At the dockhouse, Calista and Zennith are working on pre-launch prep when the habitation module arrives and is secured within the Bad Omen. Calista is given the key fob that opens the stealth compartments; according to the delivery person, the fob is the only way to access these hidden sections of the module. Soon after, the Coffin arrives with AJ, JoJo and the four passengers, and mere moments after that, the Customs call comes in, warning of an impending inspection within fifteen minutes. AJ immediately calls Tulk to advise him of this, though he doesn’t not pick up, so the rest of the crew quickly brainstorm about how to proceed. It is decided to secure the recently obtained crates within the warehouse while the Unit hide in the habitation module.

When the inspection team arrives, Zennith stalls them by faking a main door malfunction before allowing them entrance. The customs team are harried and clearly overworked and admit that they don’t know what is actually going on, only that there is a system-wide alert regarding a team of armed and dangerous men wanted for unspecified crimes. The images of these men naturally match the four hidden in the hab-module. With only a cursory examination of the ship, crew and manifest, the customs team signs off on everything and departs, which gives Calista enough time to assuage her curiosity and peek into the duffel bags and crates belonging to the Unit; in the former, she finds a great deal of combat gear and in the second … plasma charges of sufficient number to take down the entire station. She notes this for the future.

Tulk arrives with his go-bag just as the Unit are being released; he is carrying his go-bags and recommends the other characters retrieve their’s as well. Everyone splits up, with AJ hanging behind slightly to make contact with Bella and arrange for dinner. As he exits the dockhouse, he realizes that JoJo is being followed by two Taareh (likely from the earlier misadventure) and then Calista and Zennith have a pair shadowing them as well. Utilizing his computer implant and wireless capability, AJ snaps images of the pursuers and shoots those captures to the crew, along with a warning that they are being followed. He then moves to intercept JoJo who is just now turning around, which clearly surprises his pursuers. When AJ calls out to the men in Qebish to see if they are lost, his unexpected appearance and his understanding of their language visibly disconcerts the two who promptly bug out. Deciding that the crew should always remain in pairs, AJ then invites JoJo to join him and Bella for dinner. The doctor agrees, unaware that this is sort of a trap as the evening will end with Bella (and thus, AJ as well) knowing pretty much his entire life story. On the bright side, he has some fantastic hamburgers which only intensifies his newfound obsession with this miracle food.

Calista decides to engage her shadows in a far more aggressive manner. After rounding a corner to break line of sight, she then wheels around and charges back to slam into her pursuers. The man she collides stumbles slightly, which gives her an opportunity to knee him in the groin and then thoroughly intimidate the living crap out of the other guy. They also back down quickly and stumble away, leaving her feel totally badass. She will get a standing ovation from Tulk and the Unit when she and Zennith finally return.

An hour and a half later, the crew has returned to the dockhouse with their gear and everyone boards. The Unit have set up a CIC in the hold, outside the hab-module, complete with read-only connections to the Omen’s comm-systems and sensors. Around 17:30, clearance is obtained and AJ takes the Omen into the shipping lanes. Once clear, he engages the main drive and they begin their long trip. Knowing the grav-ball playoffs are taking place at Celestia, Tulk invites everyone to watch the game and most do join in. Zennith, slipping into his workaholic mindset, defers and stays in the reactor room while AJ seals up the pilot’s station and breaks out his violin to do some VR training, rejoining the rest of the crew on occasion to replenish his coffee.

After the game ends, the Unit request an hour or so of privacy in the hold, though Tulk immediately heads to the bridge, no doubt to eavesdrop using the many secret cameras and mikes he has installed throughout the ship. At the conclusion of the ‘secret’ meeting, the Unit asks for everyone to join them in the cargo bay so they can debrief them on the mission. Evidently, they only just received the full details and it turns out they are not going to FN-2187 after all, but near it, and the course change needs to happen at the very last minute. The actual mission is to accomplish a sensitive site exploitation (SSE) of a suspected downed Tohre-Chi ship! Th Unit hope to obtain as much intel on this ship as possible, especially with regards to their stealth capabilities, before utilizing the plasma charges to scuttle the craft entirely. This is where Zennith will come in due to his expertise on weapon systems and the like. The crew begins brainstorming how to best accomplish the course change without being detected.

Player Notes:

• Was missing Tulk’s player this session.
• Not a great deal of action in this session but Giger admitted he’s been swamped at work all week and was not entirely satisfied with the amount of prep he’d managed to accomplish.
• JoJo’s player decided that, since his character was from Space Japan, he is obsessed with the glory that is hamburgers. Bam. Insta quirk.
• Only one of the players hasn’t been watching The Expanse on SyFy, but that didn’t stop us from deciding we were all off to investigate the Scopuli and encounter the protomolecule.
• After Calista’s player declared that Tulk was her kind of scum following last week’s session, a running joke was spawned about Tulk having an affair with Calista. Time will tell how long that joke lasts.
• AJ still hasn’t bothered opening that letter from his ex-wife and he left it behind in the office. If he didn’t have Eidetic Memory, I’d have him forget about it entirely so it could come back and bite him in the butt later.