Garett sits down for some quality time at her computer to see what she can dig up () on the winery and on Boduke (Bo Duke?? Is he making wine or moonshine, and does he have an orange air car?).
Winner Winner Chicken Dinner, your right I took name inspiration from that series, though not the character, you (and Garret) win a free reroll in the future.
The winery was owned by a husband and wife, the husband was a older lawyer interesting in wine making and made enough money to start his own winery and work in town only 3 days a week. The ‘Gannet’ was know as a friendly though rural winery for anyone who wanted to come by. The location is about as perfect as one can expect with a view of the ocean and greenery everywhere.
The wine was sold under the Gannet label and was well received and liked locally with a few dozen cases picked up as speculative cargo every so often.
It was sold about 13 years ago, rebranded and renamed. After several months the ‘ Kaiyō Seiei’ opened to much fanfare. It is a large winery with a wedding venue and private meeting room and small housing on site. It is advertised for discriminating clientele (ie rich).
The tasting room is a inside open air style with seating of 4 to 8 person tables with a long and short bar, which holds about 120 tasters. There is a kitchen that serves high end pizza and other expensive snacks. On this level is also a private 30 seat meeting room in the back. On the upper floor is a small apartment just right for 2 people and the basement is the storage room for bottled wine. Experienced human servers staff the room and kitchen. Just east of the tasting room is a terracotta floored outdoor tasting area with umbrellaed tables and a sonic shield for bugs.
The house (previous) is about 75 meters north of the tasting room, across the parking for air ships and small craft. There is no road traffic here.
The other two main buildings are barn like, they are 50 yards west of the tasting room and share a flat gravel area in front with large and small doors. One is the maintenance and vehicle storage, the other is the winery brewing and barrels.
The wine fields are to the north and east of the tasting room and house. With a small field south where there are experimental plots. There are 7 ‘tiny houses’ equally spread among the fields where a small group (no more than 4) can spend the night. In what would be the eighth position is a wedding venue with seating area and gazebo. There are robots that care for the plants routinely: a ‘farm hand’ style that monitors growth, moisture and prunes and a ‘anti-pest’ robot that monitors and takes care of the burrowing and foraging animals.
The staff is housed at a ‘college dorm’ style building 1 kilometer west of the tasting room. There is also a community building and shared kitchen. There are no vehicles except kids grav scooter. there is a bricked path leading to bridge over a fresh water stream that ends near the barn buildings.
Looking at the schedule, there was a wedding last week, this week is the forth week of the winter wines. Dessert wines, white ports, Prosecco and Hearty Chardonnays. They also have a new wine, Tokkie which is billed as ‘lemon-lime flavors, spiked with a bit of ginger, green apple, and even mild peppercorn’. It seems to be a hit.
With some digging:
‘Thane Security’ provides protection for the winery. They hire police and military veterans. ‘Safety for You and Yours’ is the tag line. Veterans in body armor with low profile handguns matched with drone surveillance seem to be their product.
Garrett matches influxes of ships from the capital district with an increase in security at only the winery.
Peachy Clean Cleaners is a deep clean company that comes in about once a month for 12 hours and deep cleans the tasting room, house, tiny houses and wedding venue. Meanwhile the winery is closed and staff have the time off in addition to their regular schedule.
There is a kilometer restriction to incoming flights, they must be prearranged or a ship must be precleared to send down a small craft. There is one traffic lane for in and out of the airspace.
From this you can infer:
The winery hosts some sort of meeting of Nobles of Hiro’s home out of the eyes and spys of the planet.
There is no overt illegal things happening
Boduke has some sort of connection with Peacy Clean
They treat their staff well
The sister ‘Ayako’ is spending to much on security for a winery and has a friend on the air security board.
On to Boduke
Boduke was born and raised as a member of Hiros supporters. At the age of seven he was witness to the fight and even then, he knew something was wrong with it. About 8 years later, he was summarily fired with several others that witnessed the fight and was sent low passage to Saag, leaving his mother behind. He was lucky to get work in the Starport, but being small and experience with intricate cleaning techniques got him i. He worked himself up and got accreditation in the baggage area and was then mentored by the old dangerous cargo transporters. He got the training and was able to get in the next spot when it opened. He has worked it efficiently and clean for many years, making the group he is with his family of choice. Each member of the crew was chosen and trained by him, and they seem very loyal to Boduke. Yes the specialty cargo does not come along very often but they are always ready day and night to work. They also do four hours a shift with the normal baggage people when there is no specialty cargo. Boduke has never been in police trouble, but two of his people have been in a bar fight a few years ago. A fine was accessed and they were on parole for three years.
In the local workers spaceport bar, Hiro gets the idea that Bodukes team are a bunch of haughty rascals, but they are elite at what they do and get paid for jobs they don’t want to do. But when they work with the ‘normal’ crew they keep to themselves and seem to good for the work.
Rik Dzhoovet has little luck, he is allowed to talk to a cargo PR man who leads him to a admin person who search for your cargo but finds nothing. When searching for other missing dangerous cargos;
Admin guy
The only thing is the ruckus of about 10 years ago when a collection of bonsi was shipped to the Baroness Ayako, they arrived dead. There was an investigation, and the Specialty cargos division was found without fault and it was blamed on poor initial packaging. Insurance paid Ayako her money paid. But that’s not you.
Hiro knows better than to ask about the staff, but one of the administrators who woks in accounting has a full credit marker of 2000 credits, which they will happily sign over to you. Basically, they give you a receipt show a empty marker and a separate paper showing a clean marker. They do have to send her a e-mail if you want to do this
Cage Clerk ” Its end of the shift, and the weekend is coming up, if you don’t make up your mind soon, it might wait till First Day Monday
Any Follow ups?
