Bad News

The Proud Mary was cleared to land, after doing the usual bureaucratic tango that preceded doing anything at all on the chilly, crowded, desert-world of Bevey. During the process, Ella explained the apprehension on her countenance to the others; the Vargr ship docked below belonged to an old enemy crew from her Navy days, and she expected to be harassed. Given their presence, and the iron-fisted state of things on Bevey, the Team all agreed that they should remain within the startown limits for the duration of their hopefully-brief stay here. Once landed, Haank immediately saw to the unloading process, while the passengers were disembarked; farewells were said to Kella, while former-Ensigns Smith and Jones were invited to join the current crew—they accepted (though Jones admitted his new wife would undoubtedly be furious at his delayed return). To celebrate, Smith insisted they go for drinks at a local establishment; expecting trouble, everyone went along anyway.

Trouble didn’t wait. The Vargr crew intercepted Ella on the street, greeting her with feigned rapport and expressing their surprise at this chance-encounter; Ella kept her distance, and made no attempt to hide the fact that she had no desire to speak to them, ending the “conversation” abruptly, before continuing to the bar.

The bar was a dive, a menagerie of species. Sam’s attempts to carouse with the other patrons fell flat; Ella chatted up the bartender for the latest news; Haank kept to himself at a booth, and watched some golf-related programming while sipping at some bourbon; Abe’s and Buck’s attentions were drawn to the alien females present, and Buck ended up chatting up a table-full of blue-skinned humanoids (three of the four were female), crew of another Free-Trader looking for new work. Otherwise, the Team left after a few hours, without incident. In the morning, the Team went together to the warehouse-offices of Neverfail Freight, LLC, their soon-to-be former employers. On the way out, Haank spotted one of the Vargr Corsair’s crew keeping an eye on their comings and goings from their berth a few pads down the dock, and alerted the others.

At the office, the Team found the boss at his office, and sat him down to give him the bad news. Ella told the story of the loss of the Titanic VII, and the rest of her crew, though she left out the pertinent details of the Astro-Core unpleasantness. The boss was saddened to hear of it; he then asked if the Team were looking to be assigned to another ship. Ella informed him of their desire to leave the company to form their own opportunity with the ship they had recovered. The boss was understanding, thanked the Team for their contributions to the company, and wished them well (to the Team’s collective surprise, having expected legal hearings, at least). After collecting their final pay, the Team returned to the Proud Mary, now free to seek their fortunes wherever they liked.

Some time after they arrived at the ship, a runner for traffic control came over to give the Team a heads-up; the Vargr crew had been asking about their departure schedule. Abe tipped the guy twenty credits for the info.

The Team gathered in the crew lounge to discuss what to do next, and decided a few things: they would continue, as previously discussed, to Rhylanor, to report the salvage of the Proud Mary; they didn’t want to hang around Bevey any longer than they had to, and would depart as soon as possible; they wouldn’t go through a great deal of trouble over maintenance, nor spend a great deal of money, until they knew the ship was “theirs”; they were convinced the Vargr Corsair would attempt to jump them at some point after they left—initially they didn’t want to spend the money for fuel, but skimming for fuel at a gas-giant would leave them vulnerable to ambush, so in the end, they decided to fork over the money.

Haank hit the network and found plenty of freight lots and passengers bound for Belizo, the next stop toward Rhylanor; he signed up enough to fill the available space, and got it, and the fuel, all loaded. Ella filed the flight-plan, and Sam got the ship prepped for departure. In the final hour or so before takeoff, though, the Team tried to come up with some potential solutions to avoid the Corsair’s inevitable attack. Among the ideas discussed: delay departure to coincide with other traffic, to provide some friendly cover; sabotage their ship or their flight plans; talk local authorities into providing escort. In the end, Ella decided to take Abe with her to go see if the traffic control guys might be willing to extend a bit more help…

Notes

• The session was cut a bit short, so we didn’t accomplish as much as we would’ve liked. We were also delayed a bit by the usual lookup process that normally accompanies finding new freight & passengers; this prompted me to work on a spreadsheet/die-roller to handle the workload, which will be field-tested soon