The Second Adventure

This was played about two weeks ago, as a continuation of the previous story.  The title of the adventure is a spoiler so it will be withheld until the players get to the point where it wont matter. This writeup is based on Carl's notes, most of the unbolded text below is his.

Once the celebrating was done, the characters spent the next month getting the ship repaired and taking some classes to polish up some needed skills.

On the day the shipyard announced that the Skylark was ready, they got a call from Victor Romeo with a delivery job...

This time it is a very straightforward delivery, 60 tons of cargo bound for Alenzar in the Reidan Subsector.  Alenzar is a planetoid in an asteroid belt orbiting a red giant star across the Darrian Subsector border.  The planetoid (and likely for any practical purposes the entire star system) is owned by InStarSpec.

InStarSpec was an arms supplier company, now diversified to mining, metals, manufacturing and associated activities.  A Megacorp, their reputation is not aggressive.

Victor's tasking this time is for us to deliver, for 2.5 million credits:

        30 Ton   J Type Fusion Reactor, suitable to power a small town.

        20 Ton   Bulldozer

        10 Ton   Electronic spare parts

        Nominal   One Antique video game.   Titled "Thor's Hammer"

Research done by one of the characters showed that "Thor's Hammer" had been published about two hundred years ago.  The plot of the game was that the player would start with a small village and try to build a spacefaring civilization before an asteroid impacted their home world and destroyed it. The game was not a big hit at the time it was released and would probably only be valuable to a collector.

Sam Penney said that he suspected the rest of the cargo was a cover and that the game contained weapons plans or something.

 

 

Planning our route, still in our jump-2 ship without any special weaponry this time, we decided to route through a corner of the Sword Worlds into Darrian Subsector, and go to as many systems as possible that allow us to refuel at a port.  With no (known) reason to be concerned about anyone seeing us or what we have, staying away from pirates is HIGH on our To-Do list, and we figure that space ports are better than gas giants for refueling this time around.

While most of the route will be in fairly settled space, the last couple legs will take us away from full service ports and out of  areas with a primary political affiliation, so it likely will not be all roses and cheerleaders.

Our background and some updating research confirms that the Darrian and Sword World groups are not best pals, and we can likely anticipate a reasonable Navy presence in many systems along the way.  This time we welcome their assistance, at least on the way out.

While Medicus and Sam lament not having the full 64 Tons of cargo space to play with, they plan on managing with 4 Tons. Though with 9 jumps for a 2.5 Million credit payday, it is not very much less than we realized on the way outbound on our first mission. With eyes vigilantly on the bottom line, they remind us that every bit helps.  We will also be offering low and middle passage on each jump, with up to 4 low and perhaps 4 middle passengers.  Both Medicus and Fig have studied a little bit on Stewarding and after all, how tough can it be?

With that set of famous last words.....

Note to the reader: while our record books will actually reflect the number of passengers and our specific cargo, as any good business venture would, that data is omitted unless considered interesting for your reading pleasure. 

210-1100  0000
Jump out of Vilis for Margesi

217-1100  1500
Arrive at Margesi.  C class port, unrefined fuel. 

221-1100  0100
Jump out of Margesi for Tizon (Sword Worlds Subsector)

228-1100  0600
Arrive in the Tizon system.  Here we encounter our first unexpected delay, with a polite but thorough police inspection of our ship, registry, cargo(within good taste and the law).

Only one day delay, could have been a lot more red tapish for sure, and the Class B port sells us refined fuel, so we do not have the 3 day wait to process it ourselves.

230-1100  0100
Jump out of Tizon for Trifuge (Darrian subsector)

237-1100  0600
Arrive in the Trifuge system

Coming out of hyperspace, one of our first actions is to run a sensor sweep of the area, and while we have a ways yet to go to be super-sensors, this time Sam detects something.  We jumped in near an escape pod.  No beacon or any active signalling from it. As any spacer would, we investigate to see and support as best we can.

Kipenzi makes an EVA to the pod to investigate up close. She carried the 'through the wall viewer' we have had since the first mission. The markings and numbers on the escape pod do not match anything in any database we can search, and she detects no life signs. The pod itself is a good one, such as a nice space yacht would carry.

Over some concerns about explosive traps and the like from Sam, Kipenzi opens the door, and finds no life of any kind. The entire content consists of one crate, about as big as would fit into the pod.

With no markings on the crate, she used the xray tool and got some 'interesting' results, ambiguity between robotics, people and machinery, and so decided (again over some concerns for her safety) to open it up. 

YIKES.  A small adrenaline surge as a large number of arms (human arms, not weapons) were revealed, but on closer look she tells us they are all prosthetics, all right arms.

We brought the pod and its cargo back to our hold, since we had not filled the 4 ton space this time. We make a closer examination of our salvage, and with some inside information Fig points out that these arms are not just arms, they are also arms. Each one has a weapon built in.  This is high tech, and VERY illegal. After a little discussion we decided to turn them over to the powers that be in Trifuge, and we go into port.

Trifuge was colonized originally as a company world, and is still run by industry, so we turn the box over to the company security personnel there, getting a receipt. We gave them as much information as possible of where and when, and making sure WE have a record of this too. We are keeping the pod itself as legitimate salvage and plan to sell it at one of the Class A ports we will be passing through enroute to Alenzar.

241-1100   0100
Jump out of Trifuge for Jacent

248-1100   0600
Arrive in the Jacent system

 

At this point it was after 6PM and we decided to break and continue next month up at Carl's place.

Additional comments from Kay:

Actually, I remember the idea about the game being a cover as coming from Kipenzi, but I think the thought occurred to others about the same time.

PS. we still have the Haunting Thunder's AI unit, and have "woken it up".  We haven't told it what happened to the ship and  it's only giving us general access to it's information, not useful things like where's the purser's office or the gun armory.  We may end up using it as an auxiliary system with our ship, but that's only speculation at this point, and definitely secondary in terms of the game.

PPS.  Our repairs upgraded the second gun turret that was destroyed in the gas giant. 

PPPS.  We sent a video of the Haunting Thunder to an admiral at sector command, so they know about the Frozen watch in order to rescue them, if they decide to. Terry mentioned this last time. 

PPPPS.  The Darrians are known to have a weapon that can destroy suns, and they let it be known they are willing to use it.  Definitely a deterrent to war with the Sword Worlders.  Beginning to wonder if the "Thor's Hammer" video game is a weapons schematic being smuggled (a la the Deathstar)- also Kipenzi's thought.

PPP... oh, you know.  We figured that the polite ship inspection by the authorities, might have had something to do with the "illegal arms"  we discovered in the next system. 

Kay

 

Continued in: The Chamax Plague

See Also: Dramatis Personæ, Campaign Starts