Game date: September 13, EY217
Previous events: Success leaving prison, failure having dinner
Perhaps Jillian and Volkova's talk with Bishop had an effect after all. He hand-writes a letter to Warden Whang admitting that she was right to treat him badly in the restaurant and that he was just blinded by her beauty. He posts it before they leave Eondeog.
Medical supplies for Crapworld are available at the Boseog space station, just a short jog from the moon. Arrangements are simple given that this is a standard run that many ships make. Dropping off supplies is considered a public good, rewarded with a small amount of money and, more importantly, a free trip through the gate to the Nodapar (Crapworld) system and a free trip out to any adjoining system.
The rules for the dropoff are slightly complex this time around. To make sure that supplies are dropped off to their intended recipients and distributed fairly the crew are given a set of coordinates on the moon to fly over (a settlement, presumably) and a second set of coordinates where they are to unload the supplies and wait for them to be picked up by the local prisoners. The government must have at least some idea where people are living on Crapworld to have such detailed coordinates.
Jillian deals with the paperwork easily enough but balks at the sealed, unlabelled crates that she's expected to deliver. She argues and gets permission to open up one of the crates to ensure that they are actually going to be dropping off medical supplies. Assured that everything's in order they're ready to go when they're approached by a thin Piccadillian who only refers to herself as Anna. She knows where they're going and is willing to pay them to drop off a small bag with several "shielded computers" on Crapworld. Bishop bargains with her and they decide that the money she's willing to pay outweighs the risks. Everyone is paid their share from this small burst of income and Bishop pays off Malcolm the money he owes him from the ill-fated dinner with Whang.
The bag of mysterious electronics -- they're far too small to be real computers -- is stowed in the Steel Humminbird's small secret smuggling compartment. The ship leaves the space station and heads off for Juche's moon Jageun and the ship that they think might be hidden there. It's a trip that takes the better part of a day. Juche is a largely volcanic planet that has scattered Green Star Corporation mines on its surface and a strange cult of personality growing around the planet's president, a certain Rhee Ha-Neul. Under his control Juche has become increasingly paranoid, isolated, and militarized though no one knows exactly why.
On the way a stowaway is discovered: a small grey cat! No one knows how long it's been on board but it's thin and nervous. Malcolm isn't happy to have an animal on board but Jillian instantly takes to it. She names it "Ghost" and tries to befriend it by feeding it. Although it's happy to eat it's still quite wary.
Given the uncertain legality of their trip to Juche the crew decides that the best thing to do is to try to sneak down to the moon's surface undetected if at all possible. It will be tricky: they'll have to avoid being detected by a cruiser in orbit around the planet (the Cheonan), the military base on the larger moon of Keun, and the civilian base that's on Jaegun itself. At least Juche itself doesn't have any sensors that would detect them. Jillian thinks she's up to the task and plots a winding course that takes takes advantage of Keun being on the other side of Juche from Jaegun. Her path manages to approach the small moon with its own base on its far side and using the entire moon as cover from the cruiser. They're not hailed by anyone: success!
Malcolm flies the ship very close to the surface to keep them from being picked up by the base's sensors. If Hollie did actually make her way across the surface to the moon base there's a limit of how far she could have walked. The search isn't going to be easy. Jaegun is a small, very uneven moon with no atmosphere and a ripped-up surface featuring lots of crevasses in which a small ship could easily be hidden. Malcolm keeps raised features of the landscape between them and the base while Jillian uses the sensors to search for anything out of the ordinary. After six hours of searching they detect something; it's hidden well enough that it's unlikely that they would have found it without the combination of the Hummingbird's high-quality sensors and JIllian's skill. Whatever it is, it's in a crevasse that's too small to fit something of the Hummingbird's size into it but that doesn't stop Malcolm from slipping the ship in there anyway, something he's disturbingly good at.
Confident that they're well hidden, Bishop, Malcolm, and Volkova don EVA suits to investigate while Jillian stays on board the Hummingbird just in case. Malcolm's got his shotgun and Volkova has her beloved Knuta at her side once again. The item that they detected is indeed a ship. Smaller than the Hummingbird, it looks like a cargo ship with two crossed pistols airbrushed on its rear cargo door. While Volkova starts working on the cargo door Malcolm squeezes his way between the ship and the wall of the crevasse to take a look at the airlock. The ship's name is "People's Freedom" -- painted in an excessively curved script under the forward hatch-- and it belongs to the Culpepper Delivery Company, based in Providence. There's no one inside and all its systems seem to be shut down.
Volkova removes the doors with style, doing such a clean job that if she so desires they can be resealed after the ship has been examined. Flashlights reveal a hold largely filled with identically-sized crates, each of which is labelled with "Connor Arms" in large letters. While Malcolm clambers over the cargo to get to the cockpit Jillian suits up to take a closer look herself. They decide to open a crate, but not in the confined crevasse. Suspicious of potential booby traps they haul one up to the moon's surface and open it there. It's an easy job to get it up there in the moon's minimal gravity. Safely opened, it contains two large weapons: grenade launchers!
Inside the cockpit, Malcolm easily starts up the People's Freedom. All the security systems have been permanently disabled with various degrees of subtlety and the navigation data has been wiped. There is still a large amount of fuel in the tanks and life support is still strong. If he wanted to he could fly the ship away without a problem.
The crew has a quick discussion about what to do. Since Labrys City has asked them to obtain weapons to defend themselves this find is a wonderful stroke of luck. They'll definitely take the weapons and sell them. The People's Freedom is another matter. It's obvious that it's been stolen and trying to get it through the gate back to the system it belongs to is too risky. Security at Crapworld's gates is tighter than pretty much anywhere else in the cluster, as no one wants criminals to escape, and whoever's behind the ship being here is going to come looking for it sooner or later. They decide to destroy the ship to hide their theft. If they're going to blow up the ship they'd might as well strip it of whatever parts they can and so Bishop and Jillian head back to the Hummingbird to tell Volkova what's needed most as she tears systems apart on the People's Freedom.
Malcolm does a count of the crates -- thirty -- and carries them to the Hummingbird. Once in his own ship he opens them up and dumps their contents on the floor of the hold. The crates themselves would be too obvious but the weapons can be squirrelled away all over the ship. He keeps count while he moves everything over and it's quite a haul: 240 pistols, 70 assault rifles, 90 submachine guns, 40 sniper rifles, six each of grenade and rocket launchers! As impressive as this pile is none of them are designed to fire in vacuum. There are also spare parts, cleaning kits, and manuals. One glaring lack is ammunition for any of them. They'll have to go to Providence, the arms manufacturing centre of the system, to pick up enough ammo without it being too obvious. In Providence guns and ammo are sold wholesale with minimal record-keeping.
Once all the cargo and spare parts are loaded on the Hummingbird the empty crates are returned to the People's Freedom and Volkova works on a crude time-delay circuit to destroy the ship. There's enough oxygen in the life support system and hydrogen in the fuel tanks to make a satisfying explosion... assuming she can set it up properly! She doesn't have any training in setting up this sort of thing and isn't too confident.
Once everyone's on board the Steel Hummingbird lifts off and they wait for the explosion. If it doesn't happen they'll need to either shoot the ship and quite possibly leave evidence that it was intentionally destroyed or send in Volkova to see what's happened, a dangerous proposition. Thankfully it explodes roughly when it should and they fly off with a sense of relief.
It's a day-long flight to the gate to Crapworld and the time is spent hiding firearms all over the ship. The smuggling hold is crammed as full as can be and every nook and cranny on the ship that can hide its share of the illegal cargo does so. Beds get lumpier, pistols are bagged and tucked into Bishop's terrariums, Jillian's papier-mâché "big belly men" sculptures are slit open and filled, Malcolm's tea collection gets bulkier, and the engine room provides all manner of places to tuck weapons. No one on board has any real skill in smuggling but they do their best, aided by the usual clutter of half-completed art projects and the spare parts liberated from the People's Freedom. Malcolm works out how much all these weapons are worth and confidently comes up with a retail value somewhere north of three hundred thousand Bleaghs! That's enough to keep the ship going for years.
When they reach the gate on September 15th the ship is weighed with the inspection station's sensor. Jillian tries every trick she knows to convince the guards at the gate that they don't need to physically inspect the ship but they get boarded anyway. Luckily for them the inspector is overwhelmed and distracted by all the crap on the ship and lets them go without finding anything obviously illegal. The passing through the gate is otherwise uneventful and they fly towards Crapworld. It's another day to get there; if they're going to make it to the gate to Providence before it opens they'll have to run the engines hot.
Jillian finally gets Ghost to sleep in her room and feels a great sense of accomplishment in this. She finds that Ghost is a female cat but Jillian can't tell if she's fixed or not.
Crapworld itself is a large moon that orbits the gas giant of Bashois. It's close enough to the giant to have a disturbing amount of tidal bulging and a strongly fluctuating magnetic field that makes sensor readings difficult. The system is the single most heavily-traveled one in the cluster even though no one wants to go here; to keep unauthorized ships from landing on the prison planet it has a network of defensive satellites. To not get shot at by them you need to transmit the proper signal, given to you when you pick up your cargo, to them. The fluctuating magnetic fields rarely mess up their systems and make them fire on ships that they shouldn't.
Up close Crapworld has some pretty aspects, like some forests and the Rainbow Sea, but large parts of its surface look pretty barren. As the Steel Hummingbird approaches Crapworld Jillian needs to focus more and more on the sensors to cut through all the disturbances. Her skill and the high-quality sensors on the Hummingbird do the trick and she works out where they need to land. Not too surprisingly it's in one of the numerous badlands; the forests are generally too dangerous to live in thanks to the local wildlife.
Bashois fills most of the sky and its lurid light gives everything an orange glow. Malcolm takes the ship over the first set of coordinates, a walled shantytown that looks large enough to house several hundred inhabitants. The terrain is rough enough and the town too cramped for a ship to land there. Malcolm knows that he could fit his bird in the town square if he wanted to but flies to the second coordinates. No sense causing trouble, after all. They're supposed to land and wait for people from the shantytown to come to them but decide not to risk it. They've been here only rarely but know that Crapworld is dangerous due its occupants both human and otherwise and they're in a hurry. Malcolm keeps the ship hovering just above the surface while everyone else pushes the crates off the Hummingbird and places the bag of smuggled electronics on top.
Feeling that they've done their duty they fly off to the gate to Providence, pushing the engines the whole way to make it on time. Hopefully they won't get inspected on the way out of the system...
Bishop's Bedpost Notch Count: Nil (running total: 10)
Volkova's Bedpost Notch Count: Zero (running total: 1)