Plot Summary

This is a quick update of the events in the story to date.

The Heir

Dame Alicia was officially on a pilgrimage but taking the scenic route, milking the pretext for all it was worth.  Her intention was to have glorious adventures, and earn a membership in the prestigious Order of the Questing Knights.  But it's hard to have glorious adventures while guarded.  Plissken struck a bargain with her.   He would be the only guard accompanying her and she would be in charge of the itinerary if she gave her word not to run away from him. 

Dame Alicia thought this was her uncle's doing, so Plissken took it upon himself to explain the situation: she is believed to be the illegitimate daughter of the Emperor, hence the Imperial Eye protection.  Dame Alicia was crushed, but eventually doubly resolved to earn her own reputation.

The Etyri

They booked passage for Kish; while they were waiting for the departure date, they had a minor encounter with a gang of thugs beating up an Etyri, Harr’ha’ukee Thuuri.  Plissken and Dame Alicia dispatched the goons.  Later, they discovered that the Etyri, a merchant of the Cha'arkut race, was aboard the same starship taking them to Kish. 

Upon exiting the jumpgate in the Kish system, the ship was attacked by pirates.  Plissken and Dame Alicia helped repel boarders, but Plissken had the joy of finding his old associate Starjack Malone among the  pirates.  The boarders had time to ransack some of the passengers' quarters. 

Thuuri was badly wounded trying to protect some secret cargo he was entrusted with.  Plissken found an Etyri Chirikiti physician, Sissenthu Zuulu, who saved Thuuri's life.  Questioned, the Etyri merchant revealed that he was acting as courier to transport a small but very valuable artefact on behalf of his people; the object was to be taken to the Vau. 

Plissken and Dame Alicia decided to accompany him to guard him since he seemed unlikely to make it on his own.  Plissken also managed to hire Zuulu to accompany them as physician.

Kish

He then visited the Imperial Eye offices and revealed that he had discovered secret exchanges between the Etyri and the Vau.  He asked Supervisor Peng to let him continue to pursue the lead.  He received a dossier containing the most current information the Eye had on the Vau.

Plissken, Dame Alicia, Thuuri and Zuulu booked passage on a ship bound for Icon, intending on continuing to Manitou from there.  But they had a few days on Kish so Dame Alicia, always interested in sight-seeing, wrangled a skimmer from the Hawkwood embassy for a couple of days on the pretext of visiting the pilgrimage site where Saint Maya argued with the Prophet and struck a rock which has been gushing forth with holy water ever since.  They reached the small hamlet surrounding the pilgrimage site, which made all its income by catering to visitors.

This Bird Has Flown

Helped by a street kid, Plissken asked his way around and found that the Etyri had been kidnapped and handed to out-of-towners who had left in a flitter.  He asked enough questions to be beset by thugs, but trounced them soundly.  Plissken finally found the local thug ringleader, Tcheng, and after breaking his nose, convinced him to co-operate.

Plissken collected Dame Alicia, told her the story, then woke the skimmer pilot in order to return right away to the capital and main space port, Escoral.  Since the urchin, Pablito, had bragged in front of his friends of helping Snake find and beat up the thugs, Plissken decided to bring the kid as well since he would likely be beaten to death by Tcheng's friends if he remained in the village.

Upon reaching Escoral, Plissken left Alicia and Pablito at the Hawkwood embassy and, still dragging the traumatized Tcheng, went to the Charioteers' offices to have the local Manager awakened and order all starship departures delayed. 

Fleeing Miscreants

Plissken opted to examine starport traffic on his own and called Alicia to meet him there.  Coming across a group of starport employees on a skimmer, apparently turned away from a cargo pickup, he recognized them as matching the descriptions he'd gotten from Tcheng and Pablito.  He immediately tried to place them under arrest (using his voice just a nanosecond after his blast pistol), and the skimmer pilot floored it, ramming the barricade at the starport cargo gate.  Plissken reacted by jumping on another skimmer and hijacking it at badge/gun point, to the great dismay of Alicia and Pablito, who were just arriving at that point.

After a short but brutal chase and shoot-out, all the bandits were picked off by Plissken, who then retrieved the two unconscious Etyri in the back of the skimmer.  Alas, no bandits survived contact with Plissken to be interrogated, but the Etyri were picked up by the Imperial Eye.  Plissken followed, Alicia and Pablito in tow, to demand that the case be assigned to him again.  He managed to obtain a probational re-assignment.  Once awakened, the Etyri were questioned but were still woozy.  Plissken did learn that the bandits had booked their aborted escape on the Al Malik-owned cargo ship Spring Blossom, bound for Criticorum.

Manitou

Upon reaching Icon, the Saint Paulus was subjected to a minutious inspection by Li Halan Guardians of the Flame, a quasi-religious police force.  Plissken convinced Thuuri to let him carry the Vau artefact on his person and was able to avoid a personal search through his Imperial Eye authority, although he did allow the GoF to search their cabins.  The GoF commander, Mehmet Deng-Xiao Li Halan, remained on board for the journey to Manitou.

After a relatively quiet trip, they reached the planet and learned a bit about the way things work (or not) on Manitou.  They hired an agent to find an intermediary and present their request for an audience to the Vau.  The agent put them in touch with one such power broker, Baroness Athene Juandastaas, the leader of a Phavian psychic coven.

After a few days, the Baroness informed them that they had been authorized to present their request to the Vau chamberlain, and Plissken and company were taken there in a skimmer.  But once they were on their way, Plissken spotted an unmarked armoured aircar descending upon them like a ton of bricks.

The Kidnapping

Both the skimmer and the armoured aircar went down, with Plissken finishing off the enemy rabble except for their meaner, tougher leader.  While they were battling it out, they heard the sound of another large vehicle arriving, but Plissken was finally knocked unconscious before he could see who it was.

He came to in a nearby alley, having lost all his weaponry except for a couple of knives and a stiletto.  Coming out of the alley, he saw that both the aircar and the skimmer carcasses had been torched, so he started heading towards what he hoped was a city core.  A brief encounter with some vagrants helped him orient himself (and convinced the vagrants to run faster next time Snake stops to ask a question.)  

Soon after, Plissken ran into a small group of thugs on hoverbikes who harassed him a bit, until their leader appeared, jumped on Snake and tried to pound the crap out of him.  Said leader was revealed to be Snake's old pal Starjack Malone, again.  Plissken beat/cut Starjack unconscious, and picked up a new set of weapons from his old friend.  When Starjack came to, Plissken learned that their old acquaintance, Scraver boss Cuervo Jones, had put a price of 500 firebirds on Snake's head.  Plissken decided to enlist Starjack's co-operation by revealing his Imperial Eye agent status, then demanded help retrieving his kidnapped party and contacting the Baroness's coven.