Category: Uetonah Adventure 2

IY6026.350

The Fortunate Son clears that atmosphere of Uetonah and Caliban detects a System Defense Boat at the very edge of their sensor range — about 150,000 km. Knowing that they are going to be nearly impossible for that ship to observe while they are in low orbit, they move to the other side of the planet and start for the 100 planetary diameter jump point.

They monitor Samson Mining ground control instructing the SDB to come in and pursue the Far Trader Fortunate Son.

Roger uses his pilot skill to keep the planet between the two ships but with 6G acceleration the SDB is able to reach Uetonah and get the FS in sight after two rounds. SAFCO begins trying various getaway strategies. Flint uses his tactics and leadership skill to help with flight tactics and rev up the crew.

Roger takes evasive action, using his Pilot-4 skill to make up for the Fortunate Son’s slow speed relative to the SDB. Caliban moves to the cargo deck and starts removing the battle dress from the crate. It is very heavy and he needs help.  He informs the crew that each suit is accompanied by a big rifle. He describes the guns and Flint identifies them as highly illegal for private ownership PGMP-13 plasma guns. Fardt and Jinx join Caliban to help unloading the gear. Barney redlines the engines for a round, gaining an extra 1G of speed. Flint and Lucky man the sand caster and laser turrets.  Lucky fires the sandcaster to give them some cover.

The SDB hails them, telling them to decelerate and return to the spaceport with the stolen gear. It fires warning shots.

Barney attempts to prep the strained Maneuver Drive for another redline but it is simply not safe.

Roger decides to head for the small moon slightly off their vector to attempt too use it to shield them. He makes a difficult Pilot roll and is able to make the vector change. The SDB is traveling much faster, and the pilot misses his roll. The SDB overshoots the turn, giving the FS temporary safety.

As the FS continues out they are again vulnerable. Lucky fires the sandcaster again. Flint heads to the cargo deck and preps the now empty battle dress crate with a transponder, and positions it to be jettisoned.

A panicky Silvonius Janx takes over at the sensors and notices they are acting weird. Barney takes a look and see that they have been scrambled by the SDB.

Flint and Caliban take advantage of the connection Flint’s tablet still has with the Samson Mining computer network. They compose a message telling the SDB to stand down, that there has been an error. Having no computer kill, Caliban uses Jack of All Trades -1 to try to route the message through the system properly to make it look legit. He fails his roll. The SDB captain is not fooled by the message, and again threatens the FS with warning shots and instructions to return to the star port. Barney sees that the SDB is attempting to use its sensors to target a specific system on the FS, probably the Jump drive.

Roger continues evasive manuvers.

Flint jettisons the now empty crate. Barney hails the SDB, telling them to let them go or they will destroy the gear with their laser if they are not allowed to leave.

Round 6 arrives. The FS reaches 100 diameters. Roger activates the previously plotted course for Overon and hits the big red JUMP button. The Fortunate Son transitions to Jump Space, escaping with no damage.

Silvonius is furious! Barney explains that they had to take the powerful weapons due to the genocide Samson was planning. He’s still furious. Roger mentions they might make a massive profit from selling the gear and Silvonius suddenly gets a new attitude.

The crew has a talk with Silvonius about his share of the profit from selling the gear. Caliban tries selling him on the idea of each member of SAFCO and him getting an equal share. Sil is rock solid that for the danger they put him and his ship in that SAFCO as a whole gets 50% and HE personally gets the other 50% . Lucky feels that they really did him wrong with their actions and they owe him. Sil reminds them that they need him and his ship to complete their trip to Prometheus. They agree, to his terms, subtracting any SAFCO resources used. Caliban already had side deal with Sil for a percentage of any of his profits, which Sil agrees to.

They get to Overon.

Barney begins maintenance on the ship, nursing the maneuver drive back to health after abusing it so badly! Lucky relaxes. Caliban uses his Admin-4 skill to sell the 10 grav bikes, 10 tons of machine tools, and 5 tons of booze for a huge profit. Sil will be VERY happy.

Then Caliban, Flint, and Roger meet with Samson Mining admin Robert Tilton, a friend from Flint’s previous career with RCMP. Flint levels with him about the origin of the gear. Tilton tells them that the consortium has been having trouble with pirates, and that the Battle Dress and plasma guns would be useful. With skillful negotiation with a friendly admin, SAFCO gets over 2 million credits for the gear. After deducting Caliban’s 5% from Sil’s share, Silvonius will get over 900,000 credits from the deal.

Back on the ship, having gotten the news, Silvonius is grinning from ear to ear. All is well aboard the Fortunate Son, as SAFCO, Silvonius, and Jinx begin to plan the next leg of the journey.

End of session
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Elapsed time: 466 game days (1 year 91 days)

IY6026.350

SAFCO, aboard Silvonius Janks’s ship the Fortunate Son, with travelling youth urchin Jinx on board is lifting off from the Uetonah spaceport. Flint sees from a his window the cargo controller freaking out about the missing crate of Battle Dress armor.

Barney, Flint, and Caliban know about the theft. Flint, apparently not wanting Silvonius to be upset, turns down the speakers from the comm system.

Jinx makes a Streetwise roll, approaches Barney, and says “OK, what did you guys do? Something’s up.” His instincts are good. Barney gives him a very reasonable story without too many details, and tells him he might want to strap in. Which he does.

As the ship climbs, Caliban takes the Sensor Ops position. He scans for any ships following them, and indeed a ship has launched is gaining on them. He quietly informs the rest of the crew.

Lucky makes up a reason to go check out the laser turret.

The crew, expecting trouble, takes positions. Roger – pilot. Caliban -SensOps. Lucky – dual laser turret. Flint – sandcaster turret. Barney – Engineering. Fardt stays on the bridge.

Roger begins evasive manuevers.

The pursuing ship hails the Fortunate Son. “Far Trader. This is Samson Mining Security. You are in possession of stolen property. Return to starport immediately or we will open fire.”

Caliban returns the message with his own line of fast talk. The pursuing ship answers with a warning shot from its laser.

Another shot comes in, this one barely missing. Not a warning shot.

A battle follows. Barney redlines the engines to gain enough speed to keep ahead of the pursuer. Roger easily rolls and gets Advantage of the other craft. Lucky uses the turret targeting array to get a good look at their pursuer. It is a small craft — essentially a laser turret with a cockpit and engines.

At SensOps, Caliban makes a “target systems” roll, giving Lucky the ability to pick a system on the other ship to aim for. He picks the laser. Both ships fire. The security speeder, at disadvantage misses the Fortunate Son. Lucky, on the other hand, has advantage and Gunner-3. He fires and disables the enemy’s weapon.

As the crew begins to breathe a sigh of relief, and Silvonious starts losing his mind, Caliban makes another Sensor roll and detects two additional security speeders coming at them from opposite sides and above. The right’s not over yet.

Barney determines he can probably redline the engines for a total of four rounds before getting into really dangerous territory. He makes his roll again and succeed in maintaining the power.

Roger continues spinning and weaving the ship, easily getting advantage with his Pilot-4 skill and succeeding with evasive actions. Flint uses the computers at the sandcaster turret to time his sand bursts, helping them be effective, and increasing the ship’s defense. Caliban and Lucky use the same tactics, making every roll for “target system” and to-hit. Lucky disables a second pursuer.

Barney hails the remaining ship. “Break off pursuit or we’ll blow you out of the sky.”

The two disabled craft having already disengaged, the remaining pilot peels off and stops the attack.

Cheers in the Fortunate Son. Jinx is impressed! Silvonius is angry! “What have you idiots done?”

Caliban talks him down. For now.

As the ship clears the atmosphere, Caliban makes another sensor roll and detects what is probably a system defense boat at the very limits of sensor range.

The fight – is – not – over.

End of Session
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Elapsed time: 458 game days (1 year 83 days)

IY6026.349

SAFCO is still on Uetonah. They have just gotten back to Samson City, but are outside the walls, discussing further actions. It is afternoon. They’ve spent the morning traveling through the jungle.

They return to the ship and discuss various plans, and then split into teams.

• Lucky and Fardt go in search of a tavern frequented by miners in which to try to use Fardt’s streetwise skill to gain information, plant rumors, etc.
• Flint and Roger go to find some cargo for Silvonius, so this leg of the trip will not be a washout.
• Barney and Caliban will try to gain access to the Samson Mining network and plant misinformation for the incoming mercenaries to “discover.”

Lucky and Fardt find a busy establishment simply called “Tavern. They go in and start carousing. Fardt is not successful with his Streetwise-1 rolls, and not unable to really start any rumors. They go to the Collider table and gamble. Each loses some money. They meet a miner and Lucky pretends to be looking for work. The guy’s name is Harv Smithfield. Lucky chats him up for info about working conditions there, what the company is like, etc.  Harv becomes a friend to both of them. As they are talking, a ruckus breaks out at the dice table. They see a big miner yelling at boy of approximately 15 or 16 years for “cheating” at dice. The boy smirks. He is about 5’5″ tall, curly black hair,  dressed in a simple dark blue tunic over black trousers and boots. He has a belt pouch. The boy challenges the miner to one more round of the dice game. Just as it appears the miner will win, due to a poor roll by the boy, one of the miner’s dice tips precariously on its edge, finally falling into a losing configuration! The boy shovels the money on the table into his pouch as the miner erupts in anger, chasing him past Lucky and the panicking Fardt and out the door.

Flint and Roger go cargo hunting and snooping around. They find a strange cargo up for sale – 5 tons of liquor! (the cargo tables do odd things). It seems someone in the last 24 hours needed to dump it to make room for more valuable cargo, so the cargo handlers pooled their credits to buy it super cheap! Flint and Roger bring Silvonius, and the negotiate a good price that will profit the miners, certainly allow Silvonius to turn a profit, and will get the stuff off the cargo floor.

Barney and Caliban attempt to hack into the Samson network using Caliban’s TL13 hand computer, but are not successful. They leave the ship and go out into the dock to see where the terminals might be and how security is. They find a terminal. They see miners coming in from work, dirty and heading for the showers. They follow. They steal the laundry hamper from the showers and nick two Samson work suits and caps. Barney puts on one of the suits and approaches a terminal with Caliban. The terminal is occupied by a cargo handler. Barney asks if he can use it real quick to check on some cargo for “this guy” pointing to Caliban. He is convincing and the guy allows him to, after a brief discussion about Barney being a new hire. Caliban makes his Admin-4 roll by a significant amount, giving Barney a +2 to his Comp-2 roll to navigate the administrative systems of Samson. They make another good roll, and are able to hack the system enough that they can now gain access remotely with Caliban’s tablet. All this take some time. Flint and Roger return from their mission, see them, and stand in front of the terminal pretending to have a conversation, blocking the view of anyone else walking by. Having gotten the access they need, they leave, Barney changing clothes. They keep the two stolen Samson works suits.

Fardt makes a great Steward-1 roll later, preparing a fantastic meal on the ship.

After dinner, as Barney is checking some systems, he hears someone knocking on the hatch asking to be let in! He cracks the hatch and sees and adolescent male in blue tunic and black pants and boots. He allows him in. The boy wants to book passage to Listo, which happens to be on the route to Prometheus, to see his grandmother! He opens his pouch and they can see he has plenty of money. Silvonius grants him passage. The boy introduces himself.

“I’m called Jinx”.

End of session
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Elapsed time: 457 game days (1 year 82 days)

IY6026.347

SAFCO begins the session where they left off, at the Sophont Liberation Front in the jungles of Uetonah. They have spoken to Jason Slimjack, the biologist/leader of the rebels. Before light’s out the team discusses what they wish to do next.

The next day, Caliban goes around interviewing rebels regarding the Pachyderms, with the idea that he can submit this information to some journalist and thereby get the media involved. He spends the day doing that. Flint is given a tour of the rebel base and assets, as he has offerred to use his experience as an Army colonel to assist them with tactics to defend the base should Samson mining attack with mercenaries.

At Flint’s suggestion, Barney and Lucky spend the day building some expendible transmiters/recievers to use for dirty tricks in the upcoming battle, like using them to lure the mercenaries to booby traps, etc.

The next morning, Jason meets with SAFCO and ask them to take his Pachyderm research data with them, and try to get it to the Imperial Office of Sophont Relations, on Prometheus. They agree. Caliban has made his Admin roll, and he knows the head of that office from his prior service. Sir Walot DeMaris, a minor noble and expert on inter-sophont relations. Caliban thinks highly of him and believes he would be hard to bribe or blackmail.

The team loads up the grav bikes begins their return to Samson City. About 10km along the way, with Flint and Roger taking the lead, Flint detects 12 small objects pursuing them, and gaining on them fast. (Flint wins a surprise roll against the incoming hostiles). He puts his bike on autopilot and launches a grenade behind the group of grav bikes, the cloud of incoming “things”. Four of them drop off the radar.

Suddenly SAFCO finds themselves being swarmed by football-sized fast-flying insects that look like colorful wasps. The eight creatures break into pairs, with one on either side of every grav bike but Roger’s. They are very fast, and move erratically. They’ll be hard to hit.

As the team and the bugs fly down the pyschedelic tunnel, the bugs begin to attack. Between each pair of bugs a powerful electrical arc blasts. They try to catch the humans in that arc. SAFCO returns their attack. Flint turns his submachine gun on the insects. Caliban uses his skill with the grav bike to execute an impressive move, attempting to smash one of the bugs with his bike. Lucky and Roger shoot. Barney pulls out one of the insecticide weapons they bought in town and kills two of them. During the chaos, both Barney and Lucky are hit by electrical bolts. They slump on their auto-piloted grav bikes, unconscious as the others race on. Flint is hit, the energy easily penetrating his normally effective combat armor, but he hangs on to consciousness. Roger is hit, but barely.

More fighting. Caliban kills one with his auto pistol. Flint and Roger manage to kill more of them. Finally there is only one Lightning Bug left, and it flies off into the jungle.

Backtracking, they find Lucky and Barney unconscious on the floor of the tunnel, their bikes safely stopped near them. Both are still alive. After ten minutes both revive. Roger used Med-1 on everyone to bring them back up to almost full strength.

After some rest, the team makes it back to Samson City with no further injuries.

Caliban suggests that they wipe the navigational data from their bikes, to safeguard the rebel position.

The team discusses additional actions they might want to take, like planting misinformation in the Samson computer system, to sow dissent with the hired mercenaries, etc. They discuss skills needed. Barney is working at Comp-2. With this and Caliban’s knowledge of administrative filing systems they might be able to pull such a thing off. Flint has some ideas as well.

They are not sure what Silvonius Janks will want to do at this point.

End of session
IY6026.349
Elapsed time: 457 game days (1 year 82 days)

IY6026.346

SAFCO is in the jungle just outside the Samson Mining base on Uetonah. They’ve just encountered and killed three aggressive megabeetles. They are on their way to coordinates provided by a rebel operative at the spaceport, where they expect to find a rebel base. Their goal is to inform the rebels of the Sophont Liberation Front that Samson is gathering mercenaries and military gear and weapons with the goal of wiping them out.

They continue on their grav bikes through the twisting and branching Pachyderm trails. Roger and Flint are up front. Roger is navigating and Flint is monitoring his bike’s radar and otherwise on the alert for danger. Caliban is in the middle, with Lucky and Barney in the rear. They have at least several hours of travel ahead of them, as it is impossible to travel in a straight line through the thick and dangerous jungle.

Roger does a good job of navigating, but they do have a couple of random encounters.

First, while crusing through the Pachy tunnel, they encounter a swarm of what look like small floating balloons ahead. The things are of various shapes, about a foot in diameter. There is no breeze but the things are moving around, and the movement does not appear random. The party can see that each of the things has what look like sensory stalks distributed around their equators. The balloons are of various different bright colors, like most of the phosphorescent life in the otherwise dark jungle.

Lucky pulls out his binoculars to get a better look. The things do look like living creatures. He can see what look like rudimentary eyes on the ends of some of the stalks, while others are covered with unknown sensory organs. He also sees that the creatures have pores which open up and expel puffs of air, allowing them to move around in little jet-powered bursts.

The creatures are not moving any closer.

Caliban finds a broken tree branch and then moves his grav bike forward, toward the balloons. He reaches out gently with the branch to try to move one out of the way. As he moves the leafy branch near the creatures it quickly jets itself up out of reach.

Caliban now hears a “bubbling, cooing” sound coming from the creatures. They surround his grav bike and continue making the sounds. He is getting recordings on his hand-computer. He slowly moves his grav bike forward. The creatures move, letting him by.

The rest of the group slowly moves through the cloud of creatures.

They continue, Roger doing a great job navigating. About five kilometers from the desired coordinates Flint detects lots of movement surrounding them in the trees. They stop. Turns out to be a bunch of small monkey-like creatures. As they investigate, Flint’s radar detects some larger shapes coming down through the canopy. The monkeys scatter.

An amplified human voice calls out for them to put their hands up. A couple of rebels riding jungle crawlers come down out of the trees. The leader introduces himself as Ramirez. He recognizes them from their previous trip to this world, when they helped the rebels. Ramirez guides them to the base.

The base is essentially a huge treehouse, at least 100 feet up, above the first canopy, with at least 200 feet of canopy above it. It is built on a Togo tree, 60′ in diameter. They go inside a hollow part of the tree, up a ladder, and meeting Paula Masters, the leader of this base. SAFCO delivers the information. As they talk, out on a balcony overlooking the jungle, they inquire about the Pachyderms. What evidence is there that they are sentient? A voice from behind them says “I can assure you they are sentient. I have the evidence.”

They turn around to find Jason Slimjack, the biologist who was the reason for their first visit to Uetonah.

Jason explains that he’s spent time with the Pachyderms, and he has sent two information packages to the Office of Sophont Relations on Prometheus, but has gotten no support from the Imperium. The teams suspects that Samson Mining is somehow suppressing the information. Caliban tells them that there are many reasons that action may not have been taken yet, not all of them nefarious. He makes and Admin-4 roll, and he knows the head of that office.

Barney, Lucky, and Caliban go back to the grav bikes and inspect them for tracking devices. All three of them believe the bikes are clean.

Before retiring for the night, they ask Jason what the balloon creatures are. “Oh, Jungle Floaters” he replies. “They’re harmless, unless you pierce them. They have strong skins. You could hit one with a grav bike and it would just bounce off, but if you shot one it would explode like a hand grenade. They’re not sentient, though they are curious.”

The team retires for the night and discussed next moves.

End of session
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Elapsed time: 455 game days (1 year 81 days)

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The members of SAFCO spend some time doing various things as they wait for parts for the Rambler-II. Barney and Fardt have done all they can without the expensive drive components, and they have at least five weeks until the parts arrive.

They meet at the Happy Gluck that evening to discuss next moves. Barney has been interested in the Pachyderms of Uetonah for a while. As a former bureaucrat working in the diplomatic corps on the border of the Kresk Directorate, Caliban has some knowledge of such issues, and knows that the Imperial Office of Sophont Relations has at least a sub-office on each Subsector capital. Mylor’s subsector, of course, is not fully explored and the imperial presence is undeveloped. The nearest office would be the Prometheus subsector office, on planet Prometheus, one subsector rimward.

They see a man going from table to table chatting people up. He’s wearing a green velvet jack, black pants, and black boots. He’s about 5′ tall, heavy set, with gray goate. He approaches the table. Caliban notes that he’s wearing an antique wrist watch.

The man introduces himself as Silvonius Janks – Interstellar Commodities Trader. He has just landed his Far Trader, the Fortunate Son, and is in need of a crew. He tells him that his pilot, navigator, and engineer have been hired away by some guys doing recruiting.

He explains that he has a load of 1)polymer components he thinks he can sell on Overon, and that 2)he has crates of military fatigues made of cloth armor fabric he’s heard he might sell to Samson Mining, on Uetonah.

He offers the Scouts all standard crew contracts based on their skill levels, and offers Flint a position as Gunner for one of the craft’s two turrets. Lucky gets a bonus for serving not only as navigator but as gunner. Caliban negotiates a contract to represent Janks in upcoming business transactions, for a 5% commission on net sales.  They find out that his previous crew lacked a steward, so Fardt is able to take that position, insuring that they’ll not be eating rations of garblag haggis for the next few week. Janks informs them that he want to leave for Uetonah in two morning.

SAFCO spends day doing the following…

Barney and Fardt go out to purchase supplies. They see see the recruiters from Samson Mining working a booth in the market. Barney has Fardt go use his streetwise smarts (Streetwise-1) to approach the booth and listen, acting like he want to join up. They don’t take Fardt seriously, but he makes his Streetwise roll and overhears them telling the possible recruits that rebel kooks on Uetonah have come close to shutting down mining operations. He then instructs Fardt to talk to his underworld contacts and start a rumor that Samson is signing people up for a death mission — to a planet where everything will kill and eat you. Guaranteed death. Fardt again rolls and makes Streetwise check. Rolling 1d6, we determine that recruiting efforts will be delayed by four weeks.

Flint and Roger visit Alro Rupalian who agrees to have 2 goons guard the Rambler-II while they are gone, simply out of goodwill.

Caliban makes friends with doc workers – they will help watch the ship. Finds out they are union. They will send him the name of union leader for future representation for contracts. He gives them some drink vouchers to the Happy Gluck.

Janks takes onboard one more lot of product – spices – to sell on spec.

SAFCO boards the Fortunate Son and heads for Overon, 2 parsecs away. One week in Jump Space.

Caliban assists in selling the polymers there for a nice profit. He sells the spices as well, also for a good profit. Flint visits the head of RCMP on the plant, Robert Tilton. He tells him about a possible post-scrubbing claim on Chamax, should there be anything good there.

There are no available cargo lots that Janks can currently afford.

They jump to Uetonah, and are boarded for inspection by a system defense boat. It is clear to Roger that the FS would be no match for it in a fight, and says “we’d better play nice.” They are allowed to land at the Samson spaceport.

Caliban trades the cloth armor fatigues for 200% of their original cost ($100,000 total). Sadly there is no cargo to ship out at this point. Perhaps when they are ready to leave.

They talk around the spaceport and city. Flint and Roger in the city – lots more posters now than on their previous visit. Barney chats up a dock worker, finding out that rebels have mostly shut down mining operations, but that will soon be fixed. Samson has brought in military weapons, and will soon have a private army to wield them. They will wipe out the environmentalist kooks. Lucky explores the city, and sees more pro-rebel graffiti and flyers around. “Free the Pachyderms” and “All Sophont Lives Matter”. Caliban does a casual, informal intelligence test on a pachyderm, and gets confusing results.

Man in spaceport bumps into Barney, and whispers to him to meet him at Irma’s Imported Mooch Imporium at 7pm.

End of session
IY6026.344
Elapsed time: 452 game days (1 year, 78 days)