A few last preparations for the Nameless Group are made, and people distribute themselves about the ship. Hans will do the 'meet and greet' part of this. Hermes is in the bridge; Jonah in the sick bay, Dave in the engine room and Avni in the cargo bay. Then the 'doorbell' of the Camp Crusader rings. Hans goes down to answer it. On the security camera he sees three people outside:
They are all wearing uniforms recognisable of those of SuSAG employees, and are armed with snub pistols.
Hans lets them in. They introduce themselves as, respectively, Captain Nangonya, Sophia, a ship's Engineer, and Mr Thorne. When asked why SuSAG are interested they say that SuSAG is always on the lookout for interesting new ship designs and this counts as one such. Would we mind if they took some scans? Hans does not object, so Sophia takes out a hand scanner and starts playing it over things.
Hans leads them from the airlock (one of the lateral ones, on the main crew deck), and shows them an (empty) stateroom before leading them onto the bridge. Hermes greets them, and shows them the bridge functions. They don't appear to show much familiarity with them. When asked, Hermes give the same needing to raise money speech he has given everyone else who has looked at the ship. Captain Nangonya recommends corporate work as a far more stable environment; we are sceptical.
Hans then shows them around the rest of the ship. He leads them down to engineering, where they meet Dave, down through engineering and along the lower corridor into the cargo bay. Anvi, knowing they are coming, hides into the access tube to the forward gun turret until Hans has led them through the cargo bay and up the ladder to the floor hatch by the lateral airlock through which they entered the ship. Then she emerges and stealthily follows.
Hans says goodbye to them at the airlock. Captain Nangonya says she'll be in touch. Then the grav plates in the floor suddenly turn up to 2.5G. Apart from those in the airlock, anyway, it seems. Ouch!
Dave and Jonah fall over and knock themselves out. Hans also has problems. Avni, the strongest of the group, is still bothered. Hermes is sitting down in the bridge.
The SuSAG people pull their snub pistols and point them at Hans. Hans, lying on the floor, surrenders. They shoot him anyway, but only with a tranq round. Phew.
There is an explosion from the rear of the ship.
Avni hears the gunshot and concludes the worst. She throws a high explosive grenade up through the floor hatch, aiming for the airlock. Hans, starting to feel the effects of the tranq, is rather worried as he sees this, and dives for the hatch as well as he can under 2.5G. He is falling through as the grenade goes off.
The blast catches his legs, injuring them. Then he falls two floors under 2.5G (the equivalent of five floors under 1G) and hits the deck of the cargo hold. Ouch.
Hermes tries to regain control of the ships systems, but seems to have been seriously locked out. And he can't contact Jonah and Dave. He heads out of the bridge and down the corridor, his snub SMG at the ready. He checks the airlock and finds the engineer, Sophia, the only one conscious there. She points a snub pistol at him. They both fire. Hermes is hit with a HEAP round, but Sophia dies messily in a hail of HE.
On the floor of the cargo hold, Hans falls unconscious.
Jonah recovers with a lump on his head, and investigates.
The two doors into engineering (one on the upper level, one on the lower) are blown open. Avni and Hermes open fire with guns and grenades, she down into the cargo bay through the ceiling hatch and he along the corridor, which seems to stop the advance of whoever is down there. In his IR goggles, Hermes can see that they are vacc-suited figures carrying ACRs (much like the SuSAG troops we fought when taking over the Tessalon).
Avni has one of their communicators that she has taken from the captain, and listens in to the invaders.
Grenades and smoke go everywhere. In a lull in the gunfire Jonah tries and fails to get into the air-raft bay (it's locked too), then dives back into cover. He checks the SuSAG people in the airlock. Only Captain Nangonya is alive, and she only just. He does what he can to keep her alive.
Anvi holds people out of the cargo bay from its ceiling hatch. They seem to stop trying to enter after a bit.
Having done what he can to stabilise Captain Nangonya's condition Jonah goes down into the cargo bay to check on Hans. While treating him he notices people trying to get in through the cargo bay airlock, apparently as part of 'Plan Zeta'. He waits for the airlock hatch to start opening, then throws in a grenade. This seems to rather blunt their enthusiasm.
There is a big firefight up and down the upper level corridor. We negotiate a cease-fire to put their Captain in low berth. This we do, then we start firing again.
Eventually smoke billows out of the engineering area, and they stop firing. We cautiously investigate, and find that they have retreated, leaving a trail of blood through a couple of hastily-installed rear airlock doors (to replace the ones they seem to have blown open). There are three vacc-suited bodies left in the ship, one in the cargo bay and two in engineering (one upstairs, one downstairs).
Dave is found, unconscious, in engineering. He seems to have fallen and knocked himself out too. Jonah brings him round, and despite his moaning we put him to checking on the state of things in engineering after having a firefight through it.
The rest of us slap patches on the still half-full fuel bladders in the cargo bay, which are leaking liquid hydrogen all over the place. We stop them doing so and flush the system.
Dave finds that the Jump drive and power plant have both taken damage, but are still largely functional. However, trying to use the jump drive until we get it repaired will be a more risky proposition than if it was undamaged.
We regain control of the ship. There is no sign of the authorities.
We quickly get permission from Valarn Base traffic control and leave, pronto.
As we fly off, we get an incoming signal from the Coreg's launch. We take it. They ask us to explain, surrender and give back their Captain. We hum and haw and try to trace their signal, but it seems to be coming from Valarn Base itself. Then we cut them off.
We examine the sensing device their engineer, Sophia, was using. It seems to be set to scan the ship and compare its results with the plans of a Tesslon-type ship in its memory. As if they were trying to confirm exactly what sort of ship we had...
We power off away from Valarn base, using other asteroids for cover. Sensors indicate various other ships on these rocks, asteroid miners and so on.
We consider abandoning the Camp Crusader and heading for Denotam in the launch before making our way elsewhere. On going past the first big rock we turn off our transponder, in the hope that this will let us sneak off unnoticed when we emerge from behind it.
Shortly after we turn off the transponder we are hailed by some asteroid miners in one of the ships close by the rock we are using for cover. We chat with them. They seem quite understanding of our predicament and we arrange to meet with them as discuss things. Perhaps a ship-swap is in order.
Shortly after this a seeker ship, the 'Calico Weapon', rendezvous with us and Hans and Avni go over in the launch to talk to them. They talk to Darrian and Melissa, the owners, and examine the Calico Weapon. Nothing seems too much amiss, and we all seem happy to swap the Camp Crusader for their ship. Both sides examine each others ship. The Calico Weapon is a big comedown from the Camp Crusader, but it's (hopefully!) far less hot then it. It is about 70 years old, tech level 12, armed with a laser and a sandcaster, and seems rather run-down, but entirely serviceable. Darrian and Melissa claim they are in the 'small package trade' (smugglers, that is), so who knows how likely that is? But we swap anyway.
Some fuel is pumped about so we are fully sorted, and each of us signs papers from the others 'legitimising' the transfer of the ships on to another. We now own the 'Calico Weapon' as the Ulot Mining Co-operative. We transfer bank accounts from one ship to another too. We all transfer gear from one ship to another, shake hands, and go our separate ways.
They fly off in the Camp Crusader. There is a definite impression that both sides go off muttering 'suckers' under their breaths.
We decide where to go next. The world of Extolay is considered, but it has no gas giants and is on the Xboat route, so making subtle refuelling hard. For discretion we decide to head for Rullis, the gas giant in the Dinom system instead, by way of deep space, then on to Regina to check on the Marine's records there before heading onwards...
And we jump for Dinom. Jonah and Dave are sharing a stateroom; everyone else has a stateroom to themselves. The Calico Weapon is definitely more cramped than the Camp Crusader.
Over the time in jumpspace, everyone heals from the injuries they took, though a dose of medical slow drug has to be used on Hans to get him back on his feet...