Sargasso of Souls – Session 3
Almost as soon as his feet hit the deck, Razor made a miraculous recovery. He put the previous few days of chronic jump-sickness behind him and bombarded Samantha Wiles with a long list of administrative requirements that would ensure everyone aboard the Salvation had a smooth transition onto the station. He had the three CIC security guards that we had brought with us immediately put on the Nessence Transit payroll and made similar arrangements for Marie Duprés and her husband. Ultimately Marie would become his personal assistant. Next he turned his attention to arranging accommodation for everyone. Razor valued his people and made sure he looked after them. You had to respect that about him.
As for Samantha Wiles, if she had been uncertain who was in charge when we arrived, she didn’t remain that way for very long. Much to her credit however, she appeared entirely unphased by Razor’s onslaught. In fact she already had most of the arrangements in hand. It seemed she was pretty good at her job, which was reassuring.
She walked us through processing and then showed us to the ultra-modern suite where we would be staying. Six bedrooms surrounded a large communal living area, all mod cons. According to Samantha it was one of the best on the station.
Then she escorted us to the Nessence Transit offices and started to give us a run down on the status of the company and its assets. Apparently it owned a further three shuttles, though all of an older design than the Salvation, and employed around 100 personnel. These were comprised of four shuttle crews and an assortment of supporting ground crew, technical specialists and administrative staff. There were also a handful of security guards.
I could see Morris rapidly losing interest in the outpouring of facts and figures, and a short while later he, Ramsay and I left Razor and Veldin to it. Mark went back to his room for some kip, while Morris and I decided to unwind by going out for a drink.
Many individuals might well have been thwarted in this endeavour due to the fact that the economy had collapsed and the currency we had was worthless, but not Morris. To him it was only a minor inconvenience. Having stopped by our rooms to collect a couple of barterable trinkets, a small clock and an ugly looking figurine, we set out to find an establishment with a little more atmosphere than the high-class bars that appeared to monopolise the area around where we were accommodated.
After some searching we arrived in one of the seedier parts of the station and became acquainted with one of the local inhabitants, a disreputable market stall vendor by the name of Connor Dibbler. The man was a weasel who spent the majority of the time talking to my breasts, but he did exchange the objects that Morris had “requisitioned” for some smaller easier-to-handle items, effectively change, and then obligingly introduced us to a nearby bar where we could trade them for shots of a distilled rocket-fuel-like substance.
There wasn’t exactly a buzz about the place however and all in all the evening turned out to be a bit of a drag. Morris eventually took it upon himself to liven things up a bit by trying to start a fight with the other occupants but I was the only one who was prepared to rise to his continual baiting. Before things could get interesting the shotgun-wielding barman asked us to vacate the premises. Grudgingly we did as he requested.
Over the course of the next week, with Razor at the helm, the team started to settle in and establish itself.
Morris and I were tasked with finding some ex-military types to bolster the existing security team, while Veldin looked into Nessence Transit’s Medical and Technical personnel and Mark the Shuttle Pilots and Flight Crew.
Since by that time it was clear that the Nanite plague had all but finished the Earth and its ecostructure, there was a steady stream of refugees for us to recruit from. In fact, with arrivals soaring to around ten thousand per day and over two-thirds of the station’s seven hundred thousand capacity already used, it didn’t take a genius to work out a refugee crisis was only a few weeks away. Consequently the candidates we approached were all too willing to accept offers of employment and we rapidly recruited an additional six ex-military and two medical staff onto our payroll.
While this was going on Razor was busy wheeling and dealing to arrange a long-term contract with Bharat in which they would provide food for up to three hundred and fifty Nessence employees, and their families, for the next ten years. I’m still not entirely sure how he swung that one!
It was also at this time that we came into possession of some rather unique data. Franz Bauer, an analyst from a company called MBB, approached us and asked us if we would find a place for him and his family at Nessence Transit in exchange for recordings and sensor logs from a probe that had reached the surface of the nearby planet Esperi IV, also known as Storm. Due to the violent meteorological conditions that gave the planet its name, the probe was the first to have survived the descent and might provide valuable clues to unlock the mysteries of the planet’s surface.
Recognising the potential worth of this information, Razor immediately added Bauer and his family to our growing list of dependents.
At the same time he was attempting to raise Nessence Transit’s profile and ferment relations with other station stakeholders prior to attending his first meeting of the station executive council. He appealed for everyone to work together for the benefit of humanity to salvage something in the face of the looming economic catastrophe. It was powerful stuff.
Bill Stanford of Stanford Enterprises seemed to be Razor’s most promising contact. A man of scruples by reputation who, in the past, had reportedly expended considerable personal resources simply to keep his word. Assuming it was true, you had to respect him for it. Razor obviously did and a rapport rapidly developed between the two. Consequently Stanford was willing to agree to an informal alliance. It seemed to be a promising start.
