It actually takes something more than an hour before everybody is suited up, cycled through the airlock, and across at the wreck.  Banster joins them on the way over, stomping along in a vaccsuit which has a partial exoskeleton strapped to it.

"I was told that I'm to help move everything into two piles first, yours and ours, and then we can see about hauling it back.  Right?" Banster sends a low power transmission on an open channel.  "Oh, and Jockram says I have to talk to your Doc, but he wouldn't tell me why.  I hope she knows what it's about."

They start down into the crater, where the broken hull of the wrecked ship sits on the ice.


Aboard Profit Margin, all is quiet.  The only people aboard are Shui, Yas, Saskia, Corlan DeSant, Dhakhingzuel, and the pirate with the broken arm.  Corlan is in the passenger side lounge, showing Dhakhingzuel his holographic collection from his visit to the wreck, including the strange lifeforms encountered on the ice.

The pirate is in the "brig", looking blankly at the trid menu.  There are hundreds of them.  None of them older than a couple of years, and none of them with a title that he recognises.  He briefly considers, Pirates of the Spinward Main: At Imperium's End, then rejects it, given his current circumstances.  Likewise Asteroid of Blood and the vaguely disturbing Desperate Shipmates don't make the grade.  Eventually he settles for a documentary on the Fourth Frontier War, which, at 120 minutes, is almost longer than the war itself...

In Engineering, Saskia continues to fiddle about in the missile's innards, making adjustments to its settings.  Elsewhere Yas finds something to occupy herself while she waits for her turn to head over to the wreck, and Shui continues with her own work.


Jago and his expedition reach the hulk, make their way up the side, and through the useless airlock, into the interior.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:04, Wed 12 Dec 2007.

Tylen switches on his suit lights and looks round the interior with interest. He's heard the explanation for the ship's crash, but a jump failure is an occupational hazard in space travel and the fact that the ship he is on has suffered one evokes no more than a sense of curiosity. He has faith in the Profit Margin and her devoted Engineer. He turns his head to Jago and triggers the com,

"OK Boss Man, where shall we start?"

Jago looks round at the hold, the lights on his helmet following his eyes, “basically anything that’s intact and small enough to shift, which in this gravity is most of it. Take your time now, no rushing, you may be able to lift a ton with a constant but moderate effort, but it still has inertia and once it’s moving, even slowly, it’s going to break a lot of bones before it stops.”

“Over here is where they stored the fancy stuff, lets start with that.”

OOC
Jago is referring to room 14 on E deck.
.

Jago leads the way to what used to be an area set aside for exotic cargo... things with odd environmental requirements, and the like.  To those who haven't been here before, the area is a surprising mess, covered with layers of coloured ice, and with the isolation lock standing open.

Banster stops in the entrance, and raises his left hand, holding it out in front of him for a few moments, before announcing, "No radiation, beyond the normal background levels."

He moves forward. into the chamber, and experimentally lifts one of the remaining cases.  "Any idea what this yellowish stuff is all over anything?  I'd rather not take anything back that might turn out to be explosive."

“Turns out to be some sort of fruit juice,” Jago reassures the miner, “there are explosives over there which I though you guys would like.”
.

Taking the time to go over security details and check-ups while she has the chance, Yas spends her time with her head inside various compartments more than not.  One by one the systems are checked, and when needed, tweaked, adjusted or changed.

While working she ponders that chances of getting hold of a proper suit, with all the stuff left.  It cannot hurt to ask, and even if it would be an old or partly defunct suit it will give her something to tinker with, apart from her bike, that is.

Which is the very thing she returns to once all the check-ups are done.

Tylen starts to methodically examine boxes, looking for the maimum commercial value in the most compact packaging. The thought of elderly explosives makes him shudder, and he offers up a silent prayer that Jago isn't planning on having any aboard.

"Juice?  Nice... " Banster says, with a laugh.  "Perhaps we can scrape it off the walls to use in drinks.  It'd serve double duty...  Ice and a mixer in one."

"The explosives could be useful, if they haven't decayed too far.  Under these conditions, they should be okay.  The cold will have stopped just about any reaction going on in there.  But just to be sure, I'll have Hegerich check them over before they get aboard the Hound though."

Gradually, the cargo is checked over, and split into two lots, as the time slips by.

After about an hour of work, Tylen finds something odd.  A case, red in colour, some seventy by twenty by twenty centimetres, and apparently made of wood, fitted with metal handles on the two swallest sides.  Though much smaller than the others, it seems to be much heavier.  He tries to lift it, but the resistance created by its mass is far too much.  A closer look reveals that somebody has broken away part of the wood, and that it is only a thin layer over a metal box inside.  There are no markings on the outside of the crate to indicate what it might be.

Banster declares it safe, at least as far as radiation is concerned.


Back on Profit Margin, Yas  finishes her chores, and goes to work on her motorcycle, which is more of a hobby than actual work.  Saskia starts making the final adjustments to the missile, and Shui prepares datafiles for her successor.

Tylen examines the box closely for any other clues as to it's purpose or contents. He hails Jago,

"Boss, did we manage to retrieve any kind of manifest from the ship's computer? I'd feel a bit safer about this if we had some idea of what it is before we take it aboard. Mebbe Saskia or the Doc could figure out some way of scanning it to determine the contents before we carry it over to the Margin?"

Banster looks around, "I doubt they'd've had a manifest.  Jockram said she'd turned pirate."  His gaze falls upon a human hand reaching out of a solid metal support pillar a little distance away.

"Even so, I'm not sure they deserved what happened to them."

He leans down and grabs one of the handles on the case, and tries to pull it out into the open, where there's more room to take a look at it.  It hardly moves.  "Hefty little bugger." the miner comments, "You didn't epoxy it to the deck as a joke, did you?"

Tylen stays Banster with a wave,

"Let's not move it again until we know just what it is."

He turns to Jago,

"This sounds kind of stupid Boss, maybe I'm getting paranoid or something, but I have a bad feeling about this."

He gestures at the crate,

"All this dressing up seems a lot of hassle for a simple metal box, It's obvious that the wooden crate is there to somehow conceal the true nature of the package. Now the records say this ship went Pirate, and we have a ship load of Pirates over there,"

He waves in the direction of the Margin,

"Who were forced to turn Pirate under threat of a bomb on their ship. Now, far be it for me to deny us any profit from salvage here, but that little box looks like it could hold a pretty nifty bomb to me. Mebbe we should check it out in situ once we move all the good stuff back to the ship."

The pirates refered to by Tylen continue their work sorting out the cargo into two groups, as directed.

Banster studies the crate, and shines his suit lights in through the small opening.  "I don't think a hidden bomb would be left sitting in the hold where the crew could find it.  If we carefully break away more of the wood, we might be able to see what those markings in there say."

Tylen nods, but is obviously non comittal.

"OK, I'll take a look."

Carefully he begins to break the wood away, concentrating on the area of the exposed script.

Jago’s cigar moves around speculatively inside his helmet, as if conducting an imaginary orchestra.

“Knowing the capabilities of that suit Banister, what would you guess the mass of that thing to be? Denser than lead I’d warrant, though weather that’s the material of the box, or it’s contents remains to be seen.”

“How hard is that metal Tylen, can you scratch it with steel? ”

“We are about ready to start shifting the first load back to the ships, we’ll learn what we can about this box and see if Saskia or the computer can throw any light on it when we get back, though if Banister can’t shift it, we’ll probably have to leave it anyway.”
.

"I'd say it weighs at least a half ton, and probably a bit more on top of that." Banster transmits, then pauses for a couple of seconds, as he considers that.  "Denser than lead, I reckon, by quite a bit."

He leans closer, and activates a couple of extra lights on the suit, giving Tylen some added illumination where he works.  A larger chunk of wood breaks away, revealing more of the lettering on the metal beneath.


There are hinges along one side of the revealed metal, and a lock at the opposite side.  It definitely looks to be another box hidden within the outer wooden case.

Banster straightens up.  "Great Maker!  Jago.  We don't want to leave this behind."
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:53, Fri 28 Dec 2007.

Conrad, happy that the recently retired pirates are busy hauling crates of tea about glances curiously at where Banster is helping with the examination of the crate.  From here, it certainly doesn't resemble a standard cargo pod.

His earlier research had indicated that this ship, the Marcucci had been captured by pirates at Quare, Just beyond the frontier, about four parsecs from here.

That might explain why the red crate was not Imperial standard.

"What is it?  Somethin' from outside the Imperium?"

Once certain that the one-armed bandit is behaving and doing his part, Yas sits down to tinker with her motorcycle.  It is not exactly a chore, but more like meditating.  She makes a few mistakes and learns from them, getting to know the machine well enough so that she will be able to repair it even if it was pitch black and it only looks clear without being it.

She has some time before the deliveries starts to arrive, and takes it with pleasure, losing herself in her task - and yet keeping an eye on the surroundings, just as she always do, including when she is fast asleep.

Tylen attacks the case with the prybar as instructed, then checks the result.

"No go Boss,"

He relays to Jago,

"It's way tougher than steel."

He turns to Banster

"That classification mean something to you?"

He asks, indicating the writing on the case.

"You could say that, yes." Banster turns to where the captives are working, then to Jago, Conrad, and finally back to Tylen.  When he's sure he has their attention, he makes a great show of switching his comms to another channel, allowing Profit Margin's crew to see the new figure on the display screen of his control pad, but ensuring that the pirates are unaware of the change.

Once he's sure the crew are all on the new channel, he continues, "The markings tell me it's iridium.  I should have guessed at something like that from the weight.  Iridium's dense.  Rare too... which is why they made the Imperial throne out of it, because it's valuable.  It's also used to back most currencies."

"Last time the Hound was in a good port, we were talking about mining, and we joked about striking iridium.  Just for fun, we checked the prices.  If that box holds iridium ingots, then they're worth about Cr10,000 per kilo, easy.  If we split them two ways, Jago, between your crew and ours, and that bit where it says 612 kilos is right, and it feels about right, then each ship would make about three million credits."

Tylen whistled slowly,

"Now that's some spending money."

He whispered. He nudged the heavy box with his toe,

"Bugger to move about though, tell you what, Saskia's got a really neat gizmo for shifting heavy stuff."

He turned to Jago,

"Shall I go ask Sas for a loan of her toy Boss, make it a damned site easier to shift this across to the Margin?"

Jago’s eyes narrow and his gauntleted hand bashes against his helmet as he distractedly reaches for his unlit cigar.

“Open it,” he says shortly, “if it’s ingots it will be easy enough to shift separately and if there are any surprises I’d rather find out here.”

.

Tylen examined the box, taking in the catch, but also examining the hinges and the joints in order to make an educated guess as to whether the box was trapped in some way.

Banster helps Tylen to break the wood away from the inner case, gradually revealing a dull metal box, with carrying handles.  There is a lock, fitted to the side of the box, directly beneath the catch.  A standard keypad combination type.  The display is dark.

More than ten years sitting, forgotten, in a cargo hold has, doubtless, left the batteries dead.  There are no other markings visible on the case... nothing to indicate where it might have originated.

"Did you get hold of this hulk's log?" Banster enquires, hopefully, "Jockram might be interested in finding out where she's been.  Just in case there's a system somewhere nearby with an iridium-rich belt."

"Hey, Yas." Saskia says, approaching the gunner.  Her eyes, though, aren't on the other woman.  Instead they're fixed on the assorted pieces of motorcycle, neatly laid out on the floor.  She's smiling.

"Wanna get a coffee.  We can grab Shui too, talk about the boys behind their backs, while they're all off the ship."

"Heh, sure thing, Sas.  This won't go anywhere," Yas says with a chuckle, secretively happy over the interruption as she has stared herself blind at the bits and lost her place.  A break to clear her head is exactly what she needs.  It is so much easier with guns; those she knows well since many years, while this whole combustion engine deal is still quite fresh.  Still, she learns a bit every time she tinkers with it.

Pushing herself up on her feet she realises that she just stained the legs of her outfit and chuckles.

"Whoops.  Oh well, at least it's on the front of the legs, so I won't be sitting on it," she says with a wink, but steals a glance at her rear.  It would not do to sit down with a greasy butt, oh no.

"Ah, good, all clean.  Now we can talk dirt about the boys instead," comes the comment, followed by a short laughter as she steers her path towards the lounge.