On the giant screen mounted to the building’s facade, cycling through advertisements and program highlights, was a face he recognized. It was Adelina Feliciano — the headliner for the Zenith concert, the woman they had been hired to protect. Six recognized her as the same woman he had followed out of a transit station some time ago, the one who had used some kind of device to change her face before passing through security, and who had then been picked up by a man with skull-shaped shoulder pads. He told the crew what he knew, quietly and without drama, and the information settled over the group like a stone dropped into still water. Outside the building, a crowd of protesters held signs reading “Free Feliciano” and “Down with Apice,” and some of them wore shirts bearing the logo of P.E.T.A. — the People for the Ethical Treatment of Androids.
Inside the building, the crew was directed to a ballroom that had been converted into a processing center for security applicants. The room was full of people of every description — grizzled veterans in heavy armor, nervous young men in ill-fitting clothes, and everything in between. There was a long, zigzagging queue leading to a series of intake desks. Six assessed the situation and walked directly to the front of the line. A large man already standing there objected. Six announced, with complete sincerity, that he was prepared to fight anyone who disputed his right to the first position in the line, non-lethally, as a demonstration of his superior qualifications. The man was not impressed. An Apice official with a clipboard intervened and sent Six to the back of the line.
Six complied, but not without working the problem from a different angle. He moved to the back of the line and immediately tapped Ronin on the shoulder, informing him that he intended to take his spot and would fight him for it, non-lethally. Ronin stepped aside without argument. Six then tapped Shack on the shoulder and issued the same challenge. Shack declined to fight and offered to simply let Six go ahead. Six refused — the challenge had to be met properly — and the two of them settled the matter with a thumb-wrestling contest, which Six won. Marlo eventually talked him down from challenging anyone else, pointing out that starting a brawl in the applicant line was not the ideal way to demonstrate their suitability for a security contract.
At Desk 47, Marlo took the lead. He presented the group as Albatross Security LLC, explained that he had been brought on to manage the administrative side of the business while his colleagues handled the physical work, and provided a carefully constructed account of their employment history that stopped just short of the moment everything had gone sideways with Macmillan. The recruiter offered them a contract: one hundred and fifty credits per day, plus a twenty-five credit per diem stipend. Shack read the contract carefully and found the liability clauses buried in the fine print — anything the contractors did without explicit direction from Apice Entertainment would be their personal legal responsibility, not the company’s. He attempted to negotiate a higher rate. The recruiter took the contract back. Shack reconsidered, and the crew signed.
Processing was efficient. The crew was issued monocrys bodysuits, tactical vests, and assault boots, along with electric stun wands for non-lethal crowd control. Ronin Sanchez required a custom-tailored suit to accommodate his four arms, handled by a technician named Lady Edna who operated the automated fitting machinery with practiced speed. Six declined the standard issue suit entirely, keeping his combat armor and simply updating the digital display on its surface to show the Apice Entertainment Security logo. He was also asked, politely but firmly, to remove the ripped and stretched souvenir t-shirt he had been wearing over his armor. He complied. The crew watched a mandatory orientation video featuring Phoebe Dennell, who outlined conduct expectations with the practiced warmth of someone who had recorded the same message many times before.
With their contracts signed and their uniforms on, the crew needed somewhere to sleep. Six located a budget motel called the Perihelion Super 8 a few blocks from the plaza, at twelve credits a night — bare bones, but clean where it counted. The walk there took them through an older district of the city, past street vendors selling Zenith Day merchandise and food from carts under covered walkways. Six bought a commemorative t-shirt for two credits. Ronin found a street food stall run by an old woman and her son, sat down under their awning out of the rain, and ate a plate of well-seasoned meat while watching the neighborhood. At one point, a group of P.E.T.A. protesters arrived in a van, rolled up their signs, and carried two large, sealed metal crates into a nearby hotel. The crates were big enough to hold significant hardware, and Ronin watched them go with quiet interest before finishing his meal and heading back.
The motel rooms were exactly what twelve credits bought — a bed, a bathroom, a small screen on the wall, and a view of the building next door. Six turned on the television and found the local soap operas. Shack set an alarm and coordinated a meeting time and location for the crew via comms. Before the shift, the group gathered near the plaza and compared notes on the local food — Six had made a stop at a Denny Burgers kiosk and arrived with a bag of curly fries and a Quarter Hog Burger, along with a small promotional action figure of a Zenith Day pop star. Marlo traded some of his meat-on-a-stick for Six’s fries, and the general consensus was that the street food was better than anything they’d eaten in weeks.
Captain Paul Harrelson met them at the security tent at the edge of the Meridian Esplanade — an older man, slightly overweight, who carried himself with the air of someone who had been doing this long enough to have seen everything go wrong at least once. He walked them through their patrol zone, the red-lit boundary lines they were responsible for maintaining, and the rules of engagement: non-lethal force only, stun wands for anyone who crossed the line and refused to leave, and absolutely no lethal weapons without explicit authorization from up the chain of command. Any use of force required paperwork. Any incident involving the local police required deference. The event could not afford a shutdown, and neither could they.
The patrol itself was largely uneventful at first. The crew walked the perimeter while the plaza hummed with activity — stage rigging going up, camera drones running test patterns, performers rehearsing choreography on the central stage. A group of teenage fans tried to slip past the boundary line to get closer to the performers, and Ronin snapped his stun wand at the air in their direction with the energy of a man who had been waiting for an excuse. The teenagers ignored him. Rock stepped in and told them, with calm authority, that they were in the wrong area for autographs and directed them elsewhere. They left without incident. Ronin named his stun wand Frank Zappa.
A Channel 7 News van arrived later in the shift, and the crew vetted the two-person crew — a clean-cut cameraman and a perfectly composed on-air reporter named Megan — who presented press credentials and claimed authorization to film from within the secured area. Shack contacted Harrelson to verify, and the credentials checked out. Megan proceeded to conduct a live broadcast from the plaza, walking the camera through the preparations and narrating the upcoming event with professional enthusiasm. Ronin spent the entire broadcast walking slowly and deliberately in front of the camera. When Megan’s cameraman tried to reposition his drone for a better angle, which would have filmed Six taking up a shooter’s position, Ronin put his hand on the controller and pushed it down to stop him. The cameraman looked up at him. Ronin looked back. The drone powered off. Megan declared they had enough footage and began packing up.
While all of this was unfolding, Six had spotted something. In a hotel room overlooking the plaza, partially obscured by shadow and curtains, a figure was standing back from the balcony with something held up to their face. Six pinged the location to the entire crew and took a braced position, aiming his grazer rifle at the building. Shack deployed his nanomachines, sending them up through the rain toward the hotel room. What they found inside was unambiguous: a long-range scoped rifle set up on a bipod on the bed, a surveillance device discarded beside it, and a laptop with an alarm flashing silently on the screen. The occupant was already moving toward the door, heading for the exit. Six had the shot calculated — the rifle’s penetrating power was more than sufficient to reach through the reinforced concrete wall — and he waited for the order. Marlo contacted Harrelson. The response came back quickly and without room for interpretation: stand down. Six acknowledged the order over the comms with two words, delivered in a flat, even tone. Mission incomplete. The figure in the hotel room walked out the door and disappeared.