Session 2, part 1

210-1104, Glisten, Spinward Marches.

The night before jumping, Dr. Duk-Lyle takes the crew to Banfi Starport to dine and the fabulous restaurant.  This was fine dining to fill up before a week of ship's food.  The restaurant was a fine establishment, with a slowly rotating floor surrounded by aquariums.  In fact, seafood was the speciality, and one could choose items from those same aquariums.  The food was exquisite. Towards the end of the meal, the party noticed some minor altercation between a couple at a nearby table.  Not particularly raucous or loud, there was, nonetheless, a fair amount of arm waving. Ferdinando recognized the two as being the Marquis Juliette Sung Ottowald of Mertcator, and Baron Brigham Fernlucky of New Rome. Both had been in the diplomatic core years before, although neither were currently in public office.

Fernlucky, a foppish younger man, stormed off in a fit of pique, but the Marquis approached the group.  A brief round of introductions, some very expensive chocolate deserts, and she left, with the hopes that they may meet again at Trane, the groups next port of call.

The group travelled back to the ship for a good nights sleep.

211-1104 -> 218-1104, in jump between Glisten and Trane

Travis, using his journeyman astrogation, plotted the jump, and with the traditional dimming of the lights, Le Suroit made a successful transition to jump space. The week passed relatively smoothly. There was a minor incident of interesting smells wafting from the main lab, and the minor calamity of running out of coffee.  Travis was studious in his studies to improve his astrographic skills, whereas Dr. Boris Duk-Lyle was constantly interrupted in his attempt to pursue his physics studies. Being the captain of the ship had a few responsibilities and more paperwork than expected.

218-1104, Trane, Spinward Marches

Travis' jump was successful, and there were near the destination plot points.  After getting cleared with Trane Starport, they approached and made orbit. There were a few other vessels in orbit, mostly traders of various sorts. Ferdinando took down the cargo in the ship's pinnance, and the starport sent up a refueling shuttle to start the refueling process.

One of the ships was another lab ship, leased by Lysani Laboratories. Quentin, one of the scientists on board, had worked for that company years before.  The donwport representative had worked previously with Quentin, and asked for a favor: the ship had not been communicating for the last few days.  Would the crew of Le Suroit be so kind as to visit and check up on them?  Shuttle service at the class C port was limited, and merchants seemed to have priority over a research vessel.

After agreeing, Dr Duk-Lyle, Travis, Quentin and Franklin successfully loaded one of their air/rafts into the pinnance, and took the hour trip over to the other lab ship.  Boris managed not to get sick - he does not have vacc suit nor zero-G.  It was similar to the scene in 2010 when Lithgow was hyperventilating.  Travis clumped along the hull, peering into the ports, and noticed light fixtures had been smashed.  After contacting the downport manager, and getting the access codes, they first attempted to get into the lab via one of the air/raft bays.  Sadly, that bay still had the air/raft clamped inside, and despite 2 tries, Travis, having the smallest vacc suit, could not get past.  Regrouping, they next went to the main lab's cargo port.  That was a successful entry, and the excursion into the new lab started.

Notes

Being close to Halloween, I decided to run Death Station.  And I managed to use the BITS 101 Rendezvous for the restaurant.

So far everyone seems to be having fun - it was 6 before I realized it, and we had to stop the play before completing that particular segment. I was hoping to have some sound affects to make the station a bit more eerie but could not find the web site in time.

Also, so far they have not done any research using the ship's computer, and they left the pinnance just hanging out there, next to an orbiting, rotating ship.  I'll be rolling to see how far off it managed to drift.