On Spaceskull Asteroid our heroes faced a tense situation unarmed and on the wrong side of several blasters in the hands of the Sons of Hera hyperbike gang. The head slilan in charge sent two men into the Redshift Rapture to make sure there were no surprises. Then Hivesovereign Ki’kist’ac did something surprising… it bolted up the side of the ship and the hyperbikers immediately opened fire. The party ducked for cover and noticed the hivesovereign skittering across the hanger bay ceiling toward an apparent air duct.

Weaponless and under heavy fire Kit-Kaat dove into the fray to knock heads. Silas followed suit. The one unarmed attacker leveled a gaze at Tor Valds and tried something clearly psionic but failed. The gun fight was quickly turning into a melee and Tor and Kavita retreated to the Rapture’s airlock. Tor overrode the ship’s door controls and locked down every door aboard.

Then a rumbling thud shook the whole base. Our heroes assumed that their ki’tik charge must be up to something elsewhere. A second thud and several Sons of Hera began to run into the bay and for their hyperbikes, clearly evacuating.

Tor and Kavita were surprised by a bloody one armed biker banging on the Rapture’s inner airlock door. Tor did the natural, humane thing and began to depressurize the ship. Meanwhile on the bay floor Silas and iZac had managed to wrest guns from the attackers and were returning fire. Kit-Kaat made his way to the heavily armed slilan leader. He relieved her of her assault blaster and then relieved her of her head.

Things were clearly going sideways on the asteroid base and gang members were fleeing as quickly as they could. Then, a gobban at a control panel near the inner doors initiated the hanger’s depressurization and bay door sequence. klaxons sounded. Breathing was going to get very difficult, very soon.

The hivesovereign returned to the bay as Tor and Kavita watched the intruder aboard the Rapture expired. The team packed the slilan leader’s corpse aboard while they could still breath so Kit-Kaat could salvage her kinetic armor. Silas had taken the brunt of the damage, having been hit by the assault blaster, and was near death but survived to get aboard the ship.

iZac rushed to the command deck, quickly initialize the launch sequence, and blasted out of the bay. Our heroes left Spaceskull Asteroid with several of its large gun emplacement smoldering thanks to Ki’kist’ac and finally set a course for Mars.

When last we left our heroes, Kavita and Silas had entered Hanger 19 at the Halcyon starport and boarded a stranger’s ship named the Starlight Hopper unaware if anyone was onboard. While iZac was fiddling with minor repairs to the ship, Tor masterfully hacked the starport security systems from the Redshift Rapture and wrote a script to trigger all of the port hangar bay alarms at random. As a plan was being formulated for investigating the ship, Tor ran back through the security logs and found that two people, a human and gobban, boarded the ship a few hours earlier… just as said human cornered Kavita and Silas in the airlock.

“What do we have here?” he said, leveling a blaster at our burgling heroes and leaning into the corridor to shout, “Leega, call station security. We’ve got intruders.” But Kavita got the drop on him and blasted him. Silas smacked him with a pistol butt, knocking him out, just as a gobban — presumably Leega — popped out and fired randomly down the hall from a doorway and then ducked for cover.

Silas headed down the corridor, kicking away the human’s blaster and taking what little cover the door jamb at the end of the hall provided. As the gobban popped out to shoot again, Silas knocked her for a loop. Our burglars tied up their hosts, shoving them in a closet, but not before Kavita stole Leega’s tool belt. Doing a quick sweep of the ship and finding it empty, they proceeded to engineering and went to work on removing the hyperspace bypass core. Kavita’s big brain paid off and she did it in record time.

In the port building, Tor continued to play havoc with the security systems. The security teams dispatched to hunt down the problems were shutting down systems only to have them start back up again. In the meantime, iZac went down to the tarmac and very successfully smooth talked (read: bribed) the port staff there to lend him a hovertruck. As he crossed the tarmac (in a vignette to Wes Anderson) to pick up Silas and Kavita, Tor revealed his comic scripting masterpiece as each of the 100 hangar doors in the port opened in order. Hyperdrive bypass core in hand disguised by a box and a tarp, iZac, Kavita, and Silas made their way back across the tarmac (in another vignette to Wes Anderson) to the safety of the Rapture.

As they boarded the ship, thugs burst in and started scattering about the hangar. Tor engaged the fire suppression system in the hangar adding some cover and started the preflight checks. Kavita and Silas headed for engineering with the core while iZac headed to the flight deck to get the ship off the ground. A metal clunk reverberated throughout the hull. Then a second one. In the midst of the action, Ki’kist’ac, the party’s ki’tik passenger/captor, demanded to know the progress of leaving Finally as iZac punched the graviton impellers and steered the ship out of the starport. Tor noticed a leg hanging out of the open outer airlock door. The ki’tik very cooly intones that she’ll take care of it and her bloodlust was certainly sated.

iZac pulled Rapture into orbit and the ki’tik returned the to flight deck with a small, mysterious, black lockbox found on her synthetic prey. After some clumsy attempts, Tor finally managed to trigger the locks on the box and it opened to reveal a datachip and a navchip. The datachip contained mission data for the Ares Marshal our burgling heroes, now accessories to murder, had just watch die. They discovered that the Marshals are trying to stop Ki’kist’ac’s arrival at Mars and had dossiers on both Ki’kist’ac and Laya Bogana as well as a location on the planet named Aquaria Playland and it’s AI, the Concierge.

Silas and iZac made a quick jaunt into the vacuum to remove two devices attached to the hull that the Ares Marshals had used to open the airlock. iZac cracked their security with Tor’s help and they saved them for later.

The crew plugged the navchip in to see where it leads and suddenly the ship jumped to hyperspace without prompting. After two course corrections it pulled out of hyperspace at the edge of the Sol system and spoke! It seems that Laya Bogana managed to install a copy of her personality in the ship’s A.I. core. That personality, LBo2 (yes, that’s ‘elbow-too’), seems to be singularly focused on getting Ki’kist’ac to Mars.

The party is in the Halcyon starport which seemed somewhat sluggish. It seems the city supervisor has sealed the dome city’s gates and cut off all communication in and out. He has also put on a looping message warning off “invaders from space” and how they threaten the “security of Our kingdom”. Madness! iZac and Tor began to repair the damage to the Redshift Rapture with the door in cargo bay 2. Tor busies himself pulling up schematics and diagnosing the hyperdrive problem while iZac nearly damaged himself from a ladder fall when he failed to account for misaligned servos while trying to wrench the door open manually with some bolts that were stuck. Kavita left the landing bay to try and find a mechanic to help and Silas decided to accompany her. Tor came to the conclusion that the hyperspace bypass core is fried and needs to be replaced.

Silas and Kavita stop by a port bar and promptly scare off a couple of patrons. While they’re there chatting up the bartender for directions to a port mechanic, a couple of suspicious looking types enter, a synthetic and a dolmyranth. Coincidentally, they are asking around about Tor.

Kavita tracks down the mechanic and she, Silas, and the mechanic return to bay 93. They learn that only a few other ships are at the port and no one can figure out what the city supervisor is up to. With a quick hack into city systems, Tor learns that there are indeed no ways in or out of the city. The mechanic team determines that they can repair the cargo bay doors in around eight hours but end up taking only six.

The party decides that perhaps they should check up on their cryo-hibernating passenger. Kavita determined that it’s a ki’tik hivesovereign and much larger than an average ki’tik. Then, she wakes it. The agitated ki’tik quickly demanded to know if they had reached their destination, Mars in the Sol system. The PCs explain that, no, they are in the Finally system. Ki’kist’ac, as the hivesovereign is known, flew into a rage, threatening to murder the party and take the ship. Silas fired up his silver tongue and talked the ki’tik down. The party agreed to bring the hivesovereign to Mars once the ship was repaired.

Silas and Kavita decide to track down the bar patrons that they offended down seeing as there are so few ships in port. Perhaps they can help with repairs… or perhaps they can pilfer a hyperspace bypass core… or perhaps the crew there is working for the toughs looking for Tor? They come to hanger 19, where the only other civilian ship in port is and all looks quiet. They phin Tor and he cracks the door locks for them. The pair enter the hanger…

Silas and Kit-Kaat continued their exploration of the Redshift Rapture, the derelict the party discovered in the last episode. The ship was still powered down. After finally finding main engineering and the human corpse of Chief Engineer Quyn Jett with a hole blasted through him, they found maintenance tunnels that led back to a manual override for the horizon reactor. With Quyn’s security multipass Silas managed to power up the ship.

In the meantime, iZac pulled the ship around to the open cargo bay and using vaccsuits they scavenged from the Rapture’s airlock, Kavita and Tor proceeded to explore the bay. They discovered dings and scrapes and bits of scraped paint like something blasted out of the hold. The doors were severely damaged where they met the hull.

Inside, Silas saw that systems displayed as nominal except for cargo bay 1 and the hyperdrive shunts. He continued to explore the derelict with Kit-Kaat. They discovered internal holds with rations and water and in cargo bay 2 a large cylindrical tube with a faint power and vital statistic readouts. Three of the seven state rooms looked lived in. One was apparently left quickly, the other two belonged to the two crew. The captain’s stateroom contained his ID, a dolmyranth named Kuarom, and a title to the ship in his name. They moved back upstairs and forward to the control room. There they discovered the corpse of Captain Kuarom with a hole blasted in the back of his head. Curiously, he carried a second ID with the same hologram of him, but the name Derenthi.

In the cargo bay, Kavita and Tor went to work trying to close the bay doors (, HAL). Kavita found the manual override lever and managed crank them shut about a third of the way with brute force. Tor found that hacking the systems were no use, the doors need a mechanic. Between the two of them they forced the manual override lever to budge and got the doors mostly closed but still not enough to pressurize the hold.

In the control room, Kit-Kaat happened to notice a sensor blip. After further examination he determined that it was a small, fast, and heavily armed ship about 20 hours out from the Redshift Rapture’s position. The party scrambled for ideas. iZac laid in a long course back to Finally in their rental shuttle and Tor overrode the autopilot controls to send it off away from their position unmanned. After a quick graviton impeller burst that sent the Rapture in the opposite direction, the team suited up and shut down all systems but passive sensors. After several long hours of pinochle to pass the time they determined that the mystery ship was pursuing the shuttle and powered up again heading back to Finally.

Kavita examined the mysterious cylinder in hold 2 and determined that it was a cryo-hibernation chamber. From the vitals she also determined that it contained a living ki’tik that appears to be much larger than average.

iZac managed to deftly make reentry, even with the damage bay doors, and land the Rapture at the starport in Halcyon on Finally. The ship is in need of repairs and that will probably get expensive. How in the stars will the party pay for it? For that matter, will they be able to even claim salvage rights?

The party left their squat in Crux after concocting a plan to travel to the mysterious object in its polar solar orbit highlighted on Laya Bogana’s navchip. A shuttle rental seemed like a logical choice and the pricing was reasonable. Only two hitches, no money and local news was reporting that several diraks (see below) were loose on the tarmac at the Crux starport, which meant everyone was grounded. The party killed two birds with one stone by taking a job with animal control clearing up the dirak problem at the starport. They also hedged there bets by milking the merchants at the port for more cash to fix the problem.

With iZac driving a borrowed cargo mover the gang set out on the tarmac to attempt to get the diraks to chase them to a pen with waiting animal control and starport staff. After some crazy-bad driving, a few lucky blaster rounds, and Kit-Kaat rocking some awesome mnemonic axe action splitting one dirak in twain they captured three of the diraks that they managed not to kill to the pen. The starport and the merchants paid dearly and our heroes had fare for a shuttle rental, which they promptly attended to. Poor Silas missed out on some betting action among the merchants though.

After a couple of days travel they reached the mysterious object to find that it was a ship, a small transport named the Redshift Rapture. Only a very minor energy signal was coming from it suggesting it was shut down and the horizon reactor was cold. They docked and established a seal between the airlocks. With some quick hacking by Tor they had access. Silas and Kit-Kaat boarded. After cycling the airlock a foul stench of death filled the stale air. With no power on board, they are trying to figure out the best course of action.

Dirak 3 (9)

A dirak is a large six-legged reptile found in many locations throughout the galaxy. While wild diraks are viscious creatures, they can be domesticated trained as a mount.
Motive: Hungers for flesh; If domesticated, serves as mount
Environment: Wherever they can hunt food, in packs of four to ten
Health: 15
Damage Inflicted: 4 points
Armor: 1
Movement: Short
Modifications: Perception level 5; attacks and Speed defense as level 4 due to quickness; overcoming obstacles and figuring out tricks as level 4.
Combat: When a dirak bites its prey, the victim takes damage and must make a Might defense roll. On a failure, the dirak pins its prey with it’s front claws and the victim must use Might actions and defenses to free itself or the dirak continues to bite and cause more damage during its turn.
Interaction: Vicious, cunning, and a little too smart to be classified as simple predators, these creatures are likely to work in a pack using strategy to corner prey. They will not give quarter, or back off from a fight.

Enjoying drinks, laughable wagers, and some holovid micro-G cricket on a dull night at the Dead End, the crew was surprised when a human woman clutching her gut and bleeding profusely entered the bar. She stumbled toward Tor and he sidestepped her advance as she brushed past. As she collapsed Silas approached to help. In her dying breath she whispered, “Don’t let them know…” and gave up the ghost. The bartender, Koarthis, sighed heavily and mumble, “Not again.” and headed to the back room.

Checking the corpse, Silas found a credchip with around 20 credits on it and an ID naming the woman as Laya Bogana. A deft search of the hyperweb by Tor revealed her Spacebook page listing her residence as Mars in the Sol system, but her MySpace page was sorely lacking. Kavita drooled at the possibility of fresh brains for cloning seeing as they wouldn’t be able to read her memories. Then, almost instinctively, iZac checked the street outside just in time to spot a ki’tik, slilan, and four gobbans rounding the corner and making for the Dead End’s front door. iZac ducked back inside to warn the others.

Not knowing what sort of trouble or not was approaching them, Silas and Kit-Kaat set up a quick ambush at the door. The others moved the body out of sight and Tor took cover behind the bar. The slilan stepped into the bar and iZac approached and greeted him in a friendly manner just as Kavita drew her pistol. Then Silas sucker punched him and Kit-Kaat dropped him with blunt bash of the side of his heavy mnemonic axe. Chaos ensued as the ki’tik and gobbans entered the fray. Tor nailed the ki’tik with a bolt to the armor as the gobbans swarmed Kavita. The ki’tik tried to shoot Tor with his stunner and missed. Kit-Kaat intervened and murdered one gobban. The remaining gobbans fled and the ki’tik began to back out speaking into the cuff of its armor. Silas blocked his escape grabbing him. In the end, both the ki’tik and slilan were incapacitated. Emerging from the back, Koarthis was not happy and promptly told the crew to get the hell out of his bar.

Checking the ki’tik’s cuff, Silas found a PHIN-like device. A quick hack by Tor showed it to be broadcasting on a Ares Marshals signal. Uh oh, the crew just beat up Johnny Merc. Gathering the corpses and the not-so-corpses, the party made for the street and a side alley. Kavita promptly went to work on the grisly task of removing Laya Bogana’s head and stowing it in a cooler she found behind the bar. That’s when Tor found a small holoprojector device in his pocket. Bogana must have slipped it in there as she fell. As he activated the device, he realized that it was displaying coordinates in deep space of an orbital trajectory for a long polar orbit around Finally’s star. There was no indicator what this information was pointing to and before they had time to dig deeper Kavita heard sirens and spotted flashing lights reflecting off of buildings. She warned the crew and they made a break for it as the law approached.

When they were sure they were clear of the Ares Marshals mercs and local law, they made their way back to the hovel they’ve been squatting in to contemplate the mysterious navchip data and the dead woman’s head.