Well, we’ve just had one hell of a Botched Deal. As I mentioned, our cargo hold has filled up with a bunch of crap that we can’t use. Trust me, you don’t need a plough in space. I have no idea how it ended up in the hold, but it is. Anyway, point being, we needed to get rid of a bunch of trade goods that we didn’t need, want, or have room for. Guns, ammo, creds, food, booze and a damn good shag. That’s what a crew needs. Farming crap just isn’t on that list.
The good news was that Starburn had picked up a line on a guy that wanted to buy a bunch of our stuff. He ran a large store out on the frontier and was always trying to source stuff for the folk that live there. These frontier towns are always a bit of a crap shoot. You never know what you’re going to find. Some are on their way to become real places people want to live, others are backwater, inbred, idiot-dispensing hubs. Go figure.
Either way, we were going to free up space in The Stone Shark for useful things, like an Armament Chamber. Got my eye on one of those bad boys. Properly kitted out we’d be able to reduce the maintenance costs on Sarge’s combat armour, possibly get another suit for me. Upgrade some weapons, stuff like that. Basically a sound investment to increase our survivability out there. I don’t like writing those letters home to mum, never have the fewer I send the better.
We kept The Stone Shark low as we headed out to the town, still seemed a little hot for us so tried to keep it under the radar. It mostly seemed to work. We swept over the verdant arable fields, and out into the less favourable lands. Poor soil, no rain, too much sun, too little hope. Typical frontier town. We set down a ways outside it and used the skimmer to haul the goods into the town. We were barely in sight of it before a shot came our way. Just can’t catch a damn break.
We accelerated up to the outskirts and split left and right into the cover of some buildings. By now the crew took up their standard squad split. Wolf, proving his Commando past scaled the outside of a building like it was horizontal and grabbed himself a decent snipers nest. With a good view of the town he was well positioned to start taking out whoever the fuck was shooting at us.
Ah yes, whoever it was. I knew who it was. I poked my head round the side of a building and saw an old, eh, let’s say acquaintance. A completely psychopathic cyborg that calls himself Joe Pineapples. Not sure if that’s his real name, asked him one time, he muttered something about a Rogue Trooper he once knew. I was pretty drunk, may not remember that exactly right. Still, what I can say is that there’s no love lost between us and he’s a complete nutbag. Nothing good ever happens when that fuck knuckle turns up.
It quickly became apparent that Joe wasn’t in charge of the other crew though. I could tell because they weren’t running blindly into our line of fire. That would be Joe’s style. He was giving some orders though so probably signed on as a first mate or something. Regardless, it was a problem. Told us something though. Not only could we offload our trade goods, but there was obviously something lying around that would be useful for us. Why would another crew be here if it weren’t for that? Maybe if we drove them off, we could get the shiny.
With that in mind we advanced through the ramshackle buildings. Houses built with wood so warped you could almost get a clear shot through the walls of the houses. We moved up cautiously but still came under fire from Pineapples’ crew. Not just them though, the noise stirred up some locals and a bunch of Ruffians appeared and started to take shots at, well, everything. The Ruffians soon went down under the weight of fire from both crews. Enemy of my enemy and all that. They kept turning up, we kept shooting them.
It quickly became apparent that the other crew may have just been starting out. They weren’t moving as well as The Void Dragons, and they just didn’t seem to have the kind of upgraded gear you would expect to see amongst an independent crew that had been operating for any length of time. This started to show in the fight as we managed to land more hits and start dropping their crew.
It didn’t take long before they realised they were out gunned and started dropping smoke all over the damn town. Can’t shoot a guy if you can’t see him so it’s a solid tactic. I thought they were going to back off when they did that but Wolf, with a view from up high told a different tale. They were trying to advance under the cover towards one of the central buildings.
I knew that was where the trader was based so I figured they were either trying to rob him or kill him. Regardless, either outcome was a shit show for us. We needed to stop that and hopefully find ourselves eternally in his good graces.
The good thing about smoke grenades is that they work for everyone. Starburn’s squad also charged forward under its cover and arrived at the central building at the same time. They were able to keep a couple of the enemy crew pinned down but several entered and tried to seize it.
Starburn kept a bunch of them at bay with his Caesium Sprayer while Lo-ball, our new Sentry and Switch, the Chisler, ran inside to drive them back. Lo-ball reports that the melee inside the building was a pretty intense affair. It didn’t last long, it was quite brutal, but somehow we came out of it with only minor injuries. Anytime a bit of space opened up between them and the enemy the other crew tucked tail and backed off. Heh. Losers.
Unable to secure the central building, and down a couple of crew members, Pineapples and his lot started retreating. We let them go. We weren’t here for a fight, we were here for trade.
Somehow, during all of this, Switch had found a salvage crate in an abandoned shed. He cracked it open to find an upgraded Rapid Fire. We already had one of those, and this was a similar model. Worth a cred or two though so we decided to see if we could sell it. Hopefully the trader hadn’t hidden it there for later.
He hadn’t. Thank Sagblu! In the end we managed to offload the gear that was of no use to us. Got a decent enough price. The Rapid Fire earned us a tidy sum as well. With the ship cleared out of crap, there was room for the Armament Workshop I wanted. We took The Stone Shark to fitters that Starburn had found and negotiated a sweet deal with them. It was going to take a few days to install, not a problem for us. We had some beat up crew that needed to rest, and some spare creds to spend. Time to go get some food, booze and a damn good shag.
Stargrave is published by Osprey Games and was created by Jospeh A. McCullough