For those who expressed an interest in the material I
had posted here is what happened from the primary NPC's
point of view...
Neil Hart had had an offer from AllCo Genetics for transfering
his technology to the gene pool. He couldn't take all his work
from Red Wizard legally so he worked it into a game object,
a alien-proof suit of armour. He then appeared in the game as
a "king" alien and gave it to a player who worked on a merchant
ship.
Before that he had hacked local computers to arrange a
hot-shit cargo for the Baperte system (where AllCo is based)
to be "accidentally" re-routed to the same ship.
Unfortunately they ship refused the cargo. Repeatedly.
Eventually blowing dock before it was physically loaded on.
This kind of put Neil in a position. He had just been fired
from Red Wizard because his aliens completely took over the
RealVision arcade and shut it down. He had three AllCo heavies
breathing down his neck and no data.
He took the next ship to Ubedewi (where they had jumped)
"bumped into" them there and hired their ship for three jumps
without telling them where they were going. He paid them with
a run-time copy of "Bughunt on Ryleh", worth about 1.2MCr. His
heavies turned up and "accompanied him".
Next he jumped them one at a time toward Baperte, them not
realising that they were going in that direction. His plan was
that they would eventually play the game using the armour. He
would copy the data and invalidate the cube. Unfortunately they
all refused to touch the game and didn't acknowledge the existence
of the cube.
On the final approach to Allewont in the Baperte system
Neil starts demanding that his cabin has been broken into and
a data crystal stolen. He and his heavies walk (through the
computer security) onto the crew deck and make for the cabin of
the crewmember who had the crystal.
The crew tells Allewont (whose only inhabitants work for AllCo)
that there is a hijack on board and they warm up their laser turrets
and tell them to land or else. The pilot gives a five second warning
and cuts the gravity. They are decelerating at 2G but most people
manage to grab a hand-hold. Execpt one crew-member who fall 1m and
hurts themself and Neil who was in a corridor. He falls 4.5m, takes
8 dice of damage and gets all three stats reduced to zero. Oooops.
They turn the gravity back on and take the weapons out of the
ship's locker. The heavies are unarmed and cease hostile activities.
They don't move from the coridor. Hart is moved to a low berth.
The pilot makes a run for it using the landing hanger as
cover from one of the lasers. The other gets a shot and they take
a fuel hit. They fly off nap-of-earth and are only exposed for
one combat round before they can use the horizon as cover.
Allewont base send a shuttle after them and a chase ensues.
Their laser, and all internal doors, had been hot-wired by Neil to
Neil which leaves them a little bolloxed. They try to plea-bargin
with Allewont saying they will hand over Neil and the crystal for
5MCr (paid in advance). Allewont demands they return to base and
submit to a full ship search in return for the 5MCr. If they don't
agree they will spend the 5MCr on a mercenary contract to get them.
The ship capitulates.
In the end Allewont only takes Neil and the data and lets the
ship go without any malicious extra damage (except taking a gene
sample from each crewmember and their cat).
The body would take weeks to heal which doesn't suit their
time-table. They have the equipment for full body regrowth and
memory transfer, though. The first stage is to record the brain.
For best results this is done in a destructive way. Normally they
would later play this into a new "blank" brain.
However they also have the facilities to run the stored
information on a mainframe (sort of an AI). They did this to validate
that Hart's knowledgebase was intact. (They didn't want to let the
others go until they know the goods were intact) As they wired his
senses to a simple accomidation and computer terminal environment
Neil hasn't actually noticed!
So Allewont currently don't plan to reconstruct the body.
They've made a press release (after the ship left) to the effect
that Dr. Neil Hart has died from injuries sustained abort the
Merchant Ship Rainbow's End. Brain Death occured on...