Cold:Session/2 Passengers Begone

← Prev: Cold:Session/1 "Recruited" by the CIA   |  

Starring: 💳 Ciarán, 🧟‍♂️ Louis, 📎 John
Guest Starring: Zolotov Mikhailovich, Alexander Cover, Tex Andrews, Ira Lieberman
Challenge: Red tape; "Russian controlled" terminal; Getting rid of passengers; Cargo manifests
Location: Escort Terminal (Souplantantion; Long John Silvers; Many trips to the information desks)
Date Played: 26 May 2022

Defining Ham Tohyon

• Ham had a terrarium.
• Ham had a collection of "nudie mags" and used them to demo his own fashion paper dolls. (Skillfully.)
• He had a collection of Korean romance-drama tapes.

Tossing the bodies

🧟‍♂️ Louis: We are now officially a charter passenger craft. Well, I suppose the craft has always been that, but now I'm "Ham", and I have dead bodies on our ship. As tempting as having fresh human flesh on hand is- the West serum gives me an incredible hunger- we need to dispose of them before docking. Spacing them is tempting, as it's big and it's easy to lose things, but we're on major shipping lanes and the odds of the ejection getting spotted are too high. We need them to never be found. Which, no problem there- we've got a cthonic engine. I toss the bodies to our captured demon and voila, problem solved.

Escort Terminal

🧟‍♂️ Louis: Ham's next stop, fortunately for us, is the station we want to visit on behalf of the CIA. Which, saying that out loud makes me wonder: is our handler really the CIA? John seems convinced, but am I convinced that John is even CIA? I have no idea. Are we working to stop a coup, or tricked into doing something else? Well, it's better than supervising a pile of living post-docs who think they're the smartest things ever shat out. Where was I? Oh yes, we'd docked and needed to make our preparation to depart. Ham had to make a trade with Zolotov- drugs. It both maintains our cover and keeps us moving to the next leg of our mission.

Finding Zolotov is itself a challenge, but he's a fixer. People know how to find him if you're not a cop, and I'm very much not a cop. This is apparently his first in person meeting with Ham, which I certainly hope is true. In any case, he wants his drugs, and this involves ripping apart our ship, finding all of the stashes. Ham was light, of course, but it's easy enough to cut the drugs and bring them up to precisely the right weight. It might be suspicious, in retrospect, to be that precise, but I also don't want a drug dealer angry about getting shorted, so…

💳 Ciarán: We docked with Escort Terminal, a place so dismal it makes the Las Vegas airport seem like a gilded hospital. I filled out a survey for Amex Premium Space (APS) while Louis does something in the back of the ship. Our luggage is removed to go on to another station, consistent with our original itineraries. I use the opportunity to buy some new Spacesonite and transfer only the most important things, like my tie rack. John indicates that nearly anything we do for the duration of the mission should be at least tax deductible, if not fully operationally refunded. So, why not?

The station is playing weird music (John notes it's Soviet), and Louis notes that we have passengers scheduled. A handful of them. I take it onto myself to rid ourselves of these passengers before we leeave for Juno Station and onward to Raytheon. Some bribery, some gladhanding, and a bureaucratic lie assist from John, and we have removed all passengers from the manifest.

Louis checks on cargo. Something about it being unloaded and loaded again.

Departure from Escort Terminal

🧟‍♂️ Louis: despite our best efforts, we end up with some passengers on the flight out. Honestly, I don't think that's much of a problem. We are a passenger ship, having passengers seems natural. It supports our cover, but I understand the covert nature of our mission, so, whatever. It's all going fine until a short time into the flight, when we hear something slamming against the engine room door…

💳 Ciarán: John makes contact with a connection of his and says he learns some things. He also reported he was told, "Make contact with Zolo". Louis learns that this is a mechanic slash smuggler on the station, and he was supposed to get some "stuff" from our cargo. We take opportunity to search the ship high and low and find hidden stashes literally everywhere. There's no safety equipment aboard at all. The smuggled cargo was found inside the neon gas tanks and got delivered.

As we take off, we're called last minute that we're forgetting a passenger. Someone booked last minute, and it's too late to get rid of him. He already complains more than a Dutchman at a prix fixe establishment. (I overheard John and Louis pushing buttons on the tape deck during departure. Apparently there's supposed to be a co-pilot.

(Player question, inadequate notes) Something something Walezi "Guardians"?