LogBrink-Jason-8

Game log for the 2014/12/07 session of Brink, as taken by Jason

We're in a firefight! Swan's finding his own way out and the rest of the crew are trying to get out. Flail and Warchest Cipher jumps into the cockpit of the shuttle and begins warming up the engines. Absinthe snaps a dragline onto the crate full of undetermined but presumably nuclear material. Torch opens fire with his SMG in one hand while dragging Chronos with the other, and gets him to the shuttle. Chronos orders us to take off, and Cipher does so. Unfortunately the bay door is not opening.

Swan's running for it, with people shooting at him, but not hitting anything. He's well ahead of the pursuit.

Cipher slews the shuttle around and hits breaking thrusters, putting the door next to the red exit control button, and the other side of the ship toward the enemy. The shuttle passengers are thrown around like nobody's business. Torch ends up losing his footing and almost gets tossed out of the shuttle and loses his SMG.

Swan hits the door and seals an airlock behind him. He's running hard but pursuit is right on his ass. Realizing the long corridors make him an easy target, he ives into a maintenance tunnel. They don't pursue but they do radio out, meaning he's not free of this yet. He grabs a couple needles from his medkit and rigs them to rip the suits of anyone coming after him. Shouts behind him tell him that he got at least one of them, and gained a little time.

Torch overrides the lock safety and forces the hatch open, which starts venting atmo from that entire bay, but gets the shuttle clear. Unfortunately the rush of air knocks Torch off-course and he doesn't get back into the shuttle. The shuttle gets hung up on the crate, which doesn't come clean of the door. The station's spin is beginning to do weird things to the shuttle's spin.

Swan takes stock of the situation. He remembers that a woman named Nova, who has bought stuff from him in the past, lives around here. Four guards come running past the gate, and Swan just pops out behind them and just sneaks into the formation. The guards never look for him and everyone else figures he must be a VIP with an escort. Nova answers her door and immediately asks WTF Swan's doing at her home. She tries to usher him out the door, but he's not having any of that. He hypotizes her with how cool he is, and asks for her help. Suddenly, despite her rage, she just can't refuse him. She tells him to hide in the shower, while she starts taking many, many drugs. While he showers, she throws his clothes away. Swan ends up in a crop top and capri pants. No vac suit for him.

There's a knock at the door, and Nova orders Swan back into the shower. He hears a conversation in which she reports that a man went into her apartment, stole a bunch of stuff, and ran for the airlock. She also confesses to being high. The story seems to fool them, especially when coupled with her frank admission that she's using. After all, nobody covering for a criminal would do so by confessing to an illegal activity.

Chronos takes her helm as the security goons make it to the airlock door area and begin firing into the shuttle. He hits the winch release and punts the crate back into the hold, and the shuttle gets away into space. The shuttle then goes to pick up Torch. After a brief bicker, Absinthe pulls Torch back in. Cipher and Flail trade a few witticisms. We decide to go back to base, onthe theory that Swan will probably be back there when he gets free.

Swan makes nice with Nova and gets her to accept a favor as compensation instead of jingle. He arrives back in the hangar, where his crop top and capris become a topic of general derision. Despite claiming to look fabulous, Swan immediately changes clothes.

Torch comes off second-best in the bantering with Swan. He hears Chronos talking about the damaged crushed velvet upholstery in his vintage shuttle, and suggests going to the Shell to trade for better. This idea sucks in any objective way, but Torch really hates Turf today and would welcome the firefight. Torch wants to explode so badly he's ticking.

Swan won't let him off the leash; instead, he plans to go back to the Den and make sure we're all square with Chainsaw. Absinthe goes back to her room instead, but the rest of the PCs take Chronos' shuttle to the Den, along with Flail and Warchest for muscle. The Den is dark and loud, because when the factory line is running, all power goes to it.

Swan and Chronos approach Crank and ask for Chainsaw, and get rudeness and a finger pointed in the right direction. Chronos mouths off to Crank, gets told to fuck off, tries to use Torch as a threat, and gets punched in the face for his pains. Torch refuses to be Chronos' threat but tells Crank that he would take it as a personal favor if he didn't punch Chronos again. Crank agrees. Swan tries to stop Chronos' nose bleeding with a Freon ampule but just makes it worse, so we end up dispatching Chronos and Flail back to Fletch's infirmary.

Swan, Torch, and Cipher go to meet Chainsaw while Warchest goes off on his own. Cipher assures Chainsaw that we delivered the package. Chainsaw twigs that maybe the delivery didn't go entirely as expected. Cipher admits that Catch got ventilated as we delivered the package, and that we left it with a dead guy. Chainsaw doesn't like our news and tries to tell Swan that Swan owes him if the delivery didn't go well; Swan parries that we held up our end and it's Chainsaw's fault if his contract was burned.

We switch gears and do business. Swan buys Torch a plasma cutter, and then reads him. Torch loves his new toy and is composing haiku in his head. "I could peel Turf's face/with this new plasma cutter/I hope it is soon."

Swan goes looking for anti-Turf work, since Torch obviously has some biases in that direction. Sure enough, Union will pay for that. His organization is all ordinary joes, so they can sabotage stuff and make messes, but they can't actually fight Turf's org. At one point Union's people rigged a claymore mine to an airlock inner door hatch, killing two of Turf's guys, and the reprisals were basically a wholesale butchery of ordinary folk.

Absinthe opens her brain to the psychic maelstrom and has a vision of herself putting her cousin Lucy out an airlock.

Meanwhile, down in the Shell, Swan, Torch, Flail, and Warchest walk into a trap. We took the elevator to the ring just above the shell, step out the elevator, and three steps later, a huge mess of fire is coming at us. Swan hits the deck. Torch makes a hole in the deck to avoid fire and drops through, bringing Flail and Swan with. Swan grabs Warchest to drag him through as well, but doing so means he's back up in the line of fire. He takes several rounds, then his his head on the rim of the hole as Torch drags him through, and loses consciousness. The bad guys roll a grenade down the hole. Torch kicks it away a bit but Warchest gets knocked out too. His suit and Swan's are both ventilated. Torch gets Flail to help him drag the wounded into the elevator. He guesses it might be a trap so he gimmicks the elevator doors not to open. Sure enough, the elevator goes right back and we hear bullets bouncing off, followed by Turf shouting threats through the doors, but they sit tight and say nothing. Once the elevator is mobile again, Torch heads them to Fletch's place.

Fletch is not happy to see Swan, since he promised he'd pay her next time he saw her. He does some fast talking and convinces her that he's a sound investment. At this point she's basically a half-owner of Swan Logistics, Inc. She gives Swan a spinal as she works on him, which means he's conscious as she goes through elaborate explanations of how much Swan owes her for all this. Meanwhile, Chainsaw calls for him and explains that he has a problem that needs solving. Seems the crate did not get to the intended destination. Catch tried to tip off the cops about Absinthe's location, since she's currently on the station's most wanted list. Chainsaw wants Absinthe's head. Swan tries to get hyponotic on Fletch but fails - probably because he's on her drugs. He ends up owing her protection against someone named Rattle.

Cipher tries to access the world of doors for answers on this crate problem, and sees a door that opens into deep space, with the crate spinning in front of it. He decides to go back to Woot territory and ask to see the Woot matriarch. He steps very carefully around the Woot figures, and tries to move slowly into Woot turf. He tells them that Dr Oculus is attempting to monitor them. They tell him the warning is appreciated. He departs.

Once Swan and Chronos gets healed up, we're back on the path, though we're at the end of the month for purposes of lifestyle payment. Swan goes to see Absinthe on Ring 10. They're just barely past the "how's it going" stage when there's a knock at the door. It's Cooze, wondering if Swan's bothering her. Absinthe assures her it's cool, so she and Swan exchange hand gestures and then she departs. Swan then tells Absinthe that Security wants her, and that her wanted status messed up the deal down on Ring 47, and that Chainsaw asked him to kill her. He then hypnotizes her and convinces her to officially join her crew. Now he's got an ironclad reason for not killing her, and she's discharged the hold from the hypno.

Swan calls Chainsaw back and says that while he's looking into the Absinthe situation, but he thinks that he held up his end of the deal. Chainsaw disagrees. He thinks Chronos fucked it up. Swan thinks Catch did. Chainsaw accepts that Swan did as asked, but he still has a problem, and he needs someone to take care of that problem. Swan offers to bring Absinthe up to his ring, and Chainsaw says that if he can get Absinthe to his ring, it totally squares them. Swan argues that his debt isn't so large as that. Chainsaw sweetens the pot by throwing in a couple more vac suits and a couple boxes of ammo, and promises that all that stuff will be waiting for Swan when he gets there. Chainsaw does caution him that if Absinthe comes out guns blazing, the deal is off.

Swan hangs up, turns to Absinthe, and says, "Fuck that guy, we're taking his shit." He gathers everyone who will come, which excludes characters like Chauncey. Eyeball can get Swan eyes in the Den if she can get the right fiddly bit and gets some help placing it. Cipher knows the relevant bit is in the Woot ring, because he put it there, so he and Absinthe go to get it back. They have no trouble getting to the panel in Woot town, but when Cipher opens the panel, he finds that there was a Woot figure inside the panel, and opening it, broke it. A door opens and two Woots are standing there, just looking at him. He tells him he'll be back and will say he's sorry, but they tell him to come with them. He gives the fiddly bit to Absinthe and goes with the Woots. They lead him to a pitch-dark room. He opens his brain and finds that he's in the ballroom, and there's Woot graffiti everywhere, and Mama Woot is standing in the middle of the room. Actually, three Mama Woots are standing in the middle of the room. He throws the three of them a courtier's bow and makes a full confession of his deeds. She tells him that the doll was keeping the Eye from seeing anything they didn't want it to see, that now the Eye will come again, and he owes the Woots a life. He goes back to Swan and suggests that he can take care of Chainsaw when this is all over.

So, now we have the fiddly bit, and we need to place it. Chronos offers to take it there and plant it. He takes the elevators down, with Abner to act as lookout. He gets to position and starts trying to install the fiddly bit, but the wiring isn't as expected. He radios Eyeball and she's not sure how to handle this without wire colors of the right scheme, but Chronos saves the day when he turns out to have a multimeter in his kit. They start taking measurements to figure out which wires are which when Abner reports someone coming. Chronos reads the situation and decides to hide. The guy stops and lights up a smoke right where Chronos was trying to work. He decides to try to wait the guy out, but gets impatient and decides to throw away a wee oddment to make some noise and create a distraction. He uses the distraction to put the panel back, but gets caught out. He thinks fast acts like he works there, and ends up making buddies with a machinist named Kylie. They exchange gossip about the personnel down there and conclude that Skinny is OK but Crank is a huge dick. By the time Chronos can finally exfil, Abner's already at Fusty's.