COUNTER/Weight 01: I Would Like A Bribe

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Episode description

In the first session of our new MechNoir game, the freelancer problem-solving crew known as The Chime begins an investigation into the disappearance of their friend, the genius roboticist Cene Sixheart, and the destruction of the recently completed BluSky Dome. Mako Trig (Keith Carberry) and Cassander (Art Tebbel) deal with increasingly absurd robots. Meanwhile, the robotic AuDy (Jack de Quidt) tests the limits of their spaceship, and Aria Joie (Ali Acampora) launches!

This time on COUNTER/Weight: "I Would Like a Bribe"

Welcome to Counterweight!

Opening

The camera opens on five rigs hanging in a semi-circle formation above what looks like a class-5 planet, an orb of blue skies, streaming clouds, and the glow of life. But the scale, it’s all wrong. The rigs are too large in the frame of the camera, and you can tell that their boost packs are straining to keep them aloft in the gravity of Counterweight. The would-be globe, blue and alive, isn’t a globe at all. It’s only half a sphere, sticking up above ruined earth and illuminating the cratered ground for miles around its soft glow. The rigs are, mostly, heavily modified Minerva Rooks, the backbone of the Oricon forces during the Golden War. One of the rigs on the far side of the semicircle has a sort of flat obelisk for a head, with a camera attached to the side. It pivots inwards toward the center of the group, and it brings the unit’s comms alive with a crackle.

"Tea, uh, I-I mean Queen Captain-?" His voice is hesitant, but before he can actually issue any sort of complaint he is cut off.

"Bishop, you wanted to step up and start running ops, well here we are. Save your commentary for debrief."

Bishop turns his rig back towards the orb. "Yes, ma’am. Understood."

The group takes a moment to check their gear; and then shoots across the sky in wide arcs, slamming into the BluSky Dome with tactical precision. And then, explosions. And then, sirens. And the camera zooms in just a little bit closer to the dome, and the blue skies and the clouds, the glow of life, it flickers and fades, replaced by the pulsing red of emergency claxons.

Plot summary

The Chime has just seen their vidcomm with Cene Sixheart break off with the arrival of attacking riggers. Orth Godlove contracts them to find out what happened and they take the long Starlight Straights ride to the BluSky Dome. The destruction there seems to be a distraction from the attackers' real goal. Jamil Quartz-Noble is filming at the scene; she reveals that Cene Sixheart has been kidnapped, and asks the Chime to find them. The Chime visits Cene's lab, and find evidence of an infiltrator who they trace to the Rethal-Addax Spaceport.

While Aria and AuDy return to the Kingdom Come, Cass and Mako visit the spaceport and convince J-m 27 to give them clearance. Three approaching mech attack the Kingdom Come, and Aria launches in the Regent's Brilliance. Cass and Mako find the infiltrator's face from an AI clerk: his name is Shell Lotz, a Golden War era Oricon technician and friend of Jace Rethal. AuDy ducks the Kingdom Come out of range of the enemy scanners.

Cast

Other Characters