Osiris Fraternal Order

The set-up

Thirty years ago Grabex Holdings, LLC. built the Apslan 54 mining facility the surface of the planet Terratia in the Alpha Centari B system. The planet is rich in neodymium and promethium, and at the site of the mines, vast deposits are near the surface making the mines very profitable. In the mines early years, there was a rush to produce creating a culture not unlike the Yukon on Earth during the gold rush era. Mining companies sabotaged their rivals and the miners were a tenacious breed, mostly men. Echoes of those days persist still although Asplan 54 acquired all of the other mine holdings on the planet and consolidated the extraction efforts. Today it is an outpost on the edge of a forgotten galaxy with 142 inhabitants. Twenty eight of those are employed directly by Grabex, the others are mostly families, hustlers and prostitutes.

The transport ship arrives every 15 days to haul the minerals away. Terratia orbits Alpha Centari B roughly once for every 6 orbits of the Earth around the Sun, so the days are more like weeks. It docked hours ago, a new ship with a new crew, eight in all. Six men and two women all of whom seemed a little suspicious to the colonist of Apslan.

Recently retired Colonel Alcon Enta disembarks from the ship and looks around the hangar bay and mutters to himself. "Good this looks like the ass end of nowhere, they'll never find me here." Shouldering his bag and surreptitiously checking his gun he begins to stump toward the settlement.

Marcy Tannenbaum is a 24 year old hydrolics engineer. She ended up on Asplan after a series of bad choices. She hated this god forsaken place and most of the people here. Consequently, she almost never smiled and had few friends.

Toweling off after a shower, she noticed a patch of purple on her thigh. It wasn't a bruise she thought. But what was it. She would have to stop by the clinic after her shift and have it checked out. She hoped it wasn't a sign of something serious.

She dressed and left for work, returning s few minutes later to grab the security badge she forgot. Terratia was unusually quiet today. The transport had arrived an hour ago and there was usually a lot of commotion when it came. Strange.

Jeremy Strom was only 26 but had already been promoted to the Head of Security for the mine, and subsequently the whole of Terratia. It would sound impressive for a man of his age to be so accomplished, but the reality of the situation was that anyone more qualified had long since been transferred to places that acutally still had relevance. In fact, he was essentially the closest thing to law enforcement left in the settlement--or at least the only one left who had some semblance of caring.

He sat in his office and looked at his watch. 8:32. He glanced at the secutiy monitors and noticed the transport had recently arrived. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, and the miners were loading the cargo he had been charged with protecting. He checked through the rest of the monitors, seeing nothing out of place, but noting the unusual calm. He returned to his tablet, scanning through the day's headlines so far.

Johnny Nickel sat in the bar occupied with miners. Nickel resided in that bar day after day looking for customers. Nickel was a pimp and the son of a salesman. He needed those skills he knew.

"Johnny, Linda got her ass beat by some miner," Nickel's brother and accomplice said over the phone. "He is at work now."

"Name?" Nickel asked.

"Fred Quinn."

"Consider it done." Johnny Nickel rose from his seat and excited the bar, hand on his pistol. He would beat the shit out of Fred Quinn. He would also take his money and any valuables Fred carried.

Aval is the fallen scion of a noble house that rules the Hyperbius cluster, he was caught in an affair with a rival house's daughter who was forbidden to his bloodline. Forced to abscond from the system to prevent further bloodshed, he was put on the first transport out of the system in the dead of night. He can never return to his home system without amassing enough power and allies to subjugate the rival house via sheer intimidation. Yet he is no diplomat nor has he ever even dabbled in politics instead choosing to live a hedonistic lifestyle so he has consigned himself to his fate.

As Avallar steps out of the ship all he can wonder is how he had the luck to end up in the middle of nowhere, begrudgingly he starts to make his way to find accommodations.

Johnny Nickel walks down Main Street after exiting the bar. He thinks about himself. 25 years old, no family, a man with physical and emotional scars. He thinks about his soul. His soul must have died long ago. He lost his innocence long ago too. Along with his moral compass. And his family. His life.

"Got the shit man?" says a shivering man to a dealer on the street as Nickel enters the slums. Nickel was hooked on the shit himself for a while. Now Nickel only deals in lust. Maybe I do have some moral compass, Nickel thinks. Probably not.

Another lousy day of fixing other people’s mistakes and the prospect of eating instant food alone in front of the tv didn’t do anything for Marcy’s mood. To make it worse, Peter broke an ankle in the field at the end of the shift, which meant that she would have to cover his workload for the next four to six weeks. s she read through her personal mail she got a note from her sister back on Enpalore that the boy who had broken her heart, the only boyfriend she had ever had, was getting married to her childhood nemesis. Could the day get any worse?

Marcy decided that she needed to do something to get out of her routine so she went to dinner in the cantina. There was a comedian doing a stand up routine when she came in. He wasn’t great but was able to get a chuckle out of her. The crew from the transport ship was there as well. It was good to see new faces even if she would never talk to any of them. t any rate, the food was much better than she would have eaten at home and the cocktail was numbing the pain of her existence.

Alcon walks into the seedy cantina with his bag still slung over one shoulder. Taking an empty table near the back he flags down the harried looking waitress. "Anything here worth eating miss?" seeing the skeptical look in her eyes he chuckled. "No? bring it anyway so long as it won't kill an old man, and some scotch to sanitize it." Leaning back to wait he casts his one good eye over the assembled patrons and half listens to the comedian.

Johnny Nickel's phone buzzes. It was his brother again.

"Target is in the cantina," his brother says in a soft tone. "I am watching the poor guy do stand-up. He sucks."

"ETA 5 minutes," Johnny replies before clicking his phone off and dropping it back in his coat pocket. The cantina isn't far from his current location. Maybe it is for the best that his target is in the cantina. Maybe it will send a clear message not to fuck with Johnny Nickel's prostitutes.

Johnny enters the cantina and finds a seat by the bar. He looks at the comedian/target and orders a drink.