Duty Roster:

Edrasii “Eddy” Bkar’hen (Ronnke)
Ella Stanbridge (Melissa)
Ertrane “Buck” Buckner (Herodian)
Henri Haank Makruus
Ibrahim “Abe” Nouri-Abbood (Rigil Kent)
Sam Turner (Winston)
Sae Rraetheg (CommJunkee)

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Rush Job, Part II

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Maaq Mountain

Continued… The hour approached midnight as Sae continued to observe the very-large bounty hunter’s progress canvassing berth-to-berth in the direction of the Spinward Star, and tensed up as he finally reached the next berth over. The tension was shattered by an unexpected comm-call, a wrong number Sae recognized as a code—the Agency was calling him in; the call-back address was a meet-up. The bounty hunter was pointed into the starport by the next-berth neighbor, and he strode away, resolute. After updating the Crew by comm, Sae woke up Sam and had him cover his guard shift so he could “go OTG and get some real food.”

Meanwhile, Ella and Abe were wrapping up their banking business, and were on their way out of the robo-teller booth when the guy that Ella had spotted earlier approached her for some help with his new comm OS, as he had seen her using the same a moment before when she took a call (from Sae, regarding the bounty hunter). He was very polite, clearly intelligent, and perhaps, even genuine—maybe too good to be true. As compensation for her “tech-support services,” he offered to take Ella for a cup of coffee at a corner shop after he got done with his banking, and she accepted, in spite of her maybe-paranoid suspicions, and waited outside the bank for him, while Abe parted ways and returned to the ship to get some sleep, still a bit paranoid himself after the earlier “psychic incident.”

Around that same time, Buck and Eddy had arrived at an office complex in the startown to meet with the shadow broker. Eddy flirted with the secretary a bit before she announced them and pointed them to the broker’s office. The broker was cold and methodical, only glancing up to study the two briefly before looking back down at his computer displays, and rattled off the terms of shipment as if it were a pre-written script, covering every potential question before it need be asked: two 8-ton containers under seal, obtained on the black market, to be shipped to Fulacin Orbital unmolested, seals unbroken, for the standard rate plus fifty percent, half now, half by the buyer on delivery. He declared that taking the stack of cash he then slid across the desk toward them would be considered an agreement to the terms. Buck asked to make a call, and cleared the shipment with Ella, admitting it was less-than-legal (she was too distracted to make a fuss at the moment), and with permission so granted, Eddy took the cash. With a curt, “Good day,” the business was concluded, and the two left the office complex to return to the ship, but not before Eddy had secured a date with the secretary after she got off work in a few hours. Eddy noticed some nearby casinos on the way back, and Buck had to talk him out of an attempt to increase their profit-margin. Frequently checking the TrampNet for bidding activity, Eddy noticed they were being under-bid at every turn by another ship—the Jesse Belle—and he and Buck briefly discussed some sort of reprisal, but for fear of escalation, decided to let it go until later.

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Gerhard Kansii

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Katelyn

Sae waited in the indicated alley and stood, checking his comm twice in a certain way, to indicate his readiness to talk. Out of the shadows, two humans emerged: a man in a suit, and a red-haired woman, neither of which he recognized. The suited-man asked for a SITREP on Operation Red Wombat, Sae’s “favor” to the Agency, to gather information about the Crew’s possible contact with a lost Zhodani vessel; Sae held nothing back, telling them what he knew of the story—the suited-man tensed up when informed what had happened to the other crew that attempted to claim the prize. He looked to the woman, and she nodded affirmatively. Satisfied with the mission update, the man informed Sae of a new side mission he had for him, to discreetly obtain a blood sample from his fellow crewman, Ibrahim, using a small extraction device (which he then handed over), to be dead-dropped in a specific drainage grate near their berth. Sae agreed, though he intended to tell Abe the truth; the woman shook her head at the suited-man, and he again admonished Sae to keep the attempt covert. Sae agreed again, and this time, the woman nodded affirmatively to the suited-man. The suited-man told Sae, “The Agency, and the Emperor, thanks you for your service,” before the two disappeared back into the shadows. After making certain he wasn’t being followed, Sae stopped for a quick bite to eat and returned to the ship.


Some hours passed, and the first of Porozlo’s twin suns began to rise for the first of two times for the day.

While the other Crew aboard the ship slept, Sae searched the med bay for blood samples that might have been taken previously, but found none, and resigned himself to the dirty task of getting Abe’s sample the hard way. He grabbed a marker-pen, and crept into the four-bunk cabin where Abe and Sam were currently asleep; with one hand, he positioned the sampling device at Abe’s arm and triggered it, while with the other hand, he poised himself as if to write something nefarious across Abe’s forehead. The fine needle woke Abe, but only just, and in the sleep-addled haze, Sae’s apology and explanation that he was getting revenge for Abe’s constant “dog references” toward him seemed legitimate; he dismissed the interruption and went back to sleep, none the wiser. Sae retreated back to his guard duty, mission complete.

Meanwhile, Buck was outside the ship to meet the incoming delivery of the shadow-broker’s containers at the wharf, and found them as described, under a legitimate-looking monowire customs seal, with a manifest that indicated nothing special within. Just in case, falling back on old smuggling tricks (the origins of which were still unknown to the others), Buck scuffed the RFID tags, and altered the “8” digit to bear more resemblance to a “3.”

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Truman Park

Ella’s coffee-date with the spacer from the bank failed to reveal the “catch”—Truman Park was a recently-promoted 1st Mate for the Oberlindes freight lines, currently serving aboard the 20,000 ton container-ship, Boston, and was a genuinely decent guy, a perfect gentleman, as far as she could tell. They talked for hours about life on the space-lanes, eventually relocating to overlook the docks as the suns rose. Truman offered Ella a tour of the Boston, and eventually, Ella asked to see his cabin…


Eddy woke from his power-nap to the alarm he’d set to remind him of his date with the shadow-broker’s secretary, made himself presentable, and left the starport for the agreed-upon startown diner. On the way, Eddy got a call from one of the legitimate brokers whose cargo he had placed bids on; the broker wanted a face-to-face meeting with the captain and the ship’s agent, and they agreed to do so at 09:00 local time. At the diner, the date seemed to be going well until, out of the side window, Eddy locked eyes with Maaq Mountain himself. After a few tense seconds of staring that seemed an eternity, with a quick “Sorry” to his date, Eddy bolted back into the diner’s kitchen, followed closely by the bounty hunter. The two crashed through the kitchen to the back door, vaulted clumsily over a fence at the end of the back alley, and hastily weaved at full speed through the foot traffic on the boardwalk leading up to the monorail station, where the train was just leaving. Eddy jumped headlong for the narrow landing between the monorail cars, but missed his mark, and ended up caught by the foot and dragged along beside the train; he was barely able to duck out of the way of the partition as the monorail left the station, leaving him hanging precariously over the traffic below. The bounty hunter, however, had managed to get aboard, and finding Eddy hanging outside, pulled him inside the train, and handcuffed him. When asked, the famed bounty-hunter revealed what Eddy already suspected, that he had been hired by “Crazy Ivan” to bring Eddy in over some delinquent debt payments. A short, awkward ride later, the two exited the monorail and began to walk back toward the starport, when Eddy demanded to be allowed to comm someone; the bounty-hunter sarcastically agreed, and called the Spinward Star on his own comm on Eddy’s behalf, and asked for the captain.

Buck was making coffee in the crew lounge when he spotted a flashing light on the cockpit console indicating an incoming call, and answered. Ella’s location was unknown to the others, so Buck fetched Sam out of bed—the second-in-command. While suppressing Eddy’s attempts to inform his crewmates of the upcoming face-to-face meeting with the broker by smashing him into the wall, Maaq Mountain informed Sam, as acting captain, that Eddy would not be making their departure.

To be continued…


Notes

  • I took over as GM for this one-shot run; as a result, Haank was demoted to NPC status and “written out” of the event, while Eddy was “written in” for the regular GM, Ronnke. See my GM’s behind-the-scenes insights on my blog
  • The break between sessions allowed me to get caught up on the date-time, and it turned out they had gotten in late in the day, and ended almost at midnight; fortunately, space-travelers come and go at all hours, 24/7, so business around the starport doesn’t normally close up for the night
  • Sae’s meeting with the Agents actually played out first, as some of the players were going to be late; Sae’s dilemma—to “betray” his fellow crewman or not—was well reflected by the player’s; he really struggled with it
  • The man-in-a-suit was Gerhard Kansii, and the red-haired woman, Katelyn, both from the Crew’s previous outing to Porozlo; Katelyn was psi-scanning Sae to keep him honest
  • When Sae woke Abe during his attempt to get the blood sample, he nearly failed to disguise it, but for a +2 for his Sense of Duty to the Crew—Abe believed it, because why would Sae be up to something nefarious?