LogRetrograde-Jason-1

Game log for the 2018/09/30 session of Scum and Villainy: Retrograde, as taken by Jason

We decide to raid the Malklaith treasure convoy as it jumps from Iota to Rin, stealing medical supplies from a ship called the Aesculapius. Our plan relies on zap Retrograde darts across Aesculapius' stern, blasting her starboard engines and carefully raking across to port, using the damage to turn the ship away from its escort. As the escorting destroyer closes in, Dr Zen, Adriel, and BK exit the airlock and ECA to the Aesculapius. BL almost misses the target, but the good Doctor reels him in, and they're in the landing bay of our quarry.

Dr Zen and Adriel hack their way into the Aesculapius... or rather, they try. They nearly set off an alarm, but Doc is able to head it off.

Ace tries to take evasive action and activate the cloaking device at just the right time, but he mistimes it and gives them a good read on his vector. Luckily, he is the best pilot in the sector, and he shows them the Retrograde's heels even though they're chasing.

BK forces the door open. As they get into the corridors, it suddenly becomes clear that this is not a cargo ship carrying medical supplies, this is a hospital ship. He heads off to the engine room while Dr Zen and Adriel go for the bridge.

Ace outmaneuvers the destroyer and gets on its six.

Dr Zen tries to figure out how they're going to monetize a hospital, and finally decides that we're going to steal the whole thing now and figure out how to deal with it later. They arrive at the bridge, the doors open, and Dr Zen throws in his Precursor artifact "Sleepytime", which puts everyone on the bridge to sleep. They enter and see six people, all out cold.

BK tromps off to the engine room. A crew member challenges him, but BK convinces the poor sucker to take him to the most damaged area, so he can make repairs.

Ace decloaks on the destroyer's ass and opens on it, souped-up particle beams blasting. That's not enough to cripple it, but it knows it's been kissed.

Dr Zen and Slip work on disabling the ship's distress beacon and other comms. That done, he gets on the PA and announces that since there's a hull breach, everyone needs to stay in their compartment. Then he starts reading deck plans and trying to figure out how they're going to loot this fat tub. He finds out that there are about 1500 people on this thing.

BK's attempt to fix the engines fails. He does some jury-rigging, throws the lever to power them up, they whirr a bit, and then the entire thing falls down.

Ace does a couple fly acrobatic moves around the destroyer, lines up his shot, and they blasts out its life support. The bridge crew hear it radioing for help, which tells them that nobody else is going to be coming after the Aesculapius just now.

BK commands his new assistant to go about his duties while BK heads back to the bridge. Dr Zen has a new plan: BK uses the maneuvering thrusters to align the ship with the gate, while the Doc and Slip tote huge piles of supplies into a shuttle. Slip has to keep coaching Doc on how to move in power armor, and they lose some time trying to unlock the stuff they locked from the bridge. Now they're loading the biggest shuttle on this barge.

BK is able to get the ship lined up, and then goes sprinting for the shuttle bay. Ace also moves the Retrograde into position to rendezvous with the shuttle. When the shuttle leaves, Ace is right there, and once docked, they head for the starship yards.

During downtime, we can easily afford upkeep for the ship. The bad news is that we generated some extra heat (3 total), using wildly illegal gear to raid a hospital ship. We find some weird frickin' orangle mold growing near one of the condensers, and when Dr Zen tries to use Attune to deal with it, he ends up with an exciting new rash.

During downtime, Ace gambles and trains playbook. BK tells people that Wreckers hit the hospital ship, and trains playbook. Dr Zen meditates and gets Eightball to help cure the rash. Eightball works on a plan to acquire a schematic for a fine hacking rig. Slip spends a lot of time on self-care.

We're thinking it might be fun to duck over to Holt and check out the space station with the decaying orbit. Rather than take a chance on such an uncertain payoff, Dr Zen checks with the Iota Starsmith's Guild to see what sort of jobs they might have open. The local Chief Justice seems likely to rule against them in an trade dispute, and they'd like someone to get some leverage on him. Unfortunately, the Justice is tilting the way he is because the Starless Veil boss on Amaranth wants him to.

We figure our best shot is to infiltrate his house, hack his comm log, and frame him for notifying the Wreckers about the hospital ship in the convoy, in exchange for modestly laundered payment. We're going to hit during his daughter's quinceinyera. Dr Zen talks to one of the Judge's menials and gets a rough idea of the layout of the house. Dr Zen and Slip will infiltrate as guests, BK will infiltrate as staff, Ace will steal a car as a distraction, and Eightball will blow up a cop car when they get ready to chase him.

It's not the sort of party we expected. Their customs are strange to us. It's a masquerade ball and nobody came costumed. The major domo makes a beeline for Slip and asks to see her identification / invitation. She doffs her coat and then bluffs him about the wardrobe. He's not going to make a scene but he offers her the services of a staffer to take her aside and help her find more appropriate robes. She insists that her confessor come with her.

BK's just pushing carts around, acting natural.

Ace, with Eightball's help, steals a car, though it turns out to be Lojack'd. Ace does a couple donuts, signs the driveway, and then floors it onto the thoroughfare. BK's secondary distraction charge doesn't go off, though, so the cop cars are all going to be in on the chase.

Dr Zen goes looking for people to engage in conversation, distracting them from Slip, so she can get away. Nobody wants to talk to him, though, and his rudeness threatens to expose him as an impostor. He fast talks his way out of it, blaming his rudeness on his medical condition.

Ace is driving like a whole team of crazy people, letting the cops close in only so he can give the the finger, then making more insane moves. Eightball rebuilds his transmitter on the fly to try to get that detonator working. BK keeps his cover. Eightball finally gets the charge to go off, helping Ace get clear of the chase, though the people in the party notice it's a lot more distant than it was meant to be. Slip hacks the comm log and makes the necessary edits.

Flashback: Eightball studies the security of the house to know exactly how to guide the party crew out of the party.

Having done so, he's able to coach the party people in real time. Everyone's ready to leave now, so Slip rejoins the party with none the wiser.

Flashback: Dr Zen arranged for transportation from a disciple of his religion.

Slip and Dr Zen are able to make their goodbyes and get out of the party.

BK returns his cart to the kitchen and then bails the hell out of this place.

Ace, far ahead of the car, dumps the car, dashes away, and meets the team someplace far from there.

We get four payoff and five heat. We avoid entanglements! Ace gambles and trains Insight. BK paints some a mural somewhere of cop cars getting blown up as they chase Ace. Dr Zen spends some time with his driver, making sure his family is well provided for, and gets Eightball's help trying to deal with this rash. Eightball trains Insight and keeps working on getting that schematic. Slip gets another massage, and then trains Prowess.

The open job right now is to escort someone (Intal Brel of the Concordiat Knights, religious, vigilant, honorable) with information about the locked gate in Holt from Rin to Space Station IA-23 around Vos in Holt, closely watched by the Corcordiat Knights, while Conclave 01 is known to want the errand to fail. Conclusion: there's some sort of Precursor item on the other side of that gate, and the Light of the World will either open the gate, or be on the other side of it. We take it.

As we approach the gate from Rin to Holt, we're pursued by a Conclave 01 ship. The nearest place to lose them is a debris field in Holt. Ace tries to floor it while making some evasive maneuvers, but these damn droids don't shake easily. They have two fighter-type ships and a frigate coming after us. Dr Zen reaches through the Way to see if he can interfere with one of the fighters. He can find it! Eightball fails to overclock the engine. Ace sees that one of the fighters is acting up and evades toward that side, and this time gets somewhere. Eightball hacks the ship to get more speed out of the drive, and manages to kick in the turbos. Retrograde enters the junkyard, cloaks, and even the Urbots have no frickin' clue what just happened.

Dr Zen asks Intal Brel what the hell goes on here. Brel doesn't want to divulge a lot of what's going on, but the Dr can work through a lot of the obvious ways the Conclave could have gotten on our scent so early. Eightball starts figuring out how to modify the ship and change its electronic signature, to make it even harder for Conclave 01 to find us. He figures that there's a janky gravitic gyro in the yard that, if rigged into Retrograde, would change its e-signature and fool the bots. BK flies Dr Zen and Eightball over to Jerec in the shuttle. Eightball tries to list all the reasons the gyro sucks and ought to be free, but he just spills so much technobabble that nobody can tell what he's talking about. Eightball works the gyro into the ship's systems and now we fly all wonky.

We wait a little while and approach the station, and that part of the plan works fine. Ace, Dr Zen, and Slip take the shuttle and dock with the station. Our plan is to dock, get to a bar where the Knights trade messages, and leave word that the rendezvous has been moved off the station. Dr Zen checks the Way for unseen danger and senses two guys who might be looking for someone. Ace turns around and the guy following us for directions to Madame O's on Gamma Deck. The guy shouts that he can't believe anyone would think he knew anything about such a disgusting place, and throws a punch at Ace. Ace takes the punch and beats the crap out of the guy, drags his body out of the corridor, and plants illicit drugs on it.

Dr Zen and Slip get to the bar, and the Doc gives them the code words and the mesage. They accept the code words and countersign immediately, and Zen asks to move the meet. They're OK with docking up at chosen coordinates in deep space. Slip helps them sneak back to the shuttle. Ace brings the shuttle to the rendezvous. Intal gets a little cranky because the new plan took longer and because Ace, working around the crap gyro, gave the ship a rough ride.

We incur 1-heat, since only Conclave 01 even noticed that we pulled off a caper. We have no entanglement. We postpone downtime until next session.