Location: Near some dismal world in the Duzakh system
Date: 204.01.22

Everyone has their price.

The effort to track down the leader of the Luddic Path cell operating in the Corvus-Magec-Askonia volume turned into fruitless weeks of bribing minor Diktat officials for dead-ends and strong-arming know-nothing low-life black market contacts. Then out of nowhere in low orbit around Nortia came a transmission for the captain of the ISS Black Star from one Brother Cotton, "a humble traveler on the Path of Ludd". A meeting was arranged.

The price was right. The ISS Black Star finds itself aligned with a former enemy; such is the life of a mercenary captain. A wealthy one, anyway.

The Path has learned that the PLS Praxis is transporting a prominent researcher from the League-world of Salamanca to a secret rendezvous where his contract will be sold to a Tri-Tachyon executive. The Path can not pass this opportunity to strike a blow against Mammon.

The ISS Black Star, accompanied by a small Luddic Path strike force, has difficulty following the daring hyperspace route of the Praxis and encounters the enemy force just as the transfer is taking place near the planet Druj in the Duzakh system.