Tepha gripped her PD pistol in one hand and the comm in the other.

"Okay...I can do this...I can do this. Time to be a hero..."

Right as she was exiting the cockpit there was an exchange of gunfire and she screamed.

"I can't do it! I can't do it Fritz!"

Her knees buckled and she collapsed onto the deck sobbing.

OOC: I think it'll be up to Ledo to activate the suppressant system.

"Fuck you motherfucker!"

breeeeeeeeee

Silver had her finger held down firing round after round into mech boy. Fuck him, fuck the pirates, fuck everyone!

OOC: Armor takes 13 so 2 to END.
Her next series is hitting 13 for 7 damage and 10 for 11 damage. Both of those are AP 9
17:06, Today: Silver rolled 11 using 3d6.  damage #3 ap 9.
17:06, Today: Silver rolled 7 using 3d6.  damage #2 AP 9.
17:06, Today: Silver rolled 10 using 2d6+3.  Full auto again shot 3.
17:06, Today: Silver rolled 13 using 2d6+3.  Full auto again shot 2.
17:06, Today: Silver rolled 7 using 2d6+3.  Full auto again shot 1.

Silver might be able to fire on full-auto nonstop but after watching his shots bounce around Rig flipped his gun over to semi-auto and sent a burst right on target at mech boy.

OOC: Fuck yeah Rig! Rig hits at a 9 for 19! damage, AP 9 to boot.

17:09, Today: Gary 'Rig' Rigan rolled 19 using 3d6+3.  damage, ap 9.
17:09, Today: Gary 'Rig' Rigan rolled 9 using 2d6+1.  aiming, semi-auto.

BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA

Did Rig take any damage?

BWAH HA HA HA HA

Smoke is now making everything difficult to see, but both Silver and Rig can hear some satisfying Skkkkkkkrrrr sounds of metal tearing.

A few more volleys fly out their way Rig takes 8 damage.  Silver takes 14

And then...silence.  There's no Thunk, like armor falling over.  But there's no sound of powered armor moving.

The smoke is thick now.  It's going to make shooting tough.  If they don't put their helmets on, it might start to get hard to breathe.

---

Okay Teph.  Okay.  Let's try breathing into that plasticine sack over there.

---

Ledo rushes off to find the emergency valve...

Let's have ol' Ledo make some rolls please.  Vacc Suit/Str.  Keep making them until you make two 8+ checks.  Need to see how long it takes him to get to the Hold.

If he makes two checks in five or less rolls, and I would imagine he will, then you can narrate him finding the valve and turning it.  Ledo has an idea of where it is from Fritz's description.  And it will come on fairly quickly.  So there won't be any danger.

If he doesn't make two 8+ checks in five or less rolls, well....Just post the roll results.  I'll take it from there.

They were already suited up so helmets were on so they could see through the fog with IR

Rig has +10 protection so 0 and 3 from first shots and 0 again from this volley


Rig went over to a side panel and cranked on the emergency ventilation system. Normally used to vent toxic gases but in this case the smoke needed to be vented ASAP.

OOC: Silver down to 1 END...

Silver stayed at the ready with her finger on the trigger waiting for anything else to move or shoot at her.

OOC: Was the thing's jammer system still working?

Ledo was running with a lopsided gait. His left side had been slammed and shredded by sharpnel and he could feel blood leaking down to his boots. Still he gritted his teeth and pressed forward, half-running, half-hopping down through the plaza, up to the blastdoors and down the storage halls.

Flames were starting to creep closer and closer to the fuel, licking just a half foot away when he reached the valve. Luckily the groan of metal on metal masked the sound of him screaming in pain as he put his everything into turning that valve to release the suppressant.

OOC: Got it in 4, phew

In reply to Gary 'Rig' Rigan (msg # 65):

Smoke has now entered 19% of the living areas.  Starting fire suppression procedues.

Silver?  Engineer Rig?  You guys want me to kill the sprinklers?

Mainframe has turned on the sprinklers.  At the same time, exhaust fans are turning on full blown.

It takes a few minutes to clear enough smoke to see.  But the suit of armor is standing there.

Doing nothing.  There are several holes in it.  But the suit is upright.  And still jamming.

It's not moving.  He must be dead.  Quick.  Lower your weapons and turn around.

---

There's a horribly thick moment as the valve turns all the way and nothing whatsoever happens.

Then a soft rain starts to fall.  The fire retardant chemicals start their work almost immediately.  Foam begins to form as the chemicals mix with the spilled hydrogen, suppressing it's flammability.  At the same time, the foam starts to sizzle as it falls into the patches of fire, hardening into a thick paste that snuffs out the flames.

Good work Captain Ledo.  I think Engineer Rig and Silver have contained the boarder.

The airlock door on the Burn Em All pops open.

I'm sure they've learned their lesson.

Silver just rolled her eyes and emptied the rest of her clip into it. She kept firing until it was either cut in half or the jamming signal stopped.

"Uhh...what? Yeah? Cut the sprinklers. Full exhaust."

Rig kept his gun at the ready and stepped back and away as Silver was going full Rambo on the mech.

"Any word from your buddy on the other ship? Any of your friends still out in the crate?"

Ledo opens up a general comms as he runs for cover and unslings his laser rifle>

"Crew of the Burn Em All, assuming any of you are still alive. Surrender and throw down your weapons now. Your ship is slagged. Your boarding mech is contained. Herb is chunky red salsa and we have the stationed locked down.

One of the last traps set was an SOS signal sent to the local Navy station. Your buddy up in orbit is going to be tangling with a Navy cruiser real quick and then their marines are heading here.

You can either sit here and die horribly or you can throw down your weapons and we can throw you into some low berths and smuggle you out of here...for the right payment of course. Can't spend those credits if you're dead, right?"

In reply to Ledo Typhin (msg # 71):

Let's move this hoe down towards the close, shall we?

The powered suit finally stops broadcasting jamming signals.  As does the station.

So Fritz 4 has the jammer offline.  I can no longer reach the Fritz on the Burn Em All.  Alas poor Fritz 5.  We hardly knew ye.

I have reintegrated all Fritzes.  Station is now under our control.  Not that there's much left to control.

Accessing station's sensors.

Confirming beacon is offline.  Also confirming that emergency beacons have activated.

The Nice N Bloody is trying to make contact with the Burn Em All.  I'm jamming Burn's transmission.  Sending the Bloody a systems-down message.  We'll see if they think the Burn's been destroyed...

And yep.  They took the bait.  Nice N Bloody is leaving orbit.

"SHIT!"  The shout is so loud that it can be heard through the Burn Em All's open airlock.  "Siri!  You fuckin' bastard!"

There's a long pause.

"So how much are those low berths?"

Salvaging and jury rigging all day long. They didn't call him 'Rig' for nothing. That being said he found the Fritz-bots quite helpful, especially as they weren't in a proper drydock.


OOC:
07:06, Today: Gary 'Rig' Rigan rolled 12 using 3d6+01, keeping the 2 highest rolls with rolls of 5,5,6.  Mechanics .

Silver was used to these kinds of salvage operations. Breaking into an abandoned station and stripping it of anything of value brought back fond memories for her. The booby traps and piles of corpses...not so much.


07:08, Today: Silver rolled 9 using 2d6 with rolls of 5,4.  Investigate.

Ledo was used to have other people poke around on his orders.


07:10, Today: Ledo Typhin rolled 4 using 2d6-2 with rolls of 1,5.  +1 INT  -2 unskilled.

In reply to Gary 'Rig' Rigan (msg # 73):

It's quite a haul for Rig.

He finds more than enough parts to fix Tia.  He also finds enough spare parts worth stocking up on.  Filters, which are always in short supply.  Spare belts and circuit boards.  Even a clean coolant gauge, and for such a small part, it's a pretty pricey item.

Take a boon on the next three rolls for repairing Tia.  You can also assume the hull and fuel tank are patched to minimum standards.

He comes up with a decent haul of marketable parts.

Roll 1d.  You get that x 1000 creds worth of cargo:  ship parts

---

The passengers are frozen down.  Ledo and Silver head out.

The cargo holds they passed before are full of mostly junk.  Oddly, there's a spool of industrial grade silver filament parked in one corner.  Treat as a 5-4 result on the cargo trade table.  2 tons of uncommon raw material cargo

Silver knows from experience:  you always grab clean towels.  There's usually a shortage of linens and other common sundries on a space ship.  She's able to stock Tia with various sheets, towels, knick knacks, and table ware of suprisingly decent quality.  It's good for morale and should help with any high passengers that come aboard.

You can take a boon on any steward rolls related to serving high passengers until the kitchen takes damage, like from a ship battle or bomb or Silver shooting it up again.  In other words, don't get used to it

After they strip the bar and motel, they move back to the comm center.

Cles decked Lottie out in quite a bit of finery.  He trapped it of course.  Silver and Ledo...Silver mostly...has to untangle a number of trip wires.  But Lottie's corpse can be looted for about 3K in jewelry.

That just leaves the strong box...the one with the bomb on it.

Opening that will take an explosives/edu roll.  Rig can try a mechanic/int roll.  But you'll want to nail it.

The armory turns out to be both a hit and miss.  There are a lot of guns and rifles, but most are missing essential parts.  Firing pins.  Targeting guides.  Leads for the power pack.  But they find amo.  Boxes and boxes of beautiful amo.

You can assume you are ammo'd up for your weapons of choice for the next six storylines.

There's also a rather sweet looking RAM Grenade Launcher, still in it's box.

The real treasure is parked in a store room close by where Rig entered the complex.  A G/Bike is leaning against the wall.  It needs a new power coil.  But it should run just fine after that.

Yes. You have a power coil.

Once Silver and Ledo had returned back from their looting expedition they signaled Rig to take a break and the three of them regrouped in the mess hall.

"Alright with repairs finishing on the Tia we need to figure out a way out of here. Rig, take a look at the lift and see if it's fixable. Also look at siphoning fuel from the pirate ship. Maybe we can chop it up with the beam lasers and move it off the lift?

I'll go look for another way out. Rat holes like this might have another exit point so they wouldn't get bottled up by incoming ships. Maybe we can find a way to hook it up to those big hangar doors that turned out to just be a decoy?"

In reply to Ledo Typhin (msg # 77):

Have Rig make a Mechanic/Edu test for the lift.  Your plan on 'moving' the Burn Em All by blaster is pretty sound.  I won't require any rolls for it.

You are fueled up as well.

Rig looks at the lift and scratches his head. It definitely wasn't up to code, that's for sure.

OOC:

19:39, Today: Gary 'Rig' Rigan rolled 6 using 2d6+3.  fixing the lift.

In reply to Gary 'Rig' Rigan (msg # 79):

You can make 'em until you get it.  I just need to know how long it takes him is all.

OOC:


19:56, Today: Gary 'Rig' Rigan rolled 13 using 2d6+3.  take 3.

19:56, Today: Gary 'Rig' Rigan rolled 7 using 2d6+3.  take 2.

After much fiddling and review, Rig patches the power lines that got shot up in the fight.  He also replaces several valves that had more or less been melted.

It has now been two and a half standard days since the fight with Burn Em All ended.

Fritz squawks.  So the Nice N Bloody has definitely gone.  And there's an inbound naval cruiser.  It's still out of range, but it's pinging the beacon computer, trying to make contact.

They're not close enough to ID us.  But they will be close enough to know a ship took off.

You want to hail them?  Or get?

Ledo considered things and then shook his head.

"Let's get going. If they pursue we can stop and deliver a full report but this is going to be a nightmare for them to process and I'd rather know who I'm dealing with first. Chances are the captain would let us pass but if we get a hard liner or one looking to line their pockets they could try and stick us with everything. The smuggling, the murders, the massacres.


Fritz, scrub that report we prepared of any identifying information. Detail how to bypass the traps and include the mine code as well. Let's set up a little welcome call so when they get into orbit and try to land they won't accidentally blow themselves up in the process.

Nothing that will trace back to us but also with the information provided they shouldn't want to trace back to us. I want to be able to turn some of these guys in for their bounties and sell this cargo. I don't want some naval officer commandeering our hard won loot.

That just leaves the matter of the lockbox."

Ledo considers what information they can glean from their low berthers and wakes up a likely candidate (under gunpoint from the entire crew) and makes them a proposal.

"If you can unlock the safe we'll cut you in on the contents. An equal share. You can tuck it right into your pocket when we put you in cryo but there is a naval ship en route right now so we have to do this fast."

Ledo and Silver will march their newly dubbed explosive expert (or the person the one woken up thinks will be the best choice) to the lockbox and while Silver and Ledo keep an eye on things from behind the blast shield used in the Pleasure room Rig and Fritz can try to assist over the comms.

Meanwhile Rig will start the liftoff process. If the control station gets blown apart from an explosion Silver and Ledo can get to the surface via Rig's route while the Tia is already up top ready to blast off.

OOC: The big issue is nobody is trained in explosives so Rig's +2 EDU bonus gets crushed by the -3 Unskilled. Even if one of them has Explosives 0 they can get that +2 from Rig and hopefully not turn into chunky salsa. And if they do, thems the breaks, right? It was never meant to be and nobody on the crew gets a hole punched into them.

In reply to Ledo Typhin (msg # 83):

The berther who's trained in blowing things up slides through the booby trap like a hot laser through an ice crystal. He sits back and nods.

The lid comes up.

Inside are a number of hard copy logs.  In looking at them they seem to be routes and claim maps of the Hanna Why.

Hmmm, Fritz hmmms after studying them.  These would be worth a lot of creds to anyone interested in claim jumping.  They're like a who's who of who-to-claim-jump.  That's seventy five years old.  Most of this information isn't even valid any longer.

The maps of the Hanna Why are interesting.  You might be able to get some creds for them.

There is a bonus prize.  A ship's data core is tucked at the bottom.  It's the data core of a ship called You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet.  Records show that ship was impounded by the Navy ninety seven years ago.  It's still a viable core though.  If you take it to a ship yard, you might be able to hoc it.

Rig could also use it. He'd have to work on it and procure a few more parts.  But it might be possible to use it to upgrade Tia...

Need to know if you'd rather dump the core for $$$ or try to use it to upgrade the ship.

The core will net you around 9-15K if you try to sell it

Ledo shoves the claim jumps into the pirate's pocket.

"Thank you for your service. Maybe your next pirate crew can use these."

And with that he gets stuck back into the freezer. It was time for them to get up and go.

Ledo considered the core and thought long and hard about having Rig look at using it to upgrade the ship. This was going to be their home for (hopefully) a long time so the better it was, the better for all of them. They weren't hurting for cash at the moment and while this expedition hadn't been the most fruitful they had gained a few things and, importantly, had wiped one scumbag pirate serial killer from the face of the universe.

Silver linings. Now maybe Silver wouldn't have to look over her should as much.