Previously, on the Aslan Route... Captain Ashran has been reactivated and asked to find a missing spy ship and recover its data, and if possible any surviving crew.
Zuflucht, 1108 Week 44
Mazun explains to his crew that he knew Sunita when he did his short stint in the Scouts, they were in the same intake. Obviously she stayed on, whereas a wealthy uncle died leaving Mazun shares in an oxygen manufacturing business, which he sold, using the cash as the down payment on a merchant ship. The rest as they say is history.
Sunita has, he says, engaged the Macavity to repossess an Imperial vessel - another Far Trader - last seen on Amondiage, in response to the Imperial banking and insurance company Hortalez et Cie foreclosing on the mortgage for non-payment. This will allow the crew to claim salvage rights on the vessel, which even after expenses should be enough for a decent payday. Clearly, Imperial personnel on Zuflucht wear many hats, credible as there are only about a dozen of them.
The team debate whether to take the Macavity (takes longer and gives them crew problems, but they can have all their toys) or travel by liner (no toys, enough crewmembers, faster) and opt for the former.
Fast Travel, 1108 Week 45 to 1109 Week 09
The Macavity uses the spare collapsible fuel tank intended for the Perfect Stranger to jump to Gloire, then travels more normally to Serendip Belt, then Topas, Berlichingen, Neubayern, Schlesien Belt, St Genevieve, Achille, and finally Amondiage, taking 18 weeks due to an extended stopover at Serendip Belt for their 1108 annual overhaul.
En route, Rex is persuaded to let Dr Matauranga implant retractable claws in his forearms.
Amondiage, 1109 Week 10
The Macavity's crew present themselves to the Port Authority, and since they are on a legal repossession mission and have the papers to prove it, they discover that the dead crew arrived here in low berths from Acadie, and that the Perfect Stranger had filed a flight plan to Acadie, Colchis, and New Home. It seems their quarry is on Acadie, which they are warned is currently wracked by unrest. Fomented among the honest miners by offworld agents, no doubt.
Acadie, 1109 Week 12
On Acadie, the same open approach backed up by official paperwork has the Port Authority leading them directly to the missing ship, which the starport is keen to see removed as it's been tying up one of their few landing pads for months. They discover that the crew left in a hurry, using the ship's air/raft, and that later someone ransacked the ship, copied the flight logs, stole the data storage drums which are the Macavity's primary objective, and disabled the flight controls. They demonstrate the broken safe and empty cargo hold to the Port Authority, befriend them, and use this to extract further information; some "officials from Amondiage" have visited the ship on several occasions, the PA think they represent a salvage company. The PA also knows that the air/raft filed a flight plan to the mining town of Houillon, currently the site of clashes between imported riot police and rioting miners. The crew's new friends in the PA also helpfully look in their records and find that the air/raft crashed on the return flight due to "pilot error" after a "firearms-related incident".
Rex realises they are being watched from the traffic control tower. Innocent curiosity? The crew are unconvinced. Mazun reasons that someone running a spy ship will have contingency funds hidden somewhere aboard, and Vila finds these hidden in a machinery space in Engineering. Vila - of course - "knows a guy" who can be hired as an engineer to give them the full crew they need, and they leave him cleaning and repairing the ship while they fly to Houillon themselves and present their papers for a third time at the police station, schmoozing the desk sergeant into showing them the incident report; initially unhelpful, his interest is piqued by how sparse the report is, and he invites them to wait until the officer concerned comes off shift. Plying the station staff with coffee and doughnuts further improves their attitude.
Rex can smell fear on Officer Hughes when he returns, which escalates to terror as he is questioned. By carefully phrasing things to give him deniability, they extract the contact details for the local company which removed the wreckage of the crashed air/raft, while Dr Matauranga gains access to the autopsy report and notes that it overemphasises the crash-related injuries on the two bodies recovered from the wreck, and (in his opinion) under emphasises the headshots from a laser weapon which he suspects were the actual cause of death.
Mazun has some signals interception gear in the air/raft alongside Vila's concealed stunners ("Never go anywhere without it, it's every day carry for a trader captain,") and the team intercepts Hughes' panicked call to an unknown number at the starport, which immediately hangs up.
All clues point to the starport, but since they have to fly past the wreck site anyway, they decide to talk to the company which removed the wreckage first. In particular, Dr Matauranga wants to examine it for signs that the full crew of four were aboard at the time of the crash.
To be continued...
GM Notes
As written, Great Rift Adventure 2 supposes the PCs have no ship of their own and enter the Islands Cluster at Amondiage; mine are coming in from the other side as it makes more sense for my campaign, but the only adventure on the route from Zuflucht to Amondiage is at Gloire, and it makes more sense on the way back.
The adventure flowed very nicely through the initial investigation stages, with the crew now having a good idea what happened and when, but not yet understanding who is responsible or why. I had the Space Corsair and Fantasy Names generators open in a couple of tabs as we played, with the result that I could spray the PCs with credible names whenever they became interested in someone or something, obfuscating which ones are actually important. This didn't really slow them down much but did add a feeling of verisimilitude. I did forget to give them one of the essential clues, but it will be easy to introduce it next time as they continue to investigate.
The session was dominated by Mazun as a character and Persuasion as a skill, so I must shift the spotlight away from those for the next session, which will be in two weeks' time.
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