Market Value

Six days after the arrival at Rhylanor-Prime, the Rhylanor Capital Protection Service made contact with the Team, and set up a meeting to discuss ownership of the Proud Mary. All of the members of the former-crew of the Titanic VII would attend the meeting, dressed in their finest—which, for some, had to be purchased locally, and for Sam, consisted of “the usual” (Hawaiian shirt & spacer-boots). Some of the Team hadn’t been to Rhylanor before, and were rather impressed with the lavish offices of the Turuump Tower, in the finance district of the sector-capitol. They appeared to make a good enough impression with the RCPS representative (in spite of Sam’s casual dress); Ella elected to let Haank do most of the talking, as he had the most training and experience in business and finance matters. Haank happened to notice the representative’s cuff-links indicating nobility, and made a point of his proper address so the other Team-members would be aware. The meeting seemed to go well. RCPS had already taken a loss on the ship and were looking to recover what they could, but were willing to hand over ownership of the ship for five million credits, or buy it back for half the original purchase cost of 49 million credits. Haank enlisted Buck’s expert opinion on the ship’s condition, but was unable to convince the company to lower the offered amount. Both sides being satisfied with the negotiations, the meeting was ended so that the Team could confer and return an answer to the RCPS offer, which would remain open for a week.

After some serious discussion, the Team decided it would be better and/or easier to keep the ship, as-is, than to take the near-25 million and attempt to buy a new one. Over the next three days, they worked together to build a solid business plan to present to a bank for a business-capital loan. Having decided to keep her, Buck finalized the arrangements, and sent her off to have the annual maintenance done, and everyone checked into a local hotel for the duration. At the summit of the mountain of paperwork, they would form a limited-liability partnership under the name, Spinward Star, LLP; Smith and Jones would be officially hired on as employees. Roughly a week after registering their new partnership with the Imperial offices, they easily secured a bank loan for 7.5 million credits against the ship. After paying the 5 million to RCPS, as negotiated, ownership of the Proud Mary was officially transferred to the new company.

The ship now belonged to the Team, and they, to the ship. And the ship’s cat.

Four days hence, the ship was returned from its annual maintenance, and after a thorough checking-over by her new crew, given a clean bill-of-health. It was unanimously decided to spend a tiny amount of the remaining capital on a christening-party aboardships—officially christened Spinward Star. That evening, there was much celebratory drinking (though Sam made himself rather annoying, especially to those that were not drinking to excess), and near-half the Crew passed out in their beds.

Some hours before sunrise, Sam was awakened by the cat, for reasons his drink-and-sleep-addled mind couldn’t process. As he stumbled into the crew lounge, he heard some shuffling noise from below, and so, made his way to the central hatchway, to descend into the lower cargo hold to see who these intruders might be. He keyed the ship’s intercom and demanded the occupants of the lower hold identify themselves, to no response. He then opened the hatch, and began to descend, but was greeted from below by a handful of gun-wielding commandos, pulling wall-panels in the hold, obviously looking for something left there long ago. The commandos demanded he quietly continue to descend, and to “not do anything stupid.” However, he instead lept back up the access ladder, pulled his feet clear of the expected gunfire (which did not occur), and reflexively slapped the close-switch for the iris-hatch, locking it down.

Notes

• Though Ella’s Contact was available the previous session, when the ship arrived, he was not available for this one; we determined he had been called away on official business, and couldn’t hang around
• I had designed Haank’s character with just this sort of thing in mind, so it was nice to get some use out of all those “business” skills
• As one might expect, the bookkeeping took up quite a bit of time. First time using the “Finance” section of Traveller: Far Trader, wasn’t so bad
• Ended up with the $7.5M at 2% interest for 10 years; having the ship as collateral meant we could get away with the bare-minimums without any problem. Our expectation is that we can make that up pretty easily
• Sam rolled an 18 on his Carousing check at the christening party; the second time he’s failed so spectacularly at carousing, something he’s supposed to be good at