The Last Flight of the Amuar - Part 8

The Crew of the Skylark 2 captures two of the former crew of the Amuar and finally gain entrance to the ship’s auxiliary bridge and discovers what happened to the Amuar.

This entry is from the January 3, 2021 session and is based on Carl and Kay’s notes.

Continued from: The Last Flight of the Amuar - Part 7.

Location: On board the wreck of the Amuar on Pa’an, Trojan Reach Sector, Egyrn Subsector.

Imperial Date: 125-1109.

1000
Kip had just slammed a hatch in some creature's face and suddenly Fig thought, “Did we shut off the transponder? Or are we transmitting to the Zhodani?”

Asking Medicus about it, Medicus said, “I thought Sam shut it off.”

Checking with Sam, yes, he did shut it off. It is something we will have to remember in the future if we want to stay discreet.

Kipenzi wished she could scratch her head; the itch was starting to drive her crazy. We have been wearing these psy helmets for four days straight and they had to be kept dry, so no showers. On top of that, she was wearing her heavy vacc suit and couldn’t even reach it because it was under her helmet.

We were in the main jump drive compartment of E-Deck, working our way down towards the auxiliary bridge. The auxiliary bridge was on H-Deck and we needed to be there before the tide started coming in and the deck started filling with water in about an hour.

Our Initial plan was to stand back, open the hatch (gotta figure out how to do both) and shoot whatever it was.  The hatch would lead us down, closer to the aux bridge.

We changed our minds and decided to clear this level more completely, so we would not get attacked from behind.

We found a compartment containing the ship’s life support equipment and found that it was still functioning at a low level. The water system was even still pressurized, on emergency status, but working.

Many of the control panels looked like they had been deliberately smashed.  We wondered more about Zhodani mind-screwing stuff going on.

We continued forward and found a storage compartment for cleaning supplies.  They were all rifled through and piled on the floor.

We found more general equipment/ship’s locker type storage in the same condition.

On our right, was what at first looked like more storage, but had padded walls and a variable gravity control. Maybe used as a zero-g training room or special cargo storage. It was across the hall from the environmental control equipment for the exotic cargo storage area on the other side of the bulkhead.

We found several staterooms with lockers open and empty, the beds unmade, but not slept in. It looked like someone had moved out rather than abandoned them.

On our left, we found a galley with the cabinets rifled, pots and pans on the floor, the food storage was empty.

At the end of the hall was another very messy fresher. Someone had continued to use the fixtures long after they had clogged up.

The Amuar's cargo bay with the air/raft floating outside

Approaching the cargo bay, we passed an open elevator shaft with the safety cover open. Ahead of us, past the open door we could hear the sound of footsteps on the cargo bay stairs. Two legs, rather than four told us it was probably a survivor rather than one of those predators.  We could tell they were trying to be quiet, but the external microphones on our suits were turned up and we could hear them anyway.

We got our tranq pistols out.

Kipenzi stepped through the door into the cargo bay and fired at the bearded figure. He was dressed in rags and had a large pipe in one hand that he wielded as a club. She missed and he took off with surprising speed.

Fig moved ahead, but held his fire. He was armed with a gauss pistol and we wanted to capture him; and the gauss pistol might kill him.

Medicus, entering the cargo bay behind Fig, shot and missed twice as the “caveman” disappeared around the corner and headed down a corridor.

Kipenzi, using her grav belt, skipped the stairs and catwalk and took another shot at him down the hall. She missed. This guy was dodging all over the place.

Medicus took another shot as he ran down the hall and missed again as he disappeared up the elevator shaft.

Kipenzi ran forward and looked up and down the shaft. Her quarry was two meters up, climbing on a rope ladder that was on the side of the shaft.

Medicus and Fig caught up to Kipenzi as she stepped into the shaft and floated up on her grav belt.

She shot upwards as he was about to step off the ladder and finally hit him. Kipenzi asked Medicus if it would be safe to shoot him again, she almost can’t miss at this range.

He kept going, though a bit unsteadily.

Medicus said, “Yes, but only one more time.”

Kipenzi shot and hit him again.

Medicus grabbed him as he lost his footing on the ladder and started to fall. He struggled, but only weakly before losing consciousness. The weight of the two of them was too much for Medicus’s grav belt and they started to sink down the shaft. 

Kipenzi grabbed onto Medicus’s harness and Fig followed suit, and they all landed on the floor of the C-Deck main elevator lobby.

Medicus ran a quick scan and pronounced that he would be out for about 18 hours.  He was also malnourished, dehydrated, beaten up and had several fresh scars.  Bringing up the crew database, we ID’d him as Warren Escalona, the Amuar’s chief steward.

We pulled the darts out as Medicus was running his scan.

We tied him up just to be safe, even though he would be out for a while and took him to the air/raft.

We went back into the Amuar through the cargo bay door, and Sam called over from the Skylark and asked about the cargo. Medicus checked the cargo containers and found that the ship was carrying 7 tons of quartz, 3 tons of synthetic gems, and 22 tons of advanced heavy weapons.

We went back to the elevator shaft where we had captured Escalona and decided that it would be the quickest way down.

We left the shaft at E-Deck and could see standing water one level down on F-Deck.  F-Deck was above the water level outside, but not all of it had drained out yet.

There was more evidence of violence and death here - expended weapons, shot marks on the wall, bones, etc.

Fig found a shotgun and welding equipment on the floor. It looked like someone welded shut the main hatch to the backup maneuver drive compartment, and welded plates over the open iris valve. We could hear movement behind the wielded plates, probably the predator that Kipenzi slammed the hatch on earlier. Kipenzi used her x-ray scanner and confirmed that it was the predator. It was probably locked in unless there was a way out that we didn’t know about.

Near the space suit lockers there were two skulls on the floor; one had belonged to a Vargr.

According to our plan, this area had survival and exploration equipment storage. In one of the rooms, someone had piled up crates of gear as a barricade.

We float down the elevator shaft using our grav belts. G-Deck had about 60 cm of water covering the floor. We stayed above the water, just ‘cause we could.  No one wants muddy feet in the air/raft.

We could see the top of the elevator parked on H-Deck.  There was a line on the wall above our heads where the tide comes up to; and there are barnacles or something here and there below the water line.

Fig spotted something swimming in the water, rat-like, sort of. He didn’t get a good look at it and it swam away.

Kipenzi checked her map and the only hatch above this one goes to the bottom of the engineering level compartments.

To the right was a room labeled “boat deck office”, and it had a closed iris valve in the floor. This was the first one we had seen that wasn’t locked open. It was a good thing that Sam had reminded us to bring the iris valve tools.

Adjacent to the boat deck office was the auxiliary computer room.  Medicus stepped in and found that while the terminal was dead, he could tell by the lights that the computer itself was still up and running, even though it was covered in barnacles.

The auxiliary bridge was directly below us and Kipenzi used her X-ray scanner on the floor. There was a body, skeleton, or person, leaning back in a chair in front of a control panel.

There was very little water in the boat deck office, so we decided to use a trash can to bail it out and opened the floor valve.

When Fig started bailing, a couple of those black things which had swum up to the doorway took off when he splashed them with the water. Kipenzi said that they looked amphibian to her. Everyone took turns with the bucket and in about 20 minutes the water was low enough to try to open the iris valve.

1120
Kipenzi spent 10 minutes on the valve but couldn’t get it open. Fig was able to eventually get the lock into the right position so that he could crank the valve open; and the last couple of liters of water splashed onto the floor of the auxiliary bridge below.

There was a corpse sitting at a terminal. On the floor was a captain’s hat, a large wrench and a lot of dried blood. There was a datapad sitting on a control panel. There were also four other terminals that were off, but looked to be in good condition and another sealed iris valve in the forward wall.

The room had been sealed and dry before we accessed it.

The wrench on the floor was covered with dried blood and what might be bone fragments.

Kipenzi and Medicus went down through the open hatch and Fig stayed in the boat deck office keeping watch. We had another 20 minutes or so before the tide would turn and the water would start rising again.

The body was wearing an officer’s uniform and had a pistol in a holster on his belt. His name tag said Captain Joachim Bryant. He had obvious head injuries and Medicus scanned him and found that he also had a broken right ankle and left wrist along with several ribs, and there were indications of more than one puncture or perhaps bullet wounds elsewhere on his body.

The Captain’s access card was still in a slot in the panel. We shouldn’t have any problems getting access to any locked areas of the ship with it. Using the captain's access card, we were able to get at all the computer records, too.

Medicus used the terminal to download the ship’s logs and other information into his datapad. The last entry in the Captain’s log said that everyone on board had gone crazy and that he was trying to land the ship safely. It looks like the ship came down under power and made a controlled landing; and he died from his injuries not long after it was on the ground.

Kipenzi grabbed the datapad that was sitting on the control panel to take with us.

We could now track many of the events leading to the crash/forced landing and find out what happened to the 54 crewmembers of the Amuar.

Medicus checked where there was currently power, hoping that might be where to look for more survivors. Power was going to astrogation, auxiliary computer, life support, and the umbilical to the pinnace, one of the ship’s vehicles. The pinnace was stored on G-Deck, where Fig was at the time.

Fig turned up the gain on his microphone to see if he could hear anything, but only heard dripping water and the rest of our landing party clanking around on the deck below.

Kipenzi and Medicus came back up, and we cranked the iris valve shut and reset the latch. Hopefully it would stay dry when the water flooded back into the boat deck office level in a couple of hours.

1200
We went forward towards the hanger, floating on our grav belts just above the water. The black things tended to avoid us, swimming away as we moved forward.

Medicus heard splashing ahead and spotted a woman in much the same condition as Escalona. When she saw him, she ducked behind the cargo elevator bulkhead. Medicus went around to the left, toward the empty shuttle bay. Kipenzi went to the right, behind the pinnace and then over it where she could see the woman.

While the woman had her attention on Medicus, Kipenzi shot her in the back with a tranq dart and she went down instantly, falling into the water with a splash. Medicus grabbed her and pulled her up before she could drown. He ran a quick scan on her and ID’ed her as Oluksyde Vili, one of Amuar’s gunners.

While Medicus was tying her up, Kipenzi checked out the pinnace.  It looked like at least two people had been living in it, possibly more.

As she was leaving the pinnace, she closed and sealed the hatch to keep it from flooding when the water rose again.

So, we were missing one launch and the shuttle. Could one or both be at the 2^nd crash site that Erek had found?

We got our new rescuee back to the air/raft and then headed back to the Skylark. We took the up and out away from the planet, to near where the Voidskipper waited. 

1750
We updated Erek on what we learned and finally took off the psi helmets and got a chance to SCRATCH OUR HEADS!!!!!

Medicus triaged our survivors and decided to put Vili in the autodoc first. Escalona was restrained in case he came out of tranq early. Initial scans showed dehydration and malnutrition are issues for both of them.

We all got showers in turn and cleaned our psi-helmets. We had been wearing them for four days straight and they were getting nasty. We had dinner and some down time to settle things and plan further.

Kipenzi asked Medicus to check for permanent brain damage. It turned out that there was nothing major, but some subtle changes. The autodoc was tagging her as a possible PTSD stress victim.

2200
Vili awakens enraged and paranoid, incoherent.  She was too feral to deal with so we put her in a low passage berth and then put Escalona in the autodoc before he woke up.

126-1109  0030
Warren Escalona came to and was basically the same condition upon awaking.  Whatever they went through has them really messed up.  We transferred them to the Voidskipper for keeps and knocked off for the day.

0900
Over breakfast we talked with Erek on comm and started going through the Amuar’s logs.

Erek thought the 2^nd crash site was the shuttle and wanted us to do a look-see before we left Pa’an. He also wanted us to do a full sweep of the ship, picking up skulls for DNA analysis and a head count as well as making sure we got all survivors.

The ships logs pretty much told the whole sorry tale of what happened to the Amuar:

McClellan Factors gives its captains and mission commanders a great deal of latitude regarding where they operate, so long as they return to port in the specified time frame and the mission overall is deemed to have been valuable. Between reaching Belgard and beginning the return leg, Amuar’s captain had a window of 12-16 weeks to do as he thought best. Making the best use of this time is what separates a true merchant cruiser skipper from a mere cargo ship driver.

Normally, the decision of what to do would be debated by the senior command team, with the captain producing a rough plan based upon the most recent information and the mission commander (a broker from McClellan Factors) having final say. However, the mission commander on this trip was to remain at Belgard along with a handful of other personnel, setting up a permanent trade mission on behalf of McClellan Factors.

The deal with Belgard to set up the trade mission represented a big success for McClellan Factors. It was decided to keep the situation secret for as long as possible, so personnel assigned to Belgard were sent aboard Amuar as part of her crew. Losing the mission commander, a clerk and four crewmembers at Belgard would not leave the ship dangerously short-handed, and would provide an opportunity for her captain to show his true worth as sole commander of the mission.

Captain Bryant was already unpopular with the crew, giving unnecessarily harsh orders and expecting total obedience enforced by contract clauses. By contrast, most captains assigned to merchant cruisers were leaders rather than managers, and were sensitive to the fact that a crew cooped up in a starship – even a big one – for weeks on end would be worn out if driven too hard.

Bryant’s ‘do it or be punished’ attitude was not the undoing of the mission, however. That resulted from his bad judgement and excessive ambition. Determined to show he could outdo all previous mission commanders, Bryant decided to make the difficult jump-3 transit Rimward towards the Sindalian Main, intending to visit the Imperial client state of Dpres and the surrounding worlds. Dpres, he reasoned, would be a voracious market for Imperial foods supplied by McClellan Factors.

Amuar left Belgard headed Rimward, by way of gas giant re-fueling at Eleson and Velscur and thence to Odin. This meant three weeks in space and two hazardous skimming operations without any shore leave whatsoever. Resentment among the crew was punished by cancellation of shore leave at Odin, which made things worse as the ship jumped to Solaria intending to make port at Dpres.

However, another opportunity arose along the way. At Solaria, Bryant struck a deal with a mercantile group operating out of the Florian League, to provide samples of a dangerous and highly intelligent predator from a distant world somewhere with the Trojan Reach sector, or perhaps even further from Imperial space. The traders were cagy about where they found their beasts, but it was clear they would be an excellent addition to the array of threats posed by ‘extreme safari’ resorts.

It is big business in some regions, and operators are always on the lookout for a new predator to add to the mix. If one actually manages to kill a hunter, this typically increases ticket sales rather than driving off potential safari-goers. Amuar’s mission was amended, over the protests of some officers, to include bringing home three breeding pairs of the predator. This was to be kept quiet, as McClellan Factors would not want adverse publicity from being in the predator trade. Bryant reasoned his employers would be entirely happy to rake in the profits, however.

The beasts were contained in specially designed low berth units, and were quite safe. That is, until Amuar made a stopover at Pa’an. The stopover was not intended to be part of the trip home, which was planned to make best use of Amuar’s long legs. A series of jump-3 transits became a problem when exhausted crewmembers misaligned part of the main jump drive and made it unsafe to use. Amid recrimination, punishments and a near-mutiny, Amuar began a slower return using her jump-2 drive. She still had the fuel capacity to transit three parsecs, but Bryant decided that wherever possible he would jump to star systems rather than deep space, keeping full tanks rather than risking a deep-space jump.

This would normally be the safe option, but Pa’an is inhabited by telepaths who do not like outsiders. Bryant’s crew was already on the brink of insurrection when he made the mistake of dealing with the locals the way he spoke to his own crew. This enraged them, and they used their telepathic powers to induce conflict among the crew.

It did not take much to spark off violence aboard the troubled ship. Within minutes the crew was arguing; it was less than an hour to the first fist fight and deaths began before the morning was over. An enraged Bryant returned to his ship and tried to put down what he considered to be a mutiny, and pretty soon there was gunfire in the corridors. In the midst of the chaos, the main bridge was wrecked, and even as Amuar went out of control someone let one of the predators out of its low berth in the hope of eliminating some rival.

There were those who did not succumb to the madness. Some banded together to help one another, or stood by an injured friend to the last. One group launched the shuttle; someone put a missile into it out of sheer spite. Other bands managed to reach the launches. The first got away; the second was not so lucky. With its pilot wounded, the launch failed to clear the hangar properly and suffered serious damage. It crashed far from Amuar’s position despite a valiant fight all the way down. Everyone aboard died in the crash or soon after, but the launch itself was eventually salvaged and taken to Belgard by Florian traders.

With his ship falling into Pa’an’s atmosphere, his crew murdering one another in the corridors and a wild animal running loose somewhere, Captain Bryant knew all was lost. Yet in his madness he clung to the one duty that remained. Armed with a pistol and a wrench he fought all comers, right through the ship from the wrecked bridge to the lowest deck. There, mortally wounded, he sealed himself into the emergency bridge and flew Amuar to the ground.

The low berth units containing the alien predators were opened when Captain Bryant sounded the abandon klaxon. Emergency systems naturally tried to revive all low berth passengers, human and otherwise. The groggy beasts roused themselves and went hunting.

One launch got away and we could now calculate where it should be from the initial tracking information. There were seven crewmembers on board, including Barnabas Seward, Erek’s nephew.

Name	Position
Edikher Deshkhuni Gigdakiir	Gunner
Barnabas Seward	Steward, Erek’s Nephew
Balondemu Hennley	Drive Hand
Peter Klevshin	Deck Hand
Pekepeb Aobas Kaariru (Bwap)	Drive Hand
Bing Eyadema	Assistant Pilot
Frederico da Mota	Gunner

The blown-up shuttle had four crew members on board:

Name	Position
Ojore Yoruba	Ship’s Boat Pilot
Ding-rung Dzou	Drive Hand
Kodwo-dou-swun Nye	Deck Hand
Blair Kigershu	Medical Assistant

We also found data on the predators. There were originally six on board and we killed three. That would be three more plus any offspring. They have a litter of 5 or 6 and they give birth every four months.  There could be 30 of them running around. We didn’t see anywhere near that many, but some could be hibernating.  They hibernate when they can’t find food. Some of them may have dispersed into the area around the Amuar.

We started preparing to leave the Voidskipper behind us and head back to Pa’an for a final check and head count of victims, picking up the Amuar’s cargo for ourselves as salvage, and if we were lucky, picking off more predators. A short discussion ensued about warning the locals about a deadly invasive species, if we couldn’t account for all of the predators at the end.  We could be back about 1400.  It would still be high tide and G & H decks would be under water for a while yet, with the water dropping below G deck at about 1900, just after local noon.

Continued in Part 9.

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.