Having completed basic training with Vega Corporation, the PCs found themselves assigned to Helen Pergamon of the Personnel Division on Vega Orbiting Station 2. Helen informed them that they were being put on a special assignment to find and retrieve a journalist called Angelos Ingerman who was in possession of some Vega Corporation secret. Helen wanted this done as discreetly as possible. It was also important that Angelos be brought in in one piece.
Vega had recently discovered that Angelos had left Dziban two months ago on a freighter called the Point Loma, which was calling in the Cebalrai and Lucasson systems. Vega concluded that this must mean he was on the run with their secrets and that therefore he must be brought back.
Helen gave the PCs a description (tall, skinny, scruffy, wears a fishing hat) and the names and addresses of three people Angelos was known to be close to: his girlfriend Aiko Staedtler, the editor of the Regor News (a Fortean Times-like journal that Angelos sold a lot of stories to) Jen Leybold, and his former flatmate Ken Bence. All three lived in the city of Riley on Dziban. She also gave them Angelos's last known address. She refused to be drawn as to the secret that Angelos had run off with. When pressed, she admitted that the PCs had been brought onto the job because they were new to the company and therefore unlikely to get the Personnel Division into trouble with other parts of the bank over Angelos. When pressed by Bo out of earshot of the other PCs she admitted further that they were the only four trainees she could get, hence the odd mixture of skills. When pressed by Leigh she gave him her phone number.
Larzuc started by downloading and reading the last issue of Regor News, and then the back issues. As well as a piece about hedgehogs, Angelos wrote stories about aliens; mainly the popular (amongst a certain type of student) myth that alien civilisations survive and are being covered up by the banks, which exploit their alienesque technology for commercial gain. Jen Leybold collaborated with him on some of these. Jen's personal bugbear, going by her own articles, seemed to be the evil nature of some of Dziban's medical coporations.
Kale, Gundersson and Leigh then went down to the surface leaving Larzuc in orbit. They approached an employee of the Heliotrope Telecomms Company in a video arcade. Heliotrope are the telco for the area that Angelos lived in. The employee, Johan Auer, was rather suspicious of Kale's story that he was a journalist looking for dirt on the banks. Leigh retrived the situation by getting everyone mirrorshades and a dark suit, and then going round to Auer's house at midnight and 'recruiting' him for the Dziban Security Service, claiming Kale's approach had been a test. Having sent Auer off to buy four different coloured envelopes from a shop on the other side of town by telling him the receipt would contain a microdot, the PCs setlled down to ransack his flat. They broke into his bank account, found his online diary (which Larzuc started to read but gave up on), and also discovered that he fancied Jane in Accounts. Oh and he reads 'Celebrity Trash' magazine, along with many people on Dziban. After Auer returned with the envelopes they left, dropping a hint that Jane was also an employee of the DSS.
After this Leigh easily persuaded Auer to produce the phone bills of Angelos, Jen Leybold, Aiko Staedtler and Ken Bence for the last three months. Sadly Auer didn't have the initiative to look up incoming calls to the phone lines too. He also got him to nick his boss's car keys and put them in Jane's desk.
The phone bills revealed that Angelos frequently called an orbital number. He also called Aiko, Jen, and Ken. Aiko called Angelos and also one of Leigh's girlfriends amongst many other numbers. Jen Leybold called many people, amongst them the Biomedica Laboratories, an ethically dodgy medical research outfit.
Leigh arranged a date with Ana Kumeda, the girlfriend who Aiko had called. Kale went to stake out Aiko's house, in one of the most expensive districts of town. Bo went to find some fresh air and look harder at the phone bills. Angelos's bill was extremely large. Larzuc went to track down Angelos's acquaintance in orbit, and discovered that the number was the unlisted personal number of Helen's boss, Ramon Padding. He also made a nice holographic PowerPoint presentation for Helen, who was most impressed and went for a drink with him after work.
Ana told Leigh that Aiko had been dumped by Angelos two months ago because Angelos wanted to go to Cebalrai III. Aiko has been unstable ever since. Kale discovered Aiko was passed out drunk on her sofa at home, so broke into the house and searched it. He found her stash and a picture of her with Angelos but little else of interest. She reads 'Celebrity Trash' too and occasionally appears in it. She is also the daughter of the owner of Biomedica which explains her extravagant lifestyle. Larzuc was of the opinion that this might explain where Angelos was getting the money to live in a nice part of town when his apparent means of support was writing articles for Regor News.
The next day the PCs followed Ken around the University, but he didn't do anything interesting other than eat a sandwich.
Ana was persuded by Leigh to arrange a night out for the party with Aiko and another friend of Ana's. Many drinks with sparklers were drunk. Bo found himself being professionally consulted by Aiko, who then passed out in his lap after ranting a great deal about Angelos. Bo took her home and refrained from any ungentlemanly activities such as trying to get into her computer.
Larzuc was meanwhile still trying to hurry things along by making a case to Helen for the PCs to get off planet, despite their lack of concrete leads. He also made contact with Jen Leybold using Auer's email account, and asked about Angelos, pretending to be interested in hedgehogs. Jen replied that Angelos was on Cebalrai III doing a series of stories on aliens for the Regor News, and that this had been paid for by Gaston Goode Ltd, the publishers of Regor News and Celebrity Trash. Larzuc subscribed to Regor News using Auer's bank account and sent Auer a message saying that he had to read it for the DSS, and keep every copy. Leigh remembered that Ana works for the head of Gaston Goode, one Mr Evans. He asked Ana about Angelos and she eventually agreed to phone Jen and find out who Angelos was going to see on Cebalrai III.
Larzuc got Helen to find out a bit more about Angelos's income. He was independent, if not rich, and so didn't have to rely on journalism. He had a broad portfolio of stocks. Helen declined to go for another drink with Larzuc, citing a sore finger.
The next morning Ana told Leigh that Angelos had been given two contacts on Cebalrai: Professor Stelios Hobson of Easy^W Ocherland University's department of Xenobiology, and journalist named Arturo Weaver who is also a noted amateur alien expert. Helen was pleased with this because it turned out she had a cunning plan to get the PCs to Cebalrai as part of a trade delegation, thus giving them official status and the ability to legally carry weaponry. The latter is important because Cebalrai turns out to be in the middle of a very violent election campaign and an economic meltdown. War is confidently expected to break out between the three competing nation-states on the planet in the near future.