We decide to head as far away from here as we can in the hope of breaking our trail before getting on with revenge. We will head directly for the Phlume system, which is about nine parsecs away. We can do this because we can go that far without refuelling by filling the fuel bladders in the cargo hold. The plan is to go to a point in empty space, then to Denotam (to survey the situation there as it's on our route) and then depending on the situation in Denotam, on to Phlume.
So we scoop some more hydrogen from Dirou (Garda-Vilis' gas giant), move out to 100 diameters, and jump...
After a week we come out of jump deep in interstellar space in hex 1215. We move fuel from the fuel bladders into the main tanks ready for jumping to Denotam. While doing so a sensor return is detected. We investigate this, and it turns out to be a 10km-long ice-asteroid floating in interstellar space. Potentially useful. We plot its course, consider where we want to appear in the Denotam system, decide on a point, and then jump again.
To appear a week later close to the inner asteroid belt of the Denotam system, the Greong Belt (in orbit 2; Denotam itself is a moon of a small gas giant, Zung, in orbit 0). We look for somewhere in the belt where we may be able to sell the Camp Crusader. As we do so we pick up the transponder on another 'Kantrex'-class SuSAG ship, the 'Coreg', which seems to be orbiting Denotam. There are a number of ships in orbit around Denotam, particularly Xboat tenders and scout ships.
We find a nearby settlement in the Greong belt, Valarn Base, a 50km rock inhabited by tens of thousands of people, and head for it. It surface is dotted with lights and inflated bubbles. Advertising broadcasts while coming in tell us of its being the place in Greong Belt for rest and recuperation, supplies, repairs, banking, travel and so on. We contact Valarn Base traffic control, who directs us to Docking Arm 7. This is a large scaffolding pylon with individual docking arms jutting off it, to one of which we attach the Camp Crusader. Spaceport workers attach ground power and TV/communications link.
A customs officer arrives, and we pay our docking fees and are subjected to a cursory customs inspection, then we are free to land. We arrange the buying of unrefined fuel from the spaceport, and the recharging of our life support systems.
As on Joyeuse, Cleon checks out the local internet for ship brokerages, and finds several. The biggest, Argan Brokerage (run by a Bill Argan) has a number of ships for sale, including various 100 ton belt mining ships (about 30MCr each) a 200 ton jump-2 cargo ship (60 MCr) and a 400 ton jump-2 cargo ship (80 MCr); all the ships TL 10 or 11 and are at least 15 years old (the Camp Crusader is more than 30 years old). Cleon also checks out one or two other ship brokerages (Clevedon Brokerage and Mallet Brokerage) but they are smaller and only have mining ships so we don't bother with them.
We contact Argan Brokerage and tell Bill Argan that we want to sell our ship (telling him that we are a down-on-our luck trading company), and want to get about 80MCr for ourselves. He seems interested when we send him the specs of the Camp Crusader, and says he'll make some calls. However, we do not, for the moment, want to sell our launch with the ship.
We investigate travelling on from here if we sell our ship. From Valarn Base itself there are services to elsewhere in the Denotam system, as well as ships going to Phlume in 2 weeks and Calit in a week. We also look at having the frozen former crew of the Tessalon shipped elsewhere, and have them moved off the ship into a warehouse while they wait to be shipped to Rangent, outside the Imperium altogether.
Next day, while Hermes, Dave and Jonah stay on the ship to deal with selling it, Cleon and Su-Lin take the launch and head for Denotam itself (a gas giant moon) to find out what they can. They also plan to get new identities there so as to break our paper trail. Travelling to Denotam takes them day and a half.
The others wait. Eventually Bill Argan gets back to Hermes and tells him that there are three lots of people who are interested in the ship:
They will be arriving at Valarn Base in several days to have a look at the ship.
As they fly in, Cleon and Su-Lin discover that there are two nations on Denotam itself, both democracies: the Republic of Denotam and the People's Republic of Denotam. The former has a lower law level so they land the launch there, at the capital in Denotam City.
They go through customs and check out the immigration service desk. The Republic of Denotam is quite happy to have people immigrate. It costs 1000 Cr only. They fill out a form and pay up. Thus they are citizens. Then they go and get new names from the local Courthouse (100 Cr each):
That done they book into the Downport Arms hotel. They use the launch to keep in contact with the Camp Crusader (though the light lag to it from here is several minutes) and watch the Coreg when it is overhead while they investigate things on Denotam. The Coreg keeps its launch bay doors are closed, but no-one flies out from it that they see.
They find that Harlequin Traders are a tramp trading company who have been doing fairly well recently and seem to want to upgrade their ship. Red Bird Trading is another trading one-ship trading company which is also doing well, and they apparently want to obtain a second ship. They can't find out much about the nameless group, apart from that they don't seem to be leaving a documentation trail.
They also find that there don't seem to be many ships going from here to the various local non-industrial worlds, and only infrequent liners along the jump-4 Xboat route. The next one in the direction we want to go is to Extolay (via a jump-4 liner) in 3 weeks.
Back on Valarn Base Jonah is doing some investigation. He finds a copy of a 30-year old census of the Spinward Marches (with data actually going back 32-38 years) in the form of a large stack of data discs in a second-hand bookshop and buys it. It has planetary statistics and census information on hundreds of billions of people, including name, address, age, occupation, and none or more of DNA code, fingerprints, retina scan and photograph. He feeds in our information, and also that of the dead old people from the low berths on the 'Dolobid' and sets a search going.
A couple of hours later, three hits have been found - on himself, Hans/Cleon and Avni/Su-Lin. From the census he finds that:
According to the records all three of them should be in their seventies to eighties now...
Two of the corpses also show up in the search results:
None of the people found in the census data was married at the time; nor are any cohabitees listed. Several of them did have living parents (35 years ago).
Some research is done into where we could find out more about what appears to have been done to us. Anagathics are high-tech drugs, and the only places where research seems to be being done on them in this sector is at the universities of the small number of TL-15 worlds - Rhylanor, Trin, Mora and Glisten. Of these the closest to us is Rhylanor.
Somewhat later, Bill Argan calls the ship and tells us that the Harlequin Traders and Red Bird Trading people will be arriving to inspect the ship in two days, the nameless group the day after that. A little later we see two ships dock at Valarn Base - one with a jesters 'head on stick' emblem on its hull, the other with a red bird symbol.
Then the Harlequin Traders people arrive. There are several of them, led by Captain Ebnetict, a middle-aged dark-skinned woman. They are flown around the outside of the ship, then given a guided tour of the inside. They quiz us on the ships armour and other 'special features', which we tell them arises from the sorts of places we traded in. In the process of this they are given the story of our being skint. They are sympathetic to our plight, and go off seeming definitely interested.
Later that day, the Red Bird Trading people arrive, and are also shown around. Again, they seem to go off interested in buying.
On Denotam, Hans and Avni notice that for some reason the launch bay doors of the Coreg are open as it passes overhead. And there is no launch inside. Bad.
They call the others on the Camp Crusader and tell them this, then take to the launch and begin to fly back, pushing the engines for all they are worth.
The others use this time to prepare for the arrival of the nameless group (who they suspect are SuSAG people).
Hans and Avni arrive back at the Camp Crusader about an hour before the nameless group is due to arrive. And the last few preparations are made...