Cast:
| Ray | Banker |
| 5'10", late 20s-early 30s, neatly kempt ship owner-pilot. Obvious spacer gait and complexion on a lean athletic build just now "going to seed." He suits his language and attitude to the company he keeps due to long experience as a ship's steward. | |
| Will | Eddie |
| Shy of 6', late 20s, close-cropped hair, ship owner-engineer. Average, if slightly used in appearance, his build hidden under grease-stained coveralls. | |
| Randy | Croy |
| "The Shepherd", a man of philosophy in his late 30s-early 40s, sporting a warrior's build and a black ponytail. | |
| Marian | Jamie McFarlane |
| Petite 5'2" beauty with fair skin and brown hair. Always wears wrap-around goggles. Translator and negotiator specializing in alien cultures. | |
| Sheryl | Jannisett |
| 5'7", wedgewood-blue skin, long shimmery-white hair; a stunningly beautiful martial artist. Seems to be in her early 20s, possibly younger. Her perfect proportions belie her evidenced strength. |
From the journal of Jamie McFarlane
Day 0. Planet Trinkal
Offered to negotiate a deal for the ship, the Sorcerer, for tools that need to be made for them. Spent two days selling my stuff.
Day 2
Cut the deal for the tools. OK deal. Eddie thought he could set something up to recharge my gun. Going to take 10 days for the tools.
Day 2 addendum
Eddie tried to charm the blue girl but she turned him down. She told him something like, "I am to stay here and cannot go with you."
Day 6
Banker ran into the Shepherd in a bar. He'd been talking to people about the evils of drink. They talked for a while; discussing giving the Shepherd a ride somewhere.
A couple of guys gave the Shepherd a bad feeling. They leave the bar and he noticed a watcher in the vendor stalls. He scouted the area. The watcher was watching the ship egress area. There's a very beautiful blue woman there and the Shepherd talked to her.
The Shepherd headed back to where he's staying and noticed two guys watching for something; but not him. Noticed his erstwhile girlfriend was waiting for him at his place; he decided to go elsewhere. Hung out at a bar and "Doc" came over to drink with him. "She's convinced she's already pregnant but I'm sure she's not. She won't come in to get checked. Did you know about her family's history of mental instability?" He found out she's related to a bunch of the local sheriff's deputies. He headed back to end his relationship with the girlfriend. Got rid of her for at least a while.
He booked passage with us. His name is Croy.
Day 10
We're loading the ship. I've been talking to the blue girl. Her name is "Jennie," or something like that. She's obviously lost and needs help. People here have been cheating her and she only has about 20% of the price of passage. I told her we'd "work something out."
I was bringing the blue girl down from the terminal when we were attacked by nine thugs. Possibly there were 2 separate groups based on tactics and weaponry (7 in one group 2 in the other). I recognized one of them just as Eddie vaporized his face. He was a high level admin with the Trade Association. The blue girl dodged around to shield me while I blasted away. The others too got into the gun fest, with Eddie displaying crack shooting. The blue girl, though, punched through one guy's chest with her bare hand. Brutal.
Everyone but the blue girl took some blaster damage; the Shepherd had part of his head blown off but the blue girl did something medical almost as soon as he was hit and patched him back together. He must be really tough.
We took off quickly along with one dead guy, one lone prisoner, and several extra weapons.
I admitted to the others that I knew the one attacker and where from, explaining about the bad mod and the payoff from the Trade Association. I took off my shades; usual reaction. (sigh!) Croy, however, thought they were after the blue girl.
Croy went down to question the prisoner.
When I went onto the bridge, a symbol lighted up when I stood in a particular position. A panel opened revealing a space in which something could be plugged. I found Eddie and brought him onto the bridge to show him the panel. It opened on cue. My behest gizmo will fit perfectly, I thought. Again, I talked to the others, explaining how I received the gizmo from an alien who was heading home to die; it related to an abandoned site he'd found of a different alien race.
In turn, they told me how they really got the ship. [See: The Sorcerer. ] I offered to buy into the ship.
Croy let us know the attackers were supposed to assassinate us. There's a tracer in my chip; that's how they found me.
Day 14. Shipboard.
Banker plays the harmonica when he thinks he's alone up on the bridge. Croy will talk for hours about spiritual matters. Jannisett -- that's the blue girl's real name -- listens to them both, intently. Eddie creeps around avoiding Jannisett totally. Probably figures she could punch through his chest too if she got offended.
Day 27. Planet Froddelberg.
We dropped off the one paying passenger. By this time everyone was all healed from that last fracas. We released the prisoner with a sturdy, "Be good" and mixed the body into the biohazard incinerator (down to 11 ship suits now).
There isn't anywhere to get my chip replaced so I stayed on the ship. Jannisett stayed on board too. I got Banker to sell stuff for me at a fair profit. They picked up supplies. We will spend 3 days, then plan to head off planet.
Day 30, Planet Unknown.
Lifted off Froddelberg. Put on pressure suits. I plugged the gizmo into the opening. Lots of lights and stuff happened. Eddie spotted which console should be used for engineering. Jannisett passed out. Shortly the stuff died down and Banker announced that the navigation info was different. I looked at the stars; they're different too. Eddie says the power reading now says only 25% left. "You could've made a lot of Stargate jumps with the amount of power we just used." Banker said that our coordinates are no longer near a Stargate although we are at far orbit range of some unknown planet. [It was GM error that the ship was reported to be in geosynch orbit.] He started computations to try to figure out where we are. I got Jannisett comfortable, so she could "sleep off" whatever was wrong with her.
Banker did some fly-bys. The only construct identifiable (although not from space) was a glowing green beacon atop a large, lone plateau. Jannisett woke up after a couple of hours. Banker seemed rather concerned about her fainting spell. She said that she has been on 3 ships and fainted 4 times. "The data points seem to indicate that I will do so again when the ship 'jumps'." I think she was rather unsettled by the idea of being regularly unconscious.
Eddie went to rig up an atmospheric tester, returning with the notion that one of the medical supply boxes had a critter in it which escaped before he got a good look at it. "Space rats!" Banker said. Eddie was serious enough that we checked the ship compartment by compartment. Nothing. But then, there're places on this ship no one can get into.
We landed so that Eddie could test the atmosphere; he reported that it was not breathable albeit not far off. "It'll kill you slowly, I guess." EVA suits will provide adequate filter. Banker took us up again so that the bad air could be flushed from the storage area. Then we landed on the plateau. The beacon was a spire that gradually expanded downward, some 30-metres square.
Banker explained that he'd rather not remove the keystone-gizmo 'lest that action cause the ship to again take off on its own; a bad idea when it no longer has the power to make the kind of jump it last made. I pointed out that the alien who gave it to me said it would be a key for getting into the site that was of so much interest to him. So I unplugged the gizmo; nothing untoward happened.
We all went to get into EVA suits. I knew we'd have to show Jannisett how to operate one. But, as the door opened, one of the suits moved. Eddied grabbed it, yelling "Get it!" and it was really obvious that one of the suit's legs was flailing on its own. Banker pulled out his stunner and I heard a tiny voice say, "Don't shoot me." Jannisett grabbed the leg and there was a tiny shriek of pain.
Leaving Eddie with his gadgets, the rest of us took the suit to the Common Room. Inside was a 2-foot tall, 6-limbed, 4-eyed humanoid; I recognized it as a Greazle. It was the same colour as the suits. It said the last thing it remembered before being wakened by a giant (Eddie) was being on Froddelberg where some giants gave it a drug that made it go to sleep. "Everyone calls me Rocks because I can fold up and look like a rock." He claimed it hurt too much now for him to demonstrate. After some discussion during which we all agreed Rocks should not be left alone on the ship, I rigged a chest sling and took him in my suit; after all, I take up less room in a suit than any of the others. As it turned out Rocks is a kind of super chameleon and blends into things quite quickly and successfully.
Eddie had managed to recharge my gun. Most of us went armed; stunners and guns. Rocks complained, but none of our weapons are small enough for him. It was bright outside the ship; I started to get a headache. There was the impression of a door in the tower and a depression for the keystone-gizmo. A panel slid open revealing a 19-button keypad, tube, and fist-sized hole. I determined that the 19 buttons represented different races, although none were humans. I pressed BE3.
A BE3 eye came out of another panel and flashed, "Parameters?" I asked what it meant and learned that it wanted atmospherics, gravitics, temp. Eddie could give me the numbers stat so I translated. A light scanned me, then a door opened. We went in. The inside eye said, "Close door?" I said, "Yes." The doors closed. The entire room was an elevator and almost immediately started to move downwards. It stopped and a door opened revealing a room, lit amorphously, with two doors and a corridor. The suits said the air here was fine. The corridor seemed long and curved away. It was dark; only I could see into it. It seemed to be about 10-feet high and 5-feet wide. The far door was 4x4. The middle door, 7x7. The latter seemed the most conformable to BE3s so I walked up to it and the door opened.
Croy cautioned that we didn't want to lose either our pilot or our translator else we might not make it off this planet. Eddie, speaking more than is his wont around Jannisett, said to me, "If your friend will protect you, it should be alright for you to be in the front." I asked the blue girl, "Will you protect me." Her answer was a simple, "Yes," but she is insisting on going first. She did ask Croy if he would guard the rear.
Marching order: Jannisett, Jamie & Rocks, Banker, Eddie, Croy.
(EPs: 2; total: 2)
"First Flight" copyright 2004 S.Knowles & M.G.Waldman. The contents of this site are copyright 2004 Sheryl A. Knowles unless otherwise specified. All rights reserved.