=Haunted Stars=
**Posted by:** Captain Sage Kim, Elysium Rangers <**__Info__ __Msg__ __Rep__**>
This group doesn’t have an official name that I’m ’ware of. On Guanxi, they call them the Haunted Stars. They rob banks.
They came across my desk a few months ago as a result of my work with the Elysium Rangers, but the intel was broadcast to every station for fear they’d be taking refuge in the TQZ. Where my bosses see anachronistic criminals, I see x-threat. Firewall needs to step in before anyone wises up.
Some context: a few of the terraforming hypercorps—Shaanxi Reformations and Fa Jing, among others—still employ free Martians to run maintenance on their surface-side terraforming operations. This isn’t morality at work in the markets. Terraformer maintenance requires extensive travel times, irregular work schedules, and a host of tasks indentures could exploit to escape. So the corps pay these rednecks just enough to stay loyal and check the meters.
For various reasons that mostly amount to no one trusting each other, these hypercorps started to send payments in the form of anonymous credit accounts stored on cheap ectos. On payday, they’ll fab a cheap bubble hab, plop it down in a central location in the desert, and send out a merc-heavy convoy with the ectos. The terraformers trickle in until everyone’s paid, and then everyone goes home.
At least, that’s how it should work. For the last three months straight, they’ve been hit.
It doesn’t matter how randomized the location is or how much security they bring. Every time, the Haunted Stars roll in on buggies, frag everyone, and rob the place blind. It shouldn’t even work. Every ecto requires a code be entered before the credit account goes live, but they’ve managed to get the guards to give up the code … by touching them in the head. If you enhance the surveillance footage, you can see the outlaw bleeding from the nose and eyes as they do it. The dumb-ass majors in my department haven’t noticed yet, but we can’t rely on stupid forever.
They’re all asyncs. Every one of them. Kinesics software has scored hits for several of the thieves. One’s a Lost-generation criminal, another’s an escaped uplift, and three others are on Firewall’s Watts-MacLeod watch lists. Hell, the leader’s surveillance profile registers as Nia Kundaruum; she went missing through a Pathfinder gate in AF 7! How’d she get back?
Sleights explain how they figure out the locations, move so fast, and get the guards to cough up the codes. What we don’t know is how they found each other, who is equipping them, or what they hell they want with all those credits. If even one of them is an exsurgent, some heinous shit could be funded with that much cred. Pretty soon, the hypercorps are going to lose enough payroll that it makes sense to deploy Oversight. Those suits are in-the-know, so we could be looking at complications with Ozma and fuck-knows-what attempts to monetize the situation.
Even if they’re mere criminals, these assholes have killed and bankrupted dozens of rednecks just trying to make a living. To be clear, I’m not asking for the permission of anyone on this server. With or without Firewall, I’m rounding up a posse and going hunting. Who wants in?

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