The Last Flight of the Amuar - Part 5

The Skylark’s crew has dinner with a former member of the Amuar’s crew and later break into a Belgardian Navy hanger where they download some surprising information regarding the loss of the Amuar.

This chapter is based on Carl and Kay’s notes from our September 6th, 2020 session. Since we are scattered around the country, we use Discord for voice communications and the Roll20 online virtual tabletop to connect with each other. The image on the header was modeled in Sketchup and rendered in Unity.

Continued from: The Last Flight of the Amuar - Part 4.

Location: Belgard in the Egyrn Subsector

Imperial Date: 088-1109

We have plans for dinner tonight with Ian Kuuasarmi, the mission commander of Amuar’s trade mission on Belgard.

Last evening, we heard a rumor of a wrecked 20-ton launch in one of the hangars, possibly from the Amuar, and hoped to be able to get a walk through. The hangars are Navy property, and a tour was very unlikely.

Kipenzi called Kuuasarmi, and he promised to talk to the Navy here, and get back to us.

She also asked, politely, if the Amuar folks who stayed behind might have been selected because of 'issues' with the commander. He offered no answer, just polite demurral.

The Amuar left here on 213-1108. The Amuar was going to Eleson, Velscur, and then on to Odin. The first two were just gas giant refueling, gas and go. Odin was the first real port destination. Possibly we may have to search the gas giants for wreckage from a pirate attack.

The day passed, in spiritual contemplation. Or maybe we were thinking about the spirits of the evening.

The afternoon passes, it’s partly cloudy, with orange clouds from dust or maybe pollution.

Sam came back to the ship with news that the brokers all work for same group - the Belgardian government. There are no private brokers, so prices are set. The items doing the best are the rare foods and biodiesel. Sam’s using his persuasion to try to get the best prices, but it isn’t helping much. Erek doesn’t have any connections here.

The map of the Naval base shows the hanger’s off limits. Sensors show the port has radar, but it is aimed at the sky; we could fly under it if we needed to.

Checking out the hanger area: occasional SUV with Navy police logo, they drive by on perimeter patrols, on about hourly schedule +/- 5 minutes variations.

Evening
Both ships’ common areas were too small to hold everyone. The Skylark’s cargo bay was still full of cargo, so Voidskipper’s crew set up tables in their cargo bay which was still empty. Erek, as usual, prepared an excellent meal for our guest of honor, Ian Kuuasarmi.

Sam stayed on the ship when the rest went to dinner.

We hoped to find out more about life on the Amuar, and some about the folks who stayed with the ship when it left. After a couple of glasses of Vilian Eiswein, Ian (and some of the others) opened up a little bit. Captain Bryant was a bully and a tyrant. They are all glad to be off the ship, even on this hellworld.

They asked us to take a data packet for McClellan Factors when we leave, in case we get back that way before another ship comes through. It is not a problem if several copies get through. So we have one packet on Skylark and one on Voidskipper, in case we separate from Erek and his crew later on.

Erek asked about his nephew, Barnabus Seward, a steward on the Amuar. Kuuasarmi knew him, but he wasn’t with the trade delegation. As far as he knew, he was still on the ship.

We got some information on who’s good, who’s not on the Amuar’s crew.

Sywan Kolokoltsov was the XO, the Captain was taking on jobs that the XO should be doing, or Kolokoltsov would do it and Captain would make corrections – they didn’t get along; the Captain gave harsh orders and demanded total obedience. Most Captains are leaders, not micro managers.

Speculation on what happened: Maybe more likely Capt pissed off local leader and got shot, Amuar’s best negotiators are here, or a stupid mistake blew up ship, crew being worked too hard. Or the Amuar made a deal with pirates, and it went wrong.

Ian asks about Ganulph mission for Gollere. The Gollerians want us to check to see if the Imperial Cruiser is still there and if not, scan the planet for any kind of tech wreckage. Gollere once had an Imperial Naval base and research station. A Zhodani attack during the Fourth Frontier War set off an explosion in a weapons depot that stripped the atmosphere off the world and killed everyone on the planet and even took out ships in low orbit.

That mission would be about three weeks’ time, more or less. He would pay us and give the information to the locals and they would owe him some favors. He had asked about the ship in the hangar and was told it was none of his business. If he could make a case that the ship was from the Amuar it might be possible to get a look-see.

Discussion led us to settle on doing a flyby when we left Gollere and come back if we found something, our not returning would be the answer that nothing was there.

Ian thought this was pretty complicated and likely would NOT help us get a tour of the hangar. They would want the information in advance.

In Kipenzi’s earpiece Sam protested that we cannot take the time out from our search. The curse of Ganulph hanging over our heads has to be considered too.

Ian offered 600K for our cargo, thinking that would give him enough 'credit' to make the locals more amenable to letting him see the 20T launch. Right now, it’s a Belgardian Navy defense dept secret and they won’t let anyone see it.

Sam suggested using his bot to try and look into the hangar. He started working on a signal booster for it to allow longer range control.

2100
Party’s over, Sam working on probe.

With a lot to think over, we headed back to the Skylark. Late evening, still time to discuss options. We started on the drone modification soon after returning, and in about 4 hours were pretty happy with it.

089-1109 0130
With the probe ready, Kipenzi pilots it up to about 300 meters and sends it over the Navy hangers. Then she dropped it down over the one with the large SUV vehicle with Belgardian Navy logo parked out front and follows the roof line down.

Sam verified that the boosters for the transmitters tested out OK, the signal was strong and we hoped for the best. We didn’t see any indication that they had detected the probe or had noticed our transmissions.

Looking down on the SUV, Sam notes that there is only one person in the vehicle.

There are large hanger doors on the left, with red markings on the ground, that have doors that open inward, both closed. No transparent window above ground level, only translucent skylights that the multi-spectral binoculars could not see through.

Looking for entry points, Sam directed her to fly down to the double doors that had windows with light coming out. We could see the east half of the hanger, no ships visible. The microphone didn’t pick up any sound coming from inside.

Eventually the bot found a hatch on the roof. The roof hatch was near an elevator, it looked like it had a lock on it. We could see rungs of a ladder going down.

The bot checked out the other hangars too. All were about the same, but only the first one had a guard.

If we sent a couple folks with grav belts, we could check out the roof.

0230
Four hours to sunrise.

Sam, Medicus and the bot were the away team for this one. They wore black with their cloth armor, weapons, sensors and datapad.

The roof hatch was latched, Medicus’s scanner detected an alarm system. Ultrasonics, likely movement detector.

Sam used his tools to open some HVAC ducts at the front of the building and sent the drone inside to see what it could find.

After a few dead ends, the probe got a view of the western hanger and there was definitely a 20-ton launch in it. It was damaged and partly disassembled, it looked like crash damage. The name painted on the side matched one of the launches from the Amuar. If we could get access, we could download the flight information and learn where it crashed.

Now it looks like a better idea to make the deal to go to Ganulph and look around if we can get access to the ship and its database.

Sam opens a panel in the side of the elevator shaft and gets a look inside. Two stories with two shafts side-by-side, both elevators were on the ground floor.

We decided not to risk the elevator, perhaps we could override the security system, or jam it. Perhaps hack the computer?

0400
We were running out of darkness so we headed back to the Skylark.

Once back at the ship, we take a break and sleep.

In the morning, Sam meets with brokers.

By dinner time we think we have solution, but it needed some testing and proof work before we put ourselves on the line.

Since we had not yet refined the fuel, and might have to make a speedy getaway, we decided to spend a couple more days here negotiating, cargo dealing and carousing before heading back to the hanger.

090-1109 0001
Our second midnight madness team headed off. This time Kipenzi, Fig and Leon would be going.

Once on site, Kipenzi used the portable X-ray scanner to check for people, but found none.

We went for the hatch on the roof. Leon got the hatch open in a few seconds. We applied our countermeasure to the alarm. If it didn’t work, we would know fairly quickly.

Low level lighting was the only light in the hangar. We could see the ladder going down to the upper level and then through an opening to the ground floor.

Kip led the way, Fig and then Leon. We floated down and looked at the second floor, it was mostly empty. We continued down to the ground level and crossed the empty east hanger. We used grav belts to move from the ladder across the floor without touching it and over to the doors to the west hanger.

Once inside the west hanger, we could see the launch. The doors for the cargo hatches were missing, parts of the drives were sitting on tables and all of the iris valves were open. The hull was scraped up and there were bits of dried vegetation stuck to the hull.

We took samples of the vegetation for Medicus.

Kipenzi went right to the bridge, plugged in and started downloading files. Fortunately, the computer that contained the black box and flight data was still intact. The seats were damaged and there was blood on some of the panels. It looks like it came down hard enough to kill on impact. The Belgardians were calling the launch “of an advanced design”, but it was a standard imperial model.

0130
20 minutes later the download was complete and we were on our way out, and not a moment too soon. Sam, back on the Skylark, was reporting that the guy from the SUV was walking toward the hanger door.

Right after that we head a door open at the front on the first floor, within sight of where we were minutes earlier. We silently rush to the hatch and quietly close it behind us.

After about 10 minutes, as we were flying back, the guy went back to the SUV while talking on his handheld and got back in.

Once back at the Skylark, we download the data to our computer and Medicus took the vegetation samples for analysis.

Looking at the data we learned that the launch crashed on Pa’an, on 296-1108 at 02:22:31.

Pa'an is a Zhodani allegiant system, low pop. We are going to need anti psi helmets for sure.

Kip’s musings on Zhodani: “They HATE Free Traders. If the Amuar Captain had pulled anything with them, they wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot first.”

The samples we took did not match ANY DNA in Medicus's database.

Doing the math. If the Amuar had stuck to its route, then:

• Amuar left here on 213/1108. Eleson-Velscur-Odin.
• So arrive Eleson 220, depart Eleson (gas up only) 224
• Arrive Velscur 231, depart Vescur (gas up only) 235
• Arrive Odin 242 -gas up 3 days 245.
• They do business and come back the same route.

296-245 = 51 days unaccounted for, and it’s only a one 3-jump to Pa’an from Odin, so – 1wk = 44 days unaccounted for. Where were they?

090-1109 1200
Fuel processing complete.

Continued in The Last Flight of the Amuar - Part 6.

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, Mission to Mithril, Outback and Skylark and the Pit.