High Time

[SECURE TRANSMISSION. CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION WITHIN.]

In the aftermath of the Keter Gate failure, Aces High seeks combat-capable people* to assist in an urgent matter of security. The safety of the planet - no, the system - depends on this race against time.

*Tact and discretion, while desirable qualities, are not required.

[MESSAGE ENDS.]

Gunnery Sergeant Desiring Peace - Phil
Dr. Fossorial 'Foss' Coffeepot - Alex MDR
Threes Charmed - James

Summary

During their meeting with Aces High at her compound in Luckworth, the party find that she is extremely busy and extremely stressed, with a lot of her employees interrupting to bring fairly trivial matters to her attention. Threes Charmed nobly holds back the queue while Desiring Peace and Dr. Foss get the mission brief: go to the Diamond Boulevard Casino in Whistle Stop Town, find a Ziline smuggler named Keen Vault, and stop them from attending a meeting with some bandit contacts at noon.
Dr. Foss collects a sample from a fire-breathing razormonkey encountered in the wilderness. The party then deals with a group of bandits posing as checkpoint guards outside Whistle Stop Town. Dr. Foss repurposes the bandits' ID scanner into a biological scanner while Threes Charmed executes the fallen bandits, allowing the leader to run away through razormonkey territory. An awkward debate about the ethics of bandit-murder follows.
The party find Keen Vault and negotiate with them over a few rounds of 'raccabat'. Keen Vault, who has been employed by their bandit contacts to help them establish an illegal arms trade with Siruta, agrees to let the party follow behind them and ambush the bandits once they reach the weapons cache. Before they leave, the raccabat dealer approaches the party and congratulates them on the successful negotiations; he introduces himself as Nine Shrewd, an associate of Aces High, and Threes Charmed has a realisation about Aces High's honesty.
The party encounter a blightroach infestation in an old transport tunnel and discover that one of the roaches is carrying some sort of parasitic fungus. Dr. Foss analyses this using his new scanner, and Desiring Peace decontaminates the corpses using a lot of fire.
While trying to stealthily follow behind the bandits on the way to their cache, Dr. Foss is spotted; with some quick thinking, he claims to be a lone myrmecologist looking for ant samples, and the party manage to advance undetected, albeit slightly delayed.
The party arrives at the cache (which is just a large shipping container in a clearing) in time to see Keen Vault leave the container and begin negotiating payment and transport logistics with the bandits. The party attacks and subdues the bandits, but Keen Vault slips away in the confusion. Dr. Foss uses the acidic venom of his ant collection to slowly corrode the locking mechanism of the shipping container.
While this is happening, Threes Charmed acts upon a vision of ambush and sets up a net trap on the path to the cache. Sure enough, the trap activates just as the container opens, capturing a scouting drone under the control of Keen Vault - who, after seeing the value of the weapons in the container, decided to double-cross the party and return with reinforcements so they could steal and resell the weapons.
The party subdues Keen Vault and their small army of combat robots after a fierce battle. They capture Keen Vault for interrogation by Aces High, take as many weapons as they can carry from the cache and destroy the rest, and then return to Luckworth with their prisoner in tow.

Desiring Peace thoroughly catalogues the guns they are transporting, keeping this record so the Galactic Cooperation can monitor whether or not the weapons stay on Ace’s World.
Aces High is satisfied by the party going above and beyond to crush the bandit business venture, awarding each of them 3 Clout with the ACE organisation.
After Desiring Peace and Fossorial Coffeepot leave, Threes Charmed follows up on the suspicions he has held since encountering Nine Shrewd in the casino. Aces High confirms nothing about her methods, her willingness to use underhanded tactics to achieve her goals, or whether or not there is in fact a chicken-racing ring in her compound, but she does tell Threes Charmed that his intuition and dedication to his work are impressive qualities which bode well for a bright future in the ACE organisation.
Before heading back to the Firebrand, Desiring Peace returns to the Diamond Boulevard Casino to indulge in some gambling. They find that Ace’s World casinos have a fairly complicated internal vocabulary and culture, and are able to learn enough of this to make a small profit of 45 chips. Gambling aboard the Firebrand temporarily grows in popularity before the inevitable disciplinary crackdown; chicken-racing has not yet taken off as a hobby but more than a few people think it would be funny to set this up.
Dr. Foss publishes his scan results for use in the Zeitgeist Bestiary.

3 Clout with ACE
Nemesis: Big Blind (bandit captain)