>>>Posted by ElevenBravo

Right. So we went to the Dog Soldiers and had a confab with their leader, Red Feather. Turns out these neo-Luddite, hippie, Amerinds primarily run cover for smugglers from the Tir to the SS and into Seattle. They knew we had the leader’s sister and of course wanted her back. They seemed a bit usually intransigent regarding the concept of ransom. Maybe they were so down on their luck they couldn’t pay a cred? Or maybe they just didn’t understand the time-honored tradition of ransoming – or appreciate the serious potential for their impending extermination.

Whatever. We had a discussion about potential nonmonetary arrangements, for the return of the sister. Perses wasn’t too keen on the idea, until he was reminded of the fact that he had over half million ¥ sitting in his account. Then things moved pretty swiftly and the spans and the shooters decided to have a summit. They asked us to broker the deal.

Scoped the place out to make sure there were many ambushes and everything was on the up and up. In fact, just to make things a little more enjoyable Prince Paris crashed the party. Both sides were arguing hellishly, again somehow unaware of their impending extermination, and things looked like they were going downhill. Then the Shooters’ madame proposed a ritual combat between champions for the two sides. She wanted me to be her champion. A bit pretentious I thought, but then the Prince jumped in and said he thought it was a great idea.

Now it was pretentious AND official.

The spans jumped right up and picked Perses to go against me. Of course.

So – we went at it. Seemed like forever, but the TACNET told me – when I woke up – that the whole thing barely lasted four seconds.

For damn sure going to get some electric insulation on my armor.

And now apparently the Prince has yet another job lined up for us.