Duty Roster:

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

Rogue Planet

With all pirates dead, unconscious, or otherwise out of the fight, the Crew began sorting out the situation that remained. The “slaves” were held in jury-rigged cages in the hold of the hangar’s lone occupant, the far-trader, Jacob’s Apprentice, whose owner/captain, Jacob Bishop, was among those released. The pirates that still lived replaced the released hostages in the cells, and were questioned. What remained of Captain Bishop’s cargo, mixed in with other loot, was warehoused nearby; though they did not demand payment for the rescue, the Crew did agree to split the cargo with Bishop. Buck evaluated the condition of the ship and found it spaceworthy, though the jump-drive was a bit dodgy—might make a jump or two before it failed. It was decided that the Spinward Star would escort the Jacob’s Apprentice and Learned Lady back to Titleman Station (Fulacin Prime’s highport).

The nine-day trip went without incident. After disembarking, Professor Well gave them his sincere thanks for the rescue of his colleagues, and an official note from the University’s insurance company promising a 200k credit, standard “rescue fee,” which they could redeem at the nearest Rhylanor Imperial (Bank) branch on their way back to Regina; they decided Risek was their best option, only a little out of the way. With that, the Crew bid farewell to those they had rescued, and departed outsystem for Risek.

The Spinward Star entered jumpspace, and the Crew settled into their usual routines. Four days into the jump, while Haank was on watch in the middle of the “night,” the ship was suddenly pulled out of jumpspace. Haank immediately sounded the alarm and jumped into the pilot’s seat just in time to steer the ship out of the way of some debris. Before them was a massive, dark gas-giant, with several moons and lots of asteroids and planetary debris in its orbit, but no sun at all—a rogue planet. Sam was able to determine their position at around halfway between Fulacin and Risek. The ship’s comms began to pick up an automated distress call, which they triangulated, appearing to originate from a nearby moon. They approached the moon and began to scan the surface from orbit for the source of the signal, and found the wreck, a massive generation ship of a possibly Terran or very old Imperial make.

The Crew cautiously entered the moon’s atmosphere and landed the ship on what solid ground they could find in the loose sand near the crash site, and disembarked in a wheeled rover (which was among their share of the Apprentice’s cargo); the air was full of radioactive dust, so they dosed themselves with anti-radiation meds before leaving, and remained in their vacc-suits for the duration. The drove the rover as close as the dunes would allow, within 10m or so, and continued on foot over the treacherous sand (Eddy was nearly swept under the ship), to find a place to enter the crash. Buck decided to force one of the cargo ramps; he used the rover to power the electronic locks, and rigged a bypass, but the door itself was stuck fast, so he ended up using the rover’s winch to pull the ramp down.

Inside the cargo bay, they found the wreck silent as the grave. They found a pile of discarded animal bones—cattle, from the look of it—years, maybe decades old. They also found electrical lines running fore and aft, powering a jury-rigged communications suite, apparently wired up to the ship’s antenna array. The Crew split up to follow the electrical lines and some weak hits on hand-held bioscanners that some had brought along. They discovered, in one cargo bay, a number of jury-rigged low-berth pods containing around thirty survivors in stasis; and in another bay, an old encampment, the condition of which suggested a multi-year occupation; and in another bay, what was left of the startup colony’s supplies, including some old ground vehicles; and in another bay, hundreds of the ship’s original low-berth pods in various states of repair, some still holding the dead, having been stripped of usable parts to serve the remaining survivors. It was decided to attempt to move the jury-rigged pods to the Spinward Star to be taken to Risek and awakened there, though it would take a bit of engineering to move them without endangering the occupants—some took the rover back to the ship to fetch the portable fusion reactor to keep the units powered during the move. Meanwhile, Eddy continued to explore, and found a portable computer terminal belonging to the captain, Elliot Vance; after managing to power it up, among other data, he found copies of the ship’s logs. He relayed to the rest of the Crew the fate of the generation ship, the “Gloria Exodus”: centuries back, it had crashed on a moon of this uncharted rogue-planet, and the survivors managed to survive for around three years sheltered within the ship from the harsh environment outside; after further deaths from sickness or accidents, the chief engineer, Alexander McGarren—a mechanical genius, by all accounts—managed to hobble together enough functional stasis pods to keep the survivors alive almost indefinitely, in the hopes that someone might eventually stumble across their signal.

The Crew took time and care, and using the colony vehicles in addition to their own, managed to move the pods to the Spinward Star without incident. They then departed the moon, skimmed the gas-giant for fuel, and jumped out for Risek as originally planned.

Notes

• Commjunkee took over as GM for a one-shot run, of which this session was the second part; Eddy, the regular GM’s PC, continued with the Crew; Abe’s player was out this week as well for reasons.
• Due to…circumstances, I took far too long to get around to writing up this report; as a result, my memory of the events is less than complete, and I had to abbreviate things a little more than the session probably deserved
• In the 2.5 weeks out and back to Fulacin II, Salla had finally gotten his repairs done and left the station, I think
• I don’t recall if the fate of the captured pirates was ever specified, but I assume they were turned over to local authorities—I think the one that cooperated was discreetly allowed to slip away
• The captain of the Gloria Exodus is is named for two of the guest-GM’s children (Elliot, and Vance)
• The chief engineer, Alexander McGarren, is an homage to MacGyver
• I don’t think the rogue planet was ever referred to by name by the GM, but I have referred to it on our wiki as EV-001 (standard scientific naming convention is to name it for the discoverer—Elliot Vance—and in this case, it was his first such discovery), but it’s just as likely they called it “Bob” or something like that