Olympus RPG Blog

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)

Rush Job, Part II

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.

Gerhard Kansii

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.”

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?

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)

Rush Job, Part I

During the eleven days before the Adric Mason’s arraignment hearing the Crew had to spend sequestered on the sector-capitol mainworld of Rhylanor, Haank took the opportunity to complete his final testing for his Basic Hazardous Materials Handler Endorsement. He passed without incident; and while at the testing facility, he ran into an old acquaintance from his brokering days, who offered a rush job: 10dT of reactor fuel rods to be delivered to Fulacin in 20 days—a tight schedule for two jumps—for near-Express rates if delivered on time. Haank accepted the offer on behalf of the Crew, and afterward easily filled the rest of the hold with freight, and secured a full manifest of passengers bound for Porozlo, the best intermediate port-of-call on the run to Fulacin. With the courts’ permission, Valerie Vaskor would go with them as a pro bono passenger to her family home on Regina to wait for the trial. It was decided to remain on Rhylanor after the hearing for a couple more days, leaving the day after Holiday.

“Eddy”

The day after the hearing, the Crew was approached by an old friend of theirs from their days working for Neverfail Freight out of Bevey, Edrasii “Eddy” Bkar’hen; he had spotted them on video coverage of the hearing. He solicited an invitation to dinner, and after some catching up, he revealed what they suspected all along, that he needed passage off Rhylanor ASAP and had no cash to pay for it. Ella knew he was a hard worker, at least, and offered working passage; Eddy accepted, having brought what little he possessed with him to the restaurant, clearly expecting (hoping for?) an affirmative response. The day after Holiday, with Eddy as their new, temporary crewman, the Spinward Star left Rhylanor Downs again for Porozlo, wary of every wasted minute in their effort to beat their deadline.

Once under way, the trip outsystem was fairly uneventful, save for a brief outage of the ship’s artificial gravity, due to a bad relay, that resulted in one of the passengers vomiting profusely, unprepared for the sudden freefall conditions. Due to the proximity of the system’s main star, it would take around twenty-four hours to reach the jump point. A few hours in, Haank got a comm from the mainworld, and afterward called everyone to a company meeting to give them the news that he had been invited to attend a celebrity golf outing on Porozlo, a once-in-a-lifetime experience that he would not pass up, and would take the better part of the twenty-four-hour layover they had planned for—so he would be unavailable to see to the usual ship’s business while ashore. The Crew were confident they could make up for his temporary loss; Sae would take over as loadmaster, and Eddy would find freight contracts as the de facto ship’s agent, while Abe would see to the acquisition of new passengers. About an hour out from the jump point, Sam received a routine traffic notice, and recognized the identity of the approaching ship as the CV Hellhound, which belonged to well-known local bounty hunter, Maaq Mountain (he had seen a segment on the Big Shot Bounty Hunter Show at a local bar). Eddy was eventually confronted with the news and reluctantly admitted to being the target, having indebted himself enough to justify a multi-system pursuit, though he swore he had done nothing “technically” wrong. Those that knew Eddy weren’t exactly surprised; they promised to not give him up at the first opportunity. The ship jumped out for Porozlo without further incident, and seven days later, broke out of jumpspace. The jump point was masked here as well, a 44 hour delay. Halfway there, the Crew detected the Hellhound breaking out of jumpspace and accelerating quickly along a similar vector; Sam calculated its arrival to be only a few hours after their own. In Porozlo’s orbital traffic, the Spinward Star was given new vectors by OTC to avoid collision debris over the downport control zone; Buck stepped in and talked the operator into letting them continue without the resulting delay at their own acknowledged risk.

It was evening when the Spinward Star set down at the downport, and once the customs official finally showed up to do his inspection, they were released to offload their passengers and freight. Haank immediately left and grabbed a taxi, bound for the hotel in Geeka where he would be staying for the tournament, taking Valerie with him so she could stretch her legs and get a bit of fresh air. During the unloading process, the Crew spotted a familiar ship some berths down from theirs, the CV Jesse Belle, which they knew to be captained by Ulysses Pitt, a former coworker at Neverfail Freight that Buck managed to get fired long ago, resulting in Pitt’s tireless, neverending mission to make Buck’s life miserable. Afterward:

• Sam headed to the local Brubek’s for a pint and some food
• Abe started checking TrampNet for passengers to Fulacin
• Eddy started checking for freight lots bound for the same, knowing they would have about half the usual time to find any
• Buck, knowing there wouldn’t be much commerce here bound for Fulacin, made some discreet inquiries regarding possible less-than-legal deliveries
• Sae and Jones took turns watching the docks for threats

A bit later, it was decided to get permission to fly the ship out to deliver the last freight consignment to its designated locale in a nearby town, and Ella decided to fly it herself, rather than trouble Sam to come back. The trip went without incident, and upon their return, they saw the Hellhound landing on the other side of the starport from their berth. Meanwhile, Sam had returned to the berth from his drinking, still a bit tipsy, to find the ship gone, briefly causing him to panic before it returned. Later:

Ulysses Pitt

• Buck grabbed Eddy and headed out to meet with a shadow broker out in the star-town. On their way to the outbound checkpoint, Buck heard a familiar, almost-mocking voice exclaim, “BUUUUCKYYYY! My man!…,” and winced before turning to meet Captain Pitt’s feigned amity. Buck’s half-hearted attempt to smooth things over by offering to let his rival share in his criminal enterprise was rewarded only with Pitt’s assurance that Buck’s “debt” would be collected in due time, and went on his way, with a clap on the shoulder and a knowing wink.
• Ella took Abe with her to the starport’s Imperial Astro-Commerce Bank branch to cash in their now-completed freight contracts. It was busy, crowded, the wait long but not-quite excessive. As they waited, Abe felt a familiar presence in his mind—had to be Katelyn—and snapped about to find its source, though he could not; he began to recite nursery-rhymes in his head, and then sensed “amusement” as the presence disappeared; he did not share this experience with Ella. Meanwhile, Ella spotted an attractive spacer in the queue behind, and tried to dismiss her compulsion to approach him, before their turn at the robo-teller was announced.
• Sae was on guard at the ship, scanning the docks, when he noticed probably the largest human he had encountered—Maaq Mountain, the bounty-hunter—several berths down the way, asking questions of other ships’ crew and showing pictures, no doubt canvassing for Eddy’s whereabouts; Sae commed the rest of the Crew a warning.

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 bounty-hunter, Maaq Mountain, was to be a mix of Dwayne Johnson’s character in The Rundown and Fast and Furious; as I wrote him, he was pretty well-known in the Rhylanor sector, and had gotten special dispensation from the Imperial authorities to use a non-standard transponder identity code, 666D0G, for his ship, the Hellhound, a Florian-class 100dT scout vessel
• During the two-week run-up to the start of the game, Abe made an attempt or two to get Valerie to help with his research, to help her move forward—she didn’t really respond, still shell-shocked after her ordeal (that is, the Reaction roll didn’t favor the crew with her trust)
• There was a bit of confusion about the timetable, how long Haank was to be staying at the tournament and whether or not he should be dropped off and the ship continue on to Fulacin—that confusion carried over a bit into the next session
• We envisioned the scene as Sam returned from the bar, drunk(ish), to find the ship gone, as him falling to his knees on the empty tarmac with hands thrown wide, screaming “Whyyyyyy!,” and collapsing, just before the ship’s landing lights appeared over the starport; everyone dismounted and found him there in a heap and collected him 😛
• This is the first appearance of Buck’s rival—I think he just slipped the regular GM’s notice until now; he will probably be seen again

Duty Roster:

Ella Stanbridge (Melissa)
Ertrane “Buck” Buckner (Herodian)
Henri Haank Makruus (Gigermann)
Ibrahim “Abe” Nouri-Abbood (Rigil Kent)
Sam Turner (Winston)
Sae Rraetheg (CommJunkee)

Murder Boat

Knowing their quarry, the Black Star, was, perhaps literally, within sight, only four hours since its departure from Equus Downs, the Crew set about frantically getting the Spinward Star readied for her own departure, to give chase. The arrival/departure boards listed the Black Star’s destination as Rhylanor, a 3-parsec jump for a Jump-1 ship, which meant she had to be using a high-liner or jump-tug. Buck’s back-door into the SPA network was still in place, and he confirmed the flight plan to Rhylanor aboard the Tukera Expanse high-liner, which was still in low orbit waiting for departure about an hour and a half hence; Buck also downloaded her comm frequencies, which Sam used to place a call to her captain, Adric Mason. The call was picked up by an automated system, and eventually handed over to Mason after a long pause; he sounded confused, clearly not expecting to be contacted. The Crew inquired after the location and status of Valerie Vaskor; after a brief pause, the captain admitted he sadly had to let her go back on Tureded, as he could no longer afford her salary. After the call, Haank recalled their recent travels, did some quick math in his head, and declared Mason’s story to be impossible. They would have to get on that high-liner to find out—going the long way around would leave them months behind. The reactor had to be powered down for the trip; locally-provided ground-power only.

The Crew contacted the liner’s local booking offices; they indeed had a slot open, but it would cost a little over 400k credits for a 200-ton ship, and they had to get aboard within the next hour. The Crew quickly conferred, and decided they could suffer the price-tag if it meant wrapping up the pursuit of Valerie—and they expected they could make up for some of it selling their full load of grain on Rhylanor. So, the Spinward Star departed Equus Downport for low orbit, to dock with the Expanse, with minutes to spare before it set out for the Rhylanor jump point, and settled in for a week or so of little but spy-work to do.

Adric Mason

The Crew looked around, but couldn’t see much of their neighboring vessels from the ship, so they exited, and found a steward. The Black Star was berthed some distance forward of them, and they walked leisurely over to her; Sae discreetly placed a button-cam under a panel, providing a view of the concourse to the Black Star. They figured Captain Mason would visit a nearby bar at some point, so Sae took up a booth at the most-likely candidate; some hours later, their patience was rewarded. On the spy-cam, Mason was observed locking the ship’s access behind him and checking it twice for security, before leaving. Shortly he arrived alone and took up a booth in the corner of the bar, wearing gloves as expected, wiping down the seat and table and arranging things just so, displaying a bit of OCD; he sipped his drink and watched the patrons come and go, for an hour or so, before cleaning up his area and returning to the ship. Meanwhile, Buck found a wireless hotspot far from the ship and set up his portable computer, and began hacking his way into the high-liner’s network; some time later, he had managed to get a look at the Black Star’s manifests—two passengers in stasis, and only two crew listed. This led him to look over their local power usage monitoring, and found it to support what had been reported on the manifest, but he also noticed some odd, regular spikes in power usage that he eventually deduced to be robot recharging stations—which would explain the lack of crew aboard.

For starters, the Crew needed to get eyes inside the Black Star to see if Valerie was in there—they suspected she might be in one of the low-berths—getting her out of the ship would come later. They had plenty of time to come up with a plan, and over the first couple of days, many ideas were discussed, weighed and measured. The plan they settled on: Buck would use his network-hack to cut off ground-power to the Black Star, and fake a work order to check things inside for the fault. As Buck would be occupied, Sae and Haank volunteered to go aboard, both having enough technical knowledge to pass as maintenance crew—they would need uniforms. They preferred that Mason not be aboard during the deception, and would wait to execute the plan until he left to go to the bar again, where Ella would be waiting to hold him up, however she could, for as long as she could—she planned to lure him into an attempt to recruit her for his crew, so she would need to doll herself up.

Sam volunteered to acquire the maintenance uniforms. On the evening of the third day in jumpspace, he spent some time at one of the pubs aboard, where liner crewmen were known to hang out, and partied with them; after a few hours, he ended up sneaking back to the off-limits crews’ quarters with one of the female staff members. In the early-morning, as his companion slept, Sam sneaked amongst the other bunks and lockers nearby, in naught but his skivvies, and snagged a couple of appropriately-sized work uniforms, before creeping back out to safety, and then back to the Spinward Star.

In the evening of the fifth day in jumpspace, Captain Mason finally returned to the bar; the Crew, having been loitering in position, watching and waiting for a couple of days now, sprang into action.

• At the bar, Mason went through a similar routine as was observed before. Ella was seated nearby, waiting for an opportunity to strike.
• Buck activated his trojan-horse which disabled ground-power to the Black Star and released the work-order to have the matter looked at, which included the names of two crewmen assigned to do the work. Sae and Haank, in uniform, approached the ship’s locked hatch and requested entry. The door was eventually answered by a robot, which opened and informed the maintenance crew that they would have to wait for the captain to return, whom it then called over comms to respond. Meanwhile, Buck closed the access bulkhead behind them and disabled external access, so they would not be interrupted—but they would also be effectively “cornered” should the worst occur.
• Mason got the call from his robotic crewman and immediately got up to leave. Ella quickly stumbled over to him and spilled her drink all over his suit. Mason was at once overcome with horror at the possibility of infection, worsened by Ella’s attempt to “help” by dabbing his suit with a probably-used handkerchief from her purse. His angry/frustrated demands to be left alone were met by feigned indignation at his “insulting language,” and Ella complained loudly, counter-insulted, and threatened legal action, backing him up against a wall and jabbing an accusatory finger into his chest—more physical contact. The bouncers had to break them up; Ella, “distraught,” left with a sympathetic female liner crewman, while Mason escaped back down the corridor to return to his ship to respond to the maintenance situation and detox.
• With one other “conscious” crewman presumed aboard, Haank demanded to speak to the second-in-command; the robot “engineer” indicated that the second-in-command was unable to come to the hatch, but that he would go speak to him; Sae and Haank bullied their way inside after him, halting at the common-room to “wait” there, now watched over by a second robot “cargo loader.” After a few moments, the two continued to bully through, casually chattering about “maintenance-related things”; Sae lagged behind to get in the way of the cargo-loaderbot, as Haank pressed in after the engineerbot. There in the first starboard crew cabin, Haank was able to see a bedridden old man, barely capable of speaking or moving—before the engineerbot commanded Haank to leave and seized him. Haank struggled in vain against the strong engineerbot, calling out to the bedridden man to order his robot-crew to stand down; the robot attacked with the welding torch on its third arm, and burned Haank’s shoulder. Sae had finally had enough chasing about the common-room table, and shot the loaderbot with his magnum pistol, previously hidden in his tool-bag, then turned down the hall and shot the engineerbot wrestling with Haank. As Sae caught up, he smelled a faint hint of perfume in the old man’s cabin amidst the usual smells of sickness.
• Abe was watching Haank’s glasses-video-feed, and paused the feed to study the bedridden man’s medical readouts, and commed back that he appeared to be paralyzed, the result of some past trauma—indicating, in all likelihood, this was Adric Mason’s father, the previous owner of this vessel.
• Captain Mason arrived at the concourse to his ship and found access closed off and locked down, with a “closed for maintenance” graphic almost mocking his attempts to pry open the door with his fingers. As there was no response from his robotic crewmen, he stormed back down the corridor to fetch liner security. He rounded a bend, and to his horror, there was the mad woman from the bar (Ella), who upon seeing him, tore herself away from the sympathetic female crewman to badger him some more. Ella so infuriated him with her accusations, and finger-poking, and purse-swatting that he lost all self-control, horror giving way to violent rage, and he struck Ella. As he continued to assault her, Ella held off his wild attacks long enough for liner security to show up, and they tased him into a quivering, slobbering, angry heap on the floor.
• Haank and Sae were in a hurry, expecting Mason to return at any moment with a security team. They quickly cleared all the crew quarters on mid-deck—Sae shot down the securitybot in its recharging station and removed its sword-weapon—and then split off, Sae going above-decks to go through the passenger cabins, while Haank went below to check the hold. Sae had to bypass the electronic locks on the staterooms, and found them all eccentrically decorated, clean and cared for, with a faint odor of embalming fluid on the beds. Buck was watching Haank’s video-feed and spotted something odd in the otherwise-empty hold below, a fuel-refiner that didn’t make sense in that location, and informed Haank; after a bit of poking, he found it to be “hollow,” with a key-locked access panel, and called Sae down to the hold to bypass it. Once open, to their horror, they found a half-dozen dead women, all embalmed, and Valerie Vaskor, alive and nearly catatonic, resting atop the pile.

Valerie Vaskor

Haank helped Valerie out of the cell, speaking calmly—a familiar voice—ensuring her the ordeal was over, while Sae informed the rest of the Crew. As they passed the old man’s cabin, they could see he was weeping, imploring them not to hurt his son; they made no promises, just moved on. Captain Mason would no longer be an issue, but security would still show up at the ship; Haank and Sae spirited Valerie out of the ship, and down the corridor to the Spinward Star, leaving the ship open behind them. Once Valerie was safely aboard, they informed liner security of their “discovery,” hoping the ghoulish scene aboard might distract the authorities from the manner in which it had been uncovered. When questioned, the Crew held nothing back.

The Expanse broke out of jumpspace a day later, and the Spinward Star parted ways and landed on Rhylanor, where they would await Mason’s arraignment hearing, twelve days hence, before being released to move on. The trial was as somber as expected, Valerie barely able to answer the magistrates’ questions; Mason’s official trial for a dozen or more charges of murder, involuntary enslavement, and kidnapping, was scheduled to occur in fifteen months, when the Crew and Valerie would be called in to testify to what they had witnessed.

Notes

• The search for Valerie Vaskor began here
• The GM had cast Steve Buscemi for the Adric Mason role, but had forgotten he had already been used (as Captain Stannis). I suggested Mads Mikkelsen as sorta what I had in mind, forgetting at the time that he had played the part of a serial-killer before—perfect match
• Sam continued in his capacity as ship’s tomcat; his private encounter involved some “pirate” costumed role-play; after the mess with the murder-boat was over, and his companion found out she had been used to gain access to the maintenance uniforms, she punished him with more “hard labor” 😉
• It was decided that the name tags on the maintenance uniforms were Leeroy & Jenkins
• Haank has the Honesty Disadvantage, which he was forced to choke back once again in the course of duty—breaking and entering (which given astronautical (~maritime) law, amounted to an act of piracy), computer intrusion, and theft…but it was for a very good cause
• Sae got some exceptional rolls, including a Crit, on smell, when inside the murder-boat, continuing our string of ridiculous sense rolls
• Ella (and her player) gave a grand performance in the bar and the corridor, that would have, doubtless, broken down any man unfortunate enough to be targeted; when Mason stormed off to get security, Ella’s player asked to be in the corridor when he walked past, just so she could beat him down some more 😛
• The plan at the end was—with legal permission granted—to take Valerie back home to her family on Regina, where she would recover while waiting for the trial; the Crew would likely not stay, but get back to business, to return for the trial later
• This is the end of the pursuit of Valerie Vaskor arc, but not the last we’ll see of her, or her former captor

Duty Roster:

Ella Stanbridge
Ertrane “Buck” Buckner (Herodian)
Henri Haank Makruus (Gigermann)
Ibrahim “Abe” Nouri-Abbood (Rigil Kent)
Sam Turner (Winston)
Sae Rraetheg (CommJunkee)

Loose Ends

…Continued Abe rejoined the rest of the Crew as they arrived at the Dowe estate, a sprawling plantation on the outskirts of the small town, and crept amongst the trees onto the property. There at some distance, at the manor house, they witnessed the arrival of a well-dressed, very angry gentleman they presumed (and later, confirmed) to be Colby Dowe. The man appeared to yell at his servants, and later an unknown clipboard-toting employee; then a woman, presumably his young wife, he back-handed, sending her away crying—she then re-appeared on the manor balcony, alone. There were a handful of guards patrolling the property, but they did not seem to favor any of the outbuildings in particular, which might have suggested a holding place for the expected hostages. Fearing discovery by the patrols, the Crew retreated from the property after 15 minutes or so.

They returned to town and secured lodgings for the night, while doing what they could to keep out of sight of the local police, having been warned of their persons-of-interest status by Ella. As they settled in, they scoured the planetary network for information on Colby Dowe and the local situation, confirming what they had been told by Arden and his wife; it appeared that Mr. Dowe had been helping the offworld corporation strong-arm local property owners into selling in exchange for a prominent role in whatever was to follow, and was therefore under pressure to convince the Torelles to capitulate, which could be motive enough to kidnap them, if not kill them. Sae went to a local store that sold hunting supplies and returned with a few ghillie-type camouflage capes and some “super-spy” toy-sets that included cheap parabolic microphones. Sae and Buck volunteered to return to the Dowe estate after dark with the new gear and conduct further surveillance, with some rough satellite maps of the town to guide them—the rest of the Crew would listen in on comms at a diner a couple of miles down the road. Toward evening, light rain started moving into the area, heralding a proper storm.

Colby Dowe

Mrs. Dowe

Lii Ezon

Maintaining radio contact, Buck and Sae crept back onto the Dowe estate from different directions and hid themselves in the trees, suffering the rain as they surveilled the manor house. They observed Mr. Dowe, Mrs. Dowe, and a third individual they identified as the liaison for the company, all relaxing with drinks out on the balcony. Buck managed to get the toy microphone working well enough to overhear some of their conversation, including Mr. Dowe telling the liaison not to worry, because the Torelles were “being handled.” Some time later, as the wind and rain picked up, the trio went back inside, and Buck and Sae turned their attention to the guards on patrol, and the outbuildings. As they looked to start searching the outbuildings, one of the guards went to the side of the manor house to interact with someone in the cellar there, another guard by the look of him—Buck and Sae figured this to be the Torelles’ location, and after relaying their intentions to the rest of the Crew, started creeping in closer to converge on the cellar door.

Then Buck stepped in a puddle, and tripped.

Buck lay absolutely still. The guards had heard him fall, and one in particular was sure it was an intruder, but due to Buck’s camouflage, he couldn’t make him out in the darkness. The guards cautiously swept the area, closing in on Buck’s position; figuring he would be caught, Buck let out a groan, as if he were hurt. The nearest guard—the one that outed him—quickly approached and demanded Buck identify himself and his business on the property. Buck pretended to be drunk, indicating he was going hunting, and had stumbled onto the wrong property; the guard pulled him to his feet and brought him to the front door, and called for Mr. Dowe. Colby answered the door, and again Buck was asked to explain himself; when he couldn’t recall the name of the owner of the neighboring property he claimed he had come from, Buck had to think quickly…

He raised his pistol in Colby’s direction, and said, “Now I’ve found what I was looking for.”

Colby kept his cool, and ordered his guards to lower their weapons at Buck’s demand, then politely invited his captor inside to talk the matter over. Buck accepted his host’s offer, and a seat, and a drink (though only for decorum), and eventually even laid his pistol on the end-table, while he explained the situation. He was open and honest, saying that all the Crew wanted was to deliver Old Man Torelle’s remains and be on their way. Colby twitched a bit when Buck mentioned the shooting of his men, but he accepted the “deal,” to allow the Crew to finish their business with the Torelles and be on their way, and stood to shake hands on it. When Buck offered his hand in return, Colby took it, threw his drink in Buck’s face, and went immediately berserk, trying to wrestle him down and strangle the life out of him. Buck quickly got the upper hand, though, and, having suffered enough indignity for one day, was busy snapping Colby’s neck before Mrs. Dowe entered the room brandishing a small pistol and commanded Buck to let him go.

Meanwhile, Sae had himself frozen in place when Buck tripped, but upon hearing the scuffle between him and Mr. Dowe, both on comms and otherwise, he immediately started out of hiding and rounded the corner of the manor, unexpectedly coming face-to-face with one of the guards. Sae disarmed the guard of his gauss rifle, and the two traded punches, until Sae managed to land one and activate his stinger-implant, though it took some moments before the venom kicked in to knock the guard out.

Also just after Buck tripped, at the diner up the road, Haank turned to an adjacent patron and paid him 50 credits to immediately drive the three of them a couple of miles down the road. Once dropped off at the end of Colby’s drive, Haank, Sam and Abe jogged forward toward the manor, some hundred yards distant through the darkness and rain, and were stopped halfway by a pair of guards. Haank waved in a friendly manner, and said they had heard a friend of theirs had gotten lost and wandered onto the property. The guards escorted them to the manor house without a fuss, but were surprised to find Sae standing over the unconscious body of one of their fellows, but too late… they turned to find Haank, Sam and Abe’s sidearms pointed at them. Abe, a bit excited, fired his stunner at one, dropping him immediately to the ground, unconscious. The other surrendered his rifle to Haank. Now joined up with Sae, they and the guards entered the manor, emerging just behind the pistol-wielding Mrs. Dowe.

By this time, Colby had partially recovered himself, and was yelling at his wife to shoot Buck; the Crew calmly encouraged her not to, but to lay down the pistol. After some tense moments, Abe had enough of Colby’s belligerence and shot him; Colby slumped unconscious to the floor, and his wife rushed over to catch him, in tears at the horror of it all.

During this, Sae had circled back outside to the cellar, and as expected, found the Torelles inside, bound to chairs and gagged, clearly having been beaten and otherwise mistreated. Sae informed the others by radio and unbound the hostages, and helped them out of the cellar.

In the house, the corporate liaison entered the room, very cool and calm, and informed the Crew that the damage had been done, and that they should leave immediately—about the time police sirens could be heard approaching the property—and then he left the premises. When asked, the Torelles had said that the local sheriff was on-the-take for the corporation, and not to be trusted, so as the police were approaching the manor, Haank called planetary law enforcement and asked for their assistance, keeping them on comms to listen in. Then, prepared for a confrontation, the Crew met the police outside the manor, unarmed, hands raised in surrender. To their surprise, however, sheriff’s men moved right past the Crew and seized Colby Dowe, hauling him out to their cruiser in cuff-tape. As the Crew gave their official statements regarding the goings on at the plantation, the discovery and rescue of the kidnapped Torelles, they could see the corporate liaison further up the drive, who after a brief look back, got into the sheriff’s personal transport, which then departed. The Crew was informed that they were free to go, but advised to remain in town for a few days until they could sort this mess out. Colby would doubtless be blamed for all of it, and was probably not long for this world.

The Crew took their ease at the local hotel for six more days after the events at Colby’s estate. They met with Anthony Torelle many times during their stay, taking dinner at his house. Old Man Torelle’s case was handed over to his son, who received it with misty eyes, as he had the news of his father’s death. Anthony offered to fill the hold of the Spinward Star with local produce for half the usual rate, and the Crew accepted, Haank seeing to the details—Haank spent many hours discussing business in the region, and developing a professional rapport with Mr. Torelle, who offered his services any time the company returned to Equus. Then, as soon as the local police finally gave their blessing, the Crew got on the next train back to Equus Downport.

As they returned to their ship, they chanced a look at the arrival/departure boards at the concourse, and were surprised to find that the Black Star had been in port during their stay in town, and had departed only four hours ago.

Notes

• Ella’s player was out for this session, as declared last time
• Keeping up with the tradition of late, for this adventure at least, someone (Buck) rolled a Critical Success to overhear the conversation on the balcony
• Buck’s fall was the result of a Critical Failure on his Stealth check, followed by a Critical Success on the guard’s Perception contest. Buck didn’t have Acting (or any alcoholic beverages to enhance his performance), so he was defaulting it—the GM did not say whether or not it had worked. After that was pure emergency improvisation
• Haank has taken Anthony Torelle as a low-level Patron; part of a new strategy for him of business-networking
• The GM described a cut-scene afterward where a large, intimidating fellow, with a blade, entered Colby’s cell, standing between Colby and the “camera”—of course, we presumed the worst, but the GM never said specifically what had occurred

Duty Roster:

Ella Stanbridge (Melissa)
Ertrane “Buck” Buckner (Herodian)
Henri Haank Makruus (Gigermann)
Ibrahim “Abe” Nouri-Abbood (Rigil Kent)
Sam Turner (Winston)
Sae Rraetheg (CommJunkee)

Boat House

…Continued. As the Crew sped across the wetlands on Arden’s air/raft, armed only with their sidearms, they kept a sharp eye to the horizon for trouble, and they spotted another air/raft trailing them a couple of miles back; with his image-enhanced glasses, Haank was able to make out four rifle-armed men, likely the same ones that Arden’s wife shooed away earlier. The Crew arrived at Lighthouse Point and disembarked, and started looking for a way in. Haank took the path leading about a hundred yards further up the point to the lighthouse, intending to climb up and keep lookout for their shadows; he commed back that the door was locked, and Sae quickly followed to pick the lock, before he rejoined the others. The others had slipped into the boathouse under the boat-door, and found the place in a strange state: it was deserted, the doors obviously having been kicked in but replaced (barely), and otherwise looked like the place had been “tossed” but cleaned up afterward; the Torelles’ boat was also still present, and as they searched it also, found it in a similar state. Haank soon alerted the others to his having spotted the yokels a few hundred yards back, their air/raft stashed in the tall-grass out of the way, creeping up on foot through the marsh, rifles at the ready.

Sae left the boat-house and hid himself in ambush nearby. Buck also tried to sneak in a wide circle around the yokels’ approach to steal their air/raft, but Haank alerted him that one of the enemy had heard him pass, and had split off from the group to close with him; Buck briefly braced himself for a fight, but instead decided to walk back to the house, daring his pursuer to act. As such, the local fellow sprang out from the tall grass, rifle pointed at Buck, and demanded his surrender; Buck declared the Crew’s honest intentions, but the man was determined to expel the intruders on his supposed territory. As his would-be captor called out to his fellows, Buck made “finger guns” with both hands, and mimed a trigger-pull—Haank had been taking careful aim with his ETC slug-pistol from 150 yards distance atop the lighthouse, and at that signal, he fired, ruining the man’s gauss rifle. Buck then drew his own pistol and took the now-disarmed yokel into his custody and returned with him to the boathouse. The other three yokels, having heard the gunshot, picked up their pace toward the boathouse.

The Crew still inside the boathouse questioned their prisoner, who, after confirming his unbroken kneecaps were not preventing him from speaking freely, confessed that they were hired by Colby Dowe to discourage the Crew’s curiosity, though he claimed they only meant to scare them off—which was not believed. The interrogation was interrupted by automatic gauss fire on the lighthouse, and Haank’s calm-but-urgent information that a couple of the yokels had broken off and passed up the boathouse. With Sae also reporting another was sneaking around to the boathouse door, Buck forced their prisoner to call out to his fellows to encourage them to abandon their mission—the one near the door responded that they would not. Sae came out of hiding and shot the one at the door dead with his magnum, and continued on to the lighthouse, where he shot another as he entered the lighthouse—the third was already inside, making his way up the stairs to Haank. In the boathouse, the prisoner took advantage of the momentary ruckus to flee to the water, but Buck gunned him down without hesitation, to Ella’s later irritation; meanwhile, Sam climbed atop the boat and hotwired it, revved the engines, and beckoned the others to board. The last of the yokels traded quips with Haank from either side of the partition below the lighthouse windows, shooting out the glass to rain shards down on Haank; he brashly popped up with his rifle over the low wall, but Haank reacted more quickly, and put three rounds through the yokel’s chest, killing him. Sam was just easing the boat out of the dock when the all-clear was called.

No longer in immediate danger, the Crew moved on to search the residence adjoining the boathouse, and again, found it ransacked-but-cleaned-up; however, Abe noticed some small spots of dried blood, which according to his analysis, were perhaps a couple of weeks old—not enough there to indicate a murder, but perhaps a struggle. They all agreed that, most likely, the Torelles had been kidnapped by this Colby Dowe. As the Crew had already gone beyond the call of duty in their investigation, they did briefly discuss the idea of leaving the matter undone. Instead they decided that the surviving gunman should be taken to the town’s hospital—Ella and Abe would accompany the wounded in Arden’s air/raft, and Arden would safely part ways with the Crew there—while the rest would make their way on foot to Colby’s estate to spy him out, and see if there might be sign of the Torelles there.

Colby Dowe

At the town hospital, the wounded man was seen to by the available physicians, who, as expected, reported the shooting-injury to the local police. Ella took Abe aside and told him to leave her and rejoin the others before the police arrived; he attempted to refuse, but Ella would have none of it. The sheriff arrived some minutes later and took Ella and Arden back to the station to record their official statements; they told the truth, though perhaps not all of it. While taking Ella’s statement, the sheriff was interrupted by a well-dressed and exceptionally angry man, complaining loudly about one of his men who wound up in the hospital, while three others were missing—the sheriff called him Mr. Dowe, and was visibly cowed by him. Some time later, Arden was released, as was Ella, though her Imperial identification card was taken; she was instructed not to leave town until the matter of the shooting had been resolved, and to gather up the rest of her crew as well. As Ella left the station to go about her business in town, unsurprisingly, she spotted one of the deputies attempting to look like he wasn’t following her. To be continued…

Notes

• There were some exceptional rolls to spot things early on, including a Critical Success by Haank to get the details on the air/raft that was following them
• There was a bit of map-related confusion regarding the position of the lighthouse in relation to the boathouse; the players were under the impression it was a handful of yards away, but when the shooting started, it turned out to be more like 100—the GM did say so, we just didn’t quite register it
• The finger-guns, in our heads, at least—turned out fairly similar in the end 😛
• Sae’s ETC Magnum Pistol was shown to be the monster it truly was here; he took one of the men down to -5×HT in one shot to the Vitals
• Ella’s player knew she was going to be absent for the next session, so she intentionally isolated herself from the others, to make it a little easier next time

Duty Roster:

Ella Stanbridge (Melissa)
Ertrane “Buck” Buckner (Herodian)
Henri Haank Makruus (Gigermann)
Ibrahim “Abe” Nouri-Abbood (Rigil Kent)
Sam Turner (Winston)
Sae Rraetheg (CommJunkee)

Last Request

Old Man Torelle

As the Crew put the Spinward Star through her final pre-flight checks, Haank heard a rapping on the port-side airlock door, and checked the viewport for the source of the sound. He opened the airlock door for the lone old man outside it, and asked his business. The old man introduced himself as Torelle, and was going door-to-door looking for passage to Equus. Haank cleared the late notice with Captain Stanbridge and accepted the not-quite-full amount the old man was able to pay—he was uncomfortable with low-berth travel—and sent Sae to assist the old man with his luggage. The friendly old man chattered away with Sae as they went, telling stories of days gone by, and upon their return, Abe took him to his stateroom and got him settled in. The old man showed Abe a medium-sized case and asked if they had somewhere it could be secured; Abe offered to lock it in the ship’s locker for the trip, and the old man agreed—he said he was returning after many decades to Equus to give the contents to his estranged son there.

With no further surprises, the ship put out to the Black once more, and some hours later, entered jumpspace for Equus. That evening, the old man insisted on cooking dinner for the gracious Crew; he showed a gift for making more with less—the meal was excellent—and he accompanied the meal with a bottle of very old, very fine wine, from Terra herself, and more entertaining stories of his many travels. On the following morning, Abe went to wake Torelle for breakfast, but there was no answer; when he didn’t respond for lunch either, the stateroom was unlocked, and they sadly found that the old man had passed away in his sleep—Abe determined his death to be of “natural causes.” Beside him, they found an old undelivered letter, begging forgiveness of his son for the grievances that had resulted in their separation—which included his son Anthony’s address on Equus. The death was logged, and the body placed in low-berth stasis, to be delivered to his next-of-kin on arrival at port.

The Spinward Star exited jumpspace and entered Equus’ orbital traffic, and was directed to its downport, a bubble of glass and steel in the middle of an ocean that covered most of the planet’s surface. Once landed and settled in, and fees paid, the Crew immediately set about researching the possible comings and goings of the Black Star; their search of public records revealed little, so Buck resorted to less-reputable means, and hacked into the SPA network—his digging led him to a local police blotter detailing a violent incident between Adric Mason and one of his crew, a woman he had recently hired, with whom, according to her official statement, he would not willingly part ways. In the meantime, the rest of the Crew attempted to locate and contact Anthony Torelle, with no real success save to confirm the address on the old man’s letter, a well-to-do plantation in a small farming town of around a thousand souls in one of the many swamplands on the surface. After twenty-four Imperial-standard hours with no response, the Crew decided to take to the field, and took a scenic underwater train to this town to see if they could catch him up in person. They took the old man’s case along, just in…case; they were only lightly armed, not expecting a fuss.

In town, the Crew started asking around after Anthony Torelle, but everyone they spoke to seemed to shrink away at the mention of him, denying any knowledge of a man by that name. They went to the local constabulary’s office to inquire after him there; the sheriff claimed ignorance of the Torelles’ whereabouts, though at the mention of important items to be delivered, offered to take those things and hold them on the Torelles’ behalf, should they turn up. The Crew weren’t buying his story. They had about four hours before the last train back to the downport arrived in town, so they wandered around town “seeing the sights” while they searched the local network for more information—Anthony had a long-time wife, no children, and was a pillar of the local community. His parents were both dead, his mother more recently, and the Crew found her memorial in the square, with flowers no more than a week or two old—someone had been here.

The Crew decided to “wander” down the road a mile or two to the Torelles’ estate, and peeked through the windows, to find it vacant—the state of the house suggested it was lived-in, but the piled-up hardcopy mail indicated there had been no one home for a couple of weeks. The Crew noticed a neighbor down the road had been observing them, and started toward the property to see if they might be willing to shed some light on the Torelles’ whereabouts, when an open-bed air/raft sped down the road toward them, full of armed yokels, intercepting them at the end of the neighbors’ drive. The yokels disembarked, brandishing their weapons, and demanded the Crew leave, “or else,” but the little-old-lady neighbor emerged from her home, brandishing her own gauss shotgun, and scolded them, shooing them away. Once the yokels had left, the lady invited the Crew into her home, where they asked her what all this was about over tea. She revealed the little that she had seen, saying that an offworld mega-corporation had been buying out all the landowners in town for some unknown purpose, and the Torelles’ had refused to sell out to them, then two weeks ago, they disappeared; knowing much of the town was in the corporations’ pocket, likely including the sheriff, she had no one to turn to for help. The Crew asked if the Torelles’ owned any other properties in the area they might retreat to and hide out, and she mentioned they had a boat-house out on the lighthouse point; her husband, Arden, offered to take them to it, took up his gauss rifle, and showed them to the garage, where his air/raft waited. To be continued…

Notes

• The GM never described what was in the old man’s case; we imagined when he showed it to Abe, it went something like this
• Buck has been settling in, more and more, as the group’s designated h4xx0r; but making use of that presents a problem for Haank, who has the Honesty Disadvantage—he can’t legitimately ask for it, or tolerate it if he knows it’s going on, so the hacking has to be done without his knowledge
• It was at this point that the players started to realize that the information we were finding regarding the activities of the Black Star isn’t exactly “linear”; we had to start organizing our notes, which took a bit of time to sort out
• Sae’s player was asked to describe the underwater train ride; he did a really nice improvisation, including annoying kids and chatty old ladies—unfortunately it wasn’t recorded, so I can’t reproduce it here
• The GM originally only mentioned a boat-house, but the players immediately associated the situation with a Scooby Doo episode, including the typical creepy lighthouse, and the GM just rolled with it
• The GM included a stinger at the end of the session, a cutscene where, as the crew sped across the wetlands in Arden’s air/raft, another air/raft was seen following them unseen at a distance

Duty Roster:

Ella Stanbridge (Melissa)
Ertrane “Buck” Buckner (Herodian)
Henri Haank Makruus (Gigermann)
Ibrahim “Abe” Nouri-Abbood (Rigil Kent)
Sam Turner (Winston)
Sae Rraetheg (CommJunkee)

Risk Averse

After a brief conference amongst the Crew, Haank returned to the crew lounge to inform the middleman that they would rather not take the risk of delivering the surplus military weapons in person to the planet’s surface, owing to its lawless and hostile reputation, but they would be willing to sell directly to the middleman at an attractive discount. The middleman agreed, and once payment had cleared, the goods were offloaded. The hold of the Spinward Star was empty once again. Haank checked out the local network notice-boards looking for freight and passengers; there would be little-to-none headed for the next stop Rimward on the Mains, Vreibefger, or the second, La’Belle, but the third, Equus, had some potential. He found around 25 tons in total available for Equus, and went to the company offices to see to the details, but found a handful of ship-captains dealing for the available lots. One captain, seeming particularly desperate, was bidding entirely too low for the whole thing, and Haank decided it wasn’t worth the argument—they had already made money selling the surplus, though leaving with an empty hold felt somehow wrong. However, they did sign up the single low-passage customer headed for Equus; he paid up front, and Abe got him situated into cryo-stasis for the trip. Once the ship was refueled, they departed, planning to skip Vreibefger entirely for La’Belle, hoping to catch up the Black Star a little in the process.

The trip to La’Belle was uneventful. The Crew took advantage of the empty hold to do some more Judo training, as Haank was still trying to sort out how he should have handled himself in the bar-fight with the Vargr alpha. They exited jumpspace and entered orbit around La’Belle V, which had a total population of less than 100, a snowball not unlike Kegena, where this crew’s misadventures began. The Spinward Star berthed at the highport, and the Crew took some shore-leave to stretch their legs a bit. Haank wanted to go check out the local tourist attraction, some ruins left behind by a primitive civilization, to exercise his new archaeology skills, and the rest of the Crew decided to tag along, having little else in mind to do here; Sae and Jones would remain behind with the ship. After calling ahead, they took the next shuttle bound for the site. The surface of the planet was cold enough that the Crew would need wear their space suits, and as local ordinances weren’t so restrictive as their last stop, they brought along sidearms.

Prof. Kendrick Malik

At the site, they met Professor Kendrick Malik, an older human who had been studying the ruins here for some years, who took them on a grand tour of the ancient colony and chattered away about what he had been able to deduce, happy for the company and the interest. It was an impressive site, well-preserved despite the harsh environment of ice and snow. Abe took a particular interest in some local plant life, which had developed a sort of natural anti-freeze capability; he took some samples, hoping to research them later. Afterward, Professor Malik took great interest in the Crew’s account of their experience at Kegena, with the Aslan colony they stumbled upon (though some obvious, unpleasant details were left out); the NDA they all signed prevented them from discussing the Ancients tower as well, to their internalized disappointment.

As they were finally ready to go back to the station, and called back for the shuttle to pick them up, the Crew was informed that due to some rough weather coming in, they would have to wait out the night there—not an unusual occurrence. The Professor’s shelter was too small to fit the lot of them, so they had to make do with their survival skills, which served them well enough, and they passed the night, cold and uncomfortable, but otherwise unmolested. Some time after sunup, Haank woke to discover a very large predatory creature, which the Professor had described as common in these parts, having taken shelter in the same hollow between crags as the Crew. He quietly fell back to his sheltered position and contacted the others via text-only on his comm, informing them of the intruder, and they all crept up as they dared. It stirred from time to time at whatever noise the Crew was unable to prevent, but was otherwise disinterested in leaving the area. The Crew wasn’t really interested in killing the beast unnecessarily, but they would be unable to move out until they could get it to leave. Haank texted Abe to ring his comm in 30 seconds, set his comm to a full-volume audible ring, and pitched it over the creature some distance away; when it rang, the beast excitedly ran over to it, pawing and biting at it, so long as it made noise, but still would not leave the area. The Professor’s only weapon, a gauss rifle, was handed to Buck, and he prepared to bring the creature down, but they decided instead to call for the shuttle. As directed, the shuttle flew in close and buzzed the creature until it ran away, and then landed to pick up the “survivors”; Haank’s comm would not survive the ordeal, though—it would have to be replaced.

Back at the highport, the Crew set about researching the comings and goings of the Black Star, and found that it had been in port 12 months prior (that is, 4 months before Valerie Vaskor went missing). The incident was odd, as no one left the ship while it was in port here, and though it advertised for passengers headed Rimward, it would accept low-passage only. There were no other reports of its presence in the system, though it would have to have passed through at least twice more—possibly stopped at a gas giant to refuel and moved on. Having found all they expected to here, the ship was readied for departure, outbound for Equus.

Notes

• The search for Valerie Vaskor began here
• The incident with the ice-creature mirrored the first combat encounter of this campaign, on Kegena, with another oversized, predatory ice-creature—that one was shot dead
• At this point in the pursuit of Valerie Vaskor, we’re starting to run into reports of the Black Star’s whereabouts that aren’t matching up to our more-linear expectations, and decided we should get a little more organized, so we started a “clues” document to keep track of it. It’s beginning to look like chasing it down won’t be so simple
• The GM has been pushing us to start taking on some speculative freight; we’ve been making money here and there, enough to cover expenses, and haven’t really given it much thought, though it is a staple of Traveller campaigns—we’ll probably pay it a bit more attention in the future

Duty Roster:

Ella Stanbridge (Melissa)
Ertrane “Buck” Buckner (Herodian)
Henri Haank Makruus (Gigermann)
Ibrahim “Abe” Nouri-Abbood (Rigil Kent)
Sam Turner (Winston)
Sae Rraetheg (CommJunkee)

Restricted Space

In the evening of the day the Crew settled the matter with the outlaws at the abandoned mine, they met at dinner with Elijah Patterson to discuss the Black Star and Valerie Vaskor, and what he might have uncovered regarding their comings and goings in the month-or-so they visited here. He explained that the Black Star had been undergoing repairs requiring parts that had to be shipped in, grounding them for an extended period waiting for them to arrive. Afterward, they continued on rimward, their next declared destination, Tureded. Before leaving, they took on a freight consignment on behalf of a local businessman—Elijah provided contact information at the Crew’s request.

On the following day, as Buck drove Abe to the hospital for his day’s volunteer-work, they stopped first at the aforementioned businessman’s residence, and were welcomed. The man had a mining business that had dried up here, and had been in the process of relocating his operation to Tureded, piece by piece, over the last year. He met with Captain Adric Mason at dinner seven months ago to agree on terms of shipment of some mining machinery to Tureded for him. His recollection was that the captain was an odd fellow, never taking off his gloves, it seemed, for fear of local germs or whatnot; and he had a wandering eye, taking a lascivious interest in the waitress. The businessman had 28 tons of gear remaining to be shipped still, and Buck and Abe suggested that the Spinward Star might take it; he gladly agreed to meet with Ella, and sent a gift of a bottle of good wine with them.

That evening, Ella met at dinner with the businessman, along with Haank to work out the details; they all agreed to the standard rate, and shook hands on it. The next day, the freight was loaded aboard the Spinward Star, and payment was made up-front. Meanwhile, the Crew managed to find a buyer for most of their remaining load of surplus military gear salvaged from the Gileden system—mostly the vehicles and parts—for a healthy sum, turning what should have been a loss into a quite profitable stop.

As he had promised when they arrived, Haank took Elijah’s granddaughter, Kaylii, on a comprehensive tour of the ship, answering her many knowledgeable questions. She was disappointed she couldn’t leave with them, but she produced a small soapstone carving of herself, carved by her grandfather, and asked that it be taken aboard, so she could travel with them in spirit; Haank agreed without hesitation, and helped Kaylii hang the carving on the bridge with a nice view through the windscreen. Loaded, fueled, and paid, the Spinward Star took to the black once again, bound for Tureded.

Six days in jumpspace passed without incident, and the ship exited jumpspace, and entered the busy, tightly-controlled traffic pattern approaching the Tureded highport. Sam confidently refused a port-guide and docked manually; he had to jink the ship to avoid some work-craft outside the assigned berth, and scraped the ship against the entry, doing no real damage but to his own pride—though the port authority rep made a bit of obligatory fuss over the mishap. The cargo was then unloaded via the station’s automated handlers—as locally mandated. On completion, Haank took some pictures of the view of the berth with Kaylii’s carving, and planned to do so everywhere they went, sending the pics back to her on Pirema as he found opportunity. Local law aboard the station was as restrictive as orbital control, so shore-leave here would be unarmed and unarmored. Despite the vulnerability, most of the crew went ashore, separating to do whatever business they had in mind.

• Abe wandered the station’s halls, exploring. In a crowded market area, he noticed his pocket had been picked, and confronted the thief, politely demanding the return of his property. The thief, of a species Abe had not before encountered, returned Abe’s property without a fuss and cautioned him to be more wary. Intrigued, Abe offered to buy the thief dinner at a place of his choosing; the thief agreed, choosing an establishment with “outdoor” seating. Over the meal, Abe questioned the thief regarding his species: he was a Sparrial, called Rolemnarla, and he answered freely, with strangely accented Galanglic, regarding his people and their culture. Something caught the Sparrial’s attention, and he “spoke into Abe’s mind”; to Abe’s shock, he was able to respond likewise, and immediately recalled his experience aboard the Unconquerable, and his strange reaction to being psychically scanned by an awakening Zhodani officer. Rolemnarla offered to help Abe develop this ability, but had to cut their conversation short, and bolted from the restaurant. Some moments later, as Abe was paying for the meal, a couple of officious-looking “government agents” arrived at the entrance, looking for someone—Abe didn’t remain to find out who or what they might have been searching for, but returned to the ship.
• Ella also went exploring the station, and eventually found herself at a salon, getting her hair cut and styled, and engaging in small talk with the four-armed female humanoid stylist. During the process, Ella brought up Valerie Vaskor, showing the stylist her picture—she recognized the girl, having also cut her hair when she visited the station some months ago.
• Buck made a few calls and hit the streets, looking for a potential buyer for the remainder of their salvaged weapons; Tureded Prime, outside the Imperial starport, was a lawless, dangerous backwater, and the locals would surely have a use for some surplus military gear. He worked his way through the less-scrupulous areas of the station and found such a person, and they arranged to meet at the ship later to inspect the cargo.

Haank, Sam and Sae found a mostly-automated, middle-class pub, with available wi-fi connection, and settled into a corner-booth with some drinks. Thereat, Sae found himself being bullied by an alpha Vargr and his fellows, establishing dominance over “their territory”—Sae stood his ground, but took a hard punch that knocked him back, injuring his face and his resolve. The alpha downed Sae’s drink and smugly returned to his table. As Haank promised to back his play, Sae threw the empty glass at the alpha. Haank walked calmly to the other table and explained that a drink was owed his friend; the alpha stood, and the two glowered at each other. Haank reached down and grabbed the alpha’s drink; the alpha grabbed Haank’s hand. As Sam and Sae positioned themselves in opposition to the other Vargr at the table, Haank took the glass in his free hand and drank from it, maintaining eye contact with his opponent—and the fight was on. In moments, two of the Vargr had been wrestled to the ground, and Haank had taken a hard hit to the jaw after struggling to reverse the alpha’s hold, just before the alpha collapsed into an unconscious heap, having been flanked by Sae and injected with a knockout drug via hidden stinger implant. With their leader down, the remaining pack ceased fighting, and carried their unconscious fellow out of the pub. The Crew paid their bills and left shortly thereafter, to return to the ship and see to their injuries.

Some hours later, everyone had returned to the ship. Abe tended the bar-fight injuries, and chastised the participants, but made no mention of his encounter with Rolemnarla. Everyone made inevitable comment regarding the Captain’s new hairdo. Later, on schedule, Buck’s middleman arrived at the berth, and was allowed to inspect the surplus military goods, under Haank’s supervision. Satisfied with the condition of the cargo and its price, the middleman revealed the catch: it would need to be delivered dirtside—at high risk of being swindled, hijacked, or worse.

Notes

• The search for Valerie Vaskor began here
• Commerce between Pirema and Tureded, both low-population backwaters, was virtually nil. But between the business being moved and a lucky roll (a “3” on Haank’s part) finding a buyer for the surplus, the trip turned a tidy profit in spite of it. Once again, that “consolation prize” we were left with after our misadventure aboard the Unconquerable saved us
• Sam’s piloting skill is high enough that he can’t fail but for a crit. How many times can he roll a crit fail on a Piloting check? At least once more. Somehow, the shit-hot pilot always looks like a noob 😛
• This session followed the release of GURPS Aliens: Sparrials, so the appearance of a Sparrial in the campaign was no surprise, but Abe’s player had been suggesting that his character needed a proper “Yoda” to unlock his latent psi abilities to the point he could excuse improving them—and violá!
• There was a fair bit of time wasted posting image-suggestions of Ella’s new haircut, all variations on a “mohawk” theme
• Haank is a fairly competent melée fighter, and had a pretty solid plan for schooling the alpha Vargr, but the dice absolutely abandoned him—could barely roll less than 14-15 the whole time; pretty much everything he tried failed. After going back to the ship, he ended up studying the video of the confrontation over and over trying to figure out where it all went wrong
• When the GM explained that the Crew would have to go to the surface to deliver the weapon-cargo, where he had already described as the “Wild West,” with people getting robbed/hijacked all the time, he referenced “Patience/Whitefall” (which portends a deal-gone-wrong to anyone who has watched Firefly)—we’ll be expecting trouble

Duty Roster:

Ella Stanbridge (Melissa)
Ertrane “Buck” Buckner (Herodian)
Henri Haank Makruus (Gigermann)
Ibrahim “Abe” Nouri-Abbood (Rigil Kent)
Sam Turner (Winston)
Sae Rraetheg (CommJunkee)

Miner Infraction

Ella looked over the map of the mine tunnels provided by Ducote, and leveraging her tactical experience, decided which approach the Crew should take when assaulting the outlaw’s enclave within. They discussed up-armoring themselves, but the idea of riot shields or similar portable cover was eventually abandoned as too bulky. They discussed the use of drones to scout ahead, and Ducote offered the use of a microbot swarm canister and associated gear—normally used for locating trapped miners. Not wishing to drag out the affair any further or allow the enemy any more time to dig in, the Crew returned to the Spinward Star to depart.

The ship was landed some distance away, out of sight of the tunnel entrance they intended to use, and the Crew approached on foot. The door was shut, locked down and stuck fast by years of wear and neglect. Buck brought out his tool kit and forced the gate open, though he damaged the mechanism in the process, such that he had to cut through.

As Buck worked on the door, the canister was opened, releasing the hundred or so microbots, which, as directed, squeezed through the tiniest openings and quickly spread throughout the mine complex, reporting sensor returns to Abe via the control computer, which was also configured to feed positional data to Haank’s TacNet software. The microbots indicated 12-15 humanoids were within the complex in various defensive locations around a central hub—presumably their headquarters. As the microbots continued their search, Abe observed that some of them were disappearing, one by one, as it turned out, being smashed by the outlaws—they knew the assault was under way. Once the mine entrance had been forced, the Crew approached the elevator leading down into the tunnels with some concern, as its transit would probably not go unnoticed by the occupants. There was some discussion of a more stealthy option, bypassing the elevator and climbing down, but Ella didn’t trust their luck with a potential hundred-foot drop, and they were a reasonable distance from the hub, so they decided to risk the elevator; she also wouldn’t allow the team to be split up to scout ahead, lest the scouts be caught too far from help. At the bottom, Buck threw the switch to turn the lights on—the microbots sensors suggested the guards were wearing helmets, which meant they probably had some kind of night vision, so darkness wouldn’t be to either side’s advantage. The Crew crept forward down the mine tunnels, using the map to help keep their bearings, while Abe kept an eye on the microbots’ display.

Keeping the group together, they approached a tunnel-corner around which they expected a couple of sentries. Haank peeked his gauss rifle around the corner to spot the enemy on his scope’s video feed, while Sae maneuvered into position to follow him up, but the weapon was spotted by the sentries, who called out an alarm and assumed defensive positions at the other end of the rough-cut hallway. One of the sentries peeked out from cover, and Haank fired a memory-baton shotgun round into his faceplate, knocking him to the ground. The Crew immediately pressed forward, around the corner. Abe tossed a B-cell ahead between the sentries and called, “Frag out!,” hoping to trick them into running away. The sentries were joined by two more from further in, and they all sprayed ineffective gauss fire in the Crew’s general direction, ricocheting off the rock walls, but leaving the Crew untouched. Sae bounded forward of the rest of the group and planted a memory-baton double-tap in the second sentry’s sternum before bearing left at the “T” to pursue a third to cover. Buck trailed close behind Sae and shot down the second. Haank took the right-hand tunnel to pursue the fourth, who was fleeing back the way he came. Seeing the severely injured sentry-two, Abe immediately sprang forward to render medical aid; Ella ordered the Crew to remain in place to cover Abe, as he worked frantically to save the fallen enemy’s life, forcing his fellow sentry-one (who wasn’t able to flee) to help. Sae exchanged fire with sentry-three, dropping him with his UAW, and covered Sam as he slipped forward to drag the now-unconscious enemy back to the medic—as he did, Sam spotted a fifth fighter around the next corner, who hesitated to shoot. To the right, Haank, Buck and Ella engaged the fourth man as he popped in and out around a far corner, eventually resorting to poking his rifle around the corner to spray gauss fire blindly down the tunnel; Buck shot through the rifle and the hand that wielded it. To the left, Sae pursued the new fifth man, who fled before him; he loosed a memory-baton shotgun round into the back of the fleeing enemy’s leg, shattering his femur.

Haank and Buck attempted to convince the wounded sentry-four to surrender, but he stubbornly refused, having slumped seated to the floor. From a chamber beyond him, a young woman, not wearing armor or environment suit, rounded the corner with empty hands raised, saying that one of them needed medical help, before sentry-four angrily pulled her back. As the Crew continued to attempt to talk the sentry down, the girl reappeared and got free of him, and cautiously approached the Crew; Haank waved her forward and handed her off to Ella, who took her back to Abe. She explained that Amelio had been wounded nearly to death in the elevator (Buck’s doing); he had been dragged out and bandaged as well as they could, but his condition continued to worsen beyond their meagre ability to treat him. Abe was focused on his desperate attempt to repair sentry-two’s torn artery, and told the girl that Amelio would have to be brought to him. Buck and Haank pressed forward down the hall and, with no fight left in him, sentry-four finally surrendered where he sat. There were a dozen others in the chamber beyond, of various ages and armament, including the bedridden Amelio; after laying down their arms, Haank ordered a couple of them to take up Amelio’s bed and carry him back down the hall to Abe. Meanwhile, a call was placed back to Ifogi, to fetch medical personnel to the mine to help; Sam was tasked to go take the Spinward Star back and pick them up, along with Ducote and whatever law-enforcement officers he saw fit to bring along. Sam got a bit turned around in the mine tunnels, and ended up back where he started before being directed out properly.

Abe was still working on the sentry when Amelio flatlined; Buck started emergency resuscitation procedures, aided by Haank, and managed to bring him back, just in time for Abe to finish closing up the other one, and switch patients.

Shortly thereafter, Ducote and his people arrived to take custody of the surrendered outlaws. After the wounded had been stabilized enough to move, they were all taken aboard the ship and flown back to Ifogi to be locked up. At town, Abe followed the doctor and his patients into the hospital facility and continued to help out; he was later asked if he could stay on for a while, as they were a bit short-handed at the moment, and he agreed to do so, with the captain’s permission granted. The rest would take the next couple of days to sort out where and how their quarry, Valerie Vaskor, had gone.

Notes

• Buck’s player rolled a critical failure opening the door; the GM decided it would just take longer—we have no idea whether or not it had any special effect on the situation
• Sae showed his Overconfidence by splitting off from the group more than once, earning some annoyed looks from Ella
• In the last session, Buck sprayed automatic fire down the elevator shaft after the escaping Amelio; when the elevator returned, there was blood all over, but no Amelio, presumed to have been dragged out by his comrades
• When Sam decided to head back to the ship, solo, the GM asked for an IQ roll to navigate the tunnels, and he rolled a “17”
• Amazingly enough, none of the outlaws were killed in this entire affair, though several would spend a comparatively-long time in the hospital

Duty Roster:

Ella Stanbridge (Melissa)
Ertrane “Buck” Buckner (Herodian)
Henri Haank Makruus (Gigermann)
Ibrahim “Abe” Nouri-Abbood (Rigil Kent)
Sam Turner (Winston)
Sae Rraetheg (CommJunkee)

Lost Boys

Continued… The leader of the outlaws reacted to Sae’s hostile realignment and dropped his PA mike, and briefly ducked out of sight, returning with a ready gauss rifle to spray automatic fire down upon the Crew, before retreating again. Haank was wounded in the process, but stood his ground as his suit’s trauma-maintenance programming kicked in to stop the bleeding. Sam bolted for the ventral hatch of the Spinward Star and made for the cockpit. The gauss rifle of the second man, the sniper that had crept up behind the Crew, was destroyed by a long burst of gauss fire from Abe, some of which penetrated the rifle and struck the sniper, wounding him badly; Abe continued to press his target until he crawled out of sight. Sae engaged the third man, which Haank had spotted earlier at the corner of the main building, and after a few exchanges of ineffective fire, flanking, struck him squarely in the chest with a double-tap from his underbarrel gauss shotgun’s memory-baton rounds, cracking ribs and sending him flying back. Meanwhile, Ella, Buck and Haank rushed forward to the main building’s ground-level entrance; Buck was in first, and spotted the outlaw leader escaping in the open-sided industrial elevator down into the mine, and sprayed gauss fire down the shaft after him. No others were encountered, and the fight was over. They recalled the elevator, which they found empty upon its return, save for a great deal of blood, smeared toward the exit, suggesting the leader had been dragged out. The sniper was found unconscious from his wounds, having crawled a short distance away, and Abe immediately rendered aid, removing the man’s environment suit to patch up his wounds before taking him aboard the ship—he would survive the day, though he would need further hospitalization and treatment for mild radiation exposure.

The corner-man was also brought aboard the ship, hurting but alive. Sae, growling menacingly, backed up Haank as he questioned the man, threatening to toss him out of the airlock without his environment suit if he didn’t cooperate. The corner-man confessed that there were around a dozen more in the mine, well armed and prepared for an assault. He demonstrated great loyalty to his fellows and his leader, and unrepentantly insisted they would never stop raiding the colony. Satisfied they had gotten what information they could from him, both prisoners were remanded to low-berth pods, to be delivered to the colony’s authorities, where they might be more properly interrogated.

Before leaving the mine to return to Ifogi, the Crew gathered up the outlaws’ nearby vehicles—all of them—and drove them back to the colony, escorted by the Spinward Star overhead. If the outlaws were to exact some sort of revenge, they would have to walk.

The ship landed just outside the city of Ifogi, and was met by the colony’s President/Mayor/Minister of Defense/General of the Army/Chief of Police/Lead Detective, Chas Ducote, and some of his men. The vehicles were secured, and the prisoners awakened from stasis. Abe followed the sniper as he was carried on a litter to the hospital facility, gave his report to the doctor there, and left him in their custody, under armed guard. Haank debriefed Ducote on what had occurred, showing him recorded video from his HUD-glasses of the encounter. With help from the colony database, Ducote was able to identify the outlaws in the video: one was an off-worlder; another a third-generation colonist with family still in residence. The leader was also identified as a third-generation colonist, named Amelio, a miner and explosives specialist, a charismatic but ill-tempered fellow that inspired loyalty amongst his followers, with a rap sheet that included numerous violent episodes.

With the mine complex the outlaws were using as a headquarters now identified, Ducote was able to get some maps of the tunnels, such as they were before they had been abandoned—the corner-man had claimed the Crew would never be able to navigate the maze below. The outlaws had been raiding for around six months, and the supplies they had taken were accounted for; they raided every couple of weeks or so, and would not likely last long without making another run—but the Crew didn’t want to take the time away from their search for Valerie Vaskor to wait out the outlaws’ supply. Haank recommended the outlaws be somehow drawn out of the tunnels, not fight them on their very-defensible home ground. Not knowing what innocents might be down there, they were reluctant to pump gas into the mine’s exposed life-support processor, though they were considering shutting it off or disabling it, to force the outlaws to emerge to repair it, where they could be ambushed. After some discussion, though, the Crew decided they would go into the mine after them—with proper caution and preparation, they could bypass, or at least, survive the inevitable boobytraps, expecting that in a direct confrontation, the outlaws’ morale would quickly break, especially if their leader could be taken down.

Notes

• The search for Valerie Vaskor began here
• The mercenary contract specified that lethal force was not to be used except in self-defense, which meant the Crew wouldn’t engage until actually attacked—though Sae nearly broke contract, he kept it under control. Haank’s character added an SOP Perk to always record video of hostile encounters, for CYA purposes—we wanted solid evidence we had not broken the terms of our contract. As it stands, we haven’t killed anyone yet, though it looks pretty bad for the leader from our current perspective
• The outlaws were wearing un-armored environment suits, so they weren’t going to take much punishment; just “glass cannons” here
• Abe ended up being the combat-monster in this fight, to his surprise—as a self-defense-only pacifist, and mostly-new to the use of lethal weaponry. He was looking to disable the enemy’s weapon, and succeeded, but gauss rifles aren’t good cover
• Though we did eventually agree that we would be going into the tunnels next session, we haven’t quite decided how we’re going to get around the inevitable explosive boobytraps yet. Our preparations may include riot-shields, and maybe scout-drones, if we can scrape up that sort of thing