Olympus RPG Blog

Unconquerable, Part I

Now that the entire crew was inside the massive, derelict, Zhodani vessel, they started to look around their immediate environs. There were no lights, and no gravity. There was atmosphere; Buck tested it, and determined it was breathable—some of the Crew removed their helmet, revealing it to also be very cold. There was minimal power, enough to provide minimal life-support. They went straight for the nearest terminal to try to get a layout of the place. To no ones’ surprise, it used the Zhodani language, so it would be up to Haank, the only one among the Crew who could speak or read it, to find what they needed. And find it he did—a basic overview, at least—though it took a while for him to acclimate to the foreign operating system. In order to find out what the ship’s mission was here, they were looking for the bridge or auxiliary; they identified the bridge, and the directions they would need to take. Haank snapped a photo of the map, in case they couldn’t pull it up later.

They navigated to the elevator cluster they intended to use, which wasn’t terribly far away. Suddenly, the lights and gravity turned on. A disembodied female voice demanded, multiple times, in Zhodani, that they identify and authenticate themselves—Haank translated—but they had no proper answer; Haank answered “Rescue” to no apparent avail. They reached the elevator cluster, and as the elevator doors opened, to their surprise, they were met by an android-type security robot; the robot repeated the voice’s demands. As the Crew was unable to come up with a satisfactory reply, the robot then demanded the intruders surrender themselves; predictably, the Crew refused. It then produced a gauss pistol from a leg-holster and attacked with an unworldly speed and grace that made it difficult for anyone to hit it, as the Crew immediately opened fire, having no remaining alternative. Haank drew his pistol, but in his haste, it slipped out of his hands; he transitioned to the gauss rifle instead. Abe circled to the side of the cluster, for cover, having naught but a stunner to his defense; he kept an eye to ensure they weren’t flanked by another. Smith was hit, but not badly wounded. The robot was hit numerous times, but gauss weapons, as most of the Crew were armed with, aren’t the best suited for destroying machines. Haank circled to the other side of the cluster, and managed to get outside the robot’s field-of-vision; he was able to damage it enough to slow it down, such that the rest could finish the job.

The Crew were convinced this would not be the last of it, so they got moving immediately, into the elevator. It ascended through many decks to the top of the ship; as it passed through the main hangar deck, they could see through the viewports many formations of what appeared to be heavily-armed robotic combat-troops, along with space-fighters in their launch tubes. The elevator eventually stopped at its limit of the sub-bridge deck, and the Crew would have to board another elevator to get to the actual bridge. They left the elevator, and found a control station nearby, so Haank went back to work trying to find details about the ship, with Buck providing some guidance through his knowledge of computer security (the origin of which, he cared not to explain); again, the foreign operating system proved tricky to master. The others took up defensive positions around the area.

Without warning, a holographic image of a human(oid) female appeared in the hallway near the Crew, and again, in Zhodani, demanded the intruders identify and authenticate themselves. Haank tried “Emergency”; ineffective again, but nobody else could think of anything. The image declared that security was being dispatched to their location. Buck quickly left the control station and put an ear to the elevator doors—something was coming up—so he grabbed his tools and set about hastily disabling the doors before anything could emerge; he succeeded, mere seconds before the elevator and its occupants reached the sub-level. Buck continued to disable the other elevators in the cluster, as they were also activating. The image then declared that they had five minutes to identify and authenticate before anti-piracy measures would be implemented—Haank still translating; in a moment of clarity, Haank asked the “ship” to use Galanglic instead, and it did so, allowing everyone else to converse with it directly. Abe asked if there was someone they could contact to recover their “forgotten” authentication codes, and the image indicated they should contact the “civilian captain”; asked who that was, the image responded with the name of the captain of the Proud Mary—a clue. The Crew started frantically firing off any potential password they could think of relating to their ship’s former owners, and scanning the data they had copied from the smuggled OSD for clues, still to no avail. They asked the image to identify the ship in the hangar, hoping it would recognize the Proud Mary (having momentarily forgotten the transponder had been updated after the official change of ownership); the image identified not only the CV Spinward Star in the hangar, but another 200-ton vessel—the competition had arrived. Haank halted his fruitless attempts to bypass the computer’s security (despite Buck’s assistance) to try to find some more detailed deck plans, to identify a core terminal that might provide a better platform for intrusion, but every bit of useful information was (understandably) locked down, requiring authorized-access.

As the remaining minutes waned, the Crew abandoned their position and fanned out to find some sort of access to the actual bridge level above; they located the other set of elevators. As the last seconds before anti-piracy protocols ticked away, the Crew scrambled into the elevator, barely getting through the doors in time. As expected, the elevator went completely dead in an instant; the lights cut out, as did the artificial gravity. The sudden dropout of gravity hit Abe the wrong way, and with help, he barely got his helmet off in time to keep from vomiting inside his suit. Using Buck’s toolset, the Crew pried off a service panel in the roof of the elevator, and ascended to the level above.

Notes

• For those that don’t already know, the ship is courtesy of Future Armada. We all highly recommend supporting this outfit, so they can continue to make more
• Sam’s player was out this week, but since the GM expected him back next time, we did not leave him behind on the ship, so we wouldn’t have to run a split-party or jump through hoops to get him back to the rest
• It was fortunate that Haank speaks Zhodani (at Accented, anyways), otherwise this whole thing would have been far more complicated
• The dice were not being very cooperative this time; lots of failures, and Critical Failures in some spots (like Haank’s Fast-Draw attempt)
• This party is feeling the pinch of not having a dedicated computer-genius/hacker in the group; Buck can do it, but he’s not all that great at it, exacerbated, in this case, by having to work through a translator on a completely foreign system
• Immediately took to calling the hologram-woman “Cortana,” for obvious reasons
• Second time this campaign somebody’s hurled after entering Free-Fall

Lost and Found

While the rest of the Crew were handling the negotiations after Katelyn was allowed to speak to Gerhard, she was left awake in medbay under Abe’s guard. For a moment, Abe could feel a “presence” in his head; he assumed it was Katelyn, believed to be a psi, and warned her to stay out of his head.

Meanwhile, the Crew briefly deliberated, and continued to negotiate with Gerhard over the commlink for the release of Jones in exchange for the release of Katelyn and the handover of the OSD—by this point, they had all but given up on preventing the arms-smuggler from ending up with the data, whatever it was; they were unwilling to risk the life of their fellow crewmember by making waves. The Crew required the exchange take place at the landing pad, planning to have the ship warmed up and ready to bolt as soon as the exchange took place (and have the ship’s weapons as insurance against a betrayal). Gerhard balked at the idea, saying he could never get Jones, technically a kidnap victim, past security; Ella asked to speak to Jones, and ordered Jones to play along. Gerhard still didn’t trust the Crew to play nice, however, and they all ended up settling on a public place, a popular shopping mall in the startown, during the local lunch hour, a few hours hence.

The Crew prepared for the worst, planning to go armed and armored; Haank and Buck purchased proper holdout holsters for their sidearms. Abe filled in Katelyn on the situation and extracted a promise to behave herself; she seemed to agree there would be no benefit in her making trouble. As the time for the meeting approached, the Crew piled into the air/raft, and headed into town.

At the mall, they made their way to the food court and spotted Gerhard’s representative (from the earlier meeting at the warehouse), along with another man they didn’t recognize but presumed to be Gerhard. Jones, however, was not present; already, things were starting to look bad. Abe was keeping a discreet watch on Katelyn when he happened to notice a flash of recognition cross her face as she spotted someone at a different table; unable to alert the others at the time, he kept an eye to that area for signs of trouble. The Crew approached the table and seated themselves. Ella asked where Jones was, and Gerhard said that he was nearby, to be released on confirmation of the OSD data, which he then demanded to see. Ella balked at handing over the data with nothing to show for it, but Gerhard produced a datapad and slid it across the table to her, telling her to pull up the files archive and show him. She did so, and although Gerhard tried to hide his excitement, Haank and Abe both noticed the subtle change in demeanor. Now satisfied, Gerhard signaled his lieutenant to bring forth the hostage; Jones was led into view, apparently unharmed. Ella passed the datapad and OSD back to Gerhard, and Jones was released. The business concluded, Gerhard dismissed himself, and he and his associates left the food court, and went on their way. All’s well that ends well, right?

But it wasn’t over.

There was some talk of getting a bite to eat, but Ella was in a hurry to get back to the ship—now they had competition for whatever-it-was (and they still had no idea what), and they would have to hurry to get to it first. As the Crew left the food court environs, someone spotted a couple of guys get up (from the corner Abe had been observing) and start following them, one with a backpack over his shoulder. Rather than guess what they might be up to, or try to lose them in the crowd, Abe turned around and walked directly toward them, waving—they pretended to be doing something else, and did not respond. The Crew continued to leave, and the two strangers followed again. This time, as the Crew cleared the front doors to the mall, they tried to duck around the corner to surprise their shadows, but mostly failed to get ’round in time; Buck and Jones did not join the ambush effort, but made a beeline for the parked air/raft, to get it started. Again, the Crew confronted the men, asking what was in the bag. Again, the men pretended to not be tailing them. The Crew made a quick pace toward the air/raft, and climbed aboard (after a quick check for tampering); as they settled into the vehicle, the two men started running to catch them up, the backpack now off the one’s shoulder and in-hand. Air/rafts are rather slow, and Haank was certain the men would catch them up, so he climbed back out to brazenly confront them and forcefully discourage their continued pursuit. One of them immediately pulled a silenced pistol and fired, striking Haank in the torso (not squarely enough to ever penetrate his monocrys-weave), while the other threw the bag into the open-topped vehicle, landing in Abe’s lap—thinking quickly, Abe threw the bag back at the men. Haank’s sidearm was out in a flash, and everyone else in the vehicle lept out, guns ready; the two men exercised the “better part of valor” and fled as fast as they could. The Crew did not pursue or engage; they just got back in the vehicle and made best speed back to the ship (Abe and Buck both had to choke back their curiosity regarding the bag’s contents).

Back at the ship, they immediately set about getting the ship ready, and departed Porozlo space at the first opportunity. Gileden, the system containing the mystery coordinates on the OSD, was not specifically mentioned in their filed flight-plan, though it was a known necessary stopping point for any jump-2 craft headed for Kinorb (and/or eventually Regina)—the “omission” wouldn’t fool any pursuer for long. A few hours later, the CV Spinward Star entered jumpspace bound for Gileden, putting that whole mess behind them.

Seven days later, without incident, they emerged from jumpspace at the far reaches of the Gileden system. They identified the closest set of coordinates from the OSD, and started working their way down the list, visiting the coordinates and scanning for whatever might be there. At the first, nothing. At the second, they found three cargo containers tethered together, floating at a Lagrange point; they used the air/raft to tow them aboard, waiting to open them on the way to the next set of coordinates; they turned out to contain military weapons and hardware dating back to the War, one container of which was marked with the symbol of the Zhodani Empire, and contained Zhodani gear. The third coordinates yielded nothing. A total of four days after arrival, they reached the fourth coordinates, and were quite surprised to find a massive Zhodani war vessel of some unknown class, powered down and appearing totally empty—this had to be what the OSD was hiding. It was an awe-inspiring sight. Buck was convinced he could get the power back on, and there was talk of maybe moving the ship to a different location, so anyone else looking for her at the OSD’s coordinates would not find her there.

Sam maneuvered the Spinward Star into the spacious landing bay at the rear of the craft, and the Crew disembarked. After securing their own vessel, manually, as best they could, they forced the closest airlock open and, cautiously as they knew how, proceeded inside…

Notes

• The “scan” incident actually occurred last session, but it fit the narrative better here
• We had really painted ourselves into a corner with the whole “hostage” thing, and in the end, we left Porozlo having achieved nothing at all, but having given away the secret data to who-knows-whom. Our previous Traveller characters would have little issue with double-crossing someone, or doing something illegal, but this group keeps running into problems—proving that Honesty truly is a “disadvantage.” In the end, no harm was done, except that we have a new competitor for the “treasure”
• It had been nine sessions since this party had fired a shot; it took a bit to recall how it all worked 😛
• Although two of the characters have the Disadvantage, Curiosity, I think some of the players have it worse—had a hard time leaving that bag behind without taking a peek

Shady Characters

Now landed, passengers (save Katelyn, the spy, who would remain in her hypersleep pod, to be awakened when they knew what to do with her) and cargo offloaded, the Crew hit the planetary network and set about finding what could be easily found about their intruder’s contacts on Porozlo. They found little mention of Juno Radhlin, but former Imperial Navy officer, Gerhard Kansii, had a residence in the outer section of the startown—and that was pretty much all they could find. Presuming him to be a shadowy sort, due to his association with a known spy-type, the Crew decided to hit the streets and see what they could find lurking in the startown’s underworld. After some hours of consorting with various shady characters, the Crew came out with a name, Fredii, and a meeting scheduled at a seedy bar somewhere in the startown. They figured it was best to have everyone present at the meeting in case a decision needed making; Buck elected to remain behind to watch over the ship, but sent Jones in his stead (he decided better of sending trigger-happy Smith).

The bar was a wretched hive of scum and villainy, as they often are in a typical crowded startown. The Crew entered; the Aslan doorman “advised” Haank to keep his sidearm, which he carried openly, in its holster. The bar was packed full of all manner of sapient creatures. Upon inquiry, they were pointed to Fredii’s usual corner, and spotted him there. As they approached, he looked up from his illicit drugs and female company and acknowledged the Crew’s presence, inviting them to join him. Ella and Abe did most of the talking, asking Fredii what he knew about Gerhard, while trying to keep the true nature of their interest, the OSD, out of the story; for context, they revealed that an associate of Gerhard had attempted to kill them over some unknown issue. During the conversation, the others kept a wary eye for incoming trouble. Reluctant at first, but more amenable after some funds were discreetly exchanged, Fredii admitted he did know Gerhard as an arms smuggler, and offered to set up a meeting. The Crew was not really looking to meet the guy, but decided it would be the best way—perhaps only—to learn what manner of mess they had landed in, and gave Fredii their landing pad number to contact them once the meeting was arranged. Done with business, Sam decided to remain at the bar and carouse with the locals, while Haank took a few minutes to buy an Aslan patron a drink, and practice his Trokh—still rusty.

Afterward, everyone went back to the ship for the night. In addition to the potential of betrayal, there was a fear that, as a smuggler, Gerhard might require some sort of illegal shipment as payment for any information, which much of the Crew were strongly against. The next day, the Crew went about their usual at-liberty routines; Haank took advantage of the “normal” atmosphere and generally civilized state to go play a round of golf, in the actual outdoors, for a change. The call from Fredii came later in the day; the meeting with Gerhard was set for the evening, in the startown’s industrial district, at a nondescript warehouse. They did what research they could on the area, to get an eye for the terrain, and set out in the air/raft, prepared for potential combat (armored, and packing sidearms). Again, Buck held down the fort with Smith, and sent Jones in his place.

The Crew arrived early, and surveilled the warehouse area. Not long after, on time, the other party to the meeting arrived, setting down their speeder in a nearby enclosure, and unlocking the padlocked gate. The Crew approached the gate on foot, and were allowed to enter; they were stopped, and checked for transmissions—none were found. The other party’s leader spoke up, and asked what this was about. Ella spoke for the group, and explained the situation again—bearing in mind the earlier story given to Fredii, about the attempted murder of one of the crew (not, strictly, true)—but she was unwilling to come out and say, directly, why the spy might want anyone of them dead. The leader was understandably confused about how to answer without any details. He asked for a name, and Ella gave him the name, Katelyn; that name triggered a reaction from the man, and he demanded to know her whereabouts and condition. Haank noticed a shift in the man’s body-language that suggested he knew very well what was going on, now, though his line of questioning was meant to lead them to believe otherwise. Very reluctantly, Ella revealed that Katelyn was being held at the ship, safe and unharmed, in hypersleep. The man insisted on speaking to her as soon as possible. Still reluctant, but without any obvious alternatives, Ella agreed to allow him to speak to her. As she and the rest of the Crew turned to go see to it, the man politely insisted that one of them remain behind, in his custody, as insurance; Jones volunteered.

The Crew, minus Jones, returned to the ship, and Abe set about waking up their captive. Still in her sleep-pod, she was handed a commlink—the voice on the other end claimed to be Gerhard, and asked her many knowing questions about the situation, which she answered openly: she informed him the Crew had the Proud Mary, and probably had “the data” in their possession, though she had not located it, and that “they already know too much.” When they finished, Haank took the commlink to speak to Gerhard on behalf of the Crew: he suggested, after some coaxing, that they “might” have the OSD, and might be willing to give it up, if conditions were found to be favorable; Haank revealed that steps had been taken to see the data given to “all interested parties” should something unsavory happen to the Crew, though Gerhard was suspicious (to a small degree, justifiably, as the only steps that had, thus far, been taken were to make copies); both sides were willing to do a good-faith hostage exchange, but Gerhard insisted the OSD be handed over at the same time, rather than Haank’s suggestion of separate exchanges. Then they began negotiating the time and place of the exchange…

Notes

• Fredii is a character borrowed from another of our campaigns, specifically Shadowrun
• In both situations, Fredii and Gerhard’s crew, the players were struggling with the need for more information about what the mystery coordinates contained on the OSD might mean, and the desire to keep their possession of the OSD close-to-the-vest—deliberation on what to say/not say took up a lot of game-time

Scooby Trap

The Crew were at the crew-lounge table discussing their next moves when the bug they found in the hold activated, then went dark again. They knew, then, that the spy knew they had found it, so after some deliberation, one of them smashed it. Studying the pieces, Buck decided there was something strange about it, at which point Haank examined it as well, and pointed out that it did not appear to have any sort of radio receiver—it was likely psionically controlled. This suggested Zhodani involvement—sensible, as they were the other party in the War—or potentially some covert psi agency; either way, it meant they had a psi-agent aboard, and would have to assume that their thoughts had been, or would be read—no secrets. However, there was really nothing more to be done except to wait for the spy to make its next move. Sam continued to study the data on the OSD, and found a number of interesting coordinates in the near-empty Gileden system, that did not correspond to any astronomical feature he could determine; as far as Haank could recall, Gileden had no real significance in the War—on record, at least. Copies were made, as insurance.

On the last night before exiting jump-space, on Buck’s watch, he felt a strange, disorienting sensation wash over him. He concluded the psi-spy was making his move, and turned to leave the cockpit to rouse the others, but was met at the open hatch by a baklava-wearing, black-clad intruder. The assailant tried to grab for Buck’s sidearm and put him in a hold, showing some martial skill, but dinged his—no, her—arm on the door-frame, such that it fell useless. Yelling an alarm for the others, Buck continued to backpedal into the lounge as the intruder tried to grapple (one-handed), and sweep at his feet, to no avail, as Buck had some martial arts training as well. A heartbeat later the entire Crew was in the lounge with pistols leveled at the spy; she surrendered, and was bound with duct-tape. Removing her mask, they discovered her to be, not Eleanor, but the courier, Katelyn.

Ella deferred to Haank for the questioning of their captive. Haank attempted to convince her to give up her handlers; he asked her name in the Zhodani language, which, although she didn’t answer as such, did elicit a reaction that indicated she understood it; he also played at not knowing what it was she was looking for, but she didn’t fall for it. She refused to name the organization she worked for, but would only say that the information the Crew now had in their possession put them in danger, and that their safest action would be to let her walk off the ship with the OSD, and forget about it. She informed them that handing over the data to either the Imperial Navy or the Zhodani would be a grave mistake, as would be handing her over to either. Resigned to not getting anything more from her, they decided to put her in a low-berth stasis for the remainder of the trip—one of the low-berth passengers would get an upgraded ticket, taking over her cabin. As Buck looked on, Abe settled her into her sleep-pod; at Buck’s last-second encouragement, she offered to give up some helpful details in exchange for a safe exit, but she wasn’t buying Buck’s disingenuous “agreement” to her condition, and so said nothing more before entering hypersleep.

The Crew was left with little more than speculation: she appeared to be working for some unknown third-party to the War, and had not indicated what was so important about the data in any way. They brought her things down from her cabin to rummage through for clues; she had a datapad that contained a contact list, including some Navy and Zhodani contacts. A few of those contacts were on Porozlo, so they decided to keep her on ice after arrival, until they could look into those contacts and determine what the danger of letting her and/or the information go might be.

The Spinward Star emerged from jump-space near Porozlo II, and some hours later, landed at their assigned pad at the spaceport, where the cargo and passengers—minus the courier/spy—were offloaded.

Notes

• In the end, all the Players are suspecting the Psionic Institute is involved, but it’s not commonly known to exist, so the Characters don’t share that suspicion (yet)
• After a roll, the GM gave Haank a recollection about Zhodani Jump-Commandos; during the session, we never tried to figure out how the spy got out without us knowing it, but that recollection suggests she might’ve teleported—will probably try to confirm that later
• Herodian encountered, to his benefit this time, the “Crit Success on defense causes Crit Fail on the attacker” issue, resulting in his attacker’s temporarily crippled arm—he still doesn’t like that rule
• Rigil was unavailable this week, due to work, so Abe mostly acted in the background; had he been present, he would have undoubtedly been involved in the questioning process—might’ve gone better

Bug Hunt

Around a day in jump-space, the members of the Crew had separately taken some time to socialize with the passengers, in an effort to present a friendly and available persona. During that process, the secretive female passenger, Eleanor, approached Sam, asking to be escorted to her luggage, stowed in the ship’s hold. After recovering from the fact that a woman was speaking to him, he referred Eleanor to Haank, the de facto “security chief” aboard. Haank agreed, and led her to her luggage, musing to himself that some ground-rules regarding fetching of luggage while in-flight might need to be discussed. As Haank looked on, Eleanor found her case, took care to keep her pass-code hidden as she entered it—not unusual—and retrieved a box from it. On request, she agreed to allow Haank to scan the contents for security risks; using his multipurpose hand-scanner, Haank detected nothing of any interest within. He then escorted the woman back to the passenger deck.

A good portion of the first day of jump had been taken up with installation and testing of the ship’s new security system, purchased before they left Rhylanor. In the wee hours of the next morning, during Sam’s watch, the security system indicated a hatch opening—the passenger deck iris leading down to mid deck. He could see nothing on the camera system except the hatch being opened, as if by some invisible intruder. He woke Ella, and the two looked around the access area on mid deck for whatever-it-was, but found nothing, though Ella swore she had heard something scraping around under the lounge table. As they searched around the lounge, they heard the iris-hatch to the lower deck open. They rushed over and cautiously peered into the hold, eventually descending and triggering the lights, but again, saw nothing.

The rest of the Crew was roused, and together, they all started poring over the available security camera footage, but saw nothing but the hatches opening of their own apparent accord. Tabling the discussion about security procedures for later, Haank checked all the passenger cabins for occupants, and found them all where they were expected (although the corporate manager was a little put out at having been awakened so early). As they tried to come up with other ways of detecting the intruder, Sam spent the entire morning reviewing the recordings; in a lucky break, he managed to briefly spot a tiny, unidentifiable object moving around the area of the hatch at the time it opened. After showing his find to the others, they all agreed it was probably some sort of robo-bug, remotely-operated by one of the passengers, the most-likely suspect being Eleanor, with the most-likely purpose of locating whatever-it-was that the commandos were looking for previously. Since damage to the ship or Crew was unlikely, as counter-productive and unnecessary, they decided to keep the details from the passengers and allow the culprit to think he/she remained unsuspected. Abe was dispatched to give the passengers the story that there was a glitch in the new security system that had been addressed and corrected; he also set his robotic pet dog, K-9, to sniffing around the lower hold. Haank pored over the ladar data in a fruitless attempt to detect the bug, while calibrating the system for better detection of the tiny object. Buck produced an EM-detection wand, normally used to find radiation leaks, and calibrated it to home in on the bug’s and/or its controller’s transmissions. Sam also spent some more time rummaging about the lower hold, between the containers and packages, in a continued attempt to figure out where someone might smuggle something, to find whatever-it-was.

The following morning, during Haank’s last watch, using Buck’s EM detector, he picked up transmissions coming from above (passenger deck) and below (lower hold). While waking the others, he moved around the mid deck to triangulate the origin of what he assumed to be the “controller” transmission, narrowing it down to cabin three or five—five being Eleanor’s. Once awake, Abe and Sam went below with the EM-detector to find the bug. As they closed in, the transmission went dead—their search had been detected. After quite some time, about to give up, Sam finally pulled the right panel (that he hadn’t previously) and found an old, dusty OSD cleverly tucked away, about the same time that Abe spotted the robo-bug, which he cautiously collected with some vacc-tape, and handed over to Buck for analysis. They opted to plug the OSD into a personal computer disconnected from any network, for safety reasons, and found a vast wealth of 10-year-old, military navigational data centered around the Rhylanor Sector; they surmised that it was far too specific and complete to have been compiled by either side of the Fifth Frontier War, though they were unable, at the time, to determine the source of its apparent value.

With both the bug and its presumed objective in hand, the Crew had a decision to make—what to do with it all? Getting the spy to fess up who it’s handlers were would not be easy, and wouldn’t really change anything, in the end. They could let the spy off the ship without being the wiser, going so far as to put the bug back where they found it, as if nothing had happened—it would, of course, never find what it was looking for (that having been already recovered), and may convince the spy’s handlers that it was never on the ship in the first place. They could hand over the OSD to the spy, having had the data removed and replaced with something else (the images of the commandos from the Rhylanor docks incident came to mind). They could keep the data and sell it to whomever wanted to pay for it—though the Crew would need to determine what sort of threat its possession might impose on the Sector before giving it to anyone. They could turn it over to the Imperial Navy, as-is.

And, they had four more days in jump-space to figure it out.

Notes

• We had no idea, when we decided to purchase the Basic Security system (SS69), that it would be featured centrally in the next session; lucky it was there
• The idea of the “bug” inevitably spawned the mental image of this scene
• The EM detector was Buck’s use of Gizmo for the session; we all said it looked/sounded like a sonic screwdriver
• Sam kept attempting skills at default, to have an excuse to spend points in them; his player has been trying to figure out what to do with him to make him more useful when he isn’t flying the ship
• Sam was using his Smuggling skill, Perception-based, when searching the hold; this had been done repeatedly over the last few sessions, trying to find what the commandos were looking for, but finally paid off
• We’re treating the OSD as a “treasure map” until we learn otherwise