Into the Black

The Smuggler’s Reach All Station Poker Tournament is held monthly, and is one of the main highlights of life aboard the station. It is, of course, purely coincidental that there is a regular monthly event happening each week on the station. The cycle, for those who didn’t know, went as follows: the All Station Poker Tournament, the Centauri General Slave Auction, the Gladiator’s Arena, and the Centauri Stakes, a race made with ‘small ships’ (because no one could see that they were clearly fighters).

Anyways, there was a purely coincidental circuit of events that kept money and influence constantly circulating through the station, which was, in general, a good thing for everyone. For me, that meant that I had a nice, convenient way to score some serious credits. Oh, not at the tables. It was one thing to play cardsharp in a single game, cheating the whole time. Doing it in a tournament on a station of mobsters was something else. When said mobsters were very open about the fact that they had Psy-detectors, and had no qualms about showing cheaters to the nearest airlock, whether a ship was there or not, it became a rather foolish idea.

So no, I wasn’t going to try and cheat my way through the tournament. Which isn’t to say I wouldn’t be participating (it was still fun to gamble, after all). But my money-making scheme for the evening had less to do with winning the tournament, and more to do with going home with the tournament’s winner, or at least one of the high rollers. Away from the psy-detectors, and with the help of a couple drugged drinks, I hoped to ‘convince’ some of the big fish to hire an ‘escort’.

In other words, I wanted to catfish them and rob them blind, like Lord Kickass. In honor of that thought, I brought back an old friend.

Hope Walters

Human Female

Level 10

Faction: Terran Empire

Titles: Companion

OK, so I improved on her ID from last time, but bringing back the identity I used to get the Raven seemed poetic. There shouldn’t have been a problem. After all, no one on this station knew ‘Hope’.

Except for the one idiot who did.

Lord Kickass

Level 15 Human

Titles: Hotshot, Disgraced, Foolish, Indenture, Addict

Don’t know how he got to Alpha Centauri, but when I was approaching the tournament hall to register, I saw none other than Lord Kickass himself, in stuff that was barely better than beginner gear, also trying to get into the tournament. Looked like he had had a few changes since I rolled him. He’d lost his faction level, and was no longer a captain, clearly.

Unfortunately, the dumbass spotted me as I turned to walk away from the hall. I couldn’t play under this name, with Lord Kickass there, naturally. But having spotted me, he recognized ‘Hope’ as the cause of all his troubles. With a yell, he ran after me, and the chase was on.

OK, so it wasn’t really a ‘chase’. I got him to follow me into a back passage into the more private areas of the station, and was waiting for him when he turned the corner to follow me. A Psybreaker round to the face brought him up short, and I quickly closed to put a Stunning Grasp on him. The one-two combo worked like a charm. I had just over a minute to figure out what to do with this foolish man.

I used the Prison Bracers I still carried from when I was in the lab to lock his hands behind his back, and stripped him of his weapons and armor, before diving into his head with Mindread. First, the idiot wasn’t here looking for me. After the chaos involved in the coup, he’d been kicked out of Sol System, and was tricked into buying passage out of the system to Alpha Centauri. Tricked, because he’d signed a contract indenturing him to the Bratva until he could pay the debt. It was like slavery, except you still had rights.

And he got utterly fucked on the cost of travel to Alpha Centauri. I’d charged the Princess 100K. The Bratva had Lord Kickass on the line for 250K, though part of that seemed to be for the ‘generous’ offer of equipping him with new gear. And without a ship, he had no way of paying that money back anytime soon.

I honestly almost felt sorry for him. But he was an immature jackass that named himself ‘Lord Kickass’, so that feeling went away before it even got started. The idiot had already ruined my plans for the evening, which made me want to get a bit of revenge.

Searching his gear showed that while the armor he had may have only looked like it wasn’t any better than newbie rags, it definitely was a cut above the average. Not as good as what I had, but still better than what I started with. Same with his weapons. That fact made it easier for me to resist that urge to steal them all. Wouldn’t do to have him suddenly show up naked again.

My search of his mind did show two lovely things, however. First, Lord Kickass was acting as a courier at the moment, carrying a supply of certain illicit substances bound for Primo. The sale of these substances on the station would easily make me a clean 80k credits. If I could move them. Fortunately, I’d done some networking the last couple weeks, and had the perfect place to sell them.

The second bit of good news is that Kicky had been forcibly addicted to a cocktail of drugs in order for the bratva to better keep him on their leash. Among the drugs he was addicted to was ‘Pixie Dust’, a mixture of cocaine, XtC, Jovian Fly, and Venusian Pollen (the same as Jovian Fly, but designed to work on women). Besides giving the user an incredible high and making them insanely horny, it also had the lovely effect of screwing with their short-term memory.

Even better, I’d ‘acquired’ several doses of the stuff when I was in the process of getting some of the funds I’ve been spending this week. Injecting him with it was simple. Rewriting his memories to remove me from the equation was even simpler. I did, however, take great pleasure in crafting a memory for Lord Kickass where he met a dealer for his ‘fix’, and ended up paying for it by getting on his knees and very enthusiastically ‘servicing’ the man with his mouth. For kicks, I also wrote into the memory that he really enjoyed it, especially when the dealer made him deepthroat and swallow.

As a last bit of fun, I used one of the Profession guides on him, before I left him to enjoy his high. His reaction when he found out he now had Companion training was probably going to be priceless.

Anyways, I changed my look so that I looked like Kicky when I sold the stuff he was supposed to deliver for the Bratva to a shady merchant. The Bratva was probably going to be pissed at Kicky. But hey, he only had to survive their displeasure for another two RL months before he could change characters. Maybe next time he would be less of a douche?

I waited until I was alone to regain my ‘Riku’ guise. I didn’t want any other names attached to the ‘Azeroth’s Call’, after all. And where I was going next, I couldn’t help but be attached to my ship.

Kimura Gempachi

Human Male

Level 35

Titles: Shopowner, Slaver, Sadist

“Welcome to Kimura Arms!” Greeting me as I entered was a Japanese man, the ‘Kimura’ of Kimura Arms. He was a fairly normal-looking guy, but that was a mask for the fools or the unwary, if I had to guess. But then, anyone who looked ‘average’ on a station full of gangsters and rogues was probably not someone you wanted to mess with.

Trying to make this meeting go better than it did with the last Japanese guy I met, I offered a short bow. “Thank you, Kimura-dono. I would like to inquire if you have any weapons suitable for a Type I-23 Striker Shuttle? I recently acquired one that had been retired from service, but I’d sleep better if my pilot could defend himself when he’s flying me about.”

“Ah, such manners! So hard to find these days! Now, a Type I-23, you say? Haven’t seen one of those since the last war! Still, I have a few toys you might be able to use on your new shuttle. Come and look!”

Weapon Systems (Assault Shuttle)

Name

Price

Description

Mk III Ion Cannon

5000

Ion cannon on a center-mount facing forward. Ion cannons deal relatively little damage to shields, but can be used to disable unshielded craft. Effects are unpredictable in atmosphere.

Tyberius Arms Dual-Lance

10000

Standard multipurpose blasters for use in space or in atmosphere. The standard weaponry for armed shuttles throughout the Empire.

Makarov Cluster Missile Launchers

25000

Twin cluster missile launchers, mounted on ‘pop-up’ bays. These missile turrets can hold up to 20 cluster missiles each, which can be fired singly or in rapid fire modes.

Thunderbolt Torpedo Launcher

50000

Internal launch bay large enough to hold four standard-sized torpedoes.

Thankfully, the ‘disarming’ process for the shuttle had only included stripping the weapons out. The actual weapon mounts were still intact (I’d made sure to check that), which meant that installing these weapons would largely be a matter of ‘plug and play’. And boy did I want to play!

Of course, I also had to buy ammo for my missile and torpedo launchers, and replace the missiles I’d fired at the pirates and destroyer. That cost another 50K, bringing my entire bill up to 140k credits. Not too bad. Of course, I had to engage in a bit of negotiations to try and bring the price down. The shopkeeper, however, didn’t realize that the negotiations started when I used Influence to make the man notice my ass as I bent over to examine his wares.

While I had played female characters in other RPGs, and even roleplayed some while doing it, the fact that VR felt real was something I hadn’t expected. I was in a body that was (at least for now) female, and as I began to close the deal on getting the discounts I wanted, I was surprised once again at how the Pod technology allowed you to literally feel things you normally wouldn’t be able to. I had, naturally, played around with my girls in this form, but I hadn’t done anything with a man.

It was… mildly disappointing, to be honest. The shopkeeper was not interested in anyone’s pleasure but his own, and it had evidently been a while for him, because he was done fairly quickly, before I had a chance to build to anything but frustration. But then, in retrospect I guess it should have been obvious that things would end up like that. After all, I was basically whoring out for discounts, and the shopkeeper wasn’t my lover. Or maybe I had just been spoiled by my harem?

Regardless, the deed was quickly done, and while the shopkeeper didn’t reduce the total any, he did throw in a lovely armor set that should help keep me protected even when a tactical vest isn’t appropriate.

Forceful Psyleather Pants

Type

Pants

Rank

Uncommon

Created from the hide of a creature with Psy abilities, and infused with Psy by the creator, Psyleather garments offer an excellent way for those just starting out to increase their affinities and resistances until they can afford genetic mods, or for more established wearers to further boost their abilities past their mods. The type and strength of the effect depends on the creature the hide came from, and the skill of the creator. This set has been crafted to fit itself to the wearer’s form for best effect.

Requires: Level 10

+10 Energy Armor

+10% Force Affinity

+10% Force Resistance

+10 CHA

Resilient Psycloth Shirt

Type

Shirt

Rank

Uncommon

Created from the silk, fur, or fiber of a creature with Psy abilities, and infused with Psy by the creator, Psycloth garments offer an excellent way for those just starting out to increase their affinities and resistances until they can afford genetic mods, or for more established wearers to further boost their abilities past their mods. The type and strength of the effect depends on the creature the hide came from, and the skill of the creator. This set has been crafted to fit itself to the wearer’s form for best effect.

Requires: Level 10

+10 Physical Armor

+10% Physical Affinity

+10% Physical Resistance

+10 CHA

OK, maybe I could forgive the lackluster performance. The outfit definitely looked good with my coat, after all. And now I could have my nanosuit look like my skin, instead of a skinsuit. Might not be much, but having people underestimate me is always good.