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