So 4 weeks on ice for Billy and Alex and 4 weeks working as a glorified waiter for me.  Yup - the anaesthetic just wouldn't take hold.  As usual.  The crew of the Marava were actually a pretty good bunch.

Ffudn is a technological marvel - a desert planet with a very valuable set of moons and asteroid belt that is being mined for all sorts of minerals and deposits. The people live in domed cities on the central continent where the air is filtered and easily breathable after some initial acclimatization. 

So I found something in my pants.  That is to say someone had slipped something in the back pocket of my cargo pants.  It turned out to be an empty wallet.  Okay - well I thought it was empty until ‘Eagle Eye' Alex checked it for non cash items.  He came up with a 25Cr casino chip branded to the Hendrix Hotel and a small key marked 321.  After some checking, we discovered that the Hendrix was an AI hotel themed to Terran history in the period of ‘Free Love' and was located in the Northern most city, Bay.  We took the monorail to save cash - a 5 hour bullet train journey through the dust.

Bay is a bundle of laughs - a leisure resort with 24/7 pretty much anything you want.  It's where the miners go to let off steam and it's hard to feel anything but free in a place like that. Of course with the law's eyes everywhere through remote surveillance and a paramilitary police force it's not somewhere you let your hair down too much.  This city doesn't even allow chewing gum in public. 

We felt the heat when a pair of Imperial Marines stopped us at Bay Central station.  I guess we ex-cons stand out or perhaps, more likely it is the Solomani heritage.  According to the Unifeed, our politicians have their panties in a bunch over negotiations for home rule that appear to be cooling off.  Those talks and the planets concerned are distant parsecs away but with Sol peoples spread all over the Marches and elsewhere, perhaps the Imperium are being cautious.  We're a rebellious bunch.

Anyway, the Hendrix was a cool hotel with an interesting vibe.  It turned out we'd all won 5 free nights there with free mini bar.  That was all Alex needed to hear.   I went down to the casino and cashed in my chip.  A media player was given to me in return.  Shortly afterwards, a disc to put in it arrived at reception.

It was a message from Sukhov's overall 3ic and our battalion leader, Major Kachinsky.  He looked older, haggard even.  Looked like time had treated him even worse than it had us and he seemed to have forgotten our names calling us ‘friends'.  Long and the short of it was that he was sorry that we'd lost 12 years of our lives in chains and that we were to be compensated.  A Scout Courier called the Dart 77 was waiting for us at Ffudn's spaceside Starport and a fellow Solomani called Boris Batsov would help us out.

Batsov runs a club called NeoNoir in Centrale City so we trooped back on to the monorail and headed back from where we'd come.  The Noir is in NW Centrale, itself a Solomani ghetto that has seen better days.  Here the law seems less visible and we walked streets that were a stark contrast to the clean ones in Bay.  Rachel and Billy checked out a 2^nd hand tech store where the local kids were playing Bot Wars with live ammo.   She acquired a ‘deck' there - something that hackers drool over although this one was a ‘museum' piece according to her.  In the process of acquiring it, Billy noticed that Rachel has a different Prison code to the rest of us.  He thought it was suspicious but I don't see what the big deal was.

After cooling our heels at a local diner, we dropped in on the Noir where it was clear we were expected.  The place is a Solomani haven and all manner of our people turned up there.  We were feted as heroes and made very welcome.  Doc had a tear in his eye (and maybe a shot too many) when Batsov called us up after a couple of hours of free booze, dancing and singing of songs from the old planets.  He looked like a gangster to me but he spoke well enough.  He gave us all 10,000 Cr and the pass card to the Dart and offered us a way to make a load more cash.  It all felt a bit too easy but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested.

It turns out the job is the redistribution of wealth - or more accurately the acquisition of Imperial military medical supplies from a high speed train on the nearby planet of Bendor.  

Like taking candy from a baby...right?