((The following is an IC journal for my EotE character. The group recently finished up the first adventure, run out of the back of the book, and I figured I'd get a little captain's log going. The following post contains spoilers for the Trouble Brewing adventure, and some strong language.))

Jax Nason’s Captain’s Log, 1 ABY 13:04:22

The Butcher Bird is finally off the ground. After years of savings and a generous loan from Corellian Engineering, I’ve got a YT-1300 to call my own and a ticket off of Centares. Granted it’s stuck me pretty deep in debt, and she’s a little bit of a fixer-upper, but I’m not complaining. Getting off world is worth it. Now I know my way around an engine and for the right price I can slice into a computer like nobody’s business, but it takes a little more than that to get a ship off the ground.

Signing on a crew was an endeavor in its own right. Fortunately a YT-1300 doesn’t need all that much manpower behind it, but there’s no accounting for other people. A couple are taking a little time getting used to the fact paying for the ship makes me captain, but we’ll work something out. Anyway, Eddie was the first on board. He’s a local, and I’ve known him for a while, so getting him wasn’t too hard. He’s got a way with people and a sick sister to pay bills for. It’s good to have him on board to keep situations from going sour. When that doesn’t work, there’s Trillusk. He’s from Centares too, but spent some time off world in combat. Older guy, but a hell of a shot with a carbine. Always good to have a little muscle on board. And then there’s Raf. Imperial veteran who lost an arm in the service. Solid pilot, keeps a cool head in combat, but the loyalist attitude gets the crew on edge. I’m gonna have to keep an eye on him.

Once we got everything together, we set off for an Outer Rim world called Formos. It’s the first planet in the Kessel Run, a huge smuggling outpost, and a pretty solid starting point all things considered. More arid than any of us were used to for sure, though. First order of business was to check out the cantina over by the local starport to get an idea of the lay of the land and maybe unload a carton or two of death sticks I’d picked up cheap back home. On the way there Raf managed to find a beat-up droid that’d been left for dead in an alleyway. I couldn’t save it, but I did manage to slice into its memory banks to figure out a bunch of thugs had got their hands on its buddy; an R4 astromech. Interesting, but nothing we could have done about it then, so it was off to the cantina. And that’s where we learned about Bandon ******* Dobah.

This Aqualish managed to get a 10,000 credit Imperial bounty on his head by dint of a smuggling operation he was running on the planet. Furthermore, a mouthy Trandoshan let it slip that a Hutt by the name of Thakba was interested in his bringing him in alive. 5,000 credits interested. Naturally, I wanted to have a few words with him. The rest of the crew was already set on bringing this guy in, but I just wanted to see what sort of business a smuggler who managed to attract so much attention was ready to discuss. No one seemed to be in the mood to buy any death sticks, so I was about ready to give up on that when this Rodian walked in gathering a good bit of attention. My Rodian is a little rusty, but we managed to exchange enough words to figure out she was on the lookout for an R4 that had some sensitive mapping information she was willing to pay a hell of a lot of money for. That explains the droid in the alley at least.

At this point Trillusk noticed a Toydarian floating a little too close to the conversation who was pretty quick to leave the cantina when he noticed he was seen. Fortunately, Trillusk also managed to tail him covertly while keeping the rest of us in touch with comms. This weedy little motherfucker starts telling a bunch of thugs at some warehouse the new arrivals on the planet are asking questions about an R4 and trying to muscle in on Dobah’s business before flying off. Now at this point I’m still interested in talking with Dobah. That is until we walk out of the cantina and get the **** kicked out of us, at least. I don’t care who you are, that’s just bad for business. Those bounties suddenly seemed a hell of a lot more interesting. We had to head back to the Butcher Bird and get patched up, putting some of the bacta on board to use. It seemed pretty obvious that the warehouse was worth a visit at this point.

That night we scouted out the building to the pleasant realization they’d left the warehouse’s protections to electronic defense. I’m not saying the lock wasn’t high quality, but it also wasn’t anything I couldn’t slice through without leaving a trace. When we saw all the crates, we thought we’d hit the jackpot, only to find they were all empty. Though we did find quite a bit to be happy about. A nice chunk of credits, a couple of junked blaster carbines… And a certain restrained R4 droid. Popping the restraining bolt off was a little messier than I’d have liked, and when the astromech heard the gang had junked his buddy, he was all about helping us bring Dobah to justice. Some of the mapping information he’d got had the location of an asteroid where the Aqualish was hiding out. I wanted to just thank the little guy for his troubles and get him to the Rodian, but he wanted to take the fight to Dobah. We backed up the files just in case, and then it was off to the asteroids to find our Aqualish.

Navigating the interior of asteroids isn’t easy work. Doubly so when there’s some sort of slime growing in them. I really have to hand it to Raf, he made it through the caverns to where our sensors picked up a ship without so much as scratching the paint. Dobah had holed himself up in some cave with an artificial atmosphere where he was storing crates of… Something or other. The only option was to go on board and find our man. Slicing the ship didn’t work, but we did manage to get the jump on the ship’s crew. It was a tough fight. Eddie got hurt pretty bad; worse than I could patch up, in fact. But that’s why we keep bacta on board. Anyway, when the smoke cleared we were standing and they weren’t. Their ship was in bad shape, too bad to get any meaningful salvage out of it, but their cargo was good. When we left the asteroid our cargo bay was a few crates of glitterstim and a couple Aqualish prisoners heavier.

We picked up a hitchhiker on the way back to Formos, which isn’t the safest policy when you’re smuggling drugs, but his credits were good. Once we dropped off the R4 to our Rodian friend, we had to decide what to do next. Of course Raf was all about handing him over to the Empire, but the rest of us weren’t so sure. Not only do we not want money being traced, making friends with a Hutt is never a bad idea. So even though the bounty was lower, we paid Thrakba a visit. And I am so glad we did. Apparently Dobah had been muscling in on the Hutt’s own smuggling operation, and he was none too pleased. The Hutt was willing to take the glitterstim we’d picked up off our hands for a very generous price since he was so pleased with our bounty work.

It’s going to take a few days to spend all these credits. I know I want to install some smuggling chambers on the Butcher Bird, and the rest of the crew wants to get some armor. I hear Thrakba’s got another job lined up for us if we’re interested. For now, life is pretty good.

Nice story. I like the background of you and your crew.

Funny how most cussing got the censoring except one. I'm guessing that was the forum. I know you stated at the start there would be strong language, however I will point out there is plenty of alternative phrases to use.

I am wondering about that hitchhiker. But no group I have ever been involved with would have taken a lower bounty....at all.

Cheers, and keep the story rolling

Cynabar

...I am wondering about that hitchhiker...

Don't look if you plan on playing "Trouble Brewing."

Jax Nason’s Captain’s Log, 1 ABY 13:0 5: 03

This smuggling thing takes a hell of a lot more than I would have expected. You'd think it'd be as simple as loading up some shady corner of your cargo hold with valuable goods, lying to port authorities, and getting paid, right? Well, turns out there's more to it. Can't say I mind if the credits keep looking this good, but it's gonna take some getting used to.

Anyway, after our last paycheck I decided to pay out of pocket to install a new private hold into the Butcher Bird. On the outside, it looks like a standard hyperdrive reactor, but the inside is hollow. If any scanners pick up anything suspicious, I just tell 'em it's due to the reactor's shielding plates and if they want to open it up to take a look they're going to get a radiation bath that could melt a dewback. Our pal Thrakba, the Hutt, heard about this new installment and decided to offer us a job.

Apparently Thrakba's family used to be in control of Dalchy, a planet with some inclement weather over in Hutt space. But a new government took over and cut off Hutt control. Now there's a civil war on world, and Thrakba wants to show his support with an extremely generous donation of weapons to the local rebellion. And that's rebellion lowercase 'r', otherwise Raf would have gone nuclear. Thrakba just needed someone to run guns to the planet, and was willing to send twelve thousand credits our way for a job well done. Not turning that down.

Now there were a few issues. Thrakba wanted to move a whole lot of guns, and the smuggling hold is only so big. Installing an expansion was something I could handle no issue, but the parts weren't cheap. Then I had to put forward another few hundred credits to load up the cargo hold with nerf steaks so we could pass off as a legitimate shipping operation. Finally, landing on Dalchy was an endeavor in its own right. This time of year electrical storms cover the entire planet. Major cities had equipment to keep them at bay, but that just meant we couldn't land in the middle of the wilderness and rendezvous with the rebels there.

Once we touched down in the city, customs gave the ship a once-over. Apparently they'd seen this hollow reactor trick before. I was about ready to bolt right then and there, but Eddie managed to talk them into accepting a generous 'import tariff.' Just the cost of business. While I stayed back and tried to keep up appearances as a regular nerf-steak-shipper, Raf went to meet with our contact, a woman named Breena Horne who worked at a local cantina. She wanted us to get in contact with a Rodian by the name of Adoog to see where we needed to bring the guns. On the way back Raf noticed a few prying eyes, so we decided it might be best to keep him on the ship while the rest of us talked to Adoog.

I'd like to say we were more subtle finding Adoog, but Trillusk wanted to take his new scanner out for a whirl and it turns out setting up that sort of machinery in public gets you some unwanted attention. Not much came of it other than a little more attention than I might have wanted. We met the Rodian at a spacer hotel, who told us we needed to get the crates to the north side of town before sunrise next morning. Figuring that one out actually took more time than I would have expected. We couldn’t exactly fly the ship over there, and the crates were way too heavy to carry. Eventually, a couple rented hover-trucks got the job done. A few more business expenses. These things really do add up.

Adoog helped us load the guns onto a landspeeder, but apparently we were expected to get the delivery done. The Rodian had other business to take care of. Trillusk could pilot the thing, and fortunately the rebels were only stationed about twenty kilometers out from the city. We were introduced to the Twi’lek commander of the operation, a man named Zhar’sara. He had a proposition for us. 500 credits a man to lend a little extra manpower to the assault they’d conduct the next day on the city where we were docked. I’m sure 500 credits a battle was a hell of a lot more than he was paying anyone else, but I still don’t know if that’s worth getting shot at. Apparently, though, if we tried just walking back into town we’d be arrested for conspiracy. Talk about forcing your hand.

Anyway, Trillusk more or less headed this operation. He’s got more battle experience than the rest of us put together, probably. Now I’m not sure if this is some military thing, but when we showed up at the city he drove the goddamn truck we were in into the gate. It took out a guard and meant we didn’t have to worry about the city wall, though, so I guess you can’t argue with results. Getting back to the spaceport took all kinds of work. I got shot twice, nearly lost my blaster, and **** near passed out while the rest of the crew made it through without a scratch. I really need to teach someone else on the ship how to clean a wound.

After parting with Zhar’sara, it was back to Thrakba to get payment for a successful shipment. Apparently in the three days we were in hyperspace the rebels managed to seize Dalchy. More power to ‘em. I’m just glad I wiped all the records we ever visited. Now we’re in Hutt space, trying to decide where to head next. I haven’t heard word on any jobs, but something always comes up.

Jax Nason’s Captain’s Log, 1 ABY 13:05:16

Sometimes a job doesn’t go so well. Even when no one gets hurt and you get paid, it’s hard to call everything a success. I guess I should be thankful things didn’t go worse and the whole crew is still on the ship, but it’s hard to say morale is high after all this.

It started by going a little closer to the core to get some shopping done. It’s a little easier to get nicer equipment closer to civilization. Chalacta had more Imperial presence than I would have preferred, so we had to go to Randon. Plenty of stuff to spend Thrakba’s credits on, and the crew wound up a little better equipped. While we were there, Raf heard from an ex-military friend of his that Balamak’s governor had some trouble with a missing fiancé, and was willing to pay ten thousand credits to anyone willing to find her. Naturally, we were interested. No one could have known what we were getting into at that point.

At Balamak, we met up with Raf’s pal Lepidus, who told us governor Talray was due to marry in three weeks. His fiancé, Rhysio, the owner of a large security corporation on planet, had gone missing about ten days prior with no trace. The police couldn’t turn up anything, and any leads were cold. We got a warrant from the governor to investigate, and figured the company was the first place to look.

The guy running the company in Rhysio’s absence was her nephew, and didn’t seem too happy to see us. He was over my shoulder the whole time, and naturally I thought the whole situation was a little fishy. I got to slicing the security systems and Rhysio’s terminal, just to see what there was to be seen. But surprise, the security company had some pretty solid systems keeping interested parties out. What I did manage to find out was that the security’s footage had been tampered with, and her own records were under a tighter lock than they had any business being. I couldn’t get in without the proper access codes.

Her apartment was the next stop. Eddie managed to find a datapad that had been squirreled away, again with some pretty serious encryptions. This time, though, I was able to break through and read the history. Her bank account had been cleared out the day before she went missing, and her ownership of the company transferred to her nephew. She’d also been corresponding with a guy named Daymar Vale, a white collar criminal who had just got out of jail six months ago. Trillusk had also found a safe in the closet with the receipts for a ship set to go halfway across the galaxy and those access codes we’d been looking for. Now we had a lead.

Another run by the company with those access codes told us plenty of stuff we already knew. We ran by the shipyards next to see what we could find out with those records we’d picked up in the safe. As it turned out, the ship was due to leave in six hours, and with our gubernatorial mandate we could take a look inside. The plan was to hide out until the Daymar, Rhysio, or both showed up, and it would be time to ask some questions.

That’s when things went south. Daymar and Rhysio both showed up, both in a hurry to get out. They had some trouble getting the engines started, courtesy of yours truly, so we had time to get into position. And Trillusk shot Daymar in the goddamn head. I guess when you’re in the military you start seeing the world differently. In the field hesitating to kill someone is a matter of life and death. Here, though, we got ******. I thought it was pretty clear something shady was going on, but Trillusk had it in his head that a former embezzler trying to start a tryst with some planetary governor’s fiancé was a dangerous kidnapper. And now he’s dead.

Technically we’d found Rhysio, but by the time we left planet she was still in shock. We got our paycheck for filling the contract, and even gave us the chance to leave planet. But our crew had done all sorts of shady **** in the efforts of finding Rhysio, and now a man who could answer any questions was dead and the fiancé was catatonic without showing any signs of recovery. Raf’s buddy lost his job, we weren’t welcome back on planet, and things got pretty tense with Trillusk on our way out. I can only hope wherever we go next, it winds up being a cleaner job.

Post Script: Raf’s cut of the profits went to helping his buddy get back on his feet after losing his job. I guess it’s good to know even if he’s ex-Imperial, we’ve got someone like that on board.

Jax Nason’s Captain’s Log, 1 ABY 13:06:04

For a technician, I sure wind up getting shot at a lot. Doesn't matter what the job is, somehow it's always going to end up with blasters out. This last excursion really stepped up the game in that regard. A few new faces, and a lot of confusion. But all's well that ends well, I guess.

It started when we were being run off of Balamak. Trillusk decided he needed a little time off after the incident with Daymor Vale, so we parted ways to give him some time to cool off. We had almost taken off when we were contacted by a droid who let us know that one Mr. Diallo Rid'darm, a higher up in the BlastTech corporate ladder, had some matter of corporate espionage that he was willing to part with 10,000 credits to see resolved. A little vague, but not bad money. It wasn't ten minutes later that someone off-world opened comms with us to know he had a business venture where the pay would be 15,000 credits, but didn't tell us a lot more beyond that. Now 5,000 credits is good money, but none of the crew wanted to do business with someone being so evasive about the job. So it was off to Etti IV to meet up with Mr. Rid'darm.

We touched down in CorpSec about a week later. I don't know what sort of operation they're running there, but parking fees are ridiculous. The concierge was a nice kid, though. A local, who took us straight to Rid'darm's office. There we were given a corporate mandate to look into BlastTech official business, but didn't exactly have a whole lot to go on. Rid'darm was nervous about something, but wasn't willing to say much beyond the fact someone had started up some vicious rumors about him and his company he wanted to find the source of. He suggested starting at a cantina called the Lonely Rancor to see where things went.

The Rancor was what you'd expect from a CorpSec cantina. I was keeping an ear to the ground while Eddie went to chat up a couple folks at the bar. That's how the crew wound up with two new members. I wasn't about to complain. With Trillusk gone we needed a little extra muscle, and these two were willing to work for peanuts if it meant they had a way off world. The first, a girl named Clipper... I'm not really sure what her deal is. She's smart enough and has a decent array of skills if you manage to catch her when she's sober. Which isn't often. The next was a guy named Bentlis Bolg. What an *******. He's a big, scary guy and wanted to make sure everyone knows it. Chip on his shoulder so big you could see it from orbit. But at least he had a big gun.

While those two were getting associated with Eddie and Raf, I noticed a couple of locals acting a little shifty. BlastTech employees, a little paler blue than most Etti, so I figured they'd just had a tough day at work. Figured if I wanted to hear corporate rumors, I might as well start at the bottom of the ladder with a guy drunk enough to tell me what he knew. That didn't last long. He was awake long enough to tell me about a 'big job' before he passed out. That had my interest. His brother was off in a holocomm booth, having a heated albeit pretty muffled conversation. It wasn't hard to slice in from the next booth over to listen in. Turns out he was on the line with the same guy who had offered us 15,000 earlier. Whatever the job was, he was taking too long to do it. I even got a name. Wumbach.

It took a little time to decide what to do next, but we eventually decided to head back to BlastTech and see what we could find out about the Wumbach brothers. Company records had the two listed under an alias. Apparently they'd come to the planet a couple weeks ago, and were working in shipping while living out of their YT-2400. We even got an address where it was parked. It sounded a little shifty, so it was off to parking to pay them a visit.

They weren't in, but a very frightened and confused parking attendant was willing to tell us they went back to BlastTech headquarters carrying something cumbersome. I took a fuel rod from the ship to make sure they couldn't get anywhere while we made our way to shipping. Ben had one thing on his mind, and opened fire on the two as soon as we showed up. They were looking a hell of a lot less blue than earlier. Apparently we were dealing with humans disguised as Etti. I can't really fault Ben, I guess, since we managed to stun them both pretty quickly while I was digging through a nearby terminal they'd been at to see what the hell was going on. One of the crates in the shipping yard had been tampered with, that much was obvious. But as far as we could tell, all of the crates in the warehouse had the same blasters in them. Unfortunately we were paying a little too much attention to the crates and not enough to our hostages. The younger one managed to get away before we could turn him into security.

It was late. I was tired. Everyone was ready to head back to the Butcher Bird. But we could see in the garage where we were parked that the Wumbach's ship had attracted some attention from security. That at least needed some checking out. We arrived to find out that he'd taken a hostage, and security had no idea what the protocol was. Fortunately, we were on BlastTech payroll, so this wasn't exactly above our jurisdiction. We got on the ship to find out he had the concierge we'd met earlier. Negotiations were getting tense, and again Ben shot first. Things got hectic and SOMEONE maybe accidentally sliced into the ship's computers and sliced Wubach in half with a blast door. Whoops. At least the kid was safe.

We met up with Rid'darm the following morning to fill him in. Apparently that kid from the previous night was his son, and he wired another thousand credits our way as thanks. That'd been the reason he'd been so shifty earlier, we was afraid for his kid's safety. The Wumbach's ship had been impounded, it turned out the crate that had been tampered with was full of defective guns, and the brother that made his way to security turned out to be a wanted criminal and was executed earlier that morning. We got a hold of his datapad to learn they'd been recieving orders off world from someone stationed on nearby Toola. That was our next visit.

Toola's an arctic planet, currently in the middle of its coldest season. Not terribly pleasant. Our contact was a guy named Poguto, a Rakirian. Which is apparently the most terrifying thing in the galaxy. Bugs should not get that big. Anyway, comparing notes with Poguto, we managed to find out that this operation probably had something to do with Merr-Son, a rival to BlastTech that had fallen on hard times recently. A few of them had some outpost out on top of a frozen sea not far from here. We managed to follow a group out who had come in for supplies, but wrecked our speeder in the process. At least we'd found the outpost.

The plan was to try flagging them down and tell them we were stranded to get in close and see what was going on. We'd barely even waved before they started shooting at us. We shot back, and made it into the facility where there was more shooting. Ever since the deal with Dobah every time I want to talk there's shooting. I should get more used to that, I guess. A poorly timed explosion sent the layer of ice cracking by the time we'd cleared the place out. Some sort of bounty hunter showed up too, another relative of the deceased Wumbachs. He had apparently had a contract with the Merr-Son CEO. Who we'd just killed, apparently. Fortunately the bounty didn't need him alive. We got pictures, we got a datacube, we got a hostage, and we got out. The facility sunk under the ice seconds after we made it out on a stolen speeder.

Back on Etti IV we told Rid'darm what was up, gave him the holocube, and got paid. Turned out the Merr-Son CEO had got in trouble with someone after screwing up an arms contract, and was trying to get back on his feet by sabotaging BlastTech. Considering how much everyone on the crew had got shot, we were just happy it was over. Our hostage was turned over to security, and we were out. Ben went missing not long after, and we'd later learned he'd stolen the Wumbach's ship to get off world. Fine by me. In the mean time, I've got some shopping to do before we head out of CorpSec.

Jax Nason’s Captain’s Log, 1 ABY 13:06:20

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Smuggling isn't the most glamorous business, but there are still things you can hope to avoid. Unfortunately you don't always have that option.

We stuck around Etti IV for a while. Nicest planet we'd been on for some time, and shopping was good. After that last paycheck everyone had something on their wishlist. But we could have managed to be a little thriftier. On the way off-world, Eddie got a call from home. His sister's condition was getting worse, and it was going to take 10,000 credits for an operation to make things better. Comms from Hutt space let us know that Thakba had a job posted for 20,000. So it looked like we were headed back to Slyheron.

The job was pretty straightforward, but none too savory. Ten slaves had to be transported to Rorak IV a couple systems away to a Trandoshan buyer. Now no one on the crew was really completely comfortable with slave trade, but by this point we'd killed for paychecks. We were well past claiming any sort of moral high ground. So preperations were made, the cargo was loaded up, and we were off to Rorak IV.

Now I'm not sure how many slaves get processed in Hutt space, but it seems to me like they could be a little more thorough. The human slave we'd brought on board had some sort of Imperial tracking implant in his thigh. I'm glad I picked up some books on surgery back on Etti. We were barely out of the system when we got dropped out of hyperspace by some sort of gravity well, too, just in time to catch a Mon Calamari captive fiddling with some sort of distress beacon. Bad news.

The group that had set up the road trap was some sort of Rebellion outpost, and apparently we had cargo on board they wanted. Things looked really bad. Fortunately between Eddie's quick talking and some fiddling with the distress beacon, we were able to convince them that they had the wrong ship. I can only imagine what would have happened if we weren't so lucky. This called for another round of searches.

The wookie we had on board had made some progress breaking through his restraints, so it's good we caught that when we did. And the human who had the tracking chip in him was eager to tell us he was Imperial and we were making a big mistake. We didn't think much of that. But soon we made it to Rorak without any further incident and met up with our Trandoshan contact.

At this point we figured dealing in Imperial slaves was bad news. Not only do we not want the Empire on our asses, we don't want any Hutt business accomplices coming after us for shipping cargo we knew was bad. So at the last minute we decided to cut into our profits a little bit and let the one human go free. At least we can say we did that.

At the end of the day things could have been a lot worse. We got payed, Eddie's sister got her operation, and no one got hurt. We just had to pull some really shady **** to make that happen. I'm just thankful that's behind us now.

Jax Nason’s Captain’s Log, 1 ABY 13:07:12

Most of these risky jobs I can at least justify to myself. At the end of the day there's a paycheck for risking your ass. But sometimes during an emergency you get all the action with none of the reward. I guess getting to live is a reward all its own, but on that note I'd rather not have that tested all that regularly. Anyway, at least I'm still around to be writing. That wasn't always guaranteed.

It all started when the engines crapped out in the middle of nowhere, just outside of Hutt space. The ship was a little behind on maintenance, and while I did have some spare parts lying around all I managed to fix were the sublight engines. With distress beacons on all channels, we turned on scanners to see if there was anything hospitible nearby.

The bad news was the system was dead. No hospitable planets, no space stations, nothing. The good news was scanners picked up a junked dreadnought orbiting a planet a few hours away. That was our best bet. Myself, Trillusk, and Clipper got suited up as a boarding party to see if we could salvage what we needed while Eddie and Raf stayed back on the Butcher Bird.

From the onset things were all sorts of creepy. Carbon scoring on the walls showed signs of a fight on board, but there were no signs of life anywhere. All sorts of creaks and groans of aging metal had us on edge. Some thuds turned out to be a malfunctioning astromech droid, making the whole situation that much more bizarre. But when the ship went on lockdown and an EMP cut comms, we knew we were ******.

The plan became get to the engine room and get to the bridge before whatever was there found us. Even moving around had its challenges, though. Some rooms were open to the hard vacuum, and we had to jump around in zero g and put our space suits to the test. I want to take some time right here to say how much zero g ******* sucks. See, the human body has all sorts of bits and bobs that were designed with gravity in mind. I don't care who you are, losing the luxury of knowing which way is down and feeling like you're falling in every direction is all sorts of awful. And it's not like what we found after that was any better.

All sorts of dismembered corpses were lined up a couple rooms over. Someone or something had put them there on purpose. For some ******* reason, Trillusk and Clipper seemed all too pleased by this. So that's great. I'm here with comms closed on a haunted ship with two people who had been driven insane by being isolated in space. But it's not like we had any option but to keep moving. The engine room wound up having all sorts of useful salvage. But around then was when the ship started falling apart.

We hauled ass towards the bridge. More corpses everywhere. And in the medbay, some medical droid still patching up dead bodies made a move at us. Clipper blew it up before I even realized it had lunged. That's when over the comms, a voice told us our organic presence was an affront to the droid rebellion and that we would be dealt with soon. So more droids. More explosions. Trillusk got shot pretty bad, but we kept moving.

Once we got to the bridge we were able to restore comms with the Butcher Bird. Time wasn't on our side, so Eddie blew a hole in the bridge and our boarding crew jumped into the void to try and make it back home. We all missed. Smooth flying on Raf's part let Eddie get close enough to get Clipper and me back, but Trillusk was still floating dangerously close to a nebula with the rest of the exploded vessel. A little tricky business with the Butcher Bird's artificial gravity, though, and we were able to pull in Trillusk and some debris just before things were too late.

Repairs went fine and now we're on Randon, ship patched up and wounds mostly healed. No paycheck, and the dreadnought's lost in a nebula so we can't so much as sell coordinates to salvagers. But at least everyone's breathing, in one piece, and not floating through dead space. Might as well count those blessings while we have them.