First Session
We start out at a bar on Station One. People are staring at one another, pretending cosmopolitan aplomb, or are familiar with the area and see nothing unusual. Shine gets a call from a cat from the Academy with a possible job. Eventually, showing interest, they get into details at a secure communications room on the station.
The cat says something quietly to Shine in cat tongue, which Phaedra dutifully records for later translation, before proceeding in the common interstellar trade lingo. It reports Akea Magnum, Shine's old dig captain, has been kidnapped and robbed by Galliard slavers while en route to New Buffalo for an important diplomatic mission. Green Sun had originally planned to give a gift to one of the combine's leaders, but had since both lost the artifact and had a change of heart about who to support in New Buffalo.
The cat - Five or John Cat, depending on language - would like the group to retrieve the artifact from where it's being sold in the Hammerhead system, and proceed to New Buffalo - gifting the artifact to one of the local factions (two names were passed along) so that they could enter negotiations for better terms with their leadership. Green Sun would presumably benefit from the results.
The cat's initial offer was to do this out of patriotic duty. It raised it to a letter of marque for the group, plus use of a ship. The group's, or rather, Linus von Schultz's, counteroffer was for a slightly-larger-than expected sum, plus all the above, plus expenses. They broke for an hour for research and further negotiation after which the group's proposal was accepted by the cat, with reluctance.
The research (Othis & Phaedra?) did turn up that the cat was in the government, likely as main spymaster. The ship, which Othis and Phaedra were outfitting, was a pretty nifty, relatively high-tech personal yacht (a fine Topiary-constructed ship formerly owned by Akea). They speculated that Akea was likely hijacked somewhere offship rather than onship; Othis and Shine managed to turn up an EW suite to install on the vessel - now named "Magnum Opus."
Further investigation into the Hammerhead system from Station One didn't turn up anything too unusual - the artifact was being sold by a Hrulthgar, at his planetoid/fence market. He was a known local Hammerhead dealer that didn't get outsystem very often. Further investigation into the artifact which was stolen/to be given didn't turn up much, either. It was a giant diamond crystal - human head sized - with some language-like etchings on the outer surface and a significant pedigreed record in the history of Galliard of more than several hundred years.
Phaedra sent a quick message using her family's codes to make sure Akea Magnum was actually somewhere in the Galliard system. Naturally, this was intercepted by the family. And the message received by Phaedra when all had slipstreamed to Hammerhead was simple: We have the bird you're interested in. Why not come home and see how it's doing?
Transitioning to Hrulthgar's planetoid from the node point was uneventful. They pulled up to dock on one of its equatorial slots. The closeby comms were abuzz with news of the auction - they were at the right place. But Linus noticed the other ships in view were uniformly Galliard-constructed vessels: and close examination of the comms showed Hrulthgar was, indeed, pretty clearly a Galliard-employed, if not merely Galliard-allied, trade factor.
