Traveller: The New Crew

After the last crew of the search and rescue ship the Gerishi left in dubious circumstances, Pcias Station command looked for a new team to take over. Heading up the new team is Esthel MacAvoy a noble with a distinguished naval career behind her. Joining her are Professor Geryen Squall, a Darrian engineer with a penchant for explosives; Dr Twiggy Backett, a young medic looking to escape the drudgery of station hospitals; and No-Haa an ex-Imperial Agent who put in the hard yards with the marines. They are joined by Errol Barrick, a Vargr pilot with the opposite of a sunny disposition.

The new crew arrive at Pcias Station and are given the tour by the station’s XO Sar Aylen, a stiff, do-it-by-the-books woman. She then gives them a briefing pack about the system and sends them on their way to begin their duties.

After grabbing a coffee from the station crew’s mess, they head to board the Gerishi. Their first task is to inspect the ship and check its systems. Geryen gets to work inspecting the drives and power systems, finding them functional but sluggish on the pitch and yaw controls. No-Haa looks over the rescue equipment and inventories all the cool new toys he has to play with. There’s some high tech level gear such as Imperial Navy Rescue suits but supplies have not been replenished for a while. Mission Commander MacAvoy runs diagnostics on the general ship systems and finds they meet requirements, but only marginally in some cases. Errol is pleased to report the controls and maneuvering systems have had a recent overhaul and exceed expectations.

Noting the dwindling supplies and need for some systems to be overhauled and maintained, Esthel leads the crew back aboard to the station to submit their report to Station Commander Chrix Derisson. Sar Aylen makes the arrangements and after waiting ninety minutes outside Derisson’s office, they finally meet him. His warm effusions of welcome are not matched by his desire to do anything about the supply and maintenance situation. He brushes Esthel off and delegates the requisition to Sar who takes it, cautioning the travellers that it may take some time.

With nothing further to discuss, they leave station command. Geryen decides to use some engineering kits he had acquired in his past career to refit the ship’s power plant. No-Haa is already suspicious that there may be some skimping going on so he goes to investigate the maintenance and supply logs. Twiggy and Esthel decide to wait for them at the station’s canteen.

At the canteen, they meet the propietor Gleethon Fligg who makes adequetly average coffee. He shares some gossip about the last crew walking out on the job after a loud disagreement with the station commander. Esthel tips generously to keep the bwap bartender talking. Fligg tells them this came after a period of complaints about supplies and being put on a ‘management improvement’ program. The final straw for the previous crew was being sent half-way round the system on some errand but Fligg doesn’t know the details.

After a couple of hours, No-Haa joins them and shares his report with the Mission Commander. For the most part, this doesn’t contain anything they didn’t know but he managed to find some data around the station’s inspection regime over the past three months that didn’t wholly sit well with him. As Esthel examines it herself, she finds that there are clusters of comings and goings where some ships were given extensive inspections whilst a single ship was given an expediated review and sent onwards.

The three finish their drinks, a double shot of burboun for No-Haa, then move to reboard the Gerishi. There they find main power offline and Geryen still working. None of them are phased by this and get comfortable, leaving the engineer to finish his work. When he is done, Esthel finds a communication from Sar Aylen asking what the delay is in getting out on mission and assigning them their first task: to check the monitor bouys around the red zoned planet whilst maintaining a discrete position so as not to be spotted by the inhabitants.

Esthel gives her first command and the pilot Errol undocks from the station and heads towards the planet. After spotting Errol punching towards the dark side bouys first, where the Gerishi might be more visible from the surface, she corrects the taciturn pilot who adjusts the ship’s course.

Upon arrival in the vicinity of the first bouy Geryen pilots a drone to inspect it and finds it functional. Digging into the electronic systems of the bouy, he notes that a Dindy Code was actived about a month ago, instructing the monitoring system to purge records of a passing ship.

Esthel recognises this as standard practice when naval ships are on manuevres but checks the timestamp against the ship inspection records retrieved earlier by No-Haa. There is a nearby match – a civilian ship, the Sacaggen, was sped through ship inspections a few days before the Dindy Code was activated.

The new crew’s suspicions are raised but they complete their first mission successfully, checking in on all nine monitoring bouys around the planet.

Settling into their commands they await their next task as the new crew of the Gerishi search and rescue ship.