NPC Tarika FFOD's page

"Excellent! The Revenant Urge--lovely name i'nit?--is dedicated to Urgathoa. It's in the Downlow district. Rishae may have what we need already on hand and, if not, she’ll know how to get them. Sorry I can’t be of more help but, y’know... corpse trading is kind of a niche market."

Tarika taps her comm unit a few times and the address of the club transmits to Scherzo's unit.

"Once you get the goods, let me know, an' I'll get the 'xact location of the buyer. Luck!"

As the crew began to shuffle toward the air lock, Tarika added, "Hey now, we aren’t the first people to try to make some creds out of this tragedy. A bunch’a goblins already came by and made off with the Drift engine from that wreck! I don’t know what they think they’re gonna do with it, but the Harlequin’s Prayer had a Signal Booster—a big step up from the basic Drift engine in most starships, including your fancy new Oli ... ah, I mean, Black Butterfly." She winked and waved them on.

"They ain’t interested in telling us who they are until we arrive, goods in hand,” Tarika warns. “And they’ve advertised this job across the Pact Worlds. Whichever crew tracks down the cargo and delivers fastest gets the prize.”

"Dunno 'bout that, but I've been assured all the legal types have taken care of those who specified any other arrangements and these are what's left. Pro'lly didn't read the fine print when they signed the ticket contracts. Anyways, there are special circumstances that make this a high payin' job. You in?"

Once she ship was shut down, Scherzo led the crew out into the dock and along a walkway that ended at an airlock into the station. Everyone had the environmental shields activated to protect them from the vacuum. Near the airlock the slender form of Tarika could be seen conversing with one of the corpsefolk at the airlock. When she saw the crew, she squealed and ran excitedly to greet them all.

"It’s so nice to see y’all livin’ and breathin’!

Tarika pointed toward the wrecked luxury liner. "Believe it or not, that unfortunate wreck is our next meal ticket. The Harlequin’s Prayer was a Vercite starliner. Got popped by pirates. Hull burst. Killed almost everyone on board. Sad, but how does that keep us in credits? Well, I found a buyer on Vesk-2 looking for fifty tons of black hearts. Those are necrografts—strips of dead flesh you can get attached to your insides to, you know, ignore stuff that kills us living people, like vacuum and radiation. And where do we get enough corpsicles for all those necrografts? You guessed it!" She gestured dramatically to the wrecked luxury liner. "There’s a broker named Rishae who handles stuff like this. She’s at the Revenant Urge, a club here on the station. Wha’dya say? Should I tell her yer comin’?

They arranged a meeting with Tarika in person in a privacy suite designed to prevent surveillance and eavesdropping. They wanted to explain the details of Sinjin's job. By this point, she too had quit and managed her own severance package. She did not seem worried about the challenge of stealing a top secret ship from the research facility where it was being developed. She knew that in the rough and tumble world of independent shipping, this sort of deal was not unusual.

"Looks like whatever happens, we’re in it together!" she said, with characteristic optimism. "Once we do this thing for Sinjin, we’ll be independent at last! No one’ll tell us what to do. I’ll find you all the work you need—for a modest administrative fee, of course—and the universe will be your open road."

After explaining Sinjin's offer, leaving out potentially incriminating details about what exactly the drow wanted them to do for him, Tarika was sympathetic. "Tell ya the truth, I've been thinkin' of quitin' too. I don’t know what I’ll do exactly," she said. "My daughter Shan is still off terraforming some water world in the Vast for these bloodsuckers. But at least she’s on her own now, so I have options. I’ve made some contacts in the free trader community—other crews, not unlike yourselves. I could go independent, I s’pose..."

Tarika encouraged the crew to quit before they were fired and get what severance they could, although she warned them to negotiate aggressively or the Company would try to give them as little as they could. "With your severance packages, you might get enough for your own ship! I mean, if you pooled everything together, and the bank gives you a loan. You could go freelance!"

Knowing it would take hours for the message to find its to the brenneri dispater, they started toward the pact worlds. The crew slept in shifts, played games, watched Tri-D movies, listened to music, worked out. E

Eventually, a return message from Tarika arrived. Zeph put it up on the view screen in the crew lounge.

<Hey, ya'll! Glad your all right. Sucks that ya lost the cargo. I'll file a report with the information from your ship log, if you'll send me a copy. I'll stall long enough to let ya'll get back to Absalom Station. I’ll make it look as good as I can. Try not ta worry.> Her expression, however, suggested they may in fact want to worry a little.

<The Company'll probably put ya'll on probation while they do an audit and investigation.> Then she perked up and added, <Meanwhile, Lord Sinjin is lookin’ for you. By now, he's gotta know how things went down on Vohxa. You’d think he’d be mad about the job fallin’ through, but he says he just wants to talk to you about, ah, ‘a potential business opportunity.’ He’s stayin’ at King Curney’s Casbah, in the Armada. If y’all feel up to a face-to-face, look him up.>

Tarika shook her head. "Is it legal? Pretty much everything’s legal somewhere, these days. Apostae’s economy is built on the weapons trade—-makin’ and sellin’ weapons is what drow houses do. So, the short answer is... yep. As for bein' shady, Every job's shady, ain't it? But this one’s got a fat paycheck, and that’s what we need to get y’all off the Company’s hit list. Uh, figuratively speakin’. I mean, they haven’t hired assassins to kill you yet. I mean, as far as I know. Ha ha!"

Spirits were low as the team got back to regular space and checked by radio with EJ HQ at Absalom station. They received a message from their supervisor: <This is to inform you that crew of Freighter BD514 is under disciplinary action for failing to fulfill an mission assignment. You are reminded that repeated failure to meet mission goals will result in termination of employment. No bonus is awarded for this mission.>

Scherzo contacted Tarika and briefed her on the mission outcome.

“Corporations are expandin’ so fast,” Tarika said with a weary sigh. “By the time y’all went from Castrovel to Akiton, your local buyer had already been bought out by an interstellar conglomerate! Guess there’s no room for family businesses anymore. Not in the Pact Worlds, at least.”

She shook her head and tapped a few buttons on her datapad. “But let’s focus on what matters: gettin’ y’all a high-payin’ gig to put ya back in the Company’s good graces. I got just the thing. Came in not long ago, in fact, and it’s... well, not perfect, but it’ll do the trick. A drow callin’ himself Lord Sinjin is shippin’ guns from Apostae to a planet in Near Space. I guess the Gideron Authority is tryin’ to settle a world called Vohxa, and the local miners are turnin’ into more of a problem than anyone figured they’d be.

“So the job is simple: go to Apostae and meet with Sinjin’s agent, Tause Jarzeed, at a place called Lamashtu’s Lair, where you’ll pick up the cargo. Take it to a Gideron military outpost on Vohxa and collect payment. Oh, and no questions asked. You know the type.” Tarika rolled her eyes as she sent over the last of the job details.

Scherzo was concerned about many aspects of the mission. She asked for more information on the players in this transaction.

Tarika said, "So the Gideron Authority, that's basically a hobgoblin empire in Near Space. It’s gotten pretty aggressive lately, expandin’ to nearby worlds hobgoblins used to inhabit. I guess there’s old hobgoblin ruins on those worlds. Fascinatin’, huh?"

As for Lord Sinjin, she said, "I don't know a lot about this guy. Only women can rise to positions of authority in a drow house, so whatever Sinjin is ‘lord’ of, it must be somethin’ else. Anyways, he’s not on Apostae. Not sure where he is, actually; that’s why you’re meetin’ with Tause Jarzeed instead."

Regarding the mining planet, "It’s rich in siccatite and other resources. There’ve been human, dwarf, and shirren miners workin’ there for years. The local mining guild ran things until recently, but now that the Authority’s shown up, we can count on hobgoblins takin’ over. Hobgoblins don’t mess around. I’m surprised they need a weapons shipment at all. You’d think they’d have brought guns for, y’know, their planetary invasion."

As soon as the ship emerged from the Drift, the ship’s comm unit lit up with a waiting transmission from their Company dispatcher, Tarika. Since the message is from Absalom station, it was sent a day or so ago.

She looked anxious, and as soon as the transmission started she blurted out,

"Howdy team! I’m just checkin’ in on y’all. If you’re receivin’ this, you must have arrived at Akiton. Your drop-off site is in Hivemarket. Now, you can’t miss that place—just look for the biggest damn mountain on the entire planet. That’ll be Ka, the Pillar of the Sky, and Hivemarket is around its bottom. There’s a business there called Ka Imports, and Siski, the manager, is your contact. You can collect payment from her and maybe get a nice little bonus for rapid delivery.

“Be careful on that dust bowl of a world, though; there’s no real law on Akiton, and the desert is no place to go explorin’. I’m lookin’ for your next job, and I’ll send a transmission when I have somethin’ for ya. If you haven’t heard from me by the time you’re done on Akiton, come on in to Absalom Station."

The view screen changed to show another Brenneri. She was wearing a green EJC jumpsuit and fiddled with a large wrench as she talked. Her voice was higher than Benny's with shrill vowel sounds and exaggerated emphasis on consonants.

"Good day Company space farers!" she started with chipper enthusiasm. "I'm Tarika, your dispatcher. Your first assignment is to get to Qabarat on Castrovel to pick up a shipment of Yaro fruit and deliver it the Hivemarket on Akiton. Should be easy run to get you started. The fruit spoils quickly, so you should get it from the produce seller to the buyer within six days. There is potential for a bonus if you get it there sooner. Your contacts at each end are in the mission contract. Good luck and safe travels!" She gave everybody a wink (or maybe it was Shasta, whom Tarika had helped get this job when she was in a fix in Akiton a month ago). Shasta smiled at Tarika and gave her a casual salute as she was signing off.