Editing The Spinward Blues (section)

=== 216-1110: A Little Crime and Justice on Wardn ===

Wardn's a planet being terraformed by the Scout Service—''slowly'', so as not to mess up the Ancients archaeological site here. 

The party immediately falls into another plot. Bill's friend Ygrgrl was ''supposed'' to be here, or leave word, but he hadn't, which meant something'd gone wrong with the archaeological dig. The dig was sponsored by the Barons Kishurga and Janice Berlión, scholar-bureaucrats, who were on the List of Conspirators—and departed for the digsite days before contact was lost with it. A coincidence? Probably not. 

Meanwhile, more news had come in from Lunion itself: It seemed that the Earl had got himself a new paramour (perhaps the aforementioned Zhodani agent?), and had been attempting some pro-Lunion, pro-detente propaganda (including comparisons to Romeo and Juliet); it also seemed that the Duke was confirmed to be scheduled to be holding talks with the Earl during the Victory Ball, when it finally came around.

Olivia went shopping in Wardn Center, and Seldokova tailed her, and finally approached her openly. Seldokova had guessed at Olivia's background, and Olivia at hers; they agreed to a truce, and after shopping together for a while, went to break into the Berlións' house to gather evidence. Just a regular girl's day out, sort of; it turned out they both wanted friends.

In the Berlións' condo, they discovered an advanced communications suite, signs of a hidden arms cache (now mostly empty), incriminating documents (including love letters from the Earl of Lunion to his foreign ladyfriend, held for safe-keeping—the Berlións had been the Earl's tutors, and remained friends of the family), and a ''crown'' with mixed Lunion and Zhodani symbols. The two women arranged to make it look like a robbery, so they got the evidence without arousing suspicion (and Olivia made ''some'' profit). 

Meanwhile, everyone else went off in an air-raft over the horizon, out of communications contact (no regular satellites, because of the terraforming), to inspect this mysterious digsite. The first thing they noticed was a weird jamming signal emanated from the site (which turned out to be a local feature of the ruins); the second thing they noticed was the general lack of activity; the third thing was the military g-carrier parked below, and the small weapons-nests dug in around the site. Someone armed and dangerous had moved in. And fourth, there was a crashed starship, an Imperial frigate, in the lake. 

They sneaked up to scout, and encountered Thpoitz, Droyne swashbuckler extraordinaire, and lately advisor to the camp. His story: armed mercenaries had swooped in and taken everyone hostage. Why? Dunno. He was sneaking out to get help. 

Help had arrived. 

In the ensuing quick strike, Highway flanked and took out one of the nests single-handedly, Sunrise and Bill captured the g-carrier (surprising one merc and his date), and everyone else got into a firefight around the earthmound that was the dig site, finally killing or capturing all the mercs above ground. The mercenary captain tried some fast-talking, failed, and shot Sunrise before he got shot; meanwhile, Thpoitz and a Vargr mercenary fought a duel.

Meanwhile, back in Wardn Center, Special Agent Jonathan Sklar of the Ministry of Justice had been cooling his heels for weeks, because for some reason the Comptroller was openly "secretly" delaying his exit visa. Why? When he spotted and recognized Seldokova on a security monitor, he got curious, and arranged to meet her—they compared notes. Perhaps the Comptroller was involved? They split to carry on separate investigations.

When Olivia returned to the ship, she discovered that Magellan—feeling he was in deep, over his head, surrounded by dangerous people, trying to pull him back to a kind of life he'd hoped to abandon—had departed. He'd left a note, to say good-bye. Olivia was surprised to find herself heartbroken. 

Later, she and Seldokova had a quiet bonding moment while catching the new ''Romeo and Juliet'' movie on the TV. 

The hostages freed, the party pieced together that the mercs (who were basically player-character-types, rather than an organized free company) had been hired to work with the Berlións, and bivouacked here to take advantage of the sensor-jamming architecture prior to playing their part in the scheduled coup. More worrying, one of the Professors had a letter implying that there was an impending assassination attempt upon the Duke. Uh-oh. And finally, there was the downed ship—INS ''Allemande 6992''—inspection of which revealed that they'd had a mutiny on board, led by Lunion loyalists, in an attempt to capture the vessel. The Imperial loyalists had won, however, and would have started to repair the ship had not armed and nasty mercenaries been lurking outside! They and the party started putting their heads together, and Jeffrey took command of the repair efforts. Subsequent interrogations get more evidence, and Ishugi vows personally to Mr. Berlión that he will see him nailed to the ''wall'' for this ill-conceived criminal conspiracy.

Back in Wardn, the Berlións's gardener, who'd surprised and been hurt by Seldokova, got found and arrested, and thereby blew the case to the local police. Jon Sklar managed to spin things so that ''he'' "discovered" the evidence in the Berlións' apartment (while looking for what this escaped criminal had "stolen from them"). Finding out that Dame Berlión had escaped, and was returning to Wardn, he arranged with Seldokova and Olivia to get her arrested. (Olivia pretended to have been "hit and run" by Berlión's vehicle—and ''wham'', in come the cops.)

When the Wardn Comptroller finally got involved in this strange case, he was relieved! Apparently, he'd been trying to figure out a way to get information of parts of this out to higher authority, but couldn't figure out who to trust—so he interfered with other cases until someone (i.e. Sklar) got nosy. A dishonest, cowardly, and corrupt way to go about it, but it worked! And he ignored everyone else's grumbling, the way only a snake with an escape route planned can do so. 

''Allemande'' limped on contragrav into Wardn Center, and Ishugi made a stirring speech.

==== Notable NPCs ====
* Sharusk aka Fred Gustava, gardener and security guard at the Berlións' condo. Excellent martial artist, AWOL soldier (for years).
* The mercenaries include Martha, Hiro, "Sergeant Skidmarks", the Vargr Gavlarn, Dashu, and the unnamed bossman. 
* Professor Dame Shino Berlión (Hum/F), conspirator and scholar.
* Professor Baron Keil Berlión (Hum/M), conspirator and scholar. 
* Professor Hertz (Hum/M), PhDs in Architecture and Psionics, a friend of Periss Sator. 
* Ygrgrl (Veg/M), dig advisor, navigator.
* Doctor Davis (Hum/M), Life Sciences, and grad student Shumi.
* Sergeant Mikhail (Hum/M), Wardn Patrol officer, and Jon Sklar's main liaison.
* Kam (Hum/M), another Wardn Patrol officer.
* The Comptroller of Lunion (Hum/M), who is basically Louie from ''Casablanca'', only more honest. 
* Commander Sang (Hum/N), Second Officer and Acting CO of ''Allemande.''
* Lieutenant Ewigi (Hum/M) of ''Allemande.''
* Gunnery Sergeant Ahn No Muldoon (Hum/M) of ''Allemande.''
* Tejan and SFC Eneri Tomkins-Muo, Navy crewmen. 
* Odrep (Dro), of ''Allemande'', a fellow exile, who makes a bond of friendship with Thpoitz.