Most everyone shows up, though it looks like the demands of Mike's (Hector) life have grown to the point where he is no longer going to be able to show up for this game. The survivors include Paul (Bob the Saurk), Tim (Kraid Naiben), Chris (Caleb Kagan), Ernest (Liz Blessing), Bruce (Goat Gulgusskun) and Chuck.
There is some debate upon what sort of skills need to be more heavily represented in the group. The final conclusion is that the characters need a couple more gunners, and that someone needs to pick up the various social skills that Hector originally provided (Business, Negotiation, etc.). Goat Gulgusskun learns Demolition 1 and Gunnery 1. Liz Blessing indicates that she is going to be developing some skill in Leadership, which can have all sorts of nice effects in combat (through the miracle of Command Points). Caleb ups and spends a point to get Teaching 1.
| Gunnery | Pilot | Info Warfare | Tech Sciences | Tinker | Navigation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kraid | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Caleb | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Goat | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Liz | 0 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Bob | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 1 |
| Ship's Computer | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Bob the Saurk is sitting in a restroom in the Omaha Municipal Starport with a recently-disarmed bomb. He dumps the actual explosive and the timer, but keeps the suitcase. "Woohoo! Free suitcase!" He heads back to the Salt Witch, and doesn't mention the bomb to anybody. It didn't go off, so there's no reason to tell anyone.
The characters have the ten strangely coffin-like crates for Stitches safely on board, stored inside the newly-installed walk-in refrigerator. Goat Gulgusskun knows that the crates are actually cryogenic storage chambers. He uses his freaky psychic powers to determine that one of them is a fairly healthy (but frozen) human woman. This brings up the question of who these people actually are. Liz Blessing offers that these people need to be fairly special people, as shipping ten random citizens in cryogenic chambers seems to be a lot of trouble.
The characters also search through their twenty economic migrants for weapons and questionable political ideas (like, for example, anyone who thinks that they might be interested in hijacking the Salt Witch). The characters find nothing more than a couple of knives. Liz finds that one of the male passengers is actually fairly good looking.
Caleb Kagan notices that Goat has been turning the galley into an impromptu medical facility. He rages out, "YOU BASTARD! I'm gonna fuckin' shoot you if you don't move the medical equipment out of the kitchen!" Goat ignores him as he performs a series of medical exam on the passengers. He is disappointed to come up with nothing more than a couple of cases of crabs and lice. Caleb comments, "And that's ANOTHER reason why I want the medical gear somewhere other than in the kitchen!"
Liz spends some time talking to the Omaha Space Control, trying to determine if there are any interdicted zones arising from the current troubles with Mars. She finds that though OSC advises against going to Mars directly, but otherwise thinks that the situation is safe.
Caleb Kagan hits a tourist gift shoppe in the port concourse to buy a "I've Been to Earth" snow globe.
The Salt Witch jumps to Aetna, expecting to make it in 54 days or less. Three days out, Caleb reports, "My sensors have all gone fuzzy! I think something is going badly wrong out there!" He works on the situation and clears out the attacking ECM enough to pick up that there are six ships bearing on the Salt Witch. Then the sensors go out again.
Liz kicks up the engines and runs. The crew goes to general quarters. Liz estimates that the attackers will be in engagement range in three or four rounds.
Caleb manages to get a clear look at the attackers and identifies them as six scramblers. Liz knows that she's not going to be able to outrun them in a straight-line flight, so diving into the asteroid belt and playing Han Solo suddenly seems like a really good idea. Caleb suggests, "I think this is a really good way to end the pursuit, so dive on it." He then gets on the PA and comments, "Okay, passengers, you'll want to strap yourselves in. We're going to be doing some high-acceleration maneuvers. And if you hear any impacts on the hull that's either gunfire or asteroid impacts." The characters hear the screaming start and just slam the cargo bay doors.
Kraid reassures the others, "You realize these things are basically just missiles with guys riding them. Their best weapons are probably just machine guns."
Kraid and Bob are in the gun turrets. Goat heads down to the new (non-kitchen) sickbay and preps up to conduct major surgery.
And then Liz dives into the (very cinematic) asteroid belt. Right away one of the scramblers hits an asteroid... and just bounces right off. It turns out that a scrambler has AR 15, more than enough to deal with the occasional asteroid hit. The scramblers are still at extreme range (24 hexes).
Moments later, the Salt Witch hits her first asteroid. WHANG! Caleb gets on the PA and announces, "Don't worry, that was just an asteroid!" Bob the Saurk manages to damage one of the scramblers. And then the Salt Witch hits another asteroid. CLANG! Kraid gets a minor hit on another scrambler. A couple scramblers go spinning into asteroids, taking some amount of damage in the process. BLANG! The Salt Witch hits her third asteroid. Liz reflects on how it is really very good that the ship doesn't generally take any damage from these impacts.
Goat calls up to the bridge to ask, "So, explain to me how you can evade gunfire but you keep on hitting asteroids?" Liz explains from between gritted teeth, "Because I'm trying to get close to the asteroids. I'm not trying to be close to the gunfire." Meanwhile, Kraid and Bob concentrate fire on one scrambler, chewing away a few more of its systems.
At this point, Kraid notices that the leading scramblers, which haven't been shooting back at all, have boarding crews strapped to their wings. Caleb decides that now would be a good time to toss the "I am an ICPA warship" crybaby.
Liz decides to try and make a particularly dramatic maneuvering roll. She announces, "I use a Genre Point..." and pulls it off. One of the scramblers loses control and plows straight into an asteroid. A second scrambler, already damaged by gunfire, scrapes along an asteroid and leaves its engines behind. It drops out of the chase. But the two lead scramblers manage to grapple with the Salt Witch.
Within moments, six boarders are scrambling across the hull. The characters redeploy to repel boarders. Goat and Caleb go down to the cargo hold. Caleb straps flashbangs next to the airlocks. All the passengers get sent up to the central corridor, except for two who say they know how to fight. They are issued guns and sent up to help Liz in the bridge (which has another airlock).
Liz pulls the ship out of the asteroid field and tells the autopilot, "Go straight and fast!" She sees two guys in the front windscreen. One puts something very bomb-like on the glass, waves and backs off. She tells the two passengers to back off. Kraid moves up into the bridge. Bob moves into the cargo hold, where two teams of attackers are coming in through the airlocks. The characters see that the boarders are actually cycling the airlocks: they are not planning on deliberately decompressing the cargo deck.
Two teams of attackers break into the cargo hold. Lots of flashbangs go off. Half of them are the ones Caleb set, and the other half are the ones the two teams of attackers tossed. Caleb gets blinded.
Up in the bridge, the bomb goes off, dumping the atmosphere and shattering the front window. Kraid pops up and fills the area with lead. It suddenly develops that Kraid only barely knows which end of the gun needs to point at the thing he wants to die. Caleb screams out, "I thought you were a fighter! Why the hell did we think you were a fighter? Oh, right! The physical size." Kraid misses everything except the fuzzy dice, and then takes a hit that he ignores. He gives thanks for armored vacc suits. Liz follows up by taking out the dashboard Jesus.
Kraid moves forward and slashes wildly at the pirates. He misses. Liz yells, "Cut him again, Kraid!" One command point later, Kraid misses again. The pirates shoot back. Kraid takes a light wound. Liz avoids a spray of gauss carbine fire from the second pirate.
Kraid chops helplessly about and then takes another shot bouncing off his armor. Liz's carefully aimed shot with the 11mm Desert Eagle delivers a satisfying spray of blood as the other pirate takes a deep wound. Kraid finally gets a good hit, chopping a pirate in half. He crows out, "Oook! Oook oook oook!" The body floats off into space, dashing Kraid's hopes of a free gauss carbine. Liz takes a shot, getting another deep wound on her pirate. Surprisingly, the pirate is still up. Kraid slashes at him, inflicting a light wound. The guy finally falls over from accumulated injuries (two deep wounds, one light wound). Kraid pulls him back into the ship before he can drift off into the void.
Down in the cargo hold, Bob learns that ninja swords aren't so good against armored goons. And then the pirates take out their own vibro-ninja-swords. Caleb, though blinded, remains under cover and avoids getting shot. One boarder comes in running. Goat blindsides him with a shotgun, killing him instantly. Caleb feels something red and wet spray across his face. Bob slashes at one pirate and hurts him badly. A blinded pirate huddles in the airlock and takes a wild shot towards Goat. Caleb (also blind) huddles behind a crate.
Caleb tosses another flashbang into the airlock. Goat follows up with an Emergency Die-boosted point-blank shotgun shot, blasting the helpless pirate into oblivion.
Bob finally figures out how to use vibro-ninja swords against armored opponents. He strikes at one of his opponents and cuts him apart. Caleb moves over to the first guy Goat killed and pulls off his helmet to get his comlink. Then Bob kills the last guy. Caleb looks up to see Bob the Saurk dueling with the last pirate. The pirate is bleeding profusely from two deep wounds, but is still up and fighting. Caleb asks, "Who the hell gets into a swordfight with a saurk?" And then the next chop does it. Bob takes him down. The unfortunate pirate basically couldn't defend himself from the last hit at all.
Caleb listens on the radio. He hears, "Oh God! Please don't.... blauugh!" and then something that sounds like Bob laughing.
Up on the bridge, Kraid and Liz are looking at each other and asking, "Where's the blast shutter to pull across the bridge windows?" Kraid tells Liz: "I'll back you up on your scams later, but when anyone else asks about this fight you'll say I was a fuckin' badass..." Liz patches in to the intercom, "All gunners back to the turrets!"
The characters gather up the hardware the pirates left behind to see if there is anything useful that didn't either drift off into oblivion or get destroyed by Bob's ninja-sword-wielding ways. The nice items include:
Kraid takes one of each weapon. Liz takes a military vacc suit. Goat and Caleb both take a gauss carbine.
| Weapon | ACC | DM | Range | RoF | Ammo | Cost | Wt |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gauss carbine | +0 | 20 | 40/80/160/320 | 2 | 40 | 1050/40 | 4.5 |
| Vibro sword | +0 | AD+16 | - | - | - | 375 | 1 |
| Armor | Value | Enc | Conceal | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Military vacc suit | 20 | 0 | No | 3500 |
Bob the Saurk takes a couple of hours to weld a spare armor plate across the shattered viewscreen.
Goat sees Kraid come in to the sick bay with a wound and he acts as if it was the best day of his life. Kraid is unnerved, but in a moment he is in perfect health thanks to freaky psychic powers. Once Goat is done with Kraid, he proceeds to fix the captured pirate.
Caleb interrogates the pirate, but not very hard. He has already pretty much concluded that the guy is ranked about as low as possible and still be part of a pirate gang.
The characters express a desire to hand the pirate over to the ICPA. He doesn't like this idea one bit. Liz offers him a choice: he goes to the ICPA, or he goes out the airlock. The pirate protests, "But they're going to throw me out an airlock anyway!" Liz isn't very interested. She tells him, "Your choice. But listen, I'm a busy person and I've got other stuff to do."
Kraid picks up the crybaby and returns it to Caleb.
The rest of the journey to Aetna is uneventful. During the trip, Liz takes enough of a shine to the pirate that she tells him he's got a job as Hector's bodyguard. The guy's name is Jake Reflux (AGI +1, FIT +1, PER +1; Armed 2, Unarmed 2, Small Arms 2, Defense 2, Athletics 1, Negotiation 1, Notice 1, Stealth 1, Combat Sense 2, Zero G 2; STR 1, STA 27).
Rather tough. The Salt Witch is coming in to Aetna totally blind, by instruments only. Liz manages the job with aplomb. And then orders a new windshield for Cr 550.
The characters drop off Stitches' cargo and collect Cr 16,500 from him. They also have Cr 26,000 in stuff and Cr 26,000 in outstanding loans to their passengers. The characters divide up the actual money into shares of Cr 21,750 per character, plus an equal amount for the ship. The money comes from:
The loans are still outstanding.
Things on Aetna are going fairly peacefully. Oswald is doing well: she's teaching the government internal security forces how to shoot protestors from rooftops.
The characters give Jake Reflux a choice between working for Stitches and Hector. He likes Stitches better, and goes to work for him. The twenty economic refugees they brought from Earth go work for Hector, who finds jobs for them in the construction and janitorial services industries.
The characters decide that they need to improve the internal defenses of the Salt Witch. After extensive discussions, they decide to add:
The TV stand technicals will require batteries and magnets to keep them in place when firing, plus armor plating and (obviously) the machine guns. The characters head out into the marketplace and buy:
The money comes from the ship's account.
The characters get a message from Colonel Hotsul that Councilor Edric Pravad wants to talk to us. The characters are very busy arguing with each other about trying to become part of the Aetna Provisional Navy, so they happy to accept his invitation.
Councilor Pravad meets with the characters at his office in the New Ministerial Office Compound. He tells them, "We all know that Trevakian is an idiot. I don't know what you're up to, I just know you're up to no good." Caleb tries to defend himself by pleading stupidity, "We're not clever enough to be up to anything, let alone anything that's no good!" The Councilor is unimpressed, dismissing Caleb's argument with a hand wave, then explains his interest in the characters, "Whatever. Because of the current political situation, I need someone with your skills. And I know that you're trying to buy weapons and upgrade your ship, and also trying to get Dekravakian elected to the Presidency. I'll help you on all of this, if you do one thing for me. My son Simon is a mine foreman for ICPA on Bedlam. He's arranged to be transferred here, once the mines open up. But the ICPA has maybe lost two patrol boats in that system, and nobody knows what's going on. Find out if he's alive."
Liz tells everyone else to shut up as they try to "negotiate". She asks the Councilor, "What's in it for us on the front end? We love to fly into certain-death situations for no reward, but we're trying to get out of that business." "Well, what do you want?" Councilor Pravad indicates that he can get access to guns, and might be able to provide legal privilege to carry them. Liz suggests that she'd really like to have some of this hardware in advance. He mentions that the only sorts of hardware he has on hand are a bunch of spare missiles and an extra sensor pack for the Presidente.
He gives ends up giving the characters four missiles, plus a sensor package that will improve the Salt Witch's Sensor rating to +1. He'll provide more money or things later on depending on how the effort works out.
Each character gains four experience points.