Mars fills the research vessel’s forward display, rust-red beneath thin cloud bands. In the departure cabin, Captain Vey checks launch seals while Delia stands at the navigation console.
Corin remains behind on Anita to coordinate Floor 300 construction and the drone-operated hall. Rellan Voss secures the vessel, while Saro Venn stays with his cooperative and supply contracts.
Captain Vey
All launch systems are green. Once we clear Anita traffic, the vessel can reach Mars without interrupting the tower’s expansion schedule.
Delia opens Ampli Darthik’s personnel profile. The display shows a handsome, toned Martian man with vibrant green skin, light-blue cropped hair, black eyes beneath slender antennae, and a black chef’s uniform.
His record identifies him as a famed but fallen Martian sous chef. Culinary awards, disciplinary gaps, and sealed annotations suggest expertise valuable enough for Floor 300’s exclusive salon.
Captain Vey
The annotations are restricted, but his technical evaluations remain exceptional. If Darthik agrees, he could define the salon’s opening menu.
The profile requests a destination confirmation before releasing the sealed notes. Beyond the glass, Mars grows larger as the vessel enters its departure corridor.
✓ Quest Accepted
Learn what caused Ampli Darthik’s fall from the Martian culinary circuit
✓ Quest Accepted
Recruit Ampli Darthik for Floor 300’s exclusive salon
Delia leaves departure cabin behind and arrives at Ablicc.
“You get off the landing pad and head to the martian ghetto called ablicc”
SUCCESS (Great Agility, rolled +0)
Ablicc spreads beneath Mars’s copper sky, a dense ghetto of stacked habitat shells, patched pressure corridors, and blue-white signs flickering through airborne dust. Delia steps off the landing pad onto a crowded transit avenue.
Delivery crawlers squeeze between pedestrians and market kiosks. Ventilation towers thrum overhead, carrying recycled air that smells of hot metal, algae broth, and engine coolant.
A young adult Martian woman approaches from a noodle stall, lean and green-skinned, with shaved silver hair, black eyes, and a yellow utility coat marked with medical circuitry.
Mara Quell
You are looking for Ampli Darthik. His old kitchen is three levels down, past the pressure exchange. I can take you there before the district curfew.
She projects a route across her wrist display. The path avoids a stalled freight lift and leads directly into Ablicc’s culinary quarter, where a faded award emblem still marks Darthik’s former restaurant.
Mara Quell
The chef still works there when the power holds. You have arrived on a good night. His burners are active, and someone important is already inside.
The guide leads Delia through a pressure gate into the lower quarter. Ahead, steam glows beneath the restaurant’s battered sign, while a sharp aroma of fermented pepper and seared protein fills the corridor.
“You walk with the guiide you ask her how did she know you were looking for ampli”
Delia
How did you know I was looking for Ampli Darthik?
The guide keeps pace through the pressure corridor, stepping around a coolant hose as blue-white signs ripple across her yellow utility coat.
Mara Quell
Your landing clearance carried the destination request. Ablicc’s transit system flagged Darthik’s name, and the market network noticed your restaurant credentials.
She taps her wrist display. Delia’s vessel authorization appears beside a restricted personnel query, linked to the Floor 300 salon proposal and Ampli Darthik’s old kitchen address.
Mara Quell
I work district navigation and emergency access. When an off-world proprietor asks for a fallen chef, the route is easy to identify.
The corridor descends another level. Pressure doors pulse open ahead, releasing heat, pepper smoke, and the rhythmic hiss of active burners from Darthik’s restaurant.
Mara Quell
His restaurant is just beyond this exchange. If you want him for Floor 300, speak plainly. He has little patience for polished recruitment language.
Director's note
it was drugs and a loan shark he still owes money to
“Well what saw to his fall?”
SUCCESS (Superb Reasoning, rolled +2)
Delia
What caused his fall?
The guide slows beside a sealed pressure hatch. Heat from Darthik’s kitchen rolls through the corridor, carrying fermented pepper, scorched oil, and the metallic hiss of burners.
Mara Quell
Drugs, mostly. He was brilliant, then dependent, and the kitchen became impossible to manage. His awards vanished, his staff left, and the restaurant collapsed.
Mara Quell
He borrowed to keep it open. The lender was a loan shark, not a bank, and Darthik still owes the debt. That is why recruitment makes him wary.
She lowers her wrist display as two security cameras pivot toward the approaching pair. Through the next translucent panel, a black-uniformed figure—an adult human man with a sturdy build, close-cropped dark hair, medium-brown skin, and a square jaw— moves between active burners.
Mara Quell
The debt is current, the lender is patient only when paid, and Darthik’s old kitchen is watched. If you offer him work, understand what follows him.
The guide releases the pressure hatch. Inside, Ampli Darthik turns from a steaming preparation line, green skin lit by burner glow, his antennae angled toward the entrance.
Quest Complete
Learn what caused Ampli Darthik’s fall from the Martian culinary circuit
Attribute Upgrade: Agility Great→Superb