Dutch Marden
Victim NPC
Crew chief of the Lantern crew and a North Sea legend: twenty years, two thousand hours of bottom time, the man who could get anyone a billet and never let them forget it. Yesterday a parted sling took his umbilical…
Murder Party · ready to clone
No Fast Way Up
A scenario by Murder Maker
- Murder
- Dilemma
- Secret
- Blackmail
- Conspiracy
The premise
December 1982, the Fulmar Field, North Sea. A hundred and twenty-two metres down, the six divers of the Lantern crew live sealed in a steel saturation chamber, breathing helium, four days of decompression from daylight. Yesterday a crane sling parted in rising weather and severed Dutch Marden's umbilical — crew chief, twenty years a legend. He went to his bailout exactly as trained, and died thirty feet from the bell with a full bottle on his back. Topside calls it an act of God and wants the statement signed before the weather breaks and the inspectors chopper in. But the gauge reads full, the log reads wrong, and there is no fast way up: whoever killed Dutch is breathing the same gas, sealed in the same barrel, all the way to the surface.
The cast
Ronan Clay
Suspect
The other half of the legend — Dutch-and-Ronan, first pair in the water since before half this crew could swim. Grey, square, wordless; the best gas man afloat, and somehow the poorest. He touches nothing he hasn't…
Isla Brennan
Detective
'Doc' — diver-medic, ex-Navy clearance diver, the one who sews you up and signs you fit. She recovered Dutch's gear, bagged her own crew chief with steady hands, and has been clicking her pen ever since; the crew calls…
Tam Okafor
Suspect
The young gun — fastest man in the water, Dutch's protégé, the diver who went out and brought the body home. He has re-coiled the same length of rope forty times since, and cracks his knuckles one at a time when anyone…
Griff Sowden
Suspect
Bellman, thirty-one years in the trade, keeper of the chamber's small religions: the 4 a.m. gauge round he calls the church-round, no whistling in the pot, mugs on their own hooks. He cups his left ear when you talk to…
Petra Lindqvist
Suspect
The transfer — six weeks on the crew, Swedish, precise, unreadable. Writes everything in a waterproof notebook nobody has read, in shorthand nobody could. A genuinely good diver, which annoys everyone who wants her to…
Cas Reyes
Suspect
The baby — twenty-three, chatter for six, keeper of the kitty tin and a card deck he shuffles without looking. First man ever to get a laugh out of this crew at a hundred and twenty metres; currently not laughing. He…
Vern Skerry
Character NPC
The voice of topside — dive supervisor on the Petrel, thirty years on the panel, flattened to a duck-quack by the unscrambler. He wants ink on the incident statement and divers off his conscience, in that order, and he…
Intrigues
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An Act of GodMurder
The sling parted, the basket fell, the sea did the rest. Twelve men watched it happen from two worlds. That was never the problem.
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Six Hours to SurfaceDilemma
Six hours to get your story straight. Or six hours to get it true. The chamber only opens once.
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Skagerrak, 1964Secret
Old hands say every crew keeps one story at the bottom of the sea. This one is surfacing.
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The Black BookBlackmail
Dutch got every one of you your billet. Dutch wrote every one of you down.
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The Company RatConspiracy
Somebody aboard is counting for the office. Somebody's numbers are about to matter more than anybody's word.
Factions & circles
- The Lantern CrewTeam
- The Skagerrak Job, 1964Other
- Trident SubseaFaction
No Fast Way Up
December 1982, the Fulmar Field, North Sea. A hundred and twenty-two metres down, the six divers of the Lantern crew live sealed in a steel saturation chamber, breathing helium,…
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