Mission to Mithril - Conclusion

The Travellers finish scavenging the wreck of the E-a-taka Wasab and finally leave Mithril after being grounded for nearly a month.

This chapter is based on Carl and Kay ‘s notes from our March 3, 2019 session. Since we are now scattered around the country, we used Discord for voice communications and Roll20 online virtual tabletop to connect with each other.

Continued from: Mission to Mithril - Part 6.

Location: The Planet Mithril in the Sword Worlds Subsector.

Imperial Date: 321-1107.

Still stuck on Mithril.

Dinnertime in paradise - frozen everything.

322-1107  0500 Sunrise

Rested and ready, after a few days of urgency and work.

0600
After breakfast Sam set up the snowplow and rigged a sled apparatus to get the cargo from the downed ship. Meanwhile, our engineers went back to work on repairing the Skylark.

We discussed getting the archaeologists and port personnel off planet when we go, lest a new set of bad guys come to check on the status of their people. Reporting what happened is also a high priority, and the two folks who took the ATV are an issue as well.

The Sword Worlders were agreeable to going with us.

Katrin is from Gram which is deeper in the Sword Worlds than we are willing to go, but going to Biter will allow her to report to her government. The Bothildrs are also OK with going to Biter. They wanted to go all the way to Sacnoth, but they can get transportation at Biter. Egil is still in the Skylark’s autodoc, but Katrin says that he would probably go along. (Katrin and Egil are actually an ex-couple).

Sam figures out how to get the containers out of the newt ship using some skids and the snowplow.

Sam drags back the first cargo pallet with the snowplow, the armory contents and the 5 tons of gold.

His unloading was interrupted mid day by a spectacular storm, lots of lightning, thunder and high winds.

1500
The engineering crew had the maneuver drive is fixed by sunset and Kipenzi and Fig finish up testing after dinner. No work done on the wing today due to the storm, looking through the airlock window we can see that the hole in the wing has filled with snow from the blizzard.

323-1107  0300
It clears up and the stars come out, -6C.

0500
Sunrise and breakfast.

The ATV had left sensor range going north and we were keeping a watch around the area for people as well as watching the skies. It has auto pilot and though unlikely, there is the possibility that someone is still hiding in the starport building. Everyone was sleeping in the Skylark at that point.

Next on the to-do list was the wing and fuel system repairs. That would involve some non-trivial scavenging from the downed ship. Engineering 'away team' went off to work, singing as we went.

By early afternoon we had 'harvested' a good deal of repair material and loaded it onto the snowplow. Back to ship for the actual work.

New to most of this, we took our time to be sure we got it as right as we could.

1300
We spend about four hours repairing the Skylark’s wing using some structural members from the E-a-taka Wasab.

Sam makes two more trips to the wreck.

1600
Dinner, and most of us take a break except the night watch.

Weather is -11C and hazy.

Midnight
-12C and cloudy.

324-1107  0230
-33C and snowing again.

0500
The sun rises and the temperature drops to -54C. Cold enough to give you frostbite in 2 minutes on any exposed skin.

The crew takes a day off due to bad weather. We didn’t want to be outside working on the wing.

By sunset it is still -41C.

Fig's leg started to hurt more and Medicus took a look at it. Turned out there were little thingies (larvae) in the wound that had gone unnoticed till now. Medicus took a sample and cleaned them out. Hopefully it will finally start to heal now.

Fig asks Katrin about these bugs, she doesn’t know anything about them. Much of Mithril is still unexplored. They are samples of local fauna that might lead to another paper for the good doctor.

Egil was doing OK in the autodoc as well.

325-1107
Sunup sunrise and stormy.

Still really cold and storming through the day, with the weather clearing up about sunset.

Medicus checked the autodoc, and Egil was ready to come out of the oven. A couple tweaks later he was up and doing OK.

We catch him up on the current situation.

326-1107
Light snow and light breeze, -10C feels warm after the last couple of days. There are high snow drifts up against our ship.

Back to work on the fuel tank and wing. Sam goes back to scavenging cargo.

Fig wants to dig up and extract the E-a-taka Wasab’s flight logs from the bridge debris under the snow in front of the starport building.

Starting at about 0600, all three engineers spend the day on wing and fuel tank repairs. The temperature rises above freezing and the snow turns to rain.

Sam hauls three loads today and looks for any personal data concerning the E-a-taka Wasab’s crew.

1700
The rain stops, it clears up and the temperature drop below freezing again.

1800
Our engineering crew declares our wing structurally sound.

327A - 1107
It is -10C and clear as the sun comes up.

0600
Fig goes over to the E-a-taka Wasab and checks the engine room for a backup log – he doesn’t find one. Well, it was worth a try.

0700
The Skylark’s engineers work on wing electronics. The Bothildrs, being professional archaeologists try to dig up the snow covered bridge debris in the crash area to see if they can find any logs or anything else salvageable.

We hoped to get a clue as to where the ship went while it was gone. Good intel to pass on to the Sword Worlders.

1800
Finish work for the day, there is still lots to do before the ship can fly agian.

Temperature dropping again.

Electronics, baffles, skin, pressure testing, refueling and refining were still to go.

Sam had finished the cargo transfer to our cargo bay.

327B - 1107
Clear and -40C at midnight.

It warms up to -10C and it starts to snow again as the sun comes up at about 0500.

Search for bridge parts continued, and the electronics work proved a little more intricate than welding had been. Sam was done with the cargo movement and joined in for the wing electronics repairs with Fig and Leon.

328-1107
Clear skies for the workday and the temperature climbs to -10C by 0500.

By 1300 Leon succeeds in fixing the last of the wing electronics.

By 1700 Kipenzi finishes the last of the mechanical work and the wing is sealed up. We were set to pressure-test the system. We were making progress for sure.

329-1107
Clear and-10C.

0600
Fig runs a pressure test on the fuel tanks and everything passes. We are good to fuel up.

0900
We have topped off the tanks and started refining the water into hydrogen. We are lucky the pressure valves held and the fuel refinery was not damaged. You can jump using unrefined fuel, but it is risky.

Our Archeologists are still digging up bridge debris. So far they have found nothing useful or even very big. Mostly pieces are burnt and melted metal. They have also found pieces of bodies, but nothing identifiable without being able to match the DNA with a name.

It was a good time to do another diagnostic on the ship and everything in it.

330-1107
The snow starts again and as the day went on, the temperature topped out at 4C and we got rain.

We continue refining fuel and doing tests. Everyone is looking forward to getting off this ice ball.

331-1107
Diagnostics looked good, fuel refining was complete. Small lift (10 feet or so) before we actually tried to go. Everyone off the ship for that (except essentials). We retrieved the button cams and the starport crews personal effects. Sam parked the snowplow in the hangar so we can say we completed our delivery.

Battered but not bowed, the Skylark continued.

0600
We lift off, slowly climbing into the sky over Mithril Down, accelerating at 1/2 G above local gravity.

At 48 Km the grav lifters cut out and we started to fall. Medicus hit the main drive and we cleared the rest of the atmosphere, trailing flames behind us. Without the inertial compensators working, the rear of the ship became “down”. Fortunately everyone was seated and strapped down.

Once we were about 100,000 Km from Mithril and well over escape velocity, he cut the engines and we coasted out towards the 100 planetary diameter jump limit.

Sam and Kipenzi went back to engineering and checked the grav lifter component that we had looted from the E-a-taka Wasab. It apparently had undetected damage from the crash and cracked under the strain of liftoff.

They swapped in one of the components from the Sword Worlder’s air/raft and by 1000 we had gravity again.

We keep it to one G from here on until we get to a real repair facility.

331-1107 2000
Jump out for Biter. No incident.

While in jump we have a celebration, breaking out the ice wine that we have been carrying since Zilla.

337-1107 1636
We arrive in the Biter system.

We get hailed by a Sword Worlds destroyer, the Hofvarpnir.

We tell them our story, how we were attacked by pirates and got survivors here, they are intrigued and react fairly positively.

We are inspected and boarded by the destroyer and our passengers confirm our story. They say they’ll send someone to Mithril quickly. They regard of us free traders as independents, rather than Imperials or at least non-combatants in the current war.

It took us six hours to get to Bita Hár, the large station in synchronous orbit over Biter.

Once docked, Sam headed for the broker exchange to see if he can sell the gems and gold we looted from the E-a-taka Wasab and starts to look for anything worth buying that might sell on Adabicci.

Kipenzi goes to the TAS to get the latest news concerning the war. They made sure we knew to NOT go any further into the Sword Worlds.

We got as much of an update on the war status as we could. Lots of hit and run raids on worlds along the X-Boat routing, no resolution to the war yet.

The Sword Worlds Confederation forces have raided: Smoug, Olympia, Zaibon, Adabicci, Derchon, Lunion, Strouden, Grote, Ianic, Tenalphi, Wardn, Vilis, Flammarion, and they captured Margesi about two months ago.

There’s a big fleet at Vilis.

We refill our tanks with unrefined fuel.

Getting repaired at Biter would be possible, but would take at least a month before they started and we were subject to getting bumped by Sword World military and commercial ship repairs. We decided to jump to Adabicci instead. We could re-evaluate our options once we got there. We did as much double checking on the Skylark as we could while in port.

Sam was able to sell the gold and gems and bought goods to sell at Adabicci.

We purchased two proper, full strength grav components for the Skylark. We put one in, replacing the current one that was from an air/raft. That left us with two air/raft caliber ones and one full sized in our spares storage.

We went over what we had left to buy:

• Two grav cargo lifters for moving cargo at ports without facilities.
• A new personal grav belt for everyone plus one spare.
• Repair our engineering bot so it can hover again.
• Shipyard-quality repairs and a new paint job for the Skylark 2.
• A grav lifter component for our air/raft. We could use one of the parts that we salvaged, but it was agreed all around that it would be better to install a new one and keep the other two as spares.
• Spend about 100 Credits and buy some EMP shielding for our spare parts lockers.
• Two more life support packs to replace what we had consumed on Mithril.

344-1107 2359
Jump out of Biter to Adabicci.

The journey was uneventful as we crossed over the border back into the Third Imperium.

351-1107 0300
Out of jump into the Adabicci system.

No encounters at jump point, we contact station and they wave us through and direct us to dock 88.

We check on scheduling ship repairs. We’ll spend two days in a queue then it should take a week to repair the ship.

Sam sells the cargo he bought at Biter.

Checking the news, there were two TNS messages, one from Rhylanor:

...and one from Turedad:

We sent a message to Lunion to our patron through the X-boat route, “We’re on our way, delivered snowplow, passenger not there, we repairing ship at Adabicci and be there in 3 weeks approx.”

360-1107
Repairs done.

We buy unrefined fuel and spend three days refining it.

Sam fills the cargo bay and we head out of Adabicci with no encounters.

363-1107 Midnight
We jump for Lunion and setting into our old routine of rotating watches and studying.

001-1108
We celebrate New Years in Jump.

005-1108
Arrive Lunion with no problems, unlike the last time we arrived in the Lunion system.

0500
We dock at Lunion High and send a message to client that we’re here.

We get the latest news out of Regina:

We get an appointment with our client: Essapai Lergo at Oberlindes.

We tell her our story and give her the data crystal and get a 50 KCr bonus for it. It shows nefarious movements, the kind of data some people would kill for.

We fuel up and Sam heads for the broker district.

Most of the rest of us head for the bars to listen for rumors.

Medicus at a bar turns around and sees a rather threadbare old spacehand in a beard who says, “Medicus? Is that you? It is you!”

After a few moments, Medicus recognizes him. He was a crew member from the smuggler ship that he worked on before he joined the Skylark’s crew. Medicus thought he was dead and a subsector away.

The man definitely looks like he has fallen on hard times and looks like he has a story.

The story continues in Outback - Part 1.

See Also: Dramatis Personæ, Skylark 2, Campaign Starts, The 2nd Adventure, The Chamax Plague, Horde, Shadows, Research Station Gamma, Twilight's Peak, Prison Planet, Leedor on Aramis, First Call at Zilla, Trade War, The Bloodwell, ANNIC NOVA, The Kinunir, Kesser's Return and Justice.