186-1103 Colchis
Having made the rendezvous with the Sternmetal extraction team for the bodies and equipment recovered from the sunken ship “Mary Lou”, the travellers returned in the Painted Lady to harbour and attempted to sell their craft back to Kaspar the boat merchant. He, however seemed to have taken a more jaundiced view of the ship: she was old; her engine was ruined; the party had made personalised improvements which another buyer might wish to remove…
Eventually, by throwing in some expenses fraud and a free night on the boat, Kaspar agreed to pay the party most of what they spent on the old ship in the first place.
The extra night accommodation was needed since the starport was closed, allegedly due to “terrorist incursions”, although Kaspar suggested that there may just be a cashflow shortage or a desire to save on operating expenses on the part of the government. So the party settled down for another night in the garish but dated interior of the pleasure cruiser following a shopping trip into town to buy fridge magnets and other tourist memorabilia. In a bar, they met an elderly woman – Captain Hannelore Vane – who had, decades before, made her fortune in the early rush of trading with the Imperium.
At around 3am, however, three of the occupants were awakened by the sound of activity outside the boat: Rosa heard a low “clunk” of something being attached to the other side of the hull next to her cabin, while Travis and Ferrik each heard whispering and low voices. Rousing their companions, the Travellers rushed out onto the rear deck, where they encountered a frogman in a wetsuit who narrowly missed Rosa’s head with a speargun. Rosa, armed only with a kitchen knife and aware that she was not supposed to be an Imperium secret agent, started screaming loudly for help.
Ferrik started grappling another frogman who had just climbed over the side of the boat, adopting a catch-and-return policy to throw him back in, while Ferrik attempted to restrain another frogman, for’ard, eventually getting the better of him with help from Zhana and hurling him, injured, overboard, while Ferrik grappled with the first frogman until Anson crowned them with a heavy wrench, fracturing their skull.
While this was going on, the frogman thrown off the boat had decided that he would live to frogman another day and was swimming back to the boat the attackers had paddled into shore on. Unfortunately for him, the naval base next door – the intended target of the raid until nighttime and poor navigation came into play – had a sentry tower armed with a searchlight and a .50 calibre machinegun. He was quickly spotted and the searchlight ensured that the devastating effects of .50 calibre fire (fist-sized exit wounds and fountains of red water) were on display for all to see, followed quickly by the dispatch of the second frogman to be thrown back into the water.
The third was pinned-down and, despite a massive concussion and fading consciousness, he became confused and frantic as he plead with the party to question him in prison; or on the docks; or anywhere without a limpet mine attached to it. The party remembered that element in time to withdraw to a safe distance while the naval marines who arrived bravely threw out a very wide perimeter and watched the destruction of poor Kaspar’s property. Anson was approached at one point to remove the mine, but refused: not on the grounds that it would be dangerous, but because she hated water and had had enough of the risk of drowning.
196-1103 Deep Space
The Perfect Stranger could only make 1 parsec jumps, so a deep-space midpoint was needed on her way to New Home.
During the trip, the warmth of the air conditioning caused hundreds of spiders to hatch from the luggage of one of the passengers: Magda Cress, who had managed to gouge a shipment of Colchis Silk-Spider eggs from a desperate village. Now, they had awoken and were trying to make their way throughout the cabin, into the aircon system and out into the corridor. Sealing up the luggage with duct-tape, Zhana (in her thankless new role of steward) then vented the atmosphere in the cabin to vacuum and set the climate controls to -80C to get rid of the remainder. Having cleaned up the carcasses, Rosa’s suggestion was that the irate Magda be given the hoover bag.
Another passenger wished to complain – at length – at how the supposedly eco-tourist heaven of Colchis had in fact been a warzone. This was a fact that he had felt should have been more prominently stated by the travel company. He had not enjoyed the fact that the fireworks display on the last night had, in fact, been floodlights and tracer fire from Colchisian ships hunting frogmen. Nor was the cancellation of the Colchis Crested Newt safar (on the grounds that their habitat was now in the middle of a dense minefield) at all satisfactory. He demanded a discount on his flight; an upgrade; an audience with the authorities and more.
204-1103 New Home
After a two-jump voyage, the Perfect Stranger arrived at New Home starport. New Home was the original system colonised by the slower-than-light ships that arrived from Terra over a thousand years before: it was the Old Money of the Islands cluster: technologically advanced, rich and possessed of a very high self-opinion.
The crew of the Perfect Stranger were detained after customs due to “Class 3 Organic Particulates” on their clothing: remaining mildew from the Painted Lady.
On visiting the faux-industrial Isotopes Bar, the party were verbally harassed by a group of ultra-rich university students: the Golden Youth of New Home. The fashion of the time on New Home was to wear high-end, haute-couture versions of working cloths: boiler suits or vacc suits, and this group was amused by – and scornful of – the worn outfits of the genuine spacers before them. Despite considerable provocation, the Travellers declined to get drawn into a fight. Not for want of trying on my part.
Importantly, the Travellers chose to spend 300KCr of their trading profits on two crew droids with their advocate software replaced by Gunnery (Turret). They could now man (for a certain value of “man”) all four turrets on the Perfect Stranger.
216-1103 Deep Space
Having loaded up on freight, passengers and as much speculative cargo as their limited funds would allow them to buy, the party headed for the environmentally-challenging hellworld of Sturgeon’s Law. This again required a deep-space midpoint and the stress on the crew and passengers of these repeated, prolonged and dangerous journeys through deep space began to tell, with aggression, arguments and complaining frequent.
One passenger, Linnet Scoville, who was travelling to the ethically-relaxed world of Sturgeon’s Law for medical treatment for her “vital energy disability”, complained that the grav-fields of the ship were oscillating at a frequency that disturbed her chakras. She harassed Dr Bilal for second, third and even fourth opinions on her “condition”, and enquired of Anson whether the radiation from the ship’s manuevre drive was organically-certified, being assured by the bluff Belter that it was entirely free range.
224-1103 Sturgeon’s Law Orbital Space
On arriving at Sturgeon’s Law, the Perfect Stranger was hailed by the Starport, with the conversation going much like the following:
“Imperium-Registered ship Perfect Stranger switch to channel Whisky-Nine=Three.
Imperium-Registered ship Perfect Stranger is this your captain?
Imperium-Registered ship Perfect Stranger you are informed that you are denied clearance to land at Sturgeon’s Law starport. I repeat you are denied docking permission.
An injunction has been granted against you in Neubayern Hight Court for contravention of safety standards. Under the terms of the Sturgeon-Neubayern Trade Facilitation Treaty this injunction has force for a period of three months pending a full hearing for damages. Should you wish to challenge this you must inform the court of your intention to appeal, giving two weeks’ notice to the plaintiffs.”
The party were able to negotiate a shuttle to offload their passengers and chartered freight, then made their way to the only gas giant in the system to refuel. The journey took three days in the slow subsidised-freighter, and the crew were confident that this was a trap by Neubayern to force them away from the starport and out to a known and remote point for an ambush. Accordingly, they manned the TL15 sensor suite provided as part of the Perfect Stranger’s role as an intel-gathering ship.
Sure enough, they detected a stealthed Neubayern scout ship lurking in the upper edges of the atmosphere of the Sturgeon-V gas giant. They were able to do so on passive sensors, while the Neubayern ship approached them at a closing rate of 3G. They were sure that the civilian sensors of a Type-R “Subbie” could never spot them: their briefing had been based on data from a group of non-starfaring agents on Acadie, who had searched the Perfect Stranger on Acadie but had failed to understand what the TL15 machinery so far in advance of their own, TL12 technology was even intended to do.
The crew of the Perfect Stranger waited until the Neubayern ship was within range of their extended-range beam lasers and opened fire with a devastating fusillade with both the normal and the concealed turrets, surprising the stalking ship. Three out of the four attacks connected, and all three landed critical hits, with the damage accumulating so quickly that the hull of the Neubayern ship was critically damaged as well. The attacker’s maneuvre drive was devastated, reduced to only 1G and handling horribly, while a crew member was injured on the bridge and the jump drive took heavy damage.
The ambushing ship – itself now surprised, attacked the Perfect Stranger, her pulse lasers lancing across her prey’s hull, and doing further critical damage due to her lack of armour. Rather optimistically, her captain hailed the Perfect Stranger and demanded her surrender, only to be met with a further broadside which landed another lucky hit on her M-Drives. The Travellers watched with grim satisfaction as the Neubayern scout plummeted into the gas giant’s abyssal depths, pleading for rescue.
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