We were called in by Lady Exobyte. She showed us an advert for a new morph called a Regent with unbelievably good specifications which was being launched by a relatively new corporation called regency which operated out of Neptune. A launch party was being held at the Starburst nightclub on Octavia, Venus. We were asked to attend and report. Due to the nature of the event we had to be sleeved in socialite morphs and I chose the only synthmorph option, a Galatea, before we egocast to Octavia.

We looked into Regency, they had been operating for about 17 months and were a minor corporation. There were four CEOs, Brian Atkins head of sales, Jack McNally head of marketing, Jaroslaw Karnowski head of R&D and Gideon Hall head of PR. The company had no other employees. We took a limo to the club. The Dj was playing awful loud music. There was a large transparent egg being carried by four morphs through the crowd. Inside was Aaah Soprano, an up and coming singer / XP recording artist.

Nova talked her way into the back room where the CEOs were waiting. The governor of Octavia, Halis Sapien was there talking to them, discussing a deal about buying basic morphs from her and selling her the Regent morphs.

Eventually the Regency CEOs gave their presentation. The morph came with a subscription service. They described a process of star chipping which meant anyone subscribing to the premium service when egocasting into any morph would cause it to become a Regent morph. They demonstrated the morph which sprouted wings and flew. I would have grave reservations using one of these morphs. What happens if I wanted to be sleeved in something different for a mission? And what happens if the subscription was cancelled?

Nova crept outside and found their van with two bouncers. When she alerted us, Ketrah and myself left through the front and walked round. I saw another van with four people pull up. I heard them talk about delivering a message and detonating thermite. I warned the others and Ketrah told the two bouncers by the Regency van what had been heard. They rushed over to the group of four who shouted 'death to the preachers' then detonated their thermite.

Ketrah and myself took the Regency van which had four of the Regent morphs in stasis while Nova stayed to put whoever came due to the explosion off our trail. Quickly we noticed we were being followed by another van. I found a gun in the van which I passed to Ketrah. As someone lent out of the van following us with a seeker rifle Ketrah shot him. He seemed unaffected and fired back hitting our van with a smart missile. A second shot destroyed our van and it ended up on its roof. Four people got out of their van and started cutting into ours. Clearly they were after the morphs. Ketrah got out and fired at them hitting one, but they fired back, injuring her. I quickly hacked a passing vehicle and made it swerve into two of the attackers, smearing them across the road but the other two fired at Ketrah again, killing her. We had warned Nova that we were being followed and she stole a car to chase after us. She arrived just as Ketrah was killed and ran down the remaining two attackers.

I grabbed one of the Regent morphs and put it in the back of the car. Nova tried but failed to remove Ketrahs stack and we had to leave as the police drew near. We went to a warehouse as while we were being chased, Ketrah had arranged with some of her contacts that we could use it to hide. Nova contacted Lady Exabyte who said she could arrange a cargo ship but we needed to retrieve Ketras stack first as it would compromise firewall otherwise.

I examined the Regent morph and found evidence of nanites and other unusual materials used in its construction. I tried to make the evidence more like a Titan virus and Nova contacted the governor to warn her the morphs were dangerous and to ask for Ketrahs stack back. She arranged to meet at the spaceport departure lounge. The governor did not believe her story about Titan viruses but was persuaded to give her more time to get more evidence as she was concerned about the possibility of a threat and agreed to return Ketras stack, though the governor demanded Novas real identity and put a tag on her. Nova also admitted to be a member of firewall which is unlikely to go down well with Lady Exobyte.

The professor spoke to a contact and booked some time in a lab in the Radial outrigger spar delta where he examined the morph in more detail. There were nanobots merged with mutated petrochemicals which was beyond known transhuman technology. When other material was added it was converted to the same petrochemical gloop.

The professor found some news on the mesh about an attack on the Regency offices at the Aurora habitat orbiting Neptune. It was foiled and the perpetrators captured by Regency security forces. We got Ketrah resleeved while Nova talked to one of her contacts in the extropians. Her contact tried to change the subject and then broke contact when asked about the preachers.

Later her contact called back and invited us to the scumbarge he lived on which was currently in orbit around Venus. We flew over on a shuttle Lady Exobyte provided. When we docked they tried to lock us in the airlock and decompress it. I hacked into the system and quickly opened the door into the scumbarge as my meat puppet companions gasped for breath. We entered and headed towards the command centre but were attacked by five Regent morphs in the cargo bay. After a brief firefight we killed them all. There was no one in the command centre but we found an egocaster and healing vat in the second cargo bay with a store of flats. The professor found some nanite infected petrochemical contaminants in the healing vat and the morphs.

I searched through the computer records. They were ice miners and had been to a station in Neptune orbit recently where they volunteered to be sleeved into Regent morphs. The security video showed a morph being converted into a Regent morph in about 30 seconds. The AI refused to fly the barge into the sun so I disconnected it and told Nova to point it at the sun before we returned to the shuttle and undocked.

I gave firewall an update and was informed Ming had been released from rehab and would be resuming his role as our handler once this mission was completed. Nova then set course for Neptune. The flight there took about a week. The Aurora habitat was positioned over a huge storm on the planet and there was a stream of black matter rising out of the centre of the storm up to the station. The shuttle was contacted and Nova gave them some story about being a supply ship.

Instead of docking, Nova flew into the eye of the storm to investigate where the black matter was coming from.

There was a sudden bright flash and I lost consciousness. I regained consciousness a few minutes later and found Nova had managed to not crash into anything. I had been affected by some form of static discharge. The ship was near some form of airborne gas refinery floating in the eye of the storm. The black beam originated from the top of the refinery.

We docked and passed through the airlock into a large control room. There were a dozen figures at ancient looking consoles. They were completely black with no features. Nova tried to talk to one which turned and approached her, so she killed it. The professor shot a console, triggering an alarm and the figures turned towards us. They were cut down easily. I tried hacking into the local mesh but stopped when I detected an attempted virus attack. I then looked at the consoles and learned the refinery was called a skyrig. It was collecting the preacher virus from the atmosphere and transmitting it via a particle fountain to the habitat above. The alarm was indicating intruders in the control room, and a few seconds later two doors burst open as two exergent life forms entered the control room.

They were exceptionally fast. One was taken down but the other attacked me relentlessly until my morph failed. Nova was hit by the stinger of one of them and the venom caused her to lose consciousness for a few seconds though she came round just in time to kill the second. Unfortunately two more burst in. Ketrah and the Prof went down under their attacks before they were both killed.

I was restored as an infomorph. Lucas tried hacking into the ship and got infected by a virus causing him to commit suicide. An inspection of the refinery lead us to the conclusion the easiest way to destroy it was to burst the fuel storage tanks and ignite it. Ketrah offered to stay and destroy the refinery. As the ship moved away from the station we saw it explode, and the remains drop into the planets gravity well.

Firewall was informed of the deaths of Lucas and Ketrah so they were restored from backups as we returned to Titan where we were given some time to recover. Firewall spread rumours about the Regent morphs being faulty and the Regency shares plummeted. Their habitat was put into an enforced quarantine.