Episode 2: Oh No! It's Mister Popo!

Bowman easily manages to lose the interceptors by pouring on the speed from his souped-up Dragonfly. He makes it to the gate and transits to Anansi, a journey of 18 hours.

En route, the crew interrogates Six Toad, who relinquishes his remote control to the detonator rigged to the cockpit controls. Six Toad will not reveal what is in the box that was so important to the Duke, other than the Duke will kill anyone to keep it a secret. He does reveal that the plan is to sell the contents of the box to a criminal contact in Addis Ababa, a seedy neighborhood in the city of Francis, on Anansi. The contact's name is Mr. Popo.

The ship emerges from the Gate Terminal on the Anansi-side. They make their way to the planet. Soon afterwards, a Corvette belonging to the Duke emerges from the Gate. The Duke apologizes for offending Bowman and tries to reason with him. When the Duke makes an offensive comment about Tick-Tocks, Bowman cuts him off. They land in Francis and begin unloading the cargo.

After transporting the cargo to the shipping company, the crew escort Six Toad to his meeting with Mr. Popo. Francis is a frontier city of about one-million with mud streets, boardwalk sidewalks, and Gold Rush Fever. They are led into the twisting winding back-alleys of Addis Ababa, with its exotic smells, spices, incenses, and hookah smoke. Six Toad leads them to a non-descript building where they are admitted by a large turbanned guard.

Within they meet their contact, a jovial black fellow in a gold turban named Mr. Popo. They are offered strong coffee and a hookah prior to the exchange. Mr. Popo says that his employers will be very happy to purchase the contents of the box. The box is opened to reveal a set of thick technical manuals and stacks of data-chips.

Suddenly, covert operations assault troops clad in dark grey bust through the door with a flash-bang grenade and begin immobilizing and restraining all the occupants. Ngaio manages to escape out the door. Harris and Six Toad go down for the count. Bowman puts up a fight but is finally subdued. Mr. Popo escapes out the back without the box.

Ngaio gets outside and climbs the ropes the troops repelled into the alley with. She finds an air-cav transport on the roof with a door gunner and darts into a hiding place behind a solar panel.

The troops secure the box to the rope and call for lift-off. The transport lifts off the roof and pulls the troops and the box skyward. Ngaio takes careful aim at the rope with the box and shoots, severing the rope and causing one trooper and the box to fall to the ground. Immediately afterward, a shoulder-fired missile is launched from the roof across from the alley, taking out the transport and sending the dangling troops falling as the transport crashes into a roof several blocks away. Mr. Popo and several other guards, one with a missile launcher, are standing on the roof opposite the alley from Ngaio.

Suddenly, Harris' assault fighter, which he managed to summon via remote control as soon as he recovered from the flash-bang, arrives. He brings it to a hover over the alley and begins to lower the winch. Harris connects the line to the box and, while carrying the unconscious Bowman over his shoulder and standing on the box, lets Six Toad and Ngaio jump onto the line before he orders the fighter to take off, barely escaping another missile launch.

Once aboard the assault fighter, they interrogate Six Toad again. Bowman immediately recognizes the contents of the box as the schematics and back-up programming for a simulant robot. After skimming through its contents, he realizes that these are the schematics for the Duke, and that the Duke has had his brain put into an android body. Furthermore, the body was designed by the same team that designed himself!

Six Toad reveals that he was going to sell the box to the Duke's political rivals, who would use the box as proof that the Duke is not a human but a robot, thus discrediting him.

The crew thinks about this. The Duke has done good things for Ares and has been a good leader. Although the Duke would stop at nothing to retrieve this information, and that the Duke can be very ruthless, they acknowledge that he is much better than the alternatives, especiall that of the family of the former Duke, Valken.

After dropping Six Toad off on a fishing platform in the middle of the ocean, they take the box and fly off to the far side of Anansi, home to a vast unexplored desert. There, Bowman takes them to his secret retreat, an ancient pyramid of unknown origin he discovered by accident several years ago. There, hidden by the cyclopean ruins of an ancient civilization, they formulate their next move.

TO BE CONTINUED...