Our heroes spent most of the next week in the clink, bored senseless. (Arguably not a change in Matsushida's case.) Fortunately, Elektra's crew remained at large, and were able to shop for Halley, make arrangements for getting off De Moley, and so forth.
On Tuesday, Brother Antonius stopped by, with a portable video display and some interesting information from the Order's archives. He had the tape of Sir Remzao Li Halan, Brother Saul Avendus, and Father John Foster's recovery of the artifact from the Phavian Institute installation. This was the first look any of our heroes had had at the artifact, which proved to be much as described, although covered with Ur glyphs instead of the broken Jumpgate symbol. Alas, the audio track had been lost due to the age of the tape, making the sequence of the three adventurers giving their report to Church officials almost useless. Nevertheless, Matsushida begged a copy of the tape to see if Halley could do anything with it.
The next day, Master Claudius, head of the Order of St Mantius, paid a call to deliver some sad news to Gwen. On the datapad he gave her was this news article:
Hawkwood Knight dead in apparent suicide
Tuesday, 12 February 4999 (Holy Terra Calendar)--AGNI, PENTATEUCH
Authorities are investigating the death of Sir Robert Griffon Hawkwood. Sir Robert was found hanging from a chandelier in his Agni estate early yesterday morning (local time) by his servants. Sir Robert, the Warder of Agni, has no known relatives on Penta- teuch, and it is unclear at this time if he has designated an off- planet heir for his lands.
Servants found Sir Robert hanging by a noose tied from strips of silk cut from his bedsheets. Authorities have not yet determined if foul play was involved.
Sir Robert's estate recently paid ransom for his return after the knight had been captured by pirates. Details were not made available to the press.
Services have not yet been scheduled, and most likely will take place in Hawkwood space, authorities stated. Sir Robert was twenty- seven years old, and a veteran of the Emperor Wars.
After offering Gwen his sympathies, Master Claudius informed the prisoners that they would be released after being interrogated as to their intent to keep the classified Church knowledge they had been entrusted with. Master Claudius offered to delay the questioning, not wanting to intrude on Gwen's mourning, but everyone including Gwen was eager to get it over with.
The interrogations were conducted individually, by a trained Order interrogator using a lie detector. Despite various attempts to defeat, understand, and dismantle the lie detector, everyone was pronounced safe to be allowed off De Moley.
While imprisoned, both Halley and Gwen tried using psychic powers, mostly in jest. Although they did not manifest vast psionic ability, or even miniscule psionic ability, they did start getting persistent headaches.
Friday, finally, the group was turned loose on an unsuspecting galaxy. After bidding farewell to Brother Antonius with various degrees of fondness, they took the tube train back to Nash, to meet the Charioteer Royce had found who had jumpgate keys to Cadiz and Kish. Varla Des proved willing to pilot the Black Jack's Lady for a trade of jumpgate keys. Arrangements were made for lift-off the next day, and the group returned to Temple.
Both Gwen and Halley experienced some sort of memory flashback or deja vu episode when they met Des, but got no actual information.
De Moley was left behind without further incident. Once again making use of the Black Jack's Lady multi-jump capacity, they skipped through the Severus system without landing. En route, Matushida tried to chat up Varla Des in search of a weakness that would let them swipe all her keys, but got nowhere. Halley's headaches went away, or mostly so, and she was able to work on the satellite communications system she had promised Elektra. Gwen's headaches got worse as the trip went on, and she continued to have deja vu flashes, although being Gwen she didn't let on how bad it was getting.
Upon arrival in Cadiz space, there was argument over whether to deploy the comm satellite, but antagonizing the Decados was determined to be a worse risk than being out of contact.
The Cadiz spaceport was right in the center of the triangle formed by the three Great Cities, aesthetically magnificent edifices built to house Vau ambassadors, before it was realized that the Vau would not be sending ambassadors. Their original purpose negated, the Great Cities ironically became pits of poverty and misery where the poor of Cadiz gathered and festered.
In a randomly-selected one of the Great Cities, Matsushida plunged into the corrupt Decados bureaucracy, and found himself quite at home. He quickly determined not only that Sola Jaems was a graduate student of Second Republic history at the University of Leagueheim, but that she was still alive and doing research on Cadiz, in one of the other Great Cities. Matsushida, who had expected to find that she had been dead half a millenium, was quite surprised.
While Matsushida revelled in paperwork and infamy, Gwen visited an Amalthean about her headaches. Unsurprisingly, the prescription was more prayer and greater devotion to the Pancreator.
Our heroes drove to the city where Sola Jaems lived, and spent the night in hotel there, in one of the towering spires far above the scum and decay below.
At a decent hour the next morning, Matsushida phoned Professor Jaems. She did not appear to recognize him, but he set up a lunch appointment with her anyway, trusting in his skill to come up with a suitable story.
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