Far Beyond the Reach of Earth

Next stop Pandora!

Transport secured

Nataly finally decides to track down Zanzibar and help him out, arriving around the same time as Corvus, who has recently completed a black market transaction to purchase a pain inducer, as well as putting the word out on the g-list that he and some friends are looking for transport to Pandora. They find Zanzibar, meet each other, and help haul the ko’d (but still living) monkey back to a safehouse that Nataly secures from a glitterati connection.

Anna meanwhile convinces Burt Mannix to let her accompany him to his room while he prepares for their night out. As he dresses, the nano-toxin kicks in, and he gets progressively more disoriented and clumsy. They eventually head to the bar, and meet up with Nataly. However, Burt heads rapidly downhill, and, as Nataly’s mind probe reveals that he only manages the brothel end of the operation, and doesn’t have any useful knowledge of Bannock Kohn, they cut him loose. Corvus helps guide him home, and gets an hour with the talent on the house. However, he feels somewhat uncomfortable and talks about spaceships and astral navigation before leaving early.

The next day, at the appointed hour, Nataly and Anna attend the simulspace meeting with Kohn. Nataly presents herself as a broker for an outside party, looking to set up a time-dilated simulspace similar to Kohn’s, wherein they can enslave infomorphs effectively. Kohn agrees to help, after some persuading, and they decide on doing a testrun with one infomorph. If they like his services, they will send the rest.

Anna calls on the @-listers to provide a skilled hacker for the next stage. Zanzibar creates an alpha fork of Corvus, and they send it to Kohn, with the hacker piggybacking on the signal. The hacker traces Corvus 2 through a series of server switches to Kohn’s (seemingly) main server, where the hacker creates a backdoor out and begins pilfering incriminating data while Corvus 2 is worked on to make him more pliable & cooperative. The hacker exits around the same time as Kohn ships Corvus 2 back.

Zanzibar performs some quick psych therapy on the fork, before reintegrating it with Corvus 1. Anna, Nataly, and Corvus team up to do some mesh-based research and data compiling with the info from the hacker. They put together a damning account (including some xp from Corvus 2) and Anna leaks it to the media, causing a a bit of a to-do. Kohn’s operation is quickly shut down, and his servers raided, but he himself manages to escape with a few of his enslaved infomorphs.

The job being complete, the @-listers come through on their end and find transport to Pandora in a day and a half aboard the scum freighter ‘Does Not Compute.’ Corvus’ black market connections upgrade them from steerage to a private compartment, and they prepare for the trip.


