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.

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:

• 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…

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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