Matsushida dragged Gwen away before she could inflict bodily harm on the Engineer running the games, and they went to seek Jaana's advice on how to best ruin the lives of the rat bastards who had used immoral brain-mangling technology on them.
Many plans were considered, including setting the Avestites on Margold, but in the end they settled on direct personal action.
Jaana and Elaine distracted the lone commerce guard on duty outside the arcade with a faked purse-snatching. Meanwhile Halley, who had already been making bombs to assuage her frustration, mined the gaming equipment (especially the two Type II immoral brain-mangling machines) and then used her lightning shield on every other piece of equipment in the room, including the laptops.
Gwen, Matsushida, and Royo went through into the Engineers' quarters, where they rousted and duct-taped the two flunkies. Their leader, Marvin Feist, having been alerted by the commotion, said a Word that made Gwen pass out (although her phenomonal reflexes got off a shot anyway). He then attempted to use a similar word on Matsushida, who did black out but then proceeded to beat the Engineer's head against the wall until Royo intervened by force.
In the meantime, the commerce guard had insisted that Jaana and Elaine stop trying to distract him and just fork over the bribe.
The Engineer was in bad shape, but Will Peskin was able to dig up an Amalthean to stabilize him. The three prisoners, Matsushida, and Gwen then piled into an escape capsule and ejected themselves from the station, where a pre-arranged salvage operator picked them up and towed them to Delphi Station.
Leaving Elaine behind to explain how these weren't the unconscious Engineers they were looking for, the rest of the group took the prisoners down to the surface and locked them in Dame Amanda's root cellar.
Royo's practical interrogation technique got a confession that Gwen and Matsushida had been conditioned, and that it was standard Guild technique. Feist claimed that Matsushida had been conditioned previously, which is why the command word hadn't worked right. Before more details could be obtained, the local police and League representatives showed up with a search warrant. Unable to legally prevent a search, our heroes fell back on the claim that as nobles, they had every right to kidnap and torture people who annoyed them. This held up pretty well under Delphi law, although the prisoners had to be moved to a proper jail and lengthy legal proceedings initiated. Matsushida was satisfied that the life of the person who had directly offended him was sufficiently ruined, and had valuable blackmail on the Engineers, so persuaded Gwen to leave it at that.
Halley terrorized the flunkeys, but eventually let them go after she was satisfied that they wouldn't become cyberdorks.
During these proceedings, Gwen had time to catch up on her reading. The Complete History Of The Hawkwoods described the War of Attrition, and the Stand of Sernav, where Zenobiah and her sword held off hordes of Chauki and Masseri aggressors until the Hawkwood forces could escape and bring back reinforcements to liberate the planet Fallback (two jumps from Delphi). Thirty Fabulous Histories devoted a chapter to claiming that the War of Attrition was made up by Hawkwood historians to glorify Zenobiah.
The Amalthean's advice to Gwen about the mental conditioning had been "Faith", but Matsushida, knowing that solution was useless to him, enlisted the aid of an Eskatonic who understood the arcane mysteries of the sacred science, Psychology. Illuminatus Algernon Valencia used hypnosis to remove the remainder of the implanted compulsions from Matsushida's psyche. He also found the previous conditioning Feist had mentioned, but was unable to discern anything except that it related to the superego in some fashion. At Matsushida's urging, Gwen underwent treatment as well, and emerged likewise mostly whole in mind.
Finally, it was time to leave Delphi for Ravenna. The trip itself was uneventful, but upon emerging from the jumpgate in Ravenna space, their liner was disabled and boarded by pirates!
Matsushida and Gwen used their leadership and tactical abilities to muster the passengers to resist the boarders, with some success, but the mostly unarmed and untrained rabble, even with Hawkwood stiffening, were no match for the pirates. The invaders seized the ship's critical points and the defenders had to surrender.
The dashing pirate lieutenant, after an ineffectual attempt to disarm them, escorted our heroes onto the other ship to meet the pirate captain, who was none other than...
Sir Robert Griffin Hawkwood.
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