Not long into Jumpspace from Dinom, Jonah returns to the stateroom he shares with Dave to find that Dave has slit his wrists. Alarm all round. Dave is comatose. Jonah sedates him and treats his wounds.
Hermes orders everyone (including our passengers, who will attend under escort) to attend a fancy dress party to cheer everyone up. To cheer Dave up before that he reads him 'Catcher in the Rye'. This does not appear to help very much.
Avni and Hans agree to end their bit of the party by shooting each other with tranq round.
People turn up to the party, which happens on the night before exiting Jumpspace, in a variety of costumes, scraped together from the limited supplies on the Calico Weapon:
The passengers have also scraped together costumes:
And the party begins. Hermes is a very irritating host, interrupting conversations and making people mingle. Hans drinks an unfair quantity of the alcohol (scraped together from diluted medical alcohol and other sources). Jonah and Melissa chat, Jonah clearly trying to charm her, at least until Hermes breaks them up. Dave appears to be going quietly mad. He is not just in the uniform but claims to remember his Scout Service days...
A conga line forms and winds through the ship. It turns into a zero-G conga line when Hans turns off the gravity.
Dave burbles on about snakes.
Hans and Avni start shooting at one another with tranq rounds. Jonah gets in the way as Hans pops down from a ceiling hatch and is unconscious very quickly. After that the pair quickly render each other unconscious, over Hermes' protests. Hans ends up in the middle of the floor. Avni makes it to her stateroom.
Dave talks Arlent Streen into helping him stuff the unconscious Hans into a hatch in the engine room, closing it after him.
Everyone else falls into bed.
Next morning everyone wakes up. Hans is confused to find himself in the engine, and probably slightly irradiated.
Hermes humours Dave's delusions, and berates Hans (but not Avni; Hans did start shooting) for their shooting match.
Dave briefs his tool kit on the work to be done today. He is persuaded not to start disassembling anything vital for the moment.
And the next day, the Calico Weapon exits Jumpspace 100 diameters (17 million miles) out from Assiniboia, the gas giant about which Regina orbits. The system is very busy with lots of ships about, and lots of signals traffic. As soon as the ship emerges it is 'painted' by radar, something that seems to have a military signature.
We are quickly contacted by system traffic control, and are given a course in to Assiniboia to refuel, then on to Regina. We begin to accelerate in. The military radar moves off us as we do so.
It will take a day or so to fly to Assiniboia. As we power in we connect into the Reginan communications network, and use the sensors. We quickly pick up the transponder codes of several SuSAG ships coming from about Regina; some are of ships like the 'Camp Crusader' while others seem to be like the 'Dolobid'. We also pick up the transponder codes of the 'Medianne', the Dinom Corporation ore carrier that left Dinom just before the revolution started there.
As we fly, Dave begin his important maintenance work by starting to disassemble the jump drive...
Searching the communications net we find no mention of the Calico Weapon, so we do not seem to be wanted in Regina or on an Imperium-wide level.
Arlent Streen talks us into letting him use the radio to sell his shares in the Dinom Corporation. He contacts his broker on Regina and gives the order to sell, over his broker's objections.
Once that is done and the sale is confirmed, we get on the radio again and contact the two biggest in-system communications companies, the Travellers Aid Society News Service (TNS) and the Regina Media Corporation (RMC). The best offer we can get is 70000 Cr, plus full confidentiality, so we sell our news from Dinom to the RMC.
We also attempt to sell the aluminium we are carrying, and the former Dinom Corporation ATV that we now own, advertising on the Regina internet.
Metal prices are a bit depressed at the moment, due to the recent arrival of the 'Medianne'. However, after a while we are contacted by Piccolo Metals Limited who buy our aluminium at a 10% profit, payment to be completed when we deliver it to St Regina Highport in orbit around Regina.
The market for fusion-powered ATVs seems to rather small. However, we are contacted by a representative of the Grubber Mining Corporation on Brumaire, one of the inner moons of Assiniboia, who are interested in buying it, if we can deliver. We say we can.
A day or so after arriving at Regina, we refuel at Assiniboia and fly out again, towards Brumaire. Before very long we are contacted by system traffic control. They fine us 100 CR for our deviation from out planned course. We are contrite and obtain a new course, to Brumaire, from traffic control.
As we fly in, Jonah contacts the authorities on Regina and starts doing research into Imperial Census data. On the news we hear about the revolution on Dinom, and the subsequent fall in the value of the its stocks. Phew.
As we close in to Brumaire, Brumaire traffic control calls us and takes us in. We are given permission to land at Grubberville, the home of Grubber Mining, an obvious mining town surrounded by large open-cast mines on the edge of one of Brumaire's deserts.
Shortly after we land, Brumaire Customs come and inspect the ship and us. They are polite but don't seem too bothered. Once they are gone we contact the Grubber Mining Corp and tell them their ATV is here. We lower the ATV out of the cargo bay while we wait.
A little later a car turns up at the spaceport and a man who introduces himself as Chuck Grubber comes introduces himself to us. We show him the ATV. He seems quite impressed, and takes it for a test drive. Once he is satisfied with that, Chuck does an inspection, opening hatches and so on, and still seems satisfied. He asks about the Dinom Corporation markings on it. We give him a story of how we came by it that seems to satisfy him.
And he hands over about 500000 Cr for the ATV. We shake hands, thank each other, and he leaves.
We get a flight plan to Regina from traffic control, and take off, flying off Regina-wards.
After another twelve hours or so, we reach Regina and dock at St Regina Highport, the orbital city associated with the capital of the planet, also named St Regina.
Once we are docked, Regina customs come on board and inspect the ship fairly thoroughly. Finding nothing out of order, they warn us not to take any of our weapons off the ship, then leave.
That done, we contact Piccolo Metals. They quickly come and collect the six tons of aluminium, and their money is transferring into the ship's account.
Arlent Streen, Melissa Streen and Andrew Chalikos thank us all for taking them off Dinom. Arlent Streen gives us the 150000 Cr he promised us for transit from Dinom, and the three of them leave. Melissa waves to Jonah.
Now that we are better connected to the Reginan internet, Jonah finds out more about the SuSAG ships here. Apparently there is a fairly major SuSAG facility on Regina. Their Regional General Manager for this sub-sector operates from here, and SuSAG has a major administration and distribution centre on Regina. They do perform a little research and manufacturing here, but nothing serious. We decide to do nothing involving SuSAG while we are here.
Looking at the market for buying and selling ships in Regina, it quickly becomes clear that the Regina system, being a class A starport, is definitely a buyers market rather than a sellers market. Based on this we decide that Regina is not the best place to sell the Calico Weapon. Instead, as we are heading for Rhylanor, we will use the ship to travel from Regina to the X-boat terminal at Inthe (via the Yori and Treece systems), where we will try to sell the ship and from where we can travel along the X-boat route to Rhylanor. Once at Rhylanor we hope to acquire a new ship and travel on from there, perhaps back to Caliburn.
That decided, Hermes takes the Calico Weapon and flies off to Assiniboia again to refuel. Dave goes with him, not wanting to stop his jump drive maintenance at the moment. The others stay behind at St Regina Highport.
Dave seems to think he has an entire team of engineers working for him.
We book into a hotel on the space station.
That done, they seek advice on how to treat Dave's breakdown. Jonah doesn't seem too knowledgeable on that area of medicine, so Avni buys a 'psychiatry for dummies' book and begins to read.
We also buy some proper alcohol for future use. Jonah buys more medical and census-related information; he would like to buy some drugs, but does not have the licence which is required in Regina for acquiring medical-level drugs. Anvi buys some disguise materials. We also spend 2000 Cr on parts to fix the fuel tank hole we acquired in the revolution at Dinom.
Once we are checked in, Avni travels down to Regina to visit the Veteran's Society museum and archive at the Imperial Marine base on the planet. The museum area is a public facility, and Avni has no problems. She looks around then begins to look through the archives, starting with Alyssandra del Nero.
She finds that Alyssandra retired from the Marines at the age of 55 with the rank of Captain and a full Marine pension. She returned to her home system of Caliburn, apparently wanting to enter politics there. She had seen action against the Zhodani and other enemies of the Imperium over the years, and had been posted to a variety of star systems in addition to the Jewell system. However, she had never been decorated in that time. She was a member of the Veteran's Society, but her subscription lapsed two years ago.
There were other Marines posted to the same places as Alyssandra. Two who were younger than her have risen in rank since then; one is now a Captain, the other a Force Commander. People of the same age as her long ago retired to their home systems across the sector. There were no other Caliburnians in the people Alyssandra knew.
Having found this out, Avni returns to St Regina Highport.
Meanwhile in the hotel, Jonah searches the census data. He has a couple of more recent censuses on disc now, from 25 and 15 years ago. This time he finds matches for Hermes and Dave:
As with the rest of us, they seem to have had no close family or spouses, and not really to have been anything special.
When she returns to the hotel and is told this, Avni is not impressed by our former selves!
And while the now-refuelled Calico Weapon flies back from Assiniboia, the rest of us look for a cargo to trade on further. We manage to acquire 23 tons of high-tech cargo, filling our holds, for 5000 Cr per ton (115000 Cr total), using the money we got from the sale of the ATV and paying extra for quick delivery. We hope this give a good profit on the lower-tech world of Inthe.
And once the cargo is loaded aboard, we gain permission to depart from traffic control. Avni rushes out a quickly buys a high-tech toaster oven to distract Dave from the important systems. Then we head out towards 100 diameters from Assiniboia. On the way, we 'persuade' Dave to reassemble the jump drive.
And once we arrive at 100 diameters, off into Jumpspace we go, en route to Yori...