Outback - Part 2

The crew travels to Mora and Jason fails to return when he goes looking for a patron.

This chapter is based on Carl and Kay‘s notes from our Jun 30, 2019 session. Since we are now scattered around the country, we used Discord for voice communications and the Roll20 online virtual tabletop to connect with each other. The map is from TravellerMap.com and I modeled the illustration at the top of the page in Sketchup and rendered it in Twilight Render.

Continued from: Outback - Part 1.

Location: Gitosy in the Rhylanor Subsector.

Date: 070-1108.

Gitosy is a large asteroid in a star system that goes by the same name. The asteroids in that system orbit in a spherical shell instead of in a belt on the same plane. The asteroid is not too large, so it didn’t take us long to get in from the 100 planetary diameter limit. We were docked at about 0300.

After breakfast we had a discussion on what path we were going to take to get to Caledonia. We were tending toward the “Merchant/Best trading” path rather than the “Shortest travel time” path. We decided that we would stop at Mora and have the ship’s annual maintenance done there.

071-1108
Sam went out and sold the fruit juice that we had salvaged on the trip in. Fruit juice at an asteroid base usually sells at a premium, but because he didn’t have a chain of custody, he had to unload it at a discount.

On the other hand, it is all profit when the price of acquiring it is zero.

Fig ordered a load of unrefined fuel and restocked our spare life support.

Most everyone went bar hopping that evening. There was no news or rumors of note.

Someone in the audience reacted badly to Fig’s singing at the Karaoke bar. But Medicus was able to calm things back down, not sure if it was his bedside manner skills or his imposing size. Probably some of both.

078-1108
With cargo loaded and fuel refined we be gone. Undocked at 1300, Heading out for the Vanejen jump point.

084-1108 1313
Into the Vanejen system.

Inbound toward the planet we encountered a jump shuttle for a System Defense Boat, the Conflict. They were not to chatty, all business. At least they didn’t shoot at us. Odd, there are no SDB’s normally in this system, its registration showed it belonged to the Rhylanor Subsector Navy.

Landed at Vanejen Down at just before 1900. The weather was cold and stormy on the ground.

We were here once before. We are keeping a low profile, since our last visit was not entirely without incident.

091-1108 1700
Cargo loaded and we lift off about an hour later.

The scout ship Pathfinder was coming in as we left.

We jump out at about midnight.

098-1108
We celebrate Sam’s birthday; he is 42 today by calendar years.

099-1108 0001
Out of jump in the Brodie system across the border in Mora Subsector.

We meet the Scout ship North Star headed in the opposite direction, probably headed to Vanejen. Fig, an ex-Scout himself, says it is configured as a courier rather than as a scout. Probably on a communications mission.

Brodie orbits a Type M III red giant and it takes over four days to reach the planet from the 100-Stellar limit at 3G.

103-1108 0400
Docked at Brodie Down.

Not much here, it is a colony of Mora and most of the population lives in the starport complex. There is no night life to speak of.

106-1108 2030
Cargo loaded, taking off.

111-1108 0115
Jumping for Mora.

118-1108

In hyperspace longer than normal. At 8 days we got concerned about a mis-jump. We were staying suited up just in case of some kind of critical failure.

Diagnostics on all of engineering were good. No indication of jump drive hardware or software failures.

119-1108
FINALLY out of jump. Trying to figure out where we are. Sam figured it out - we are actually in the Mora system (whew). More diagnostics to follow in short order. We were on the far side of the system from Mora itself, 4 or so days cruising to get there. We will make sure to report this to scout service as soon as we can. We may have hit some kind of anomaly.

123-1108 0800
Docked at Mora High.

We got on schedule right away for our annual maintenance and we were able to get a slot on 127-1108 and verified that it would take a week as usual. Medicus and Fig got scheduled for maintenance on their prosthetic arms on 126.

The shipyards were impressive, they looked like they might have been larger than Rhylanor’s and we saw some battleships and cruisers under construction. There was a lot of other heavy industry here as well.

Fig found an ad for a month-long astrogation course and he and Sam signed up for it. In addition to extensive classroom and simulator work, they would be jumping to a nearby system and back as part of the course.

Kipenzi took a class in Vilani to supplement what she already knew and also signed up for a first-aid class. Both skills will probably come in handy at some point.

With Sam in school, Medicus took on the role of ship’s broker and set about selling the cargo that we had picked up at Brodie. He also signed up for an energy weapon class in the evenings.

Leon took a class in Zero-G movement at a local gym. He planned to spend his evenings out carousing with the Hoi Oligoi - high society.

Jason was mostly on his own, we noted that he checked his weapon out of our armory and wondered how he was getting it through starport security since only shotguns were OK outside the port gates.

Information on the war was getting farther and farther out of date as we moved away from the front. Some war information did finally catch up with us and it wasn’t good.

Not all is going well for the Imperium.

With a month here, we could sample the different types of bars for gossip and carousing. You never know who talks about what. We made a point to go to different bars; Spacer, Scout, Naval, even Vargr and other alien bars.

124-1108
Mora High Port was shut down for about 11 hours, not even shuttle landings were allowed. We heard rumors of Sword World terrorist plots.

126-1108
Fig and Medicus go in to get the annual maintenance done on their prosthetic arms. Fig lost his original arm to a terrorist explosion before he joined the crew of the Skylark and then had the original functional prosthetic replaced with a high tech one after an incident on Fulacin. Medicus lost an arm in a gunfight where he took a shot from a laser rifle on Keng, where he almost died.

127-1108
Everyone packed up their bags and checked into the local TAS hotel as the Skylark was moved down to the shipyard for annual maintenance. Now that we had Traveller Aid Society members on the crew, we got the 20 Credit a night rate.

131-1108
Field trip for Sam and Fig’s astrogation class. They jump one parsec to Dojodo. As part of the class, they de-opaqued the windows and actually looked at hyperspace. They say that looking directly at hyperspace can drive people mad.

“Actually, madness is relative. For a few, seeing jumpspace makes them catatonic. For others, it gives them headaches, or eyestrain, or fascination trance. Some can’t see it; they see only grey. Some see it and never travel again.”

“Every good astrogator has to at least confront jumpspace once in his or her life. It carries you to a higher level of understanding.”

Sam went first and did well. Later, he discovered that some things about astrogation that had always give him trouble became clear.

Fig likewise, and found that the class got a lot easier after that.

It was interesting for sure.

“Seeing jumpspace is a quantum effect. What imagers and lenses see is one thing; what consciousness sees is another. Photographs, images, sensors, lenses and displays all produce a near-uniform gray image. Consciousness sees something else. More than that. When several consciousnesses see the same view, they all see the same average. When only one consciousness sees it, it is unique.”

While Sam and Fig were expanding their minds in jumpspace, Medicus and Kipenzi went carousing and met some religious pilgrims. The “Children of the Six Gods” were on a pilgrimage and were passing through Mora on their way to Vanejen. They invited Medicus and Kipenzi to come along, but they declined.

134-1108
Medicus picked up the Skylark 2 at the shipyard. It had that “New Starship Smell” once again.

People moved back into the ship and Kipenzi's bag set off an alarm on the way back in through security. Full check of baggage said all was OK.

146-1108
Sam and Fig jumped back into system. They learned something. Hopefully everyone else did too.

That evening Fig, Kipenzi and Medicus got together at the TAS’s Octagon Bar and everyone got caught up on the last two weeks. While there, they met Ngozi Woyo, a retired ex-scout and Xaviera Gracia, a former Navy NCO. Both were in their 60’s and had been too old to be called back into service for the current war.

152-1108
Jason had reappeared, better dressed and with some money. He said he had a cache stored here from his smuggling days, but we figured he was probably actively working as well. We don’t ask and he didn’t volunteer any information concerning that.

153-1108
All classes complete.

Leon got to go to a fancy upper crust party, and met Ambassador Shungam Ikhe, ambassador of Tyokh, who was tall even for an Aslan. He was passing through on his way to Capitol and stopped in system to visit with the Duke of Mora.

154-1108
We were ready to roll out but Jason has not returned for a couple of days. We checked hospitals and police stations and no one has seen him. His personal communicator was not answering.

A hold was put on our undock slot and the Police wanted to talk to us about something. It may or may not be a result of asking about Jason, but the hold was put on AFTER we inquired.

Something is afoot. They put a 72-hour hold for Skylark and we were all escorted to the local starport security office and separated.

Our interviewers were Lt. Clara Daltry with the starport police dept, one other human officer and an alien with three arms, three legs, three faces and it just watches. We were asked about the evening of 153-1108 and our relationship with Jason Hendrickson.

It turns out that Jason was killed last night and we are “persons of interest” since when a ship’s crew member is killed in port, the murderer is often another member of the same crew.

We went back to the ship after our interviews and started looking over the news.

The alien tripod was a Threep and probably acting as an empath or maybe a body language reader. Though they usually live and work in pods of six it is not unheard of for one to work alone. Their home world is on the other side of The Great Rift, but they are found all over the Imperium.

Jason was hit from behind (blunt force) in Brown sector, an industrial area. The news assumes it was a robbery and it just might have been.

155-1108
Medicus got a message from a dead man:

Sam tried to research some information about the Eye, but came up empty. Fig tripped over some information. It was found on a world in Trojan Reach Sector about 100 yrs ago, and may be an ancient artifact. The world it was found on was not known for any Ancient sites, and opinions differ about whether or not it is actually an Ancient artifact.

The Eye has traveled about since then, last seen about 20 years ago when a notorious pirate named Lefty Fitzpatrick was using it as a false eye. Numerous collectors and the Imperium want it.

Kipenzi remembers that that name came up in conversation long ago. On Fulacin when we talked to the Droynezillas, the name Yasterdray, or something like it, was a faction in the war with the Ancients.

She said, “Yasterdray was the name of a person who was one faction of the Ancient war. There were five sides fighting each other. And no we don’t want the Empire to have it, remember Tukera – one of theirs is 5th in line to the throne. Also, if the war goes badly, we don’t want the Zhodani to get it either.”

Fig says, “NOW we have a real reason to go to Caledonia.”

Continued in Outback - Part 3.

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, Justice and Mission to Mithril.