The Last Flight of the Amuar - Part 9

The Crew of the Skylark 2 finds the missing launch containing seven survivors from the Amuar, recovers the remains of many who didn’t survive and makes plans to finally return to the Imperium.

This was our 99TH SESSION – time flies when you’re running for your lives.

This entry is from the February 13, 2021 session and is based on Carl and Kay’s notes.

Continued from: The Last Flight of the Amuar – Part 8

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

Imperial Date: 126-1109.

0900
We decided that rescuing possible survivors took precedence over recovering bodies and loot from the Amuar.  At least hopefully survivors; we expect they are in cold sleep as they coast along.

From the tracking information that we had recovered, we were able to find that their target was one of the gas giants of the 2^nd star in the system – it would take them a year to get there in a launch.

Knowing when they left, and how much fuel capacity they had, we made our best guess at the optimal way to catch up to and rendezvous with them. With our greater acceleration and ability to accelerate continuously, Sam and Fig calculated that we could be at their location in a couple of days.

Erek decides to go ahead with the Voidskipper; doing 4G’s, he could be in the area in about 30 hours.

127-1109  1500
The Voidskipper spotted the launch’s transponder, and sent us updated coordinates.  We were about 7 hours behind them, and would not overshoot as much as they would.  We could actually connect up with the launch well before the Voidskipper.

128-1109   0150
Sensors showed a mostly shut down launch, with no life signs. That is normal with everyone being in cold storage.  Not unexpectedly, hailing got no answer. We finished the rendezvous and got set to go over for an in-person look.

Kipenzi and Medicus suited up and headed over to see what was what.  Definite plan to turn off any autopilot (having the ship flip and start a slowdown burn at the wrong time would be BAD).  They took equipment for door access, low berth examination and some maintenance if needed.

Not well versed in EVA actions, Medicus accidently decoupled the EVA equipment, and off it went into space.  Medicus was just outside the airlock, but still tethered to Kipenzi. She pulled him in and looked around for the EVA pack. There was no sign of it.

Note for Year's End party: this footage will figure prominently.

Sam was on sensors on the bridge – he couldn’t find the jet pack. The problem wasn’t just the cost of getting a new EVA pack. Without someone controlling it, it was traveling in random directions and would be moving several hundred km per hour within a few minutes and would continue to accelerate until it ran out of fuel in about an hour, if it didn’t hit something first.  Sam continued his scan, hoping to find it since it would have enough velocity to damage the ship if it came back.

They finished cycling the airlock, floated inside, and started looking around. They saw eight low passage berths, hatches in floor and ceiling of main area, and a couple of iris valves. There were green lights on six of the berths, one with no lights at all, and one in the 'wake up' mode.  The OFF one was empty, so looked like seven folks made it off of Pa'an.  They found Erek's nephew, looking OK but sleeping away.  One of the berths held a male Bwap (Newt), he would be Pekepeb Aobas Kaariru.

There was plenty of time before the wakeup process finished, so Kipenzi went to check out the bridge. The autopilot was set for turnover in about a week; Kipenzi turned it off.

Sam lined the Skylark up to receive the launch.

Leon, who claims to have skill with ship's boats, EVA'd over to the launch. He maneuvered to put the launch into the cargo hold. He had been away from it a little too long.  First try scraped some of the paint, but he recovered and kept trying, eventually getting inside. A little damage to the rear cargo lock door of Skylark was the only real downside. At least it was only the INSIDE cargo door.  We could at least still pressurize the cargo hold.

The first of the launchees to wake up was Bing Eyadama.  He was surprised to be here.  Kipenzi filled him in on the history of our rescue.

He filled us in a little on the Amuar story. He said there had been three people in the second launch, agreeing with the body count we knew of already.

Erek wanted his nephew to be revived, but we decided to leave the rest sleeping till we got back to civilization since we didn’t want to stress our life support. It would already be close.

By 1500 the Voidskipper had joined with us, and it was reunion time. We got the launch aligned better, so we could actually load the cargo containers off the Amuar.  We planned to put the two launch waker-uppers over on the Voidskipper so no detectable brain waves would be going down onto Pa'an.  We would, as before, all wear our psionic shield helmets for the duration.

1600
We started back toward Pa'an with our transponder off, intending to approach the side opposite the known settlement. Voidskipper would stay well outside any likely telepath’s range.

On the way back, Kipenzi uncharacteristically asked about our fees and Sam filled her in. Erek paid for docking fees and fuel. He also used his contacts to help out when we were buying and selling cargo.

The rest of our reward would come from McClellan Factors.

They were paying:

• 2 MCr for the Amuar’s location. 
•  2 MCr for retrieval of computer logs.
• 15 KCr for each crew and/or passengers.
• 84.5 MCr if we find and deliver the ship (this one is not happening).

Sam rechecked the contract and verified that it didn’t specify dead or alive for the crew. This was why we were spending so much time recovering bones that could be ID’d as being from crew members.

We will need to go back to Pax Rulin to get the reward from McClellan.

We plot our route back: Pa’an – 985-373 (red zone) – Ganulph (red zone) – Vior – Bantral – Pax Rulin.

Vior is an Imperial Scout Service installation and while it is outside of the Imperial border, it marks the edge of what we would consider civilization.

We also spent time looking at the files on the predators and talking about what to expect.  They started with three breeding pairs which could produce up to 30 offspring under optimal conditions – our worst-case scenario. They carry their young in a pouch.

130-1109  0200
Late afternoon, local Pa'an crash-site time. It is high tide and The Amuar is an island in a flooded estuary. It is four hours to sunset and low tide is many hours away.

Sam and Leon are on fuel detail, and everyone has their psy helmets on.

Literal head count on the Amuar coming up, to see how many people we can confirm are dead, and retrieve something that could be used for definite ID. We decided to sweep the Amuar for skulls and maybe predators while water was being loaded for conversion to top off our tanks.  Medicus, Kipenzi and Fig would do the critter crawl.

0300
Kipenzi was wearing the vacc suit damaged on a previous trip as a suit of armor, to save one good suit for when she has to be in vacuum.

We are armed with tranq guns in case we find more survivors and gauss pistols for the predators. Kipenzi has her x-ray scanner and we are carrying tools for opening any closed doors we may come across. We also brought Sam’s drone, the anti-grav cargo net and bags for skulls, bones and any other items we wanted to carry out.

With the drone leading the way, the terrific three entered the ship.

We went in through the cargo bay door and floated back towards the electronics shop where we had left off before.

We found a skull and picked it up. The lift shaft next to the electronics shop ran between C and E decks and it had a rope ladder that the survivors had been using to move between decks.

Kipenzi sent the drone up to C deck to check ahead of us – empty.

She followed it up, cut the ladder down and stowed it in her pack.  She then went back down to E deck where the rest of us were. We then moved forward, searching rooms as we went.

Kipenzi sent the drone up to the 2^nd elevators shaft that also had a rope ladder. When it got to C deck, a live person took a swing at it with a sword. He missed and Kipenzi brought the drone back down.

We all went up, planning to distract and tranq him rather than having to kill or cripple him. He was gone by the time we got up to C level.

0400
Kipenzi cut the rope ladder and stowed it in her pack.

Moving forward we found more bones and bagged them. There was a Human skull in a stateroom and a Vargr skull on the floor of a fresher.

There were four personnel capsules next to the forward elevator shaft. None had been used.

We found main fire control in the bow of the ship. There had been heavy fighting here, but the maintenance hatch to the crawlspace for the automated turrets was still sealed so we left it alone.

Heading aft, Medicus stepped around a corner in the common area and a predator charged him from the other end of the corridor. Sam, monitoring the cameras from the bridge of the Skylark spotted it first and took over the drone and intercepted it.

The predator was distracted enough for us to switch weapons and we finished it off with gauss pistols.

Medicus checked it and it was an adult female. It had eight pouches and was carrying two mouse-sized infants; we terminated them.

As we moved further aft, we got a little spread out. When Kipenzi stepped into the bedroom of the owner’s suite she got jumped by the live person we saw earlier.

Fig shot and missed. Kipenzi shot and hit him, but he looked like he barely noticed. Medicus shot him with his tranq pistol and he dropped to the floor unconscious.

Medicus bandaged his wounds and we tied him up and took him back to the Skylark to put him in the autodoc.  We ID’ed him as Gai Liga, a deck hand.

0500
We bagged another skull in engineering and moved up to B deck.

On B deck, Kipenzi added the third and final rope ladder to her collection and picked up the gun that we had found on our first visit.

Moving forward towards the bridge, we found another set of bones.

The bridge itself was badly damaged and looked like the scene of a major battle. There were a lot of scattered bones, several mostly intact rib cages and four skulls. There was no way to tell which bones went together without testing.

We moved up to A deck with the drone leading the way. We found four VACC suits as well as tools and repair parts and we put them all in the cargo net. Main fire control was at the aft end. We checked the turret, no one was in it.

We found 30 more suits in various sizes spilling out of lockers. We bundled them up next to the exterior hatch for later retrieval since they would have filled the cargo net to the point that we wouldn’t be able to fit it through doorways. Even with the zero-G lifters on the net, it would be become unwieldy. 

We went forward to the launch hanger. Between the damage from being hit by the launch when they tried to get away and the re-entry stress, one of the hatches was barely hanging on.

With the upper part of the Amuar cleared, we went back down to D deck.

Once on D deck, we worked our way towards the bow of the ship until we found a closed iris valve that we had not investigated on our first time through. The walls on either side were covered with racks of missiles, and missile launch tubes were at each end. The label next to the sealed hatch confirmed that it led to lower astrogation.

A quick scan showed that there was an intact body inside. It was the first one since the captain that we found that hadn’t been reduced to scattered bones.

Kipenzi removed a wall panel and went to work on the release for the iris valve. It appeared to be stuck and she was not able to get it open.

A second look with the scanner made it look like someone had welded it shut from the inside.

Our plan of the ship indicated that there was no other way in. We decided to leave this one for now and continue our search, moving aft.

On the far side of the cargo bay, we found a side room with a mattress and someone’s stash, with tools and a rifle (an ACR) that was missing a magazine.  There was some kind of project in progress there that we could not tell what it was.

There was a cutting torch with fuel with the equipment. We moved the torch back to the iris valve that we would need to cut open later when we returned.

Continuing with the search, Medicus found a skull, femur, clavicle and other bones scattered in the hall. A scan told us that they all belonged to the same individual.

Checking the predators we killed earlier, one was female with three dead pups.  Chipmunk-sized instead of mouse-sized this time.

The pharmacy and medical stores had been rifled but Medicus recovered a little bit of useful stuff.  The secondary computer was off and damaged.

We found more bones and bagged them, labeling the bags with where they were found.

There were six low berths that had been modified for carrying non-human cargo. It was where the predators had been stored.

At the rear of sick bay was a small operating theater.  Kipenzi checked it, and found it empty.

Passing to the far side of the cargo bay, we found the magazine office and an impressive collection of weapons scattered on the floor outside in the hall, including a spear and a sword on the floor next to a floor iris valve.

The side rooms behind the magazine office contained drones, explosive stores and other toys, including missiles.

The Skylark was all filled up for fuel processing by this time and we headed back for some food and rest with our full cargo net. It was sunset and the tide was going out. When it was completely out, we could come back and do the lower decks.

Back at Skylark we do the final head count – literally:

Out of a crew complement of 49, so far we have accounted for:

• 3 dead in the 2^nd launch
• 7 alive in the 1^st launch
• 3 survivors – transferred to the Voidskipper’s low berths
• 1 dead Captain’s body
• 1 dead body in lower navigation behind a welded door
• 18 skulls (one of them Vargr)
• 3 dead predators
• 4 dead offspring-predators
• A collection of bones belonging to 18 separate individuals.

There are fourteen crew members still missing. They may be on the lower decks that we will clear when the tide is out. There is also a small chance that some crash survivors left the ship and are camped in the surrounding areas, so we may have to do IR scans at the end.

Kipenzi checks the ship’s schematics and finds a shuttle on F Deck, a shuttle and pinnace on G deck, and a life boat on H deck – underwater now, but there may be more survivors living in them.

Continued in: The Last Flight of the Amuar - Part 10

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.