Busting the Drug Rings of Kether (continued)

In yesterday’s episode, I finally made progress on busting the drug rings of Kether. An attempt on my life, led me to a helijet port where a mechanic had noted some “irregularities” in air traffic control. Following up on the ATC, I found a bribe and a paper trail leading to the Customs office. After a long stakeout, I caught them in the act: a shipment of drugs, and the Customs officers rubber-stamping it through. Now they’re locked up in my ship (does it have a brig? a cargo hold?) and gave me my next two leads about who’s further up the food chain.

I head to the penthouse office of the lovely Isosceles Tower, home of Zera Gross & Associates Import/Export Company. But the door is ajar, and the office is silent… and wrecked and abandoned. I find a note on the computer that “the feds are onto us, destroy everything and meet at X” with the coordinates of their rendezvous! Looks like the flunkies who worked here went light on the cleanup in their haste not to get caught. Or maybe it was a trap, a plant left here to lure me in.

No matter, though, I have to do what I have to do. I head out to the island where they went, walking right into their territory…. and I’m certainly expected.

The compound is a shipping facility: entrance doors for personnel, a freight bay, and so on. The book gives me an opportunity to try something clever, and drive one of the large freight-hauling vehicles right through the freight bay doors like a boss! It’s kind of like in Dune, where they ride those giant sandworms through the blasted hole in the Shield Wall, right? Total badass. With a wall-shattering, grinding crash! the freight bay collapses, killing several guards and leaving most of the evidence intact.

And I realize that so far, I haven’t lost a single Stamina point yet. I’ve had exactly two combat encounters, one in space and one with guns, and only two pages apart. In fact, I haven’t touched the dice before nor since those two fights. That’s unusual.

I make my way down the hall, and into an office where I find Zera Gross herself, dictating a note in her office. She dives for her gun, and I dive for mine. Three lucky shots for me, three unlucky shots for her, and it’s all over. “Zera is immobile. The vidilink is on fire. The desk is riddled with bullets. Looking around, you find nothing of note in the room.” Hm, maybe my definition of “nothing of note” is very 20th century, but that sounds noteworthy to me…

I find the computer banks which she was using to manage the operation: production figures, flights and routes, … and the location of the asteroid where the manufacturing facility is located. Wasting no time, I hop back in my ship and take off.

However, the asteroid is surrounded by a mine field. I fail a Skill roll, run right into one, and KABOOM my ship and I are vaporized.