"The French Lieutenant's Connection" © 1988, 1998-2005 by
Marcus L. Rowland, originally
appeared in _Challenge_ #39 (pages 61, 63, & 64), and is
reproduced here with the author's permission.
Text-entry & HTML:
Steve C.
PCs should be adventurers active on Beta Canum-4. Survivors of the adventures Tricolor's Shadow or Beanstalk are especially suitable, provided they are not actively pursued by the French authorities. Beanstalk is a useful referee's aid.
It sounds like an easy job, though the money isn't particularly good. The task is to escort one Frenchman from Adrian to Premiere and make sure he catches his ship to Earth. What could possibly go wrong?
A shady contact (someone the PCs trust to a limited extent, though not a close friend) wants the PCs to help him with a little problem. A certain French gentleman is about to travel to Earth for a short holiday, and he wants to avoid attracting any attention. The team is to escort him from Adrian to Premiere, then up the beanstalk to the orbital spaceport, and to make sure that he isn't pestered by the authorities. In particular, it is important that he not be searched when he goes through customs at the spaceport.
The contact won't reveal his client. The contact isn't very generous, and the team should be encouraged to haggle a decent wage - no more than Lv 100 plus expenses per PC per day. There's a deadline; the team must ascend the beanstalk within 55 hours, or the Frenchman will miss his flight. Note: if you don't start this adventure in Premiere, you need to adjust the times given above and below. The contact will grudgingly pay a maximum of Lv 200 per PC as an advance on expenses. Beanstalk tickets and papers will be provided when the team returns to Premiere.
The team is to get to Adrian as quickly as possible and take prebooked rooms at one of the seedier hotels there. The Frenchman will contact them, using the name of the man who hired them (Louis).
The Frenchman is Lieutenant Jean Luc LeClanche (army reserve), a junior cipher clerk at the French legation in Adrian. (NPC Motivation: Minor Joker, Spade 2).
LeClanche suffers from delusions of grandeur. In particular, he's convinced that vital military information passes through his hands. He's mistaken; military traffic is rarely routed to Adrian, and the bulk of the signals are low-priority commercial and diplomatic messages. A few months ago he began to make copies of the coded messages, along with the daily cipher keys, and now he has two portacomp chips full of messages. He hasn't realized that the lax security which allowed him to do this is an indication of the low value of his information.
LeClanche is unusually tall, exceptionally awkward, and very disaster-prone; machinery and other fragile items seem to shatter at his touch. Think of him as a cross between Inspector Clouseau and Basil Fawity, but clumsier.
Six weeks ago LeClanche approached Ludwig Volkmann, a Bavarian diplomat, and offered to sell him his "secrets." LeClanche wanted Lv 1,000,000, a new face, and a new identity. Surprisingly, he accidently found the right contact; Volkmann runs the Bavarian commercial intelligence unit of Adrian, and his job is to predict French economic moves. He soon realized that LeClanche didn't have any important military data, despite his claims, but could be an important resource for commercial information. The messages on the chips aren't likely to be valuable in isolation, but the code keys might possibly help crack messages intercepted from more important economic centers. Ideally, Volkmann doesn't intend to risk further contacts with someone as unstable as LeClanche, so he has made indirect arrangements to hire the team to escort LeClanche off-world. He'll meet LeClanche on the ship. Volkmann will cheerfully accept the chips from another source, given proof that they are authentic, and will even pay a few thousand livres. (Don't let the players know this unless LeClanche is arrested or killed, and they contact the man who hired them for further instructions.)
LeClanche has arranged to take leave the day before meeting the team, and his superiors assume he will be on holiday on the French continent. They aren't at all suspicious. It should be emphasized that the French authorities won't be looking for LeClanche unless he or the team does something to attract their attention. He isn't under any form of surveillance because he simply isn't important enough to justify it.
It takes about 20 hours to reach Adrian: 10 hours by airfilm to Soissons, then an eight-hour hydrofoil run, with some time for loading, waiting, etc. LeClanche contacts the PCs a few hours after they reach the hotel.
Once the PCs meet LeClanche, their problems really begin. Any plans they made will be scorned, and LeClanche invariably suggests other plans far more likely to cause problems. For example, the team suggests taking the hydrofoil from Adrian to Soissons, mingling with other passenger to avoid attracting attention. LeClanche demands that they hire a charter boat instead, adding hours to the jouney time, doubling the cost, and adding the risk of shipwreck. He sulks if his ideas are ignored. He dresses "inconspicuously" - a hooded parka to conceal his face (despite the fact that it's summer) or a dark trench coat (same objection). He has the chips in a money belt and frequently feels his waist to make sure they haven't been stolen. The PCs should soon guess that something is hidden there; however, LeClanche will put up a fight if the team tries to take charge of the chips. He doesn't own a gun and will try to persuade the adventurers to give him one; if anyone is stupid enough to oblige, he'll shoot the ground a few centimeters from someone's foot as he tries to put the gun in his pocket.
If LeClanche is arrested for any reason, he'll soon confess. He'll reveal that he was accompanied by the team, and he will detail any offenses they've committed along the way.
The first objective of this adventure is to make the simple journey from Adrian to Premiere seem as daunting as Homer's Odyssey. A few possible complications are described below.
Try to cause many delays. For example, if LeClanche falls into the sea as the team leaves the ferry, the harbor master will insist on a medical check. This, and drying LeClanche's clothing, takes long enough to ensure that the team will miss at least one train.
Ideally, the team should reach Premiere about one hour before the last capsule is scheduled to leave. It takes time to pick up the tickets (including a forged passport for LeClanche) and reach the tower, and they check in only minutes before the deadline.
If the team is too late to catch the capsule, their contact calls Volkmann and explains the situation. After a couple of hours, Volkmann radios back to say that he has arranged for scramjet tickets from Uethen.
Unless the team is on the run, the customs men at the bottom of the tower have no particular reason to search them. They are looking for incoming contraband and outgoing terrorists, not escaping defectors. They'll check papers, LeClanche's passport identifies him as Marcel Maigret, a bank courier, and is good enough to withstand a routine check. Naturally, LeClanche panics and starts to behave conspicuously. The customs men will soon find the chips if the team is still allowing LeClanche to carry them. But they just check the chips with explosive and drug sniffer machines, and plug them into a portacomp to make sure that they are really data chips, not dummies containing contraband. Bank couriers often carry information on portacomp chips, but the chips are usually coded for security, so the officers won't see anything odd.
Naturally all weapons are impounded by security; anyone carrying an unlicensed or illegal weapon will be arrested and strip searched, and won't be allowed onto the capsule. Warn the team about this before they reach the terminal! Beanstalk security is much too good (and well armed) to let the team bypass customs or force its way onto a capsule.
The beanstalk trip should be enlivened by more incidents. LeClanche will make an inept attempt to seduce at least one woman (preferably a PC). He'll get drunk and drop hints about his "secrets."
Despite these problems, there should be no serious incidents en route.
The team must escort LeClanche to Uethen - about 50 hours, including hydrofoil crossings, with a 55-hour deadline before the last launch meets Volkmann's ship. Naturally, LeClanche makes more problems; some of the beanstalk incidents may be appropriate. Volkmann will ensure that seats are waiting and that there won't be any awkward questions about weapons - although they will be impounded for the flight. If Volkmann hadn't been trying to avoid any traceable link to LeClanche, then he would have selected this route from the start.
The scramjet journey is uneventful. LeClanche spends his time with his face in a vomit bag (which will be spilled in free-fall, if you are feeling unusually sadistic), and the craft docks at the spaceport three hours after takeoff.
Regardless of the route, the ship is scheduled to leave about an hour after the team arrives. Volkmann is aboard and won't be seen by the PCs unless they are carrying the chips and have ditched LeClanche. In this case, he'll hand over a maximum of Lv 5,000 for the chips; that's all the cash he's carrying, and he won't arrange a traceable credit transfer.
The team won't be allowed to board the ship this close to departure, so LeClanche must go through customs with other late-arriving passengers. All the team can do is arrange some sort of diversion. Exact details are left to the players, but a "drunken" brawl in the departure lounge, or some noisy but nonviolent behaviour, may be best.
Eventually, if all goes well, LeClanche boards the ship. For the PCs, the adventure is over, apart from a routine journey back to Premiere to collect their wages.
This adventure can go wrong for the players in many ways. At worst, they may be hunted by the French authorities. See The Tricolor's Shadow for details of pursuit on Beta Canum-4. The PCs will be reasonably safe if they can reach Bavarian territory or hide in British territory until the authorities lose interest.
If the PCs actually kill anyone, they may be targets for a planetwide manhunt. No one (including the Bavarians) is prepared to help murderers. The Bavarians will eliminate the team's contact in Premiere (by paying him to move off-world), then deny knowledge of the situation. Depending upon the PCs' personalities, the adventure could end with time in prison, or even their deaths.
If LeClanche is abandoned by the adventurers but is not killed, he will eventually turn himself in to the French authorities, who will be interested in the adventurers. He'll also confess if he's arrested boarding the ship.
There will be no pursuit unless it is sparked off by the actions of the team or LeClanche. Ideally, this should be a light-hearted adventure without serious, long-term consequences.