4. Signing on a Crew
What a fucking headache! How hard can it be to find a crew to take to the void with? Apparently, pretty fucking hard if you want some competent people on board. The number of fuckwits that turned up looking for a berth. I swear, I wouldn’t trust them not to open the airlocks and vent the whole damn ship to space!
Still, we did manage to fill the berths. Put out a call across the net that we were looking for a crew to take to the stars. Within a couple of hours we had a bunch of people at the loading ramp looking for a way off this water moon. It was a long process but we did find some useful crewmen in the fish guts.
It was easy to filter out a bunch of them straight off the bat, they just didn’t have any of the skills that we would need given the work we were likely to end up doing. The first berth went to Doc. Unsurprisingly he’s a Medic, from his credentials he’s pretty good at it too, going to need him to patch us up. Injury and death are fairly inevitable in this kind of life, so a decent sawbones is something to have on hand.
Next up came Nitro, he’s a Gunner and brought his own rapid fire Plasma Chain. Haven’t seen one of those in a while, must folk prefer slug thrower’s but Nitro swears by this weapon. I was afraid to ask but I get the impression he sleeps with that gun in his rack.
Something I was keeping an eye out for, and Starburn eventually came across one, was a Chisler. There’s a lot of loot out there but getting hold of it is a special skill that I just don’t have the time to acquire. Data is one thing, but physical stuff, that’s another. Chisler’s make their living by getting into that stuff and Tech Light seems to be decent enough at it.
Next up, standing a head taller than the rest of the crowd was Sarge. He was standing a head taller because he rocked up in a suit of functioning Combat Armour. I haven’t seen one of those since I arrived on this moon. You can guess why he’s called Sarge. Turns out we fought in some of the same battles, and on the same side thank Sagblu. That could have been awkward. We didn’t fight anywhere near each other, but given the scale of those battles it’s not a surprise. Given he survived them he is, like all those Armoured Troopers, as tough as a coffin nail.
Sarge didn’t come alone though, he brought his buddy Wolf with him. Now, you don’t often see Armoured Troopers rolling with Commando’s but these two had formed a firm friendship. It was a both together or neither kind of thing. Simple choice to make, we were going to need the fire power, even if the maintenance on that combat armour was going to add to our running costs. From my experience, a decent suit of combat armour is worth the cost, and I know a few tricks that keep that to a minimum. There’s a small workshop where I can work on these things. Should be able to keep it running long term.
The problem now is that we were running out of creds to pay for the crew. We still had three empty berths. I had long since taken our call off the net so I yelled across the crowd that there was no more pay available and they should all bugger off. That’s when I got a big surprise. Three young lads didn’t leave. Red, Jammer and Flames. They had grown up together in one of the mid-size fisher villages. They wanted off this rock more than me and they didn’t care if the crew paid them or not. They actually seemed capable so I signed Red on as a Recruit, hopefully I can train him up a bit, but Jammer and Flames, they were unexpected. Those two are strong and fast. I don’t know where they learned to run like that on a water moon but learn they did. I took them on as Runners. Assuming we manage to get some loot, we’ll need to get it back to The Stone Shark safely. That’ll be their job while we cover their asses.
That’s them. That’s my crew. The Void Dragons.
Stargrave is published by Osprey Games and was created by Jospeh A. McCullough