Tepha continued to poke around the comms and sensors.

OOC:
21:58, Today: Tepha Pezal rolled 8 using 2d6.  blind roll.

Silver was kind of bored with the whole thing.

OOC:

21:58, Today: Silver rolled 4 using 2d6.  blind roll.

Ledo gave a shrug and then motioned for Greta to follow him. He led he swiftly through the corridor towards the first puzzle. He pointed at the door with the 0 and then then 1.

"Think you can figure it out?"

He let her stew for a bit before heading through the correct door and into the next room.

"This next door requires a password. It is really really bad if you get it wrong. Luckily we solved it but Greta, if you would please turn away..."

Once he was sure she wasn't looking over his should he would move to block the display while he entered in the correct password.

"Now before you cross this threshold note that your comms are probably going to cut out after this point because of the jamming field. Better check with your boss first before proceeding."

Greta nods and trails along after Ledo.

She blinks at the first puzzle and says, "Uhmm...well the 1 is the number to the left..."  She then runs to catch up with Ledo.

She looks at the plaques.  "Is it this Lottie person?  The sign outside said what's missing and that was Lot E from the list of warehouse spaces...Why are you looking at me like that?"

She nods at Ledo's warning and clicks her comm.  "You hear that?"

"Yeah.  Just signal when you get back in range.  You know the drill."

She taps something on her comm and holds it up to Ledo.  She's typed out a text message but not sent it.  She's just using it as a pad.

Greta holds up the com so Ledo can see it:  You know he'll stab you in the back as soon as he can, right?

---

Rig rechecks the schematics and the reports Fritz flashes up on screen.  It fits with what he's seeing from a visual inspection.

To get it space worthy, it would normally be four or five hours worth of work.  That would be at a fully working port.  Here...

The hole in the hull is a straight up patch job.  He will need to pull some metal for the patch, probably from the hull of that derelict, but it's a straightforward job.  He will need a second set of hands, mostly to operate the power grips that will hold the hull in place while he welds it on.

The bigger issue is the fuel tank.  The sealant Tepha applied is only a temporary solution.
But again, raiding the derelict should give him the parts he need.  Or something he can fabricate into a stronger patch.  The real question comes in how to go about doing the work.

To patch the hole up, he has to empty out the fuel tank first.  Even a cold patch is risky on hydrogen.  He needs to find someplace to dump the fuel.  And they're short on fuel to start with.  Not even a drop can be lost.

More worrisome is Mainframe's estimates on how far they can travel on what fuel they do have.  If this wasn't an astereoid field, they could do a burn and probably make it back to Granger's Landing.  But you can't just rip through an asteroid field.

Maybe the derelict has some more...

First thing's first which was to continue salvaging the derelict. Rig was trying to look nonchalant as he walked underneath the guns of the pirate ship but what was he going to do? Wait? The ship needed fixing and he had to hope that the pirates wouldn't get board and take pot shots at him.

And if they did...well that would be a new problem to add to his list.

OOC: While things are relatively peaceful he'll have Fritz and Tepha work on pumping the remaining fuel into the inflatable storage tank while he gathers all the parts they'll need.

Salvage first, repair second.

Ledo gives a nod and begins tapping on his own comms. He keeps speaking though just in case the audio is still picking up.

"So as you can see there Cles strung up a remote activated mine right on a faultline. If that thing blows up the whole base will come tumbling down on us..."


I know. If you help us we can protect you. Get you out of system with a clean ID.

In reply to Gary 'Rig' Rigan (msg # 15):

Rig taps a line from Tia into the derelict's systems and gives the junk heap some power.  Fritz follows the line and noses around the derelict's system.  He shoots an inventory and manifest to Rig.

There's a little bit of cargo here.  Some of it might be worth dredging up.

Looking at the ship's specs, there might be a few parts worth taking to.  Even if it's just to keep them on hand, spare parts in storage are money saved.

A fire broke out onboard at some point.  That seems to be what killed the few people who were onboad.  It must have burned quickly.  The bridge is mostly a wash.  Fritz is having to operate off the computer in engineering.  But a couple of state rooms and the hold escaped damage as did engineering.

Blind roll from Rig now please

---

Tepha watches the gauge while keeping an eye on the valve.  The first time she helped Rig with the inflatable tank was easy.  All she had to do was watch.  Now that she has to keep an eye on the whole process, it's a little more complicated.  Not tough.  But it is trickier than one would expect.

Something flashes in the periphary of her vision.  Mainframe is relaying the scanner readouts to a side screen on her workstation.  In the odd moments when she's not watching the flow valve pressure gauge or standing on tip toe to peer over the top of the board to make sure the inflatable tank hasn't hit a snag as it expands outwards, she's been glancing at the scanner results.

Something flashed up on the side screen.  But whatever it was, it's gone now.  Overwritten as new results come in

---

Greta nods vigorously, then taps out a new message.

Deal.  We need to talk.  But I can't shut off this comm.  It's got a recorder as well as broadcasting.  If there's a gap, he'll know.  Ideas on how to talk?

Greta holds that up and looks at the charge.  Yeah.  Hey.  Is that...uh...teddy bear waving at you?

Fritz 4 is out on the hallway of the motel platform, waving it's arms and jumping up and down.

Rig continues his salvage operation...

OOC: 19:14, Today: Gary 'Rig' Rigan rolled 7 using 2d6.  blind roll.

In reply to Gary 'Rig' Rigan (msg # 18):

Man.  Your blind rolls have been biting it haven't they?

The state rooms have some personal effects.  Nothing too racy.  Teph and Silver might like some of the fashion junk.  One of the state rooms looks like it was nothing but a high heel closet.

Now as to that cargo...

Roll twice on the trade good table starting on page 212 of the core book.  Then for each one roll 2d unmodified.  If you roll over an 8, the cargo is still good.  You have a single lot of it.  If not, it's junk

Rig peels off the sections of hull he needs.

Mechanic/Edu tests on Riggy please.  Roll them until you make 2 that are 8+.  I need to know how many rolls it takes for you to make them.  Thanks.
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:54, Tue 02 June 2020.

Rig was poking around through the cargo. Mostly it was all burnt out or junk. A pallet of completely molded foodstuffs? Pass. A burnt out piece of wreck? Who knows. Towards the back though he spotted two pieces of cargo unscathed.

He checked the manifest and then quickly double checked it and then popped open a container to be sure.

Gems. Crystals. Diamonds.

Rig had no idea if these were legitimate, forgeries or stolen. But he was impressed. Maybe this would be profitable after all even with the damage to the Tia


22:01, Today: Gary 'Rig' Rigan rolled 14 using 4d6 with rolls of 3,1,4,6.  cargo 1, is it good?

Goods: Gems & Crystals. Still good


He went over to the next pallet that had a series of tall containers, taller than him. He began checking the manifest and then nearly choked. This...this was a game changer. He popped open a container just to be sure.

"Uh...Fritz...are you seeing this?"

Mining drones. A small army of them. Things just got a whole lot more interesting.



22:01, Today: Gary 'Rig' Rigan rolled 20 using 4d6 with rolls of 4,6,6,4.  cargo 2, is it good?

Goods: Robots. Still good. Fuck yeah.


Meanwhile Rig knew a ship like this like the back of his hand. He knew where he needed to go and how he needed to go about going.

2 rolls, 2 successes.

22:06, Today: Gary 'Rig' Rigan rolled 14 using 2d6+3.

22:06, Today: Gary 'Rig' Rigan rolled 12 using 2d6+3.  mechanics + edu.

This message was last edited by the player at 03:07, Tue 02 June 2020.

Tepha paused as she looked at the readout. What could it have been that she missed? She asked Fritz.

"Fritz, was there something odd in the fuel readout just a second ago? Something odd flashed but it disappeared now."

Silver was lounging in the turret keeping her eyes on the ramps from the Burn Em All.

If someone was going to get out of that ship and fuck them over it would have to be through an airlock...except they said there was someone else missing.

She cursed and pulled up monitors to keep an eye on the elevator shaft and the lift shaft as well. Maybe whoever it was that was still out there was folloing Rig through the guts of the base or was making the long climb down the ladder like she had to. Either way with a rack full of missiles almost pointed her way she wasn't about to get bushwacked.

"Wait a minute. If they can hack our feed, can't we hack theirs?"

She said it on the internal comms to Tepha and Fritz. Listening in would probably be a good idea, wouldn't it?

Ledo looked and forced out a laugh. Inside his guts were churning but the comms were still open so he needed to keep the charade going.

"Oh, yeah. It's a remote control toy. Fritz uses them to scout for traps. They're too small to set off pressure sensors."

He motions for her to follow him but on his comm he quickly types out a message.

Don't talk about teddy bear. Tell your boss about the carnage.

He points towards the mine and the strip club.

"Just so you know we're telling the truth why don't you take a quick look around. Poke your head in to verify that we didn't just make up those pictures. The office in there is safe so you can pull up the madam's records to help you figure out what's going on."

He then looks back at Fritz, taps his "ear" (through the helmet) and then points back to the hangar in a (hopefully) universal signal that they are being listened to.

En route to rendezvous with Fritz he taps one more message on the display without sending it.

Can you cut the relay? Can they still hear us?
This message was last edited by the player at 03:16, Tue 02 June 2020.

In reply to Gary 'Rig' Rigan (msg # 20):

Fritz runs a quick check on the cargo Rig has found.

The crystals appear to be the type used in production for communication equipment.  Unprocessed, but an uncommon enough commodity to be worth hauling.  Base price $50K for the lot.

The robots are actually construction droids used at starports.  They cling to the hull and are capable of doing small maintenance like repairing pings in the hull from tiny metorioids or doing very basic electrical work.  Small patch work that covers an area no larger than a quarter of a meter.  There are 20 of them.  They might be worth more as a lot for sale than useful board.  Though, that is just assuming they are left as is...

Moving like he has a mission statement and a pickax, Rig gets to work.  The salvage goes down like butter.  The real kind.  Not the made from fungus kind.

All in the repair work is going to take two and a half hours with an hour for the scrape down of the derelict.  Not bad for an old fart.

---

That wasn't on the fuel readout.  Hold on.  It was on the sensor scans I've been feeding you.

Huh.  There's movement in the shaft.  Maybe.  The jamming device is making it hard to read though.

Tepha plays with the controls, letting the fuel tank go on it's own for a moment.

Like Fritz told her, the jamming device is effecting the scan quality.  But there is no doubt.  There's someone coming down the shaft the same way Ledo and Silver did.  Looks like a single person, though there might be two.  It's hard to tell.

Silver buzzes in at that moment with her idea.

It is possible.  But it will take some doing.  Silver, I'm going to patch the fuel tank gauges up to your console.  If the fill-pressure gauge hits over 120, use the kill switch to stop the transfer.

Tepha, I need you on scans.  Try adjusting the cross frequencies at random.  I'm going to work on an algorithm layout on this jammer to see if there's a way to end run it.

What Fritz is asking Tepha to do is more or less put together a jigsaw puzzle.  She'll work on cross checking different frequencies in the same batch, feeling her way around the static to try to find Burn Em All's feed.

Which is a long way of saying need Teph to give me a Sensors/Int check please

---

Greta looks around the scene, less shaken by it than would have been expected.

She shrugs at Ledo. "When you crew with Siri and Herb, you get used to these kinda scenes."

Fritz answers in a moment.

I can cut relay.  Working on counter measures.

Not sure they can hear us.  Hard to tell without a hack.  And yes, I tried the hack.  They have a pretty stout set of defenses, including lots of data mine fields and counter measures.  I would be putting Mainframe at risk, not that is a bad thing.  But I figured it was one more headache you didn't want at the moment.

Mainframe has lots of tape of prerecorded conversations.  I can broadcast those on different frequencies to act like a smoke screen.  They would have to figure out what channel to monitor by listening to each one.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:36, Fri 05 June 2020.

Rig is still looking at those robots all packaged up neatly.

"Hey Fritz, what can you do with these?"

Tepha meanwhile did her best to follow along with Fritz's commands but it was a bit of a struggle remodulating the scanners repeatedly.


22:47, Today: Tepha Pezal rolled 6 using 2d6+1.  sensor check.

This message was last edited by the player at 03:48, Fri 05 June 2020.

Silver splits her attention between the fuel gauge, the other ship, and the shaft where two more jokers were entering the playing field.

Ledo cursed and then nodded at Fritz to cut the relay. They didn't know how deep Siri was in their comm system, or any of their systems. Seeing Greta unfazed had made his blood run cold.

He delayed as much as possible but it was time to see where the bottom of the rabbit hole.

"Alright Fritz, I think our guests here have had enough of a tour. Greta, why don't you report in, make sure they know you're alright before we move forward."

He paused, hoping to find out if the relay did anything to the other ship's comms or not.

After Greta reported in (or attempted to at least) he tapped out a message privately to Fritz.

Kill the mine. Don't let them intercept that code. Can you rearm the mine behind us?


"Alright, let's head in. Hey Fritz, doesn't this remind you of our time with the Antwhites? Remember how that went down?"

It was a coded message, he couldn't be too careful. A Bugee armed with a pistol had surprised Sylvie Anthwite enough for Ledo and Silver to get the drop on her. He was hoping Fritz would pick up the message and get ready to follow discretly behind them with the PDL pistol just in case 'Greta' turned out to not be as innocent as she acted. Innocent people didn't act that callously in front of a massacre like that. Maybe she really was that broken, or maybe her whole "damsel in distress" act was just that, an act. He was cautious around her, keeping an eye out for any weapons or other devices in her hand. Granted she might be expendable which is why they sent her, or she might be a deadly ninja assassin just like the Antwhites.

Either way Ledo needed a better position before making a move and he was hoping that the control room past the mine might open up a new opportunity.

In reply to Gary 'Rig' Rigan (msg # 25):

As is? Fritz considers Rig's request.  I can download copies of myself into them.  They have a decent capacity.  So I should have a fair bit of movement.  It's odd.  I seem to have a lot of programming specific to this kind of task:  taking over bots and such.

Anyway.  I can run them if that's what you mean.

---

The damn jammer is frustratingly complicated.  Instead of casting out on a set series of frequencies, it modulates through, making it tough to predict.

She gets a fuzzy image of one suit heading down the tunnel. It looks like what she thought might be a second suit might actually be some kind of bot.  But she can't tell.

Uploading algorithm to your scanner base.  Try it again Tepha

You heard the AI.  Sensor/Int check please

---

Understood Captain. And then, sotto voce as it were, Fritz 4 adds Understood.  Since we don't know if you'll be able to reach us once you're in there, do you want me to drop the mine again after a set period of time?

Greta nods at Ledo after she's done.  Fritz 4 gives him the go ahead.

Ledo steps around the torn apart guy in front of the entry, Greta following his lead.  Past Mr. Torn Apart is a short hall ending in a staircase going up.  It's dark at the top of the stairs.

Shining a flash light shows that up top is a large, round open room that screams command center.  Along the walls are set work stations, all powered down and completely quiet.

Perhaps surprisingly, there are no dead here. No dried blood stains.  No signs of any violence at all.  It looks like someone just turned the lights out on their way out the door.  Maybe Cles ran out of people to kill.

There's a couple of ladders set in the walls, each across from each other at the one hundred eighty degree mark on the circle.  The ladders lead up to a semi circular balcony that runs along the northern side of the room.  There are two doors set on this balcony.  Ledo imagines one is the Captain's quarters and one...a business office maybe.

One of those two rooms.  Cles is waiting in there for Arden, if his message is to be believed.

Rig rubbed his chin and nodded.

”Do it. I have an idea.”

When Fritz was loaded up in the drones Rig packed up the gems and robots and made them ready for transport. He would transfer the gems to the Tia’s cargo hold and the drones he would leave out on the tarmac between the two ships. When its’ done he’ll comm the <i>Burn Em All</i.

”We found some valuables in that derelict. Figure it’s only fair to split the goods. Got a crate of industrial robots I’ll set here for you. Captain’s orders are nobody leave your ship though so assuming he gives the go ahead you can come load it up. Until then I’ll just leave it here for you.”

OOC: The new plan is if things go south for Fritz drones to pour out of there and start tearing up the other ship. Even a couple of them getting onto the pirate’s ship hull could do a lot of damage and would be difficult to remove when they’re not in zero gravity. Even better if the pirates end up getting the robots on board before Fritz activates...

Tepha tried to get the scanners working properly but the jamming field was too strong. Even still she reported it in.

”Silver, can’t tell if its one or two coming down the shaft.”

”Doesn’t really matter. When they open up that aft hatch we should blow the charges and open fire. They aren’t letting us get out of here alive so it’s best to have the element of surprise on our side.”

Ledo gives Fritz the nod.

”As soon as we’re through reactivate it. Leverage and all that.”

Once Greta rejoined he motioned for her to follow and led them to the circular room.

”Keep your eye out for traps. This place is full of them. “

He flashed his suit lights over the ladders, trying to peer up as much as possible.

”You take that ladder,I’ll take this one. If something up there tries to shoot us then the other person might get a better look.”

Once Greta was at her ladder he signaled again and they both began to slowly creep up to look at the balcony. As he took the rungs one at a time he opened put he coms again to Greta.

”So, anyone else decent onboard that ship? I’ve never heard of it but sounds like a rough ship from what you described. Hard way to a make a few credits.”
This message was last edited by the player at 20:45, Sat 06 June 2020.

In reply to Gary 'Rig' Rigan (msg # 30):

"Aw shucks.  Ain't you the generous soul.  Thanks.  We'll fetch it when we can."

The voice on the com from Rig is dripping with sarcasm.

Still.  After a few minutes, a guy comes out of the ship and walks over to the crate, lifting the lid and peeking inside.  He lifts one of the droids, hefts it, and takes just that droid back to the Burn Em All

---

Silver kills the fuel lead.  The job is done.  Rig should be able to start patching up the tank leak now.

Tepha gives the sensors one last go.  Still nothing but jamming with occasional slices of innuendo.  But she does get one thing from it.  She gets a sense of their movement rate.

She can tell from the last two 'clear' shots that whoever it is is descending fairly quickly.  In fact, they should be within visual range in the next minute or so.

---

Greta chuckles as she climbs her ladder.  "You don't end up crewing for Herb unless you got a lotta desperate goin' on.  Some of the crew have bounties on their heads that are too damn tempting.  Some of us are just trying to hide.  The one thing you can say about Herb and Seri: they don't like anyone else killing their crew.  That's their job."

She reaches the top of her ladder a moment after Ledo reaches his.  Nothing.  No pressure mines.  No lasers.  No killer drones.  It is almost anti-climactic.

"So when you crew for Herb an' Seri, you're safe.  You know.  From everyone besides them."  Greta continues as she slinks down the side of the balcony, heading for the door closest to her at a slow, methodical pace that seems to indicate she's been to this picture show before.

"You don't crew for them if you're expecting to live a long time.  You're just trying to buy as much time to breathe as you can. This one reads Pleasure" she says, standing in front of the door on her side and pointing at a word scratched into the metal of the iris hatch.

Ledo's door reads Business

Ledo points Greta towards Pleasure while he takes Business.

"Don't go in just yet, we're just opening the door, scouting it out and regrouping. Got it?"

Rig walked out of the and began putting together the pieces to begin patching the ship. Well pretending too at least. When he had gone inside for parts Silver had explained the plan to him. It was foolish and reckless but given what Silver had told them about who exactly was onboard Rig didn't see too much other choice. He had to admit that when they opened the hatch to retrieve their fellows would be the best time to detonate the charge and fire the lasers.


"Hey Fritz, what can they do with that droid? How well hidden is your program and how fast can they take back control and root you out of there?"