Only moments have passed since Tulk fired the shots that crippled the stealth launch and the second launch has raced to dock with the Tohre-Chi ship. The boarding party is aware that they’re about to have company (bad company at that!) as well as finally noting that JoJo has wandered off. Mister “Black” of the Unit decides that most of his team will go down a level, then make their way aft in an attempt to flank the approaching hostiles while leaving behind one of their number to continue cutting out computer core; the Bad Omen Crew will need to “hold the line” and AJ quickly hashes out a rough tactical plan. He goes to the ceiling (thanks to the zero-gee environment) where he wedges himself into place while directing Calista to a nicely defensible spot that will also give her great fields of fire. Zennith continue to poke around the CIC, looking for things of interest (to him, anyway) while below-decks, JoJo endeavors to communicate with the now wakening (and very badly damaged/injured) Tohre-Chi. The doctor is somewhat successful in this and then begins patching up the alien’s environment suit with his own suit’s emergency repair kit. Meanwhile, Tulk is able to tell that the people in the first launch are trying to facilitate repairs and draw closer to the Omen, probably in order to attempt a boarding action; he fiddles with the comms and issues a “stand down or I will shoot the shit out of you” order.

On the Tohre-Chi ship, the Hostiles approach, laying down ineffective suppressive fire to cover their advance, which result in AJ and Calista engaging them from distance. AJ opens up with the close-assault weapon he obtained on Lucifer and the APDS slugs rip through one of the boarders’ suit, likely killing him instantly, and Calista lights up another man with her heavy laser pistol, badly wounding him and basically turning him combat ineffective. Facing this unexpectedly heavy return fire, the boarders’ advance completely stalls out and they hunker down under cover to exchange shots that don’t hit much of anything. At the sound of the firefight beginning, JoJo is surprised that the Tohre-Chi reacts and heads toward the firefight; over the comms, the doctor quickly tells everyone not to shoot his new friend and barely gets this across before the alien passes through the Unit who have reached their jump-off point and are about to engage the Hostiles. Still, AJ takes a bead on the Tohre-Chi as it appears due to its proximity to the reactor – he is concerned that the thing is going to try and cause the entire ship to go boom and plans to shoot the “shark” before then. Seeing the wisdom in this, Zennith secures his discovery – a compact, folded up Tohre-Chi gauss rifle – to his suit and draws his own laser pistol to join the “line” while his wife continues to lay down a withering barrage of suppressive fire herself.

Over on the Omen, Tulk hasn’t received word back from the other launch and is now able to see heat signatures exiting it. He neither knows nor cares if they’re just trying to abandon a crippled vessel, and instead re-engages with the Omen’s laser. Most of his shots are misses given the distances involved and his general inexperience with shipboard weapon systems, but enough of them strike home to turn the craft into a floating derelict. He’s also pretty sure that he nails several of the rock-jumpers who were exiting the launch. All in all, its a very bad day for them.

The Tohre-Chi launches itself into the fight, deploying some sort of cybernetic claws, and immediately draws all fire from the hostile boarders. Before things can get completely out of hand, though, the Unit engages … and they are not shooting to wound. In seconds, all hostiles – including JoJo’s new friend – are down and the ship is secure. Now with the computer core cut free, the Unit is ready to bug out although Zennith desperately wants to stay for a while longer. AJ agrees only to let them take some extra time making their way back to the docked launch so Moss can try and secure interesting samples for study. At the launch, Mister Black announces a change to the plan: there is no way for the Omen to outrun the Alliance frigate, USS Bunker Hill, so he and his team will take the functional stealth launch and use it to make good their escape while the Crew surrender to the Hill. The very notion of surrendering at all, especially to legal authorities, causes both Calista and Tulk to get upset, but AJ acknowledges the wisdom in this since he, better than the rest of the Crew, knows what the Hill is capable of and he knows that, technically, DSD, Inc. has done nothing wrong. As captain, he agrees to this on the condition that they allow Zennith to obtain some samples from the launch that Tulk ripped apart with the Omen’s laser. Mister Black is okay with that since they need to blow up that craft anyway and he likely doubts that Moss is going to learn that much from just a couple of pieces. With the key to the escrow account with the rest of their payment (plus a little extra) in hand, the crew examines the undamaged launch & discover it has jury-rigged flight controls that function well enough. AJ takes the controls – he’s always wanted to fly an alien ship, so this is one thing off his bucket list – and takes them to the other launch, now a drifting derelict, where the Crew secures the stealth samples while the Unit plants another explosive. All of the Unit’s gear is relocated to the launch and the two ships part ways with AJ pointing the Omen at the Hill so they can just ‘get it over with.’ Once they’re more than 10K kilometers away from the Tohre-Chi ship, there are several flashes as the charges detonate.

CDR Savage

The Hill identifies the Crew’s approach vector and issue a “stand down and prepare to be boarded for inspection” order, something they did not do earlier, and AJ signals compliance on a wide-beam transmission so the entire system could potentially hear it. The two ships dock some hours later and armored marines board where they inform the Crew that the captain would like to speak with them. AJ, being the only ex-military member of the Crew, takes lead and goes into savoir-faire mode in an effort to make up for Calista and Tulk being in uncooperative moods. Once aboard the Hill, the crew are scanned and then secured, with AJ being led away to an interrogation room. He has uncomfortable memories of rooms like this from his time in the TFR following the disappearance of the Normandie and falls back on old habits by running wormhole calculations in his head to defeat any potential psychic scans. Soon after, Commander Savage, the ship’s captain, enters and quickly notes AJ’s distraction. With nothing to hide, AJ tells the pure, unvarnished truth and provides data recordings of their encounters with the Unit to back this up. Before they conclude this interrogation, AJ makes sure that CDR Savage knows that any blowback from this must fall on him (AJ), not the other members of his Crew who were just following the chain-of-command. Savage says he will do what he can but doesn’t promise anything.

Tulk is next and he is more than a little irritated at having to go through this crap at all, so he decides to share his pain by dragging out his story for as long as he can while couching it from a purely administrative and economic point-of-view, which likely makes the interrogation hideously dull. JoJo is next and his utter inability to lie results in him spilling absolutely everything that he knows and then some, which means he’s out very quickly by way of comparison. Calista doesn’t even try to hide her lack of interest in being here since she knows that AJ has all of this recorded. As a result, she’s ‘compliant, but not helpful,’ answering questions in terse sentences that use the bare minimum of words necessary to get the point across. When she leaves, she gets the feeling that Savage doesn’t like her and she doesn’t care. Zennith, who is still annoyed at the (in his opinion) unnecessary destruction of a technological treasure trove, takes the opportunity to rant at CDR Savage about the general stupidity of humans in destroying things they don’t understand. In the course of this, he basically counter-questions Savage who acknowledges that his orders were really unclear and he didn’t even know about the Tohre-Chi ship until just recently. The Bunker Hill’s captain also implies that his orders indicated that Mister Black’s Unit – who he references as Special Operations Group Team Nine – might have been rogue.

With the entire Crew interrogated, Savage advises them that he is releasing them because he does not consider them to be complicit with any wrong-doing. He does not state they are wholly free and clear as the Alliance could potentially still charge them (although Zennith at least hears this as “you’re innocent of all charges”; AJ being former Navy himself recognizes military CYA speak when he hears it), though CDR Savage does not think there is anything they actually could be charged with. He further states that the Bunker Hill will escort them back to Tamborro Station and the Crew return to their boat. They’re going home.

Player Notes:

• More “paperwork” taken care of in the beginning – we established that the Rival Crew has a frequency of appearance of 9 or less (won’t appear in the next session, it seems) and that the “bank job” that the Moss couple have in mind to recover their monies will also feature on a 9 or less (also won’t appear next time.) We also determined that, excluding the payment for this job, DSD, Inc. has 2 months of operating expenses available.
• The majority of the session was a “loose” fight – I say loose because the GM used the combat sequence (Base Speed to determine who goes when), but we clearly weren’t using 1 second rounds.
• This is actually the first time that AJ has used that shotgun in combat; he obtained it from the pirate lair in “The Sabo Affair” but then the campaign just sort of fizzled out and we never came back to it. Until now, I did not realize how much damage the thing could do, especially with the APDS ammo I had in it. We determined that a shot from that could potentially penetrate the inner bulkheads of the Bad Omen (which is insane).
• Many of the PCs were (understandably) frustrated at having to surrender to the Bunker Hill even though AJ saw the wisdom in this and pushed it forward. Zennith was probably more upset at the Unit for blowing up the Tohre-Chi ship.
• Many were the jokes with regards to exactly what JoJo was doing with the Tohre-Chi. I tried to ensure that Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” started playing each time it came around to his turn again (thanks, YouTube!)
• Zennith has obtained a TL11 fold-up Tohre-Chi Gauss rifle which he plans to reverse-engineer, then get to working and give to his wife as anniversary present even though she’s more of a beam weapons girl.
• GM will have to comment but I don’t think there were any survivors from Tulk’s mad minute with the Omen’s lasers…
• Once more, “The Expanse” has seeped into the game. The interrogation on the Hill intentionally evoked the Martian interrogation of the surviving Canterbury crew in season 1, complete with the super-focusing drugs. There were also shades of the interrogation scene in “Firefly,” with Zennith sort of being Kaylee, Calista filling in for Jayne, and JoJo taking on Wash’s exuberant babbling role.

It is about 22:00 local, 26 Feb. As the session begins, the PCs are still discussing best options for determining how to break line-of-sight and have reached what amounts to a plan: once within the Far Belt during the decel phase, engine trouble will be faked and they will “set down” on a rotating rock, then launch from the dark side of this rock before going silent. It will take multiple days to reach the target rock, so AJ spends about 15 hours (total) working out the new route. By his calculations, they should reach the final target on or around 6 March.

The Crew has a lot of time to kill before everything starts blowing up in their faces. JoJo mostly spends time with V.R. tutoring and practicing his Muay Thai, which definitely leads to AJ sparring with him to determine how Krav Maga stacks against it. They find themselves fairly evenly matched with about equivalent skill levels. Tulk digs into the names he obtained from his television friend and is able to determine they’re all IBM employees. Calista generally hangs out with the crew in order to get to know them better, but also checks discreetly to see if there are any future jobs for her to handle on the side. Zennith, being a workaholic, focuses much of his time handling shipboard maintenance, although AJ is also present for some of this time to learn new engineering skills required for certain certifications; in his spare time, Zennith also works on a robot hamster for his wife. In addition to the above-mentioned items, AJ also ends up watching a recording of Bella’s play where he finds her not as terrible as he feared; he also interacts with their passengers in an attempt to get to know them better, especially once Tulk discreetly reveals that he’s eavesdropped a little bit and suspects the Unit are Confederacy personnel, not USA.

On the third day out from home, Tamborro Station, the USS Bunker Hill is detected to have launched, evidently on a hard burn in the direction of the Omen. Tulk is on watch when this happens and alerts AJ who knows the Hill is twice as fast as they are. Based on the current math, the Crew is about five days from their false destination, FN-2187, and the Hill would arrive within a few hours of them, not counting the impending distraction.

Day Seven approaches and the Omen reaches the designated time to execute their deception. The dual effort between AJ and Zennith turns out to be awesome; Zennith forces a fuel overfeed in engine two that results in a very visible backfire, and with a hard and sudden decel that is actually concerning to all parties but the pilot and engineer, but instead of landing, use the asteroid as cover and slingshot hard on the new vector before going dark. From passive sensors, they’re able to deduce that the Hill was completely spoofed and have given themselves an extra 12 hours before she will be able to intercept them.

Once they reach the mission site, it takes about 30 minutes for the Cew to eventually locate the blacked out Tohre-Chi ship … and it’s a big one, looking to displace around 500-600 tons or so. Everyone dons vac-suits and Zennith evacuates oxygen from the Omen … just in case. AJ orbits the Tohre-Chi ship for a bit so they can identify an entry point; during this, they determine that the two smallcraft normally attached to this ship are missing and there appears to be a really cheap worklight in one of the open bays, strongly indicating that some rockhoppers found this and have staked out a claim. This will be their entry point and AJ, knowing that Tulk positively sucks in zero-gee, has him stay behind to man the sensors while the rest of the crew spacewalk over.

Neither Moss particularly appreciate the zero-gee ops, but AJ is clearly an expert in doing so. The Crew and the Unit board the Tohre-Chi ship and begin moving slowing toward the ‘front’ with Zennith identifying stuff along the way. They find enough evidence to nearly confirm the presence of some rockhoppers living here and, upon entering the CIC, AJ is able to note that the blackbox is gone. The Unit begins cutting out the computer core.

Back in the Omen, Tulk is startled when a ship appears mostly out of nowhere – it is one of the missing Tohre-Chi smallcraft! It buzzes him but foolishly drifts into the Omen’s field of fire so Tulk remote fires the laser cannon which pretty much cripples the smaller ship. However, the second smallcraft appears and dives toward the Tohre-Chi ship, docking hurriedly before Tulk can puzzle out how to reorient the Omen and shoot it too. He warns the boarders … they’re about to have company!

At the same time, a bored JoJo has wandered away from the others and discovers what appears to be a suit of Tohre-Chi armor plugged into the ship. Just as everyone feels the vibrations of the smallcraft docking through the deck, the Tohre-Chi’s eyes suddenly light up…

Player Notes:

• Ended the session early because GM doubted the impending fight would be over quickly. Like more than half of the gaming group, he’d also had a very difficult work week and had not prepped as much as he would like.
• As a player, I’d like to figure out how to streamline some of the maths more, particularly with regards to in-system navigation stuffs. They aren’t terrible but I hate math of all sorts so honestly, I’d prefer a spreadsheet I could just plop my die results in and it figure the crap out for me. We’ve got something like that for Mass Combat so I may be bothering the GM to do that for the astrography and navigation stuff.
• Am wondering how we could have sped up the trip time. Once we establish a SOP for what a character does, a Time Use thing is probably the way to go, then we can skip past the “You’ve got 6 long and boring days to the target. What do you do in that time?” kind of questions since the normal answer would probably be “I do what I normally do during this time.”

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.

Began with a brief flashback to the hours immediately after the bar fight at Hard Vacuum as JoJo started actively seeking out a new place to live. At this point, he has been with DSD for exactly one week and as such, is just now getting acclimated to the station. During his apartment hunt, he observes a person “in medical distress” while in one of the lower wards. His doctorly instincts kick in and JoJo investigates, finding a man in critical shape, having previously been nailed to the bulkhead by a piece of rebar but somehow having managed to get free. The man is thoroughly unconscious. JoJo applies medical assistance, contacts the authorities, then rides to the aid station with the paramedics where he impresses them with his know-how. He is questioned by the authorities but allowed to leave.

Back to the present. The initial projected travel time to FN-2187, the destination in the Outer Belt, is eight days, but AJ immediately starts crunching numbers while Tulk negotiates with the Unit to get us a better deal. Being awesome, AJ brings travel time to just under 6 days which nobody believes at first. Meanwhile, Tulk seeks out a habitation module for attachment to the Omen and seeks out a smuggler version. After seeing how small the profit margin would be on this, he talks “Mister Black” into covering for most of the hab-module, which allows DSD to cover additional expenses. In the course of this, Tulk receives a ping for a data mining program he has running for any uses of his previous identities. Evidently, a “Hanibal G. Dunbar” is on-station! Tulk must investigate without raising suspicions and decides to do so after coordinating with the guy he’s renting the module from. In the course of those negotiations, Tulk agrees to do an unspecified favor in the near future so as to receive the “friend discount.”

Leaving Calista and Zennith behind to finish prep-work (and to inspect the habitation module upon arrival), AJ takes the Unit (and JoJo) in the Coffin to pick up other purchased goods from some less than reputable folks. En route, the Unit note the presence of the USS Bunker Hill, a navy frigate, and express some consternation; AJ inquires whether this is going to be a problem and receives a non-answer answer in return. This transaction takes place in vacuum and involves some rather shady-looking Taareh. Half of the purchased gear is present, but the other half is on a nearby ship, a fact that sets off everyone’s ‘ah, crap’ meter. Two of the Unit accompany the Taareh while the other two begin to load the gear on the Coffin which AJ floats closer, already expecting they’ll need to make a quick getaway. As he is jacked into the Coffin’s systems via his neural interface, AJ makes good use of the integrated sensors and identifies two hostiles sneaking toward the hatch of the other ship. He alerts the Unit via comms, then drifts the Coffin forward. The two would-be hostiles panic and retreat and, inside the other ship, there is an exchange of weaponsfire before the Unit guys emerge with their gear. AJ has the Coffin moving back into the traffic lanes before they’re all fully inside.

Tulk digs into the Hanibal purchase, identifies the shop location, and hacks their system to get all of the pertinent data. He briefly makes an attempt to pick up the purchase at the warehouse location but is rebuffed by the foreman who is clearly a by-the-book kind of dude. Retreating, he then stakes out the delivery address and intercepts the UPS guy. Thanks to his hacking, he knows all of the info on this purchase, including the tracking number, so the deliveryman doesn’t think anything of signing it over. Tulk even slips him a tip which is greatly appreciated. After the deliveryman is gone, Tulk then takes the television upstairs to “Hanibal” and, once the idiot opens the door, intimidates the living crap out of him by declaring that he (Tulk) is a very good friend with the real Hanibal Dunbar who is … displeased that his identity has been stolen. He even flashes his gun, which causes the idiot – a guy named Nguyen – to faint in terror. Tulk literally kicks the guy when he is down, obtains additional information on how Nguyen obtained the name, and then leaves with a warning that Nguyen is being watched. He keeps the television and drops it off at Hard Vacuum, claiming it was a donation.

At the office, with the habitation module inspected and secured, port authority customs contacts DSD: the Omen has been flagged for inspection, which is most definitely not a coincidence (what with the presence of the Bunker Hill, the renting of the hab-module, and a flight plan having been filed.) Customs will be at the office in fifteen minutes.

Player Notes:

• Was missing player for both Calista and Zenith this session.
• Evidently, the incident involving “Hanibal” was due to Tulk’s Secret coming into play for this session. We all expect Tulk to continue harassing this guy and have started tossing him random ideas.
• Took me (as a player) entirely too long to realize that the “mercs” were members of “The Unit,” a 3-season television show about special operators and their families.
• Totally called the Ronin-like incident with the Taareh guys as soon as it started. It’s like I know how Giger thinks!

The shooting has stopped. Calista immediately pursues the two fleeing ‘pirates’ but is unable to catch them as they manage to escape in a small groundcar. Meanwhile AJ directs JoJo to begin triage on the wounded and moves to help while Tulk takes the uninjured survivor aside with the newly arrived Steg for interrogation; they learn that the first group of idiots were hired by a man named Bobby Liu to start hitting shops on this level but discover little else of import and decide to let him flee. He runs afoul (briefly) of Calista who injures him but doesn’t stop him.

Local security arrive and several of the Crew recognize Sergeant Allred as the first responder. He is Steg’s enemy so Steg makes a discreet exit via the back entrance; Allred is … displeased when he recognizes the Crew and throws his weight around but no one bites so the interrogation about what happened goes relatively well. AJ learns that the cops have been facing a very high volume of calls. Until the investigators arrive, Hard Vacuum is taped off.

Once the cops are gone, Anson reveals the other part of why he wanted to chat with the crew: an old colleague of his is looking to charter a ship to Helene’s belt and will be here in “a couple three days.” This frees up the Crew to do other stuffs in the meantime. Tulk immediately starts researching this Bobby Liu fellow; Calista and Zennith go shopping for guns and checking into the would-be pirates, which results in them finding the Blue Neptune, a very small freighter that has left within the hour; while AJ assists JoJo in getting settled on-station while also juggling Bella issues as she’s won the lead in a local play and insists she’s not ready.

Having located where Liu might be hiding, Tulk enlists Calista’s aid in a quick ‘B&E’ op in the slums. First, they must navigate through what appears to be a house rave taking place, during which Tulk is caught unprepared by a local offering him a beer. Calista has an front-row seat to a comedy of errors as the normally unflappable Tulk first fails to fast-talk his way past the man, then falls back on blatant threats. He accidentally uses Liu’s name which causes the man to back off immediately. The two continue on and break into Liu’s crappy apartment where they discover no one inside but plenty of damage, indicating to them that someone has been dragged out of here. Frustrated at the dead end, they withdraw and speak with locals, confirming that yes, bad things happened in that apartment and yes, someone was carted out by a group of thugs earlier in the day.

Two days later, Anson contacts AJ and Tulk, advising them that his guys are here and will meet them at the DSD office. Tulk is there first and realizes someone has broken in, so he reaches out to the rest of the crew and tells them to assemble. Once gathered, they enter and discover four men waiting. All are very big, very polite, and are carrying bags/cases that are distinctly military in nature. The leader of this group – who calls himself Mister Black – references Master Sergeant Law and states they are willing to pay triple standard to be taken to FN-2187 in the far Belt, but will need to be in the black within eight hours. As the Bad Omen doesn’t have adequate life support for non-crew, Tulk will need to rent a habitation module while AJ takes the runabout and one of the mercs (because what else can they be?) to retrieve some additional gear.

Player Notes:

• Was missing JoJo’s player for the session.
• We got bogged down a couple of times due to our slacker GM being wildly, horribly unprepared, particularly with regards to the interrogation. The B&E thing also dragged a bit – IMO, he should have had a couple of punks (controlled by Zennith’s player and myself) kick in the door and try to blast Calista & Tulk.
• Mister Black asked Zennith if he’s worked with nonhuman weapons before, which is concerning. And intriguing at the same time.
• Despite being a superb social engineer, Bella is a terrible actress when performing, something that was lifted from the Sophie Devereux character on the TV show Leverage. This will be the first time many of the characters have experienced this fact.
• AJ also received something that looks suspiciously like a wedding invitation from he ex-wife but has not bothered even opening that envelope.
• As a player, I need to figure out how to include AJ more in situations like this. Calista and Tulk are very clearly peas in a pod with regards to breaking the law … perhaps AJ & Zennith need to develop a serious bro-mance due to their shared appreciation for classical music? More importantly, though, I need to figure out how AJ makes things fun for the other players as well…

Begin in media res with the Crew assembling at the offices in Hard Vacuum to discuss matters with Anson. There, we discover that the Starport Authority Closure Commission (SPACC) is once again threatening to close down Tamborro Station and a “Save the Station” organization has sprung up with Anson planning on participating. Their hope is to “clean up” the station and get it declared a historical location so the SPACC won’t (or can’t) close it down. Tulk, being a suspicious sort, decides to start investigating this group.

Ted announces that they have “visitors” (despite the front door being locked) and the Crew find themselves suddenly facing down a handful of armed punks, all wearing the usual security-spoofing gear. None of these punks seem particularly competent, which is especially notable when they don’t even bothering patting down the Crew, all of whom (except Zennith) are armed. AJ’s bad luck flares up once more, though, and one of the idiots happens to notice that he is carrying a las-pistol; there is a great of shoving and threatening and posturing, with AJ on the verge of attempting a disarm maneuver (despite it being very unlikely to succeed) but Tulk interjects himself into the situation, dazzling the thugs with a startling amount of bullshit that actively confuses them (since, after all, victims of an armed robbery aren’t supposed to be this indifferent to the would-be thieves!)

As the Crew (plus Anson and Ted) are threatened, a second group of thugs appear, also demanding the cash. This group appear to be spacers rather than local lurk-rats and are better armed. A tense stand-off ensues which Tulk (taking advantage of a half-hearted idea espoused by newly hired JoJo) complicates by insisting the Crew had already given the money to the lurk-rats. More shouting and threats transpire with most of the Crew cautiously trying to move out of the field of fire; AJ actually advances toward Anson and Ted, planning on trying to protect them when the shooting starts since he’s wearing a nanoweave bodysuit and they don’t appear to be armored.

Tulk sees his chance and takes it. As he shifts behind one of the lurk-rats (who happens to be holding a laser pistol), Tulk discreetly draws his hold-out las-pistol and takes an under-the-arm shot at one of the spacers while simultaneously shouting out something that makes it look like the lurk-rats are attacking. It works. Almost at once, the bar is crisscrossed with lasers and bullets and shotgun slugs. The Crew dive for cover (wisely) except AJ who tackles Anson and Ted to the ground before drawing his pistol. Once satisfied that they’re not going to get caught in the crossfire, the Crew draw their weapons and engage an already confused situation. In seconds, all but one of the lurk-rats are dead or grievously wounded (most to the shots of the spacers) and two of the four spacers are downed (one of whom is straight up dead thanks to Calista scoring some lethal vital strikes with her modified heavy laser pistol.) The remaining two spacers wisely flee and AJ gets the sole remaining uninjured lurk-rat to drop his weapon and surrender … before Tulk can start shooting any would-be survivors.

The current plan is to interrogate their prisoner (while JoJo triages the injured) before summoning the authorities to take the lurk-rats into custody. It strikes all of the Crew strange that two different groups of would-be robbers hit the same place at the same time…

Player Notes:

• We spent most of the session finalizing some character elements (some additional background stuffs, equipment, etc.) so really, nobody expected to get a lot done. Since so much time was burned with that sort of thing, can’t really judge the effectiveness of the characters yet.
• I (Rigil) had Fantasy Grounds running on my laptop and used that to quickly identify everyone’s modifiers for ranged combat which worked out better than I’d expected.
• Some of the initial setup was pretty unclear. For example, I didn’t entirely realize we were still in the bar until it was explicitly stated – thought we were being ushered out of the bar – and we didn’t realize we were initially in the bar’s office before the lurk-rats appeared. A little more descriptive flair at the beginning would be helpful.