Summary 1: Salvage and Slavers

Salvage and Slavers!

 The Aven Flyer had been gone for almost two decades. The 400 ton cargo ship disappeared while heading out to a jump point off Kinorb in 1182, and not a trace had been found – until now.

Aven Incorporated was a small and very aggressive subsector carrier with in all five starships between 400 and 800 tons. Due to the rather cutthroat nature of Aven Incorporated, the company was berated by their competitors, most notably Galactilines and Silver Star Lines, and Aven Inc. was declared bankrupt some years after the disappearance of the Aven Flyer.

 Five weeks ago, 329-1199, the Oberlindes lines ship Comtessa had to take a roundabout route to a jump point in the Menorb system due to solar flares. The Comtessa picked up a faint signal immediately before jump, and the signal corresponded to the Aven Flyer. Christo Aven, the heir of a company travelled to Menorb after hearing the news. He had funds, but not the skills to find the Aven Flyer. Christo Aven wanted to pick up the computer memory recorder, if possible, or perhaps even salvage the ship to settle claims and matters of family honor.

Being a citizen of the Empire, Christo Aven contacted the Imperial Embassy, and was in turned recommended to seek out the services of a certain William Gray, the former 3rd Secretary, who was on leave. Gray spent a week going through the rather meager amount of employable sentients who had some deep space experience, but by 001-1200, Gray had assembled the following prospects at Joe’s StarBar by the small Tissem star- and airport:

“Tricky Rouge”, a foreigner wearing a worn vacc suit. Lacking many credentials, he did have all the necessary starship qualifications. 

Herr Dr. Glazhütte-Limburgh, an ambitious computer scientist in search of funds to get him out of the Menorb system.

Phillip Frederick, Baron Fullford, a retired Imperial Navy officer and nobleman with odd preferences.

Riva Carollo, age 35, 686AA7, Navigation-1, Computer-1, Engineering-2, Mechanics-1, Electronics-2. Carollo is a former petty officer from the Imperial Navy. Hir (Carollo is nongendered) worked with naval development, and hir’s quite astute at starship technology. After an honorable discharge, Carollo has been employed with various short-term projects, but hir needs funds to leave Menorb after an employment forfeited on payments. Riva Carollo is quiet, good company, and quite the geek.

“Drozd”, age 26, 4BA997, Pilot-1, Streetwise-1, Handgun-1, Blade-1, Engineering-1. Acheteweeza

Sirokdrozd is an accomplished poet and singer/songwriter, although she hasn´t reached the point where she can make a career out of her calling, so she has to rely on her old spacer skills. She is passionate, inquisitive, and very engaging, although she requires privacy for creative purposes.

Having agreed to hire the above mentioned individuals, the next problem was finding a ship. Menorb is far from a star-faring society, and although the small and dusty starport was open, traffic was scarce. Two ships were however available as rentals: the Highroller, a Type S Seeker with a disabled jump drive, and Who’s Next?, a B-class 90-ton Utility Shuttle. After much deliberation, the would-be spacefarers decided to go for Who’s Next? Routine preparations and a systems overview would take approximately 48 hours, and a launch was scheduled for 0800 on 003-1200.

News on Menorb

1.      Menorb will open up the Ithaca (Menorb-6) gas giant and its satellites for the Imperial market starting in 1201.

2.      The Morristown Civil Guard has been deployed to quell unrest following the New Year’s celebrations. Zealots of the Church of the Frozen Chosen were rioting against frivolous festivities.

A record number of abductions have taken place over the course of the year, mainly in Morristown, Tissem and Crystal Flats.

4.      The mayor of Tissem will be stepping down after 22 years in office. Several factions are vying for control of the capitol, and the city is experiencing bureaucratic paralysis,

5.      The Council of Menorb will be instituting a single child law that will be promulgated on 100-1200. The population is quite concerned, and several pro-life churches have arranged demonstrations and even religious rioting in several cities.

       The Menorb Civil Guard is hiring and also offering college tuition after service for especially accomplished members.

   

      There were also some purchases that were required, and Baron Fullford was yearning for some hard, steely matter in form of a gun or two. Cruising around Joe’s StarBar did lead to some potential gunrunning contacts, but to Baron Fullford’s intense dismay, he ended up being the victim of a scam that left him without any funds whatsoever. Employment by Christo Aven thus became the only viable alternative, and Baron Fullford together with Herr Dr. Glazhütte-Limburgh started programming a course to Menorb-6 (Ithaca), the enormous gas giant that is the outmost planet in the system where the beacon signal from the Aven Flyer had been picked up. Tricky Rouge, Drozd and Riva Carollo went over the rest of the ship together with Christo Aven and William Gray, the latter mostly providing sandwiches and banter.

      

      The takeoff was uneventful, and the crew on board did feel a sense of relief to leave the wretched surface of Menorb, with the knit-knats, peddlers, religious wackos, overcrowding, and stifling heat. Who’s Next? Left the atmosphere and blasted out on the seven-day journey to Ithaca. Once in transit, things became more than a little complicated. It turned out that Who’s Next? Had a number of seemingly concealed faults: the problems started with the commodes overflowing, and then it rapidly went downhill.

”It’s a cerrtified piece of shit. Like, the gravity plates malfunctioned on the highest setting, rrandom alarrms went off, and therre was a perrvasive odorr of cauliflowerr once we left the atmospherre of Menorrb”.

-        Drozd describing Who’s Next?

The persistent technical problems and the close confines had the crew eyeing each other with increased suspicion, but fortunately a voice of reason, in this case Herr Dr. Glazhütte-Lantz, defused the situation.

“I saw the creeping paranoia as Who’s Next? began showing off an increasing amount of faults and failures. But listen, even thinking of offing people just because of a malfunction is more than a little creepy. The oxygen supply must have been tainted with mistrust or something, since Drozd and Riva turned out to be quite ok. Really nice, actually”.

-        Herr Dr. Glazhütte-Limburgh

After a bit more than seven days in space, the receivers of Who’s Next? Did pick up faint automated distress signals, but it turned out to be difficult to get a reliable bearing. However, persistence pays off, and after six hours of hard work, an approach pattern was programmed and Baron Fullford engaged the thrusters. After just about three hours, the radar picked up a signature that seemed to correspond to a commercial vessel.  

Baron Fullford made a very careful approach towards the silent vessel. On board Who’s Next?, the bridge crew was completely silent. Only the low beeps from the proximity warning radar and the intermittent hiss from the attitude adjustment thrusters could be heard. As the derelict vessel became fully visible on the viewscreens, the crew could spell out the letters on the bow. It was the Aven Flyer, very slowly tumbling around in orbit around the blueish-gray backdrop of Ithaca.

The computer on board the Aven Flyer did not respond to any call, so only two options remained: physically interfacing the airlock or blasting it open. Tricky Rouge and William Gray stepped into vacc suits, grabbed ropes, hooks, magnets and thrusters, and slowly made their way over to the Aven Flyer. The radiation level from Ithaca turned out to be significant, and Tricky Rouge and William Gray did not idle as they propelled themselves across the void. They successfully grasped the hull of the Flyer, and Riva Carollo and Herr Dr. Glazhütte-Limburgh made it over by hooking on to the rope that Tricky Rouge had suspended between the two space vessels.

Herr Dr. Glazhütte-Limburgh did not need too much time to do an override of the starboard wing airlock, and the away party entered an airlock that obviously hadn’t been used in decades. In the airless zero-gravity of the Flyer, a single red l.e.d. indicated that the ship was on emergency power. Once again, Herr Dr. Glazhütte-Limburgh opened the inner door to the airlock, and a couple of ice crystals tumbled out from the innards of the Aven Flyer. William Gray had produced a handgun, and he took point, his suit floodlight painting an eerie picture to the crew members following him. As the party entered the cavernous cargo bay of the Flyer, the floodlights revealed the nightmarish cargo of the derelict vessel: perhaps two hundred low berths, all filled with frozen humans. Some of the berths had clearly malfunctioned, and the horrified away party realized that the poor souls in the low berths had tried to claw themselves out of the coffin-like berths before succumbing to dehydration or insanity, leaving mangled and withered corpses for the away team .

After this nauseating and terrifying experience, the party made their way up to the bridge of the Flyer. As they stepped up onto the bridge deck, a single sweeping laser scope beam swept over the astonished away party, followed by a fusillade of laser beams from an unknown opponent. The party scrambled for cover, and those with handguns returned fire. It turned out that the bridge was guarded by two sentinel droids that were dormant until intruders were noted. Both Herr Dr. Glazhütte-Limburgh and Riva Carollo were struck by laser blasts, and in a cacophony of laser blasts, handgun fire, fire extinguisher contents and sheer violence (courtesy of Tricky Rouge), the sentinels were disabled.

“Being hit by a laser pulse really doesn’t hurt at first, as long as the pulse doesn’t carry foreign stuff into the wound. But mind you, once the initial shock wears off, it hurts like hell. It is like having been both stabbed and cut at once and then having had the wound sealed with a blowtorch”.

-        Riva Carollo on being hit by a laser pulse.