(Rob Ellisson – player absent)

Following his visit to New Berlin memorial park, Marcus disappeared. The others decided that, since it looked like he was having some issues with the visit to the world, that they wouldn’t worry about him until the following day. In the meantime, Alumiya and Dex sought out some basic engineering supplies for the ship.

Marcus was drinking himself unconscious in a downport bar. After a while, he became convinced he was being watched – but was unable to identify who it was. As he turned to leave, he collapsed in a heap…

The following day, Dex got a message from the New Berlin Peacekeepers: Marcus was sleeping off a lot of alcohol in a cell. The team went to fetch him, paying a fee for the “accommodation”, before he had a hefty breakfast.

Returning to orbit, they met the Ramirez family, including their grandmother and servant, and took them to the Beowulf. Leaving for Lando, their first jump brought them out at a completely different place than they were planning. While they were waiting for Roger to recalculate the next jump, they became aware of another ship approaching. It hailed them, telling them to prepare to be boarded.

Dex immediately got on the intercom to the navigator, telling him to get a move on. When this was apparently ignored, he and Marcus went down to his cabin. The door opened immediately: “This is going to be awkward isn’t it?”

Roger, rather surprisingly, was holding a gun…

Following his instructions, they returned to the bridge, Marcus making a point of moving slightly faster, so that he could warn Rob to get out of sight as he reached the galley. Roger locked himself inside the bridge with Dex and Marcus, informing him that they were all going to wait until his friends arrived.

Dex, thinking fast, made an announcement about the gravity being switched off: Alumiya got the message and tried to do so, but doubles it instead. This had the desired effect of disorienting Roger, but he recovered surprisingly quickly. Marcus’ attempt to grab his gun resulted in his being knocked to the floor. The pair of them desisted from further action.

Meanwhile, Charles arrived in the galley with his assault rifle, having figured out something was wrong, and was briefed by Rob. The medic had noticed that Roger was behaving completely differently from his normal timid demeanour and, notably, that his body language had changed radically. He’d realised that Roger was the mysterious vaguely familiar person he’d seen in the vicinity of the assassinations on Lando and New Berlin. Charles tried to break through the door to the bridge, but Roger threatened to shoot Dex and Marcus so he gave up.

As the other ship got closer, Roger informed the crew that they would be left alive if they caused no further trouble.

Alumiya, reasoning that the real problem was the approaching vessel, decided to trigger a short random jump, hopefully taking the ship a few light minutes or light years away. She hit the lower end of the scale (which would have made it easier for a non-navigator to recalculate their location for a new jump), but Roger managed to figure it out in a couple of seconds, verbally sending jump calculations to the other ship. The new vessel arrived an hour later, indicating the accuracy of his figures. While they were waiting, Dex managed to get Roger to explain that one of the passengers was a war criminal, and that his job was to track them down and dispose of them.

Alumiya decided it was a good idea to prepare for trouble and got into her armoured spacesuit, grabbing her axe for use as a weapon.

The other ship turned out to be a sleek vessel of a similar, if younger, class to the Beowulf, painted in dark colours and bearing worrying modifications. It docked at the port hatch and two men in light battlearmour came board. Roger appeared and led one of them upstairs. After some shouting and sobbing, they returned with the family’s servant (not the father as they had expected). As Roger, the prisoner and the boarding party left, he slipped a note to Marcus: reading it as soon as the door closed, he saw a set of jump calculations and the words “trust me”.

The other ship now undocked and began a wide turn into an attack vector, deploying weapons in direct contravention of Roger’s promise. Alumiya was ready and they jumped to the given coordinates before it opened fire, arriving right next to Lando Station

They decided to check the navigator’s room, finding some explosives and an elegant sniper rifle, along with his charts; they decided that he appeared to have been an assassin. Marcus believed he was a programmed genetically engineered life form (GELF), probably deployed by the government.
They delivered their cargo, including their remaining passengers, and decided to invest in some weaponry so that they could fight off future piracy. Shipboard weaponry is illegal for civilian vessels, so they sold the rifle to a collector, via his beautiful partner, and bought some armoured space suits and sidearms for those who wanted them.

They also hired a new navigator (an experienced older man, willing to work his passage to a different part of space) and planned a new high-risk, high profit project: carrying goods across the uninhabited systems between shipping routes. They began by buying some industrial goods to take to the agricultural colony on Erehwon, where they planned to buy some low-tech shotguns and begin their cross-route career.

The trip to Erehwon was relatively uneventful (with one mild misjump) and they were able to sell their cargo for a reasonale profit and obtain their weapons. Deciding that the last few weeks had a been a bit eventful, they opted to take a few days out to recuperate at the coast.

The Empress flies west, Dex desperately fighting the aerodynamic instabilities caused by the torn metal on her side. At Rob’s direction, the ship heads across an open plain towards a distant mountain range, beyond which lies the sea and temporary safety.

Unfortunately, their attackers also have flying assets and the Empress is pursued by two armed aircraft. A hotly contested chases ensues: Dex has the edge on skill, but the enemy have an advantage in manoeuvrability and armaments – as becomes clear when projectiles begin to rattle off the hull.

About half-way across the plain, Alumiya contacts the cockpit, suggesting dumping a small amount of lubricant into the exhaust from the vessel’s manoeuvring thrusters. Dex approves the plan and, working quickly with Charles’ aid, Alumiya performs the necessary actions. The lubricant reacts with the exhaust, forming a huge cloud of smoke that blinds the pilot of one of the planes. The other craft just manages to dodge out of the way as the out-of-control aircraft runs straight into the hottest part of the Empress’s thruster exhaust and explodes. Dex takes advantage of the chaos to get out of weapons range and is able to put the larger vessel’s powerful drive to better use, leaving the solitary aircraft behind.

Dodging through the mountain range, the ship emerges over the western seas and heads straight towards a small cluster of volcanic islands. Landing in the bowl of an extinct volcano, the crew emerge to examine the damage… It’s minor, but difficult to repair: an explosion has punched a hole on the upper hull and one of the main fuselage spars is cracked. While the former is already half-fixed, the spar will need replacing at a shipyard, although the vessel could manage for a while if it handled carefully. Charles returns to work on the hole while Alumiya finishes her interrupted maintenance work on the gravitational inducer.

During a break in the repairs, Max calls everyone together for a conference, although he shocks them all by appearing clean, in a suit, with his hair in a pony tail, though he has still not shaved. A second shock is the amount of money, gems, platinum, bonds, records of captain’s stashes and whatever else he has been able to find, laid out on the table with the beginnings of a set of accounts detailing where it all comes from.

The first thing he explains is what he has found out about the captain and the woman who funded the operation which was:

1. The captain appeared to have had no family other than Max the blond haired willowy guy (“and I think we know the nature of that relationship but each to their own and they are both dead now anyway cough”). He only had a small stake in the ship: the main owner was the financier.

2. The financier, Ingrid Sorrenson, was not the independent merchant that she appeared to be, but a high-to-mid level manager from one of the big corporations. Worryingly enough he has never been able to ascertain precisely her position or responsibilities.

He then presents two options:

1. The right thing to do: return the ship to the corporation that, via Ingrid, probably owns this ship.
Pros: It will be legal, the crew might get a good bonus and a job with the corp, they will sleep better at night.
Cons: If Ingrid has been playing fast and loose they will probably be arrested as co-conspirators, else, if she has been obeying orders and this is some sort of black ops, they will be detained to find out what they know about what went wrong. In either case, a very bright light would be shone on their pasts and the odds of never being seen again are good.
“If we decide on this option could you put me off in the first decent port you come to and number me among the dead.”

2. The good short term option: take the ship and contents to one of the shady ports and sell it and its contents.
Pros: The ship is worth a lot of money and even though the crew will get nothing like the actual value, it will make a big difference to them, enough that when they retire it will be in comfort.
Cons: Since they would have sold the ship they will be stuck in a very shady port with a lot of money and the chances are good that they will never make it of the planet alive. Also selling a ship garners a lot of attention and even if they make it off, the corporation may notice what they have done and track them down, especially if it was black ops.

3. Go Trading: His favoured suggestion is the crew simply keeps the ship and goes trading. “I am sure that I can get her new papers with documented proof that we own her and I can generate several years accounts etc.”
Pros: They get their own trading company and will hopefully become wealthy, they can travel to avoid attention, there are several caches mentioned in the captain’s papers they might be able to get hold of for starting trade items, etc.
Cons: It’s expensive, a lot of the resources they see on the table will go on getting solid legal papers that will withstand normal scrutiny – they cannot trade without those – and re-fitting the ship, buying and finding cargo. There is a risk that the corp will come after them if it finds out they survived, at the moment the _Empress* has vanished with all hands. Trading is dangerous: there are always opportunists after the ship/cargo and the dangers of deep space.

“So what will it be? As I have said my vote is for option 3 what about you Cap… er Pilot?” He smiles.

He also points out that he: “forgot to mention: one of the big changes that needs doing to the ship, the encrypted beacon, we need a new one. Getting a new one is not a problem, that just takes quite a bit of money. Loading it with information that confirms the ship’s papers, once we have some nice ones, is quite another. To put it simply getting hold of a government single use encrypting loader for one of these things is going to be a little difficult.”

Ultimately, the group decide to try option 3. A brief discussion heralds the new name of the Emrpess, the Beowulf, and Charles decides to paint it on the outside of the ship as soon as he’s finished patching the hole.

Meanwhile, as conversation turns to the subject of potential cargoes, Rob, who has been sitting in on this without anyone commenting, asks “what’s in the space between the reclamation vats and the engine rooms?”

This throws them – Marcus has always assumed that space was part of the reclamation system, but Charles is able to confirm that it’s not. The crew begins a thorough investigation of the space in question and is able to confirm that it appears to be a sealed volume about 3×4×2 metres in size. Eventually, they locate a concealed entrance in the floor of Charles’ workshop – under the still – Charles says he knows nothing about it. Opening it up, they find a hidden hold, outside the influence of the gravity generators, containing some jump-proof crates. Opening one up, they find it full of heavy weapons control systems – of the type that would have been needed to control the kind of weapons briefly seen lying in the broken crates at the scene of the massacre.

Suddenly, the reason for the conflict becomes clear: Ingrid had withheld the control systems in the hope of getting a higher price for the weapons. The local warlord had come up with a different solution.

Realising that these items are extremely dangerous to have around, they decide to hide them away for future reference, hiding them in at least two locations in the local asteroid field for security and redundancy.

Other searching turns up two jump-proof cases in Ingrid’s quarters, one containing an encrypted portable computer (nobody has any idea how to get into this) and another larger case containing storage spaces for high-tech weapons and other kit – it’s currently empty, but may be of use for other purposes.

The new owners of the Beowulf decide that their first task has to be to fix the ship and acquire a new beacon.

“Ah!” says Marcus, “Lando!”

“Lando? I don’t think I’ve heard of that world”

“It’s the central station in an asteroid field quite close to here…”

A bright sun shines down on a cold, dusty landscape, populated only with patches of grey scrub. A cluster of prefabricated buildings lies nestled between low hillocks for warmth, each distinguished by an elaborately painted wooden frontage (not unlike the classic image of a Wild West town).

A battered, but solid-looking, tramp freighter (the Empress of Marava) swoops in and lands in a field about a kilometre out of town, its landing pads sinking deep into the soil. The loading ramp is lowered and two grav sleds slide out, carrying several armed figures. A smartly-dressed woman, obviously the leader, shouts something back into the hold, before the sleds head off over the horizon.

Aboard the Empress, Allumiya is trying to fix a problem with the GI drive, while Charles is performing maintenance on the sewage reclamation system. Dex is in the shower, but something goes horribly wrong when Blake accidentally cross-connects the water supply to the reclamation system…

Marcus decides to head out to the local bar and try to check out what’s going on. As the supercargo, he’s very interested in what the ship may be carrying; as is happening more and more of late, the owner is not telling him. Dex decides to tag along in the hope of chatting up one of the local women. They enter what appears to be a very functional basic drinking establishment and, after Marcus makes several attempts to make himself understood, Dex manages to acquire some of the local rotgut in Russian (the local dialect is very thick and difficult to understand). Marcus finds the local populace to be very unhelpful, but it may be that his lack of knowledge of the language is hindering things. Dex has similar difficulties but, in his case, it may be the lingering odour from his shower that is causing problems…

Meanwhile, Rob is in the bar, having finished his sojourn on Novyye Nigde and journeyed across the continent in the desperate hope of getting a berth offworld. He intervenes in Marcus’ attempts to gain information and begins to negotiate passage, when the supercargo’s radio squawks. He pulls it out in time to hear a desperate call for help, followed by the sound of automatic gunfire. Dex and Marcus both run for the ship, closely followed by Rob.

As they arrive, they hear the buzz of approaching grav sleds; turning to see what’s happening, Marcus realises that they approaching sleds are not the ones that left earlier. Dex cold-starts the Empress into flight as Marcus hits the door control and a missile slams into its side, puncturing the hull and knocking Allumiya over. She desperately tries to get the power system fully online while Charles races to patch the hole on the upper deck.

Marcus directs Dex towards the boss’s rendezvous point. Flying over it, they come under fire and just have time to see a number of familiar dead bodies lying around the ship’s sleds and their cargo. The crew decide discretion is the better part of valour and head for safety. Rob, having managed to scramble aboard during the chaos, demonstrates his knowledge of the planet by suggesting they head west: a number of uninhabited rocky islands lie off the coast and many of them have caves or craters big enough to hold a small ship.