Gameplay - Bad Moon Rising Part One

Forensics and the Tek squad arrive on site and get to work. The corpse will need an autopsy to determine cause of death but his hands have been superglued to the steering wheel and ass to the seat. The med team determine he's been dead for some time but rigour mortis has not encumbered the body's positioning. The body stinks but clearly this was a tall, strong, physically active man.

The Med team takes away the body for an autopsy and Chief DiMaggio himself comes down to witness the aftermath and he congratulates your squad for avoiding loss of life and what could have ended in a multi vehicle pile up.

"Now get to your assignment. Come back here when you're done and pick up on this case," he barks.

The Konstant Cup is a typical, Mega-City One franchise synthi-caf bar on the corner of Hilton and LeGrange pedways.
From the outside, a squat, wide building fashioned into the semblance of a coffee mug with a welcoming holographic
sign of a buxom waitress refilling a mug with steaming synthi caf. Inside the bar is stark white, with coffee mug-shaped
booths, high, floor-fixed tables, glaring lighting and a very sterile ambience. The place is completely robotised: three multi-armed robot servers dispense coffee with unerring proficiency as they scoot around the booths on single ball wheels, cheery messages displayed on their face-screens.

Except for today..

As you arrive, Tek Squad are on site and have cordoned-off the bar.

• Four dead in total. Three of the men, sitting together, are
low-level hoodlums in the Contralto Crew:

o Ridgy ‘Knuckles’ Dean, age 48; ran zziz supply
rackets in the lower levels of the sector. Pulled five
years cube time for GBH around seven years ago.
Very low-weight in the Contralto Crew but known to
be loyal and keen to go on up in the world.

o Georgi diBesti, age 51; thug-for-rent who
specialised in terrorising alien visitors fresh from
Eustace Fargo Spaceport. Several convictions for
assaults and facing a mandatory lobotomy if he
offended again. Looks like someone got there first:
the entire front of his brain has been shot away with
almost surgical precision.

o Toni Durante, age 49: slightly better connected
in the Crew and in charge of one of the corrupt
portering rackets at the spaceport. No convictions
but plenty of suspicions.

• The dead citizen is Willy-Billy Schultz, a resident of Buzz
Aldrin block. He had a job as a trainee sub-assistant
cleaner at a Sector 13 public convenience. No Justice
Department history.

• The three Contralto Crew, whilst known to each other,
were not common associates. Each was packing a
weapon of some kind; a spit-gun of varying calibres.
Whoever shot them worked fast. Only Knuckles
managed to get a hand to his weapon. Tek believes
two shooters may have been involved simply because
of the speed needed to gun down all three. Forensics
have dug bullets out of the remains of each man’s
head and will run the usual ballistics. Results should
be available within the hour and beamed to the Judges’
bike computers

• There was no robbery: the serving robots accepted only
card payments anyway, so the Konstant Cup has no
cash. None of the victims have been robbed either; each
one has wallets and ID still in place.

• Tek believes that there was a second witness to the
shooting. The table where Willy-Billy Schultz was sitting
had two synthi-caff mugs and the second mug has
traces of lipstick on the rim. Schultz’s girlfriend perhaps?
Records show he was not married but PSU have no
records for any known female liaisons.

• This branch of Konstant Cup is in a PSU dead-zone.
The street cameras do not quite cover the entrance to
the bar and when video records are pulled for the likely
period of the crime (between 3am and 6am), only the
Contralto Crew are seen entering. Customers coming in
from the Hilton Street side of the bar can be picked-up on
camera; from the LaGrange side, the images are fuzzy.
Someone knowing the camera positioning could walk up
to the doors in a diagonal and completely avoid being
picked-up on any PSU scanners. No internal cameras
save for the memory banks of the serving droids and all
three of them have been blasted.

• This has all the hallmarks of a professional hit. The
gunmen knew who they would hit and when and how
to get in without being detected. The Konstant Cup may
have been chosen precisely because it is in a PSU dead
zone. Whoever did this was ruthless enough to leave
no living witnesses: Willy-Billy was cleanly executed
and judging by his slim build and typical, block-resident
dress, was no threat to anyone save, perhaps, the
germs in the public toilets he cleaned for his job.

As Noss studies the scene he considers the method of execution.
A high-calibre gun that, fired at very close range, guarantees death. The victims were shot very quickly in succession: either more than one gunman or someone with very fast reflexes. The weapon also used case-less ammunition – a feature of the .408 Hand Cannon. However, Noss knows that a .408 Hand Cannon is not necessarily the choice of weapon for a professional hitman of the kind mobsters usually employ. It is costly and difficult to obtain. What is evident is that whoever pulled the trigger knew what he was doing – the murders were fast and effective.

It seems the Tek Squad have done their jobs and you don't spot anything that hasn't already been picked up on.

As Skegg takes a look around he considers the place itself as a location for execution.

The Konstant Cup on Hilton and LeGrange is a good spot: excellent escape routes and a PSU blind spot. A brightly lit, public area, it would probably have felt safe to the victims.
The Konstant Cup is in Contralto turf and the victims probably did not expect any form of confrontation from whoever summoned them there. Clearly they did not meet by chance – any meeting at that early in the morning was obviously pre-arranged.

You each have at least one Contralto contact or informant on your books (feel free to add to your character sheet and name them)

Potential avenues of investigation...

Why were the Contraltos hit? - Shaking down contacts/using informants

Gang War? - Investigate possibility of revenge killing from other crime family

Homes and associates of deceased? - Personal visit or order Tek Squad/Forensic Squad shakedown

PSU recordings - pull records on movements of victims in Sector 13

The Citizen - apartment, criminal record, employment, where is the survivor?

Max Contralto - As well as a slew of other Contralto's, there's always the top man, Max Contralto if you think this is worth bothering him over..

or anything else you may think of...