Scherzo Vivacissimo's page

Scherzo opened a radio channel to the other ship and said, "It's only fair to warn you that the goods we're shipping are technically evidence of a serious crime conducted by the creator of the black hearts, Rygan Vuul. He sabotaged the starliner and orchestrated the pirate attack and so it would explode. Then he appropriated the corpses with the help of the lucandrian Rishae Tulvauran. Since you stole the black hearts from her, she could implicate you in the crime. I have the evidence the stewards need to start an investigation. If you win this race, I might be motivated to get revenge by sending that evidence to Absalom Station authorities, making it risky for you to go back there."

Niva did not reply. There was no immediate change in the race, but Scherzo hoped the information would bear fruit before they got to the planet.

Scherzo called Benny back to the bridge. "What is that?! Sensors show nothing there."

Out in front of the ship appeared to be a chaotic swirl of light. It crackled as if with large amounts of charge, which ought to show up on sensors. Then large chunks of matter appeared and just as quickly vanished, also not showing up on sensors.

Scherzo called out to her science officer, "Zeph! Find a way to warn Shasta where those plasma fields are!"

Scherzo laughed at Niva's taunt. "I'm happy to bet our success on Shasta. I doubt these pyrozoa will give your guy a break based on his resume. We'll try not to beat you too badly. Wouldn't want you to lose face with other wannabe shippers."

She turned off her mic and said to Shasta, "Don't make me eat my words."

Scherzo interupted Rygan waxing eloquent about the virtues of undeath to show him her comm unit. "Time to talk business. We need 50 tons of black hearts. You've got the materials to produce them here and if you don't make them for us, the stewards will get all the evidence showing how you sabotaged the star liner to explode, allowing you to obtain the corpses for cheap, that is, after you eliminated the pirate you hired to attack them."

Rygan sputtered and tried to act innocent until Scherzo began reciting text from his transmissions to Rishae planning the acquisition of the corpses before the ship had exploded.

He sullenly ordered his assistants to begin full production of the nectrograft materials, telling Scherzo they would be ready in 2 days.

Scherzo remains along with Benny and Zeph to supervise and make sure Rygan does not try anything foolish. She sends Orion, Shasta, and Emersohn back to the space goblins to help them get the drift engine repaired and installed in the Butterfly.

Scherzo began to set up the computer to record her message, but as she did so, Zeph managed to use her activity as cover to allow Zeph to get past the access code to look at the system. Zeph gave Scherzo a subtle thumbs up. While Scherzo was recording her message, Zeph began to search through the message log to see if she could find any suspicious references to the Harlequin’s Prayer.

Zeph found a recorded message received about a month ago from Otan Saema, owner of the Harlequin’s Prayer, expressing their admiration for Rygan and inviting him aboard the ship for an all-expenses-paid cruise. Rygan accepted the invitation. Zeph found more exchanges to indicate Zygan had boarded the vessel, received a tour, including a visit to see the drift engines, and also that Rygan claimed he had to leave before the ship departed to take care of some unexpected urgent business.

The same day, Rygan sent an encrypted message out to an area of the Diaspora known to be an area frequented by pirates. There followed a transfer of credits to the same location.

Zeph made a copy of all the evidence and then sent a short summary to Scherzo's comm unit to share what she had found.

Meanwhile, Scherzo said, "Greetings, exalted one. I am Scherzo, captain of the Black Butterfly and new convert to the worship of Urgathoa. I was at the Revenant Urge doing some shipping business with Rishae Tulvauran and she recommended I visit and learn about your philosophy of achieving singularity through unlife. My crew and I'd love a chance to see what you do in person and perhaps purchase some augmentations."

After a short wait, the same voice as before spoke again, "I'm always happy to discuss the singularity. Show yourselves through the recovery room and surgery to the necroforge. I'm having a special on adrenal gland replacement."

Before the group approached, Scherzo pulled everyone together for a few words. "We have to approach this like a regular business transaction, but be on the lookout for trouble. We know the ship's drift engine was sabotaged, and if I had to guess who might stand to profit from a ship full of corpses, well, ..." Scherzo directed her eyes at the shop. "If we can find evidence it was him, I'm sure we can get a much more reasonable price for our cargo. Zeph, when you can, check their computers. Everyone else, keep your eyes out for the material placed on the drift engine, some kind of thermal salve. And be ready to fight. If we confront him with evidence, he may decide to eliminate us. We need him to make the black hearts, so we only fight until he concedes. All right. Let's do business."

"How about you fix that leak," Scherzo said, "and modify it to fit on our smaller starship, and if you get the job done in less than 3 days, we'll either pay you or take you with us when we make our next shipment."

This satisfied the goblins who began work immediately. Emersohn showed the others two transparent gems. Benny and Zeph recognized them as elemental gems, which would summon an air elemental. It was just a small one, but Zeph knew that they could be useful, even if they only had enough magical juice to stay around for 20 seconds.

Scherzo patted Emersohn on the back and said to everyone, "Good team work everyone, as usual. Rest up, while I negotiate with these folk to get the signal booster off this engine so we can have a chance of catching up with the competition."

Then she added, "Emmo, send me a copy of those pictures. I want to show them to the stewards."

"Well done, Benny, Emersohn! Now let's hustle to see if Shasta and Zeph need our help," Scherzo called out as she herself moved toward the drift engine.

She heard Shasta calling for help back at the drift engine, so Scherzo said, "Zeph! See if you can help Shasta. We'll keep sparky away."

Scherzo led the team out of the club before discussing the team's next step. "We should try to find that booster before we try to obtain the black hearts. I won't be a point to getting the merchandize if we have no chance of beating the Wintermourn."

Scherzo contacted Tarika, who gave them the location of the goblins who got the drift engine from the star liner. She said to poke around Docking Bay 87 for a lead. Asking around the docking bay, they learned the goblins had a work area in the Botscrap neighborhood.

When the team got there, they found a large public junkyard, called The Heap by the locals, a massive pile of derelict starships, power armor, vehicles, and other techno garbage.

They could see and hear some activity at the top of one of the largest piles.

Scherzo took Emersohn with her up to the top floor. In the last confessional on the right, they found Rishae looking at something on her comm unit. She was a lucanrian, a fey race descended from beings of light. Most have milky covering over their eyes, but Rishae has smoldering red wraith motes instead. She had skin the color of moonlight, with purple hair, a number of metal objects and opaque white stones embedded symmetrically on her face.

After introducing herself, Scherzo explained that they needed 50 tons of black hearts.

"I’m not sure I can help you," she said. "I’ve already sold the necrografts to Rovo, and I don’t have another 50 tons of spare black hearts just lying around. Even if I did, you heard her; they’re already on their way to your mystery client."

Knowing they have a way to possibly get an engine upgrade that would boost their speed, Scherzo negotiated the purchase of another 50 tons of black hearts using up most of their capital from their severance deals.

But as they were leaving, Rishae caught up with them, furious about something. Scherzo wondered if they had somehow insulted the broker.

Before leaving the docking area, Scherzo instructed the crew of the BLack Butterfly to fan out and see if they can learn more about what happened to the ill-fated star liner.

Orion didn't learn anything that couldn't be discerned from the condition of the ship itself. Benny and Zeph found out the leader of the alleged pirate attack, Tremeshkan “the Razor” Carva, a notorious shirren space pirate and Free Captain. News bulletins visible on large monitors showed his picture.

Shasta and Zeph learned interesting tidbits about the ship's owner, a Verthani fashion mogul Otan Saema, who was also on the ship when it was attacked. Saema was in debt to Blackwind Engineering, who now owns the ship and leads the salvage operation. Blackwind sold the dead bodies to a... specialized broker: Rishae Tulvauran.

Scherzo found a talkative dock engineer who inspected the ship when it arrived, who informed her that only an internal explosion could’ve caused the kind of damage dealt to the ship’s interior.

"Seems like a lot of sharks swimming in these waters," Scherzo observed. "This may be an 'inside' job, if you take my meaning."

Scherzo shrugged and said, "All right. Where do we find this club?"

Scherzo glanced at the others. Nobody objected. She sighed and said, "I guess. Who's the buyer?"

Scherzo had heard that corpses were frequently sold when next of kin could not afford to have it cremated or destroyed in other ways or shipped to a planet for burial. There was obviously no place for burial plots on a space station. So the bodies were sold to be converted into various commodities, including necrografts.

"I would think that those who can afford such luxury cruises would prefer other arrangements than having their loved ones converted into spare parts and such."

Scherzo walked to the front window to get a better view. "Zeph, look up news regarding any Opulos Drift Cruisers. I seem to remember something about a pirate attack." Zeph confirmed that there had been reports of a pirate attack on one of the star cruisers that had resulted in the loss of all on board.

Scherzo looked at Zeph's monitor and huffed. "Those undead sentients give me the creeps. Still, last I checked, they pay in credits like everyone else. Let's check it out."

Scherzo listened carefully to her crew and thought a few moments more before saying, "On balance, I'm with Benny, Shasta, and Zeph. I am a pretty good judge of character, I think. Lord Sinjin impressed me as the kind who is a professional liar. I wouldn't be surprised if he sabotaged our first mission delivering the fruit. It was the Golden League that bought out the market we had the contract with and I suspect the previous owner may have been killed to boot. The second mission looks like he hired us to fail, so we'd have incentive to quit our jobs and do what he wanted us to do. So if he's capable of all that, why would he leave six loose ends who can testify as to his involvement when he can just take advantage of the remote location to dispose of us? And if we expect him to do that, let's just skip all that drama and risk and keep this ship and go into business for ourselves. EJ Corp has already put these freighters on the market for a while and so we ought to be able to fly it without drawing attention to ourselves."

"Orion, Emersohn, are you willing to stay with us if we don't deliver the ship to Sinjin?"

The trip through the drift took four days. Once out, they scanned the area to make sure no ships were nearby. Then Scherzo called a meeting in the bridge. "I want to know what each of you thinks about whether we attempt to deliver this ship to Lord Sinjin. Who wants to go first?"

Once the ship was safely in the Drift, Scerzo said, "First of all, well done, everyone! We got some breaks, but overall, we did what we had to do with a minimum of loss of sentience. We should arrive near our rendezvous point in a few days, so we have to some time to think and explore the ship. We have a ship and we can go anywhere we want. What we need to decide is whether or not we deliver this ship to Sinjin or just skip system."

Shasta started to try to hack the ship's computer to access the controls, but Scherzo tried using her sister's keycard and the controls came to life. Within three minutes, the engines were warmed up, Zeph was seated at the science officer's station. Orion and Benny took the gunnery stations, and Emersohn oversaw the engineer's console.

Scherzo, as captain, had a console higher than the others, with steps on either side leading up to it. She felt a thrill as she took the seat.

"When we get out, plot a course to the Diaspora but not too close to the asteroid Deminda gave us the coordinates for. We need to talk about our next move. I don't trust Sinjin and, well, we've got the ship."

The keycard also opened the hatches that allowed them to enter the ship. The crates and computers were secured inside. Emersohn gave the works a once over. They checked the null-space cargo holds to verify that they were real. As advertised, they appeared to have two times the volume inside than outside. Emersohn wanted to check them out thoroughly, but Scherzo was worried about security arriving.

"That monitor had plenty of time to signal my sister of trouble. I expect security forces are hustling toward us right now. The sooner we get away the harder it will be to catch us. We can play with our new toy once we're away."

Zeph and Benny converged on Scherzo to give her a hug. Emersohn gave a fist bump to Shasta. Then everyone converged and hugged each other for fifteen seconds, everyone nearly exhausted from the stress. Except for Orion, none of these was a trained fighter. The stress of battle was especially intense for Scherzo, Benny, and Zeph.

Eventually, Scherzo called an end to the post fight response, saying, "Good teamwork everyone. But we need to make one last check for valuable items to add to our severance packages and then we've got a starship to steal."

Scherzo stepped up onto a crate that was next to Orion and the dustar. The blades could not reach her and so she was able to take careful aim with the laser rifle at almost point-blank range and put an end to the robot with one shot.

Scherzo delayed her next attack long enough to inspire Orion to carry on. "You're getting quite a charge out of this battle. Don't let a few electrons get you down!"

Then she moved around to Orion's left side, so she could get a clear shot with her laser rifle next turn. She glanced nervously at the dustar, which was still sending out laser attacks.

Scherzo had her laser rifle ready and moved in front of Zeph firing. Her shots hit the floor, not the dustar.

In the conference and presentation rooms, Scherzo and Benny did not find anything of note except some video presentations about the project. One of these, narrated by EVP Reisora, was a brief summary of Project Oliphaunt and the potential for widespread null-space technology. In the vid, Reisora explained that Project Oliphaunt was originally sponsored by followers of the Prophecies of Kalistrade seeking a way to protect the golden commerce barges, which were manufactured on the orbital plate, from pirates.

"But the best way to avoid piracy," she said, "is to never attract the attention of pirates in the first place. Project Oliphaunt puts all the cargo of a bulk cruiser into a small, fast, unobtrusive transport. To pirates, the Oliphaunt is just another starship among countless others. But that’s only how we began this project; now that we’ve made a breakthrough, we’ve set our sights much, much higher."

When Zeph showed Scherzo the picture of her with Eline Reisora, Scherzo scowled and admitted, "Yeah, I was going to tell you about that. Eline and I are stepsisters, both adopted by these two. We went our separate ways over a year ago. I had no idea she was connected to EJ Corp or this project until Sinjin mentioned her."

"Shake it off Emersohn! We've got this!" Scherzo called out, helping him to recover his nerve.

Scherzo entered taking a similar position to Benny behind a wall to the guard's left.

Scherzo mingled with various people at gathering places and engaged in conversation with people she judged might be connected to EJ Corp or the Kalistocracy. She gleaned enough information to narrow the location of the Oliphaunt to one of five sites connected with EJ Corp. She gave these locations to her partners and they each visited the five zones as part of tours provided by the facility.

"May we have some time to discuss this?"

Sinjin agreed and Deminda showed them to a small conference room where they could talk privately.

After some discussion back and forth about options and Lord Sinjin's intentions, they decided they might as well at least go to the Horse Eye Orbital Plate, and check out the situation. They could always back out if they could not see a way to steal the ship.

When the emerged, Scherzo said to Lord Sinjin, "We'll do it. I hope you can provide us with some resources. We've not been paid yet by EJ Corp and I doubt that's ever going to happen."

"If we steal this ship for you, what do you intend to do with it?"

"Tell us more about this Eline Reisora," Scherzo asked, as nonchalantly as she could.

"This sounds like we're taking all the risks while you take none. If we're caught, you'll deny you had anything to do with it. What if we refuse?" Scherzo asked.

Scherzo glanced around at her crew, whom she was beginning to think of as her friends. She had never before been part of a group that did such exciting work and enjoyed each other's company as much as this group. During the last Drift journey, they had begin to discuss the idea of forming a music group and had some terrific jam sessions. She knew they would likely lose their jobs for their two failed missions, but now she began wonder if Sinjin had engineered those failures to pressure them into doing his dirty work. There was no reason to ship such a small shipment of weapons to a large military operation that surely had all the weapons they needed and sources for more weapons when they needed them.

But she was shrewd enough to recognize the trappings of organized crime and doubted she could get Sinjin to admit to such a plot or that it would matter if he did. So she decided to learn more before asking the crew to make a decision that could have life or death consequences.

"What makes you think we have the skills to defeat the considerable security of a top secret research project? We're not trained in hacking computers and defeating security programs to open locked doors."

Once in the Drift, Scherzo crafted a message to Tarika, explaining that there had been some problems delivering the weapons and the entire shipment was lost. She did not elaborate about the weapons going to resistance fighters, but it would likely be reported by the Gideron Authority once they got reports from the troopers in the enercopters.

<Give it to us straight,> Scherzo said in the message. <Is there any point to reporting back to Absalom Station?>

Scherzo aimed carefully and squeezed off a laser shot that threaded between Benny and Zeph to hit the trooper in the back.

Scherzo's laser rifle stabbed out two more red lines of energy, but she couldn't hit the sniper.

Scherzo kept firing her laser rifle and another beam lanced into the trooper.

Scherzo aimed her laser rifle out the passenger side window and fired two shots at the sniper. The first one hit him in the chest.

Scherzo moved to the window and fired her decoupler but it too missed.

The gamble paid off. The sergeant tried to lash at her while she aimed, but the taclash charge was absorbed by her armor's energy shielding. She fired her decoupler and the plasma struck Sergeant Vestrek in the chest and sizzled through some of his skin. It proved too much and he collapsed, life ebbing out of him. "Not so much fun when your enemies outnumber you and have weapons, is it?" She felt no sympathy for the trooper after seeing what they hobgoblins were doing to the innocent miners.