Fly Free or Die

Battle for the Nova Rush

The prologue

It started as a simple cargo run for Vito, Veridia Three to the Diaspora, and ended with the crew captured aboard the Nova Rush by Captain Phaedra Firestorm's pirates. They did not stay prisoners. The crew killed Polly, the serpentine electrovore in the cargo hold, repaired the ship's reactor and its missile launcher, beat Firestorm, who did not survive it, and flew the Nova Rush out from under the people who had stolen them.

They kept the ship. They also kept the pirates' ysoki pilot, who now serves as the Nova Rush's bathroom attendant and wears a bellboy outfit to do it. Darling Dalyx of the Split Blade got away. Vito parked the Nova Rush on Veridia Three and set about laundering its tags and registration, and later uploaded the ship's VI, Captain Concierge, into La circonferenza.

Punching the Clock

EJ Corp's newest haulers

The crew signed on as company haulers for EJ Corp (Elysian-Jaimisson), flying a loaner hauler, the BD514, with a helpful ship voice named TARN. The job: pick up Prat's Produce yaro berries at Qabarat on Castrovel and deliver them to the Hivemarket on Flurmaloxy.

Goblins ambushed the berry run. Gino drove the company rig clear of the police with no statements and no impound. At Ka Imports the crew fought Ainsley's shobhad enforcers and stood down when it was obvious they were outmatched, and Xandar tried to intimidate Ainsley by climbing onto her desk. In the end the delivery came up one crate short, the crew paid EJ out of their own pockets, Runo ate the loss, and the whole run made no money at all. Welcome to corporate life.

The Gideron Job

Guns for the Authority

Hackrat caught up with the crew at the Apostae loading dock under Vito's temporary logistics cover. At Lamashtu's Lair in Nightarch the crew declined to rescue Cicil Nightshade, who freed himself anyway and then publicly credited them as his rescuers. Horizon attacked them regardless, and the crew killed Horizon. The bar went back to normal.

The real job was Tause Jarzeed's weapons shipment to Labor Camp 1120 on Vohxa, under the Gideron Authority. When Vog tried to flip the weapons, the crew reported him and delivered the full shipment to the Authority. Somewhere on the Winterpeak run Mad Dok kicked Vog off the moving truck and over a cliff. Vog did not get up.

Going Rogue

The Oliphaunt heist

A hologram of Lord Sinjin offered the crew a heist: steal Project Oliphaunt, EJ Corp's prototype ship, from the Horse Eye Orbital Plate. They took the job readily and asked very few questions. First they quit EJ properly; every one of them was paid severance by an EJ representative the crew knows as Carp Face Kevin.

The infiltration began with recon and the shareholder tour and ended with a straight break-in through a locked door. Mad Dok nearly killed himself on the C7 server room's shock grid. The crew woke Monitor 77B, an anacite security robot, which very nearly wiped them out; Gino saved the day while everyone else lay dying, and the crew put the robot down.

At the handoff asteroid the Golden League betrayed them. The crew disarmed the sabotage charge before it could go off in the Drift and escaped with the Oliphaunt undamaged. Sinjin's operative Deminda escaped too. The crew left owning a stolen prototype, hunted by EJ Corp and by Sinjin, and the BD514 went back to EJ.

During downtime at Concord Station, Vito helped paint the stolen hull red, and the crew renamed it La circonferenza.

Pounds of Flesh

The necrograft race

The crew raced a rival crew, the Wintermourn (Captain Niva Rovo, Jinx, Nemelith, and Dizzy with her shoulder robot Digit), to deliver necrografts to a buyer on Vesk-2, and won. The rivalry was friendly then. Rishae, a necrograft broker, arrived after the goblin-yard fiasco poking Xandar angrily in the chest, then sided with the crew and has been an ally since.

Xandar let Rygan Vuul install an implant in him: an undead adrenal gland, which still confuses his first move in every fight. The crew cut a deal with Rygan, then exposed him anyway, proving he had sabotaged the Harlequin's Prayer and releasing the evidence. Rygan fled Singularity House. The crew sold the black hearts to Dr. Shazarad at the Ghost Mire clinic, adopted three Heap goblins (Rattlesnarp, Fleagreeb and Goog), and installed a Signal Booster on La circonferenza.

Shards of the Glass Planet

Birnam's Bubble, the Vast

At Birnam's Bubble the crew completed a Weydanite charter for Captain Expedite-8 and picked up Glerak, an Alithee who became their communications officer. Glerak does not speak Common. He is extremely good at his job anyway.

They also met Lovinette, a skittermander technician, who has a thing for Gino. The love notes and the homemade granola made with the planet's berries have not stopped since.

Shadows and Scarecrows

A gift from Vito

Vito gave the crew a prepaid adventure in a Zo! holo-sim, and the sim did not let them play themselves. Xandar woke up as Teflar. Hackrat was conscripted as Kareida's protector and threatened by his own crew. Mad Dok calmed a scarecrow mare. In the end Teflar was defeated, Kareida and the Dreamers were protected, and the crew got paid. The table loved it.

One glitch: the sim pulled a dead noodle vendor out of Gino's memory of his hometown, and she recognized him. Zo! called it a rendering fault.

A Rock and a Herd Place

Cowboys of the Veskarium

Adani hired the crew to round up a defrex herd on Vesk-2, through the Yiti Preserve and Kahrudi Canyon, and bring it to Skitterhaven Ranch on Vesk-3. Gino settled the herd's dominance display by wrestling the alpha defrex to the ground, which is now a table legend.

EJ Corp sent an assassin, Kreech. The GM's dice were so bad that the crew decided EJ had sent its worst assassin, and they took it personally. Kreech died. His radioactive predator, its control chip removed, became the crew's pet, Reggie. The crew also found the tracker EJ had hidden in their ship and has been feeding it false data ever since. They killed the stridermanders preying on the ranch and became local heroes.

Enemy of the Empire

The Agavana bounty

Captain Eshovayo of Veskarium Directive 9 offered a clean-looking bounty on a scientist named Agavana, on Karm's recommendation. At TruBlu Dyeworks, Charity robots tried to silence Jassk; Jassk recognized the crew and told them where to go. All three Charity units were destroyed.

The crew killed Agavana. The money was too good to pass up. She hit them hard with a mind-affecting spell before she fell. As the crew dragged her body outside, the Wintermourn landed, watched in silent disapproval, and left without a word. The bounty side got the corpse. The crew kept her vaccine work: her notes, her research samples and a small supply of finished doses.

It Came from the Vast

The Bloom

Outbound from the Agavana job, the crew boarded the Bloom, a Xenowarden survey ship with something loose aboard: Sample 62. Sample 62 skewered Caelis on its tail, and Xandar healed her with his gem-powered healing tendril. Xandar also claimed an advanced flamethrower and stole the shoes off a corpse, and the crew picked up a porter drone that does not work. Xandar gave Captain Concierge a pair of monoshade sunglasses, which Concierge still wears.

The crew opened the airlock several more times than strictly necessary and insisted throughout that Sample 62 was a legally distinct alien. The Bloom was destroyed, and the Xenowardens, warned in time, thanked the crew and paid them.

Before the Bloom went, the crew took its captain with them: the echo of Leah Imaaz, the ship's captain AI, who agreed to come. She lives in La circonferenza's systems now, and the crew means her to take over most of what Concierge does.

Merchants of the Void

Calm 93

A cargo job the crew understood only vaguely led to Yatraxo, who had a stash of starmetal gems hidden away. She offered a fifty-fifty split if the crew could find her broker, Lindol, who turned out to be a kidnap victim. Yatraxo came along for the ride to Tranquility.

At Tranquility, a Marixah prison, was Calm 93, which the Adamant Scale had secretly taken over. People the crew had dealt with were being held there and mind-siphoned: Eshovayo, Rygan Vuul, Rishae, the Wintermourn's own people and more. The crew fought through the Hellfire Bunker beneath it and killed Renevaya the Gentle, the Adamant Scale officer who ran it. Gino carried "the rat and the robot" out, and then the crew broke the prison open. They walked out with Rishae, Lindol, Dr. Shazarad, the Skitterhaven ranchers Karm and Adani, their hand Gumbabo (a ysoki who now runs Skitterhaven) and two of the Wintermourn: Captain Niva and Dizzy. Things with the Wintermourn are warmer now.

Rishae became the crew's permanent black-market vendor. The crew took the Nova Rush back into service, and La circonferenza stayed with Vito.

The Big Ask

Ray's, Jedarat and the road to Entha

Tarika, an associate of Vito's, asked through Vito for a favor: her daughter Shan had gone silent at EJ Corp's terraforming posting on Entha. There was no payment. The crew went anyway, in the Nova Rush.

First, contract killers from the Hafrigek Xun hit the crew at Ray's Famous Sandwiches, Dimitri's shop on the frontage of Vito's shipyard. The fight went much harder than anyone expected, and one Xun was questioned. Watch Sergeant Torgun Bramm and Veridia's V-Spec took the scene over the three dead Xun and took the questioned one into custody. Along the way the crew handed a relic to Tikchas, the shirren xenoarchaeologist working for Verran (a half-orc relic runner who hired the job by hologram), whom the table loved; the rest of Verran's payment is still sitting with Vito. They also recovered Rishae's bonded goods from Transfer Depot 47-C, and Captain Niko Haddan of the Gideron Authority intercepted the Nova Rush on the way.

Then came Jedarat. Xandar's claim to have phished the president of Blorpulon Six out of a planet led straight into the Jedarat resort fraud. The crew sided with its operator, Zeizerer, and negotiated: 30,000 credits, platinum memberships with an air-tax waiver, board seats, immunity, the planet keeps the name BLORPULON SIX, Xandar's face goes on the resort sign, and Xandar runs the gift shop. They do not own the planet. Skix, the ysoki tech from Depot 47-C, came to staff the gift shop with the remaining hugbots, leaving AbadarCorp's depot with nobody minding it; Rishae moved her business there; Vito is cutting himself in with a ristorante; Mad Dok wants to repair and keep a hugbot; and Zeizerer pledged to protect the crew. Blorpulon Six has a lot of cliffs.

A Watery Embrace

Entha and Terra 5

Entha is an ocean world run by EJ Corp. In orbit the crew met Captain Siovan of the Surnoch's Tooth, an independent the Company had branded a criminal, and flew on. Then they crossed paths with the Wintermourn on the landing pad, passed through the Elysia dome, met Lovinette again (she is on her way to Veridia now), and survived an ambush in the water.

At Terra 5, a flooding EJ underwater station, the crew killed Zivix, rescued Shan and Kaia, and pulled Dev, the station's ROV mechanic, out of the drone lab. The chief mechanic outside, Birshae, was killed by mercenaries. Having found Shan early, the crew mostly wanted to leave, and Mad Dok pushed hard to drag her out instead of exploring. They came away with Kalo mercenary gear.

Duel in the Deep

Avarin's Wrath

Avarin Sacrion, EJ Corp's director of operations for Entha and Elysia, was killed in the deep, and the crew shut down the Harvester, EJ's machine down there. Xandar joined minds with the aglian collective, and the heart-boulder left him a little more magnetic than before. The crew asked whether one of the aglians might join them in a space suit; that question is still open.

The crew made a clean breakaway with Shan alive, and she went home to her mother. They brought out pinkstone coral, an aglian starmetal statue and Avarin's ludicrously expensive timepiece. The evidence of what EJ had been doing on Entha reached the Xenowardens, brokered by Vito.