Editing The Spinward Blues (section)

=== 217-1110: The Battle of Wardn ===

The Comptroller put Wardn under Scout Quarantine, which means no info gets in or out without his say, thus giving Our Heroes some time to plan, and the Wardn Patrol some time to corral suspected conspirators on the planet. What little info had hit the public eye was causing a shitstorm of rumor and speculation.

A Navy ship arrived in system, and an xboat message arrived for Sunrise—sent to catch up wherever she happened to be. It was from the Conspiracy; they threatened her son. Sunrise immediately sent a message back telling them to go to hell and figure out a better lie. Almost immediately, the Navy ship—INS ''Implacable'' GSZ41668—starts sending contradictory messages, first demanding a halt to all Scout communications, then rescinding the order… a chain-of-command argument, no doubt. Apparently, someone on the ship ''was'' after the party, and someone else wasn't. 

''Implacable'' sends parties down to look for "terrorists." The party comes up with a counter-move: Ishugi and some volunteers surrender themselves, to tell the truth to the ship's captain directly; "Porter" and Thpoitz come along, psionically cloaked, to assist; everyone else waits on ''Nifty Mongoose'', preparatory to making a daring rescue if necessary. 

Seldokova was increasingly dropping hints that she was beginning to have feelings for Ishugi. Ishugi was not unfeeling towards her (albeit distracted by current events).

Olivia and Highway have a pleasant breakfast conversation.

Sunrise also arranged a little time-bomb for the conspirators, by putting copies of their evidence so far into the datanet in such a way that it would get flagged as contraband material—and thus, would eventually get discovered by law enforcement or intelligence. You can't stop the signal.

Onboard ''Implacable'', it turned out that Captain Bao-Como was blithely oblivious to the desire of the "special observer from Intelligence, Mister Fiske" to make the prisoners disappear. Bao-Como insisted they receive proper courtesy, and of course they started telling him their story… Fiske dragged them out of the room and confronted them. He outright ''bribed'' them to stay out of the way—a maneuver which had the sign of being a spur-of-the-moment decision of a confused Conspiracy, but demonstrated that they did have good financial backing. They turned him down.

Because ''Implacable'' couldn't leave without its shore parties, there was a hastily-improvised plan to keep the shore parties distracted by faking up some riots. This mutated into a hastily-improvised plan to capture one of their APCs, pose as part of ''Implacable'''s crew, and thereby get onboard the orbiting ship. It was so crazy it had to work, and so Highway, Odrep, and others arrived at ''Implacable'' just at the time that Fiske gave up and started ''his'' mutiny. 

Seldokova, on the ground, had allowed herself to be arrested, in order to meet with the local powers, but Olivia and Sklar decided she needed to be sprung from the local Army brig. They arrived just as an infiltration-suited assassin was taking apart the tiny garrison; Sklar was taken out, WIA, but Olivia and Seldokova got out, and chased the killer across town. They radioed ahead a warning—if the assassin was tying up loose ends…

The power went out all over the ship, and there was much shooting and fighting in the corridors, but Fiske's forces hadn't expected the sudden reinforcements, and were finally forced back into the engine room. This required a nasty bit of tactics to storm the place, especially as—by this point—the ship was broadcasting a distress signal. And it had been heard by the crew of a Merchant Liner, ''Orion's Girdle.''

On that ship was the formidable Boris "Rasputin" Ludermenkoff, a retired Imperial admiral. When the liner crew asked him if he'd like to advise—and when he found out about the treason onboard ''Implacable''—oh, dear. Boris immediately took command, ordered passengers and crews into life-boats, and directed the liner straight for the disabled frigate, demanding victory or death. With him threatening from the outside (threatening, hell, he was shooting to kill!), and the others fighting from the inside, ''Implacable'' was finally secured.

Sunrise had been shot ''again.'' This after not fully recovering from the previous injury. Some people don't know when to quit.

Porter had been killed—most definitely killed, not faked—and Thpoitz severely wounded. They exit our story.

There was a lot of mess in orbit, during all this, as ships variously declared for the Imperial loyalists, or declared neutrality, or just tried to stay the hell out of the way. At Olivia's suggestion, Seldokova fakes a transmission suspending the Barons' authority, which helps.

Meanwhile, Police Sergeant Jhon Minuur of the Wardn Patrol met the wounded Sklar, and was able to intercept the assassin before she could finish her work. The Berlións sign confessions (turns out the assassin had come from Fiske), the Wardn Comptroller-General disappears but opens his files to inspection, and everyone sits down and works out strategy. The Wardn media have a field day. 

Bill Janesson declared his intention to cut out, now that the party had access to big ships; Ishugi, in gratitude for services rendered, offered them retirement land grants in his home subsector, and signed the appropriate papers.

==== Notable NPCs ====
* Rick Larni, Supervisor of the Wardn Scout Way Station.
* Captain Nedry Bao-Como (Hum/M) of ''Implacable'', immediately dubbed "Bertie Wooster" by the players.
* Commander Pierce Amsted (Hum/M) of ''Implacable'', who'd been forced into helping the Conspiracy.
* More ''Allemande'' crew: Lieutenant Wallace (Hum/M), bland officer; Corporal Annan (Hum/F), cheery marine; the unnamed but tough Marine Sergeant (Hum/M); the corrupt engineer (Hum/M). 
* "Mister Tellus Fiske" (Hum/M), a nasty little man from the Conspiracy.
* The harried Steward of ''Orion's Girdle'', and the unnamed officers.
* Blet High-Star, an ancient Vargr technician with distant military experience, who volunteered to help out on ''Girdle'' during the fight.
* Jeffrey and Jon Sklar both passed into NPCdom.