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Valsen - you decide after a brief internal debate. It's a been a long, tiring, and annoying day full of bullshit and unwelcome news. There is a lot of anger and frustration stewing inside you right now, and quite frankly you don't trust yourself to stay calm if forced to interact with a noble. And with how nobles are, simply not groveling hard enough can be seen as a punishable show of disrespect, never mind actually daring to get aggressive with one.
A more cowardly choice perhaps, but also the more sensible one. Hardly anyone will care if you beat the shit out of him first to work off some of that anger.
You took the effort necessary to track down his hideout after he made it clear he wasn't going to drop the recruitment attempts. Not his home, mind - you were playing by Barter rules even if he wasn't - but the rusting, hollowed out shell of an ancient cargo runner down in the Belly, where he would gather the sad bunch of bastards he was trying to shape into a coven.
Node 252 is up in the "top" half of Barter, so you have quite some distance to cover, but you can probably use zip-shafts for most of the way - extremely long, mostly straight corridors excluded from the station's gravity generation field and lined with constantly running conveyor belts equipped with handholds. A relatively low-cost solution to letting people cross the literal kilometers of space that Barter occupied. However, also a solution that has run its course due to the multiple new stress points each new zip-shaft created within the station's hull. The tram lines were supposed to be a more centralized, high-capacity solution to the problem, but, well... you were right there to witness how that went.
However, as head through the corridors toward the nearest shaft, you catch that unpleasant sensation you've felt back with Gresh before: constrained mana.
Magitech.
It lasts for all of a second before you turn the corner you were already taking. But as you keep walking, it returns a short while later.
You reach the zip-shaft, but instead of immediately diving into zero-g, you approach one of the food stalls that inevitably pop up in high traffic areas and take some time deliberating over which flavor drink to purchase, making conversation with the vendor while casually glancing around the area.
The little bastard is using some sort of cloaking technology, but you spot the energy it puts out easily enough with your enhanced sight. Sure enough, it's almost identical to the drone you encountered in 252. And you're just as certain that it's looking at you.
Any hope of what you told Gresh being true - that it was just a coincidental encounter with someone pursuing some unrelated agenda - dies a quiet, ignoble death.
Alright, you fucker - you decide, tossing the vendor his creds. Let's see if you can keep up with me.
(cont)
