Adventure Writeup: Dancer

You'd be surprised how easy it is to get work as a Traveller. Most people think that it requires hunting down shady characters, doing covert meetings in dark alleys, and getting double crossed more often than not. Mind you, that last part is true, but as for the rest of it? Most of the time, work would find you. Of course, we never got easy jobs. Far from it, in fact, we always got what seemed like the worst jobs you could get. So we tended to spend our time between jobs relaxing as much as possible. Which, for most of us, meant going to the best bar we could find and getting as drunk as possible.

So there we were, enjoying the best bar on Balthazar with varying levels of enjoyment. Vanai and Amelia were having seltzer water and watching the news, while Daniel was grumbling about how we were still on Balthazar. Alex was off making sure our new ship was actually space-worthy, which we had decided would be worth checking. Unfortunately, it turns out that would take a couple days longer than we would have liked, which is to say a couple days. In the meantime, we just hoped to lay low, and not get into trouble.

Needless to say, we'd barely gotten drunk when a Patron (he was a bar patron in the sense that he actually bought some drinks, but he was also a Patron in the Traveller sense, ie, that he was paying us money to go kill people and deal with problems) showed up and started chatting us up. He was a fairly nondescript fellow in a business suit who we would have taken for a stockbroker or insurance agent if it hadn't been for the job he was giving us.

You see, he was apparently representing the interests of the Balthazari government. In our first mission on-world, we'd blown up a train full of their weapons, but in our second, we'd tried (and pretty much failed) to save the one Balthazari government official we liked, so we reckoned it'd all work out. At least if Daniel could overcome his urge to stab the guy as soon as he sat down at the bar and started talking. The man told us that a spaceship carrying an important cargo of the material phaesite had crashed in the desert. The government apparently urgently needed to retrieve this cargo- but not urgently enough not to outsource it to a bunch of rookie subcontractors like ourselves.

To be honest, a few things should have tipped us off during our conversation that something was up. For one, they had decided to hire four guys in a bar instead of sending out their own people after the crashed ship. This happens to us often enough, and those are usually the adventures where people end up trying to kill us. Second, the guy was really vague about what phaesite was and what it did. Like, really vague. He said something about it being used to generate electricity, though, so we ignored it. He was also very unspecific about why exactly they needed a ton of heavily armed mercenaries for a simple salvage operation. Again, we probably should have asked about this. But hindsight is 20/20, and we just settled for a payment of few thousand credits apiece, and transport out to the desert and back.

Alex needed to stay behind and get our ship problems figured out, but the rest of us assembled on the edge of Balthazar City with our gear and weapons. For a Traveller, your weapon is like your underwear- you take it everywhere, and you feel acutely uncomfortable without it. It was just going to be the three of us on this adventure- Daniel, Vanai, and Amelia- but between us we were basically hauling along an arsenal. It's not like there's a baggage limit on mercenary work, after all.


When we showed up on the edge of town the next day, the Balthazari government had a vehicle waiting there for us. The driver and guide were both very tight-lipped, and while we tried to get some information out of them, the best we could get was a terse reminder to "grab the phaesite, and get out". They dropped us off in the middle of the desert, and sped off.

We walked over the next row of dunes and saw the ship below us. It was a large ship, with a central hull and two engine pods attached to the rear, one on each side of the body. It was half-buried in the sand, but it looked as if it hadn't taken too much damage in the crash. There was clearly an entrance airlock located along the side close to us, almost exactly at dune level, and so we walked up to it and went inside.

The airlock was fully functional, and so we just walked in, Daniel taking the lead. The ship was dark inside (presumably the power had been shut off in the crash), and eerily silent. We all pulled out our weapons at that point, and turned on our night-vision goggles. We're Travellers, meaning that we have a healthy sense of paranoia, and a tendency to solve problems with overwhelming force. The airlock opened onto a long corridor. A name-plate across the hallway identified the ship as the Orpheon, a research vessel manufactured at Hightower.  

The Orpheon (Artist's Rendition)

What we saw was mundane in the extreme, at least until we walked into the room marked 'Life Support'. There was a body on the floor, dressed in a crew member's uniform. He was still holding his arms up before his face in a vain attempt to protect himself from- something. His body had been slashed in multiple places, and most horrifying of all, there were large bite marks along much of his body, where flesh had been torn off. Droplets of dried blood littered the floor and the computer banks around him. We weren't exactly strangers to this kind of thing (we are Travellers, after all) but this was gruesome and unexpected, and we had to look away. 
"His entire left arm's been practically devoured, as has his torso," Amelia said. "The position of the corpse indicates that he died violently, and was then eaten quickly rather than by scavengers." Vanai had by this point turned away and looked as if she was trying not to vomit. 
"This means there's enemies onboard the ship," Daniel said, hoisting his shotgun. "Exactly where I want them."
Vanai for once didn't contradict his macho posturing, possibly because she was thinking Daniel was trying to deal with the carnage, in his own way. We looked around the room, and it looked as if life support had been managed through here. The equipment was damaged badly, although this seemed like more the signs of a fight than deliberate sabotage. The fire extinguisher from the wall had been ripped out, and we found it, dented, in a corner, with bits of fur stuck to it. "Aha!" Amelia said, looking for all the world like a private detective. "The engineer here must have used the fire extinguisher to defend himself against a furred monster."
"Good thing we have guns instead," Vanai commented dryly.

As we left the life support room, we were becoming more and more convinced that there wasn't anyone alive on the ship. We weren't exactly flush with cash, so we didn't have any means of scanning the ship. No matter. We started moving room by room down the hallway to our left. As it turned out, the ship's bridge was only a few doors down the corridor. 

The doors to the bridge had been electronically sealed shut. Amelia elbowed us aside and got to work on the access panel, and the doors unlocked. Daniel pushed them open and we got inside. The ceiling lights glowed faintly on a scene out of a murder movie. A uniformed crew member was lying dead on the floor, her chest practically ripped open and half-congealed blood covering the floor around her. She was still clasping a rifle, which had been almost cut in half. Vanai bent down to examine her, but couldn't get much out of it other than that something onboard the ship had been killing people, which we'd all deduced by that point. Amelia, meanwhile, bent over the bridge consoles, while Daniel pointed his shotgun out towards the dark corridor we'd just come in from. It looked much more ominous now. 

"It looks as if the ship crashed because no one on board was at the controls," Amelia said. "They were coming into Balthazar's gravity well and then they just stopped inputting commands. Interesting."
"Can you look at, say, why people stopped inputting commands?" Vanai asked.
"I'm guessing it's something to do with why this crewman is dead," Daniel added. 
There was more typing, and then Amelia grimaced. "I'm not seeing anything. Either the ship had an absolutely horrible internal camera system, or it was cut off for some reason. Either way, there's no recordings for over a month, after they stopped at a lab station someplace called Gadden. I might be able to scrub it out into the open if I had a day or so." 
"We don't have the time. Are there any life forms on board the ship?" Vanai asked. Amelia hunched over the console. "That's weird..." she said softly.
"What?" Vanai and Daniel said, near-simultaneously. 
"I'm picking up one lifeform. Very faint, not moving, in the cargo hold."
"Like a human?" Vanai asked.
"If they're a human, they're close to death.  There's also a few animal-size signatures in one of the central rooms. Computer says it's a laboratory. But for just a second, the system was showing another lifeform in one of the engine pods. But it's gone now. Probably just a sensor ghost." 
"Okay," Vanai said, trying to digest the new information. "We'll head to the cargo bay, try and find the survivor. We'll then pick up the phaesite cargo, and get out."
"The manifest says the phaesite is in one of the labs adjacent to the cargo bay," Amelia said. 
"Let's move, then," Vanai said.

We set out into the corridor of the ship. As we'd seen on the computer, the ship had a fairly simple layout. It was shaped like a large rectangle with two engine pods bulging out along the rear, with the bridge made up the front of the rectangle. The main body of the ship included labs and staterooms, divided by two hallways running parallel to the long side of the rectangle. The cargo bay made up the rear of the rectangle, with access to the engine pods from the cargo bay. As we set off for the cargo bay, we found ourselves moving along one of the long hallways, which due to the tilt of the ship in the sand was leaning slightly downwards. We moved with our guns out, scanning the long hallways for any sign of movement. We knew that whatever had killed that crewman on the bridge was more than likely still out and about. 

Daniel, who was in the lead, had just opened the door into the main laboratory when a massive thing leaped out onto his chest, screeching horribly. He flailed backwards, while the creature's claws scraped against the armored chest of his combat armor. Daniel himself wrestled it off, throwing it to the ground of the ship. It was a massive rodent, the size of a small horse, with beady little eyes and sharp claws. Vanai fired at it with her pistol, striking it several times in the side, but it just leapt forward, claws outstretched towards Vanai. Daniel lined up his shotgun on it and blew its head off. It was writhing on the ground in it's own innards when Daniel shot it again, in the flank, and stopped moving. "Gross," Amelia said. Its blood had fanned out along the corridor floor. 
"Where the hell did that come from?" Daniel asked. 
"Maybe it was a lab specimen of some kind?" Amelia said. She pushed open the door to reveal a laboratory. There were rows of lab tables bolted down against the floor, a bank of computers along one end, and assorted laboratory materials scattered along the tables. There were several small cages, presumably for animal specimens, on the tables. They had all been wrenched open. When we peered closer, it was obvious that whatever had been inside had perished gruesomely. 
"So maybe that rodent was mutated, or grew somehow to that size?" Vanai said.
"I...don't think that's how science works," Amelia said. "Animals have a biologically determined upper limit for their size. They can't just be scaled directly up to be larger. Their internal skeleton, their anatomy just won't work if scaled up. You couldn't just make, say, a cockroach the size of a person."
Vanai shuddered. "Then where did that rat thing come from?"
Amelia shrugged. "It's a big galaxy. Maybe they picked it up somewhere early in it's life cycle, and it grew. Do you think that thing killed the crew?" 
Vanai furrowed her brow. "Probably. The fur seems to match up with what we found on the fire extinguisher in life support. It's probably been feeding off of the crew."
"Let me take a look at the ship's records," Amelia said. "Don't touch anything." She sat herself down at a computer console and powered it up. The rest of us wandered around the room, looking at the shattered equipment.
"Found it," Amelia said. "Their lab records. It looks as if they were testing the effects of phaesite chemical exposure on various lab animals." We all gathered around the screen. 
"They picked up," Amelia said, "eight rodent-like animals from a dealer on Nestrom. They put them into these cages..." she pulled up a video feed, "and applied the phaesite chemical regimen." On screen, a handful of scientists bustled around in what was clearly a sped-up video. "This one in the center," Amelia said, as if she was narrating a documentary, "rodent #4, received a greater treatment than the others. It experienced major growth. At the time of the last lab update, they were trying to figure out whether this was an unusual phaesite side effect, or if this rodent was the same animal as the other lab specimens they had."
"It looks like they never got a chance to find out," Vanai said. "Rodent #4 broke out of it's cage and killed them all."
"They're scientists," Daniel said. "Taken by surprise, with no chance to defend themselves, they'd be dead meat."
Amelia was clearly trying to come up with a cutting rejoinder, but before she could respond, the ship shuddered and the floor pitched beneath us. When it settled, the angle of the floor was more pronounced. We all exchanged worried looks.
"I think the ship's sinking," Vanai said.
"It's a heavy ship," Amelia said. "I could see it sinking into the sand."
"Let's move," Daniel said. 

We went back out into the corridor and walked quickly down to the entrance to the cargo bay. Daniel wrenched the door open, and we were in. Large rows of shipping containers filled the immense space, which had a higher ceiling than anywhere else on the ship. "The life sign was near the back," Amelia whispered to Vanai. "Do you see anyone?"
"I see them," Daniel called. He'd taken a few paces down between the rows of shipping containers. "Over here. She's hurt badly."
We came over to join him and saw that he was bent down over a middle-aged woman. She was lying prone and clutching at her stomach, trying to hold her guts inside her body. 
"Oh no," Amelia said. "Oh no." She bent down and started rummaging through her backpack.
"Can you do anything for her?" Vanai asked. 
Amelia bit her lip. "I...I don't think so." Vanai bowed her head. 
"You're in danger," the woman croaked out. "I'm done for. You need - to run."
"What happened?" Vanai said, low and urgently. "What happened to your crew?"
"They're dead," she said. "They were killed by a monster. You need to run. Flee."
"We killed the monster," Vanai said, urgently. "The giant rat. Were there any more of them?"
"They weren't killed by rodent number four," she said. Her eyes were dropping shut.
"We're losing her," Amelia said. 
"They were killed by...the thing we called Dancer." 

Her eyes closed. Amelia bent over and felt for a pulse. When she looked up, both Vanai and Daniel were very clearly agitated. 
"We need to go," Daniel said. "Right. Now." 
Amelia stared at him. "What did you say? What's Dancer?"
"You heard him," Vanai said. "We're moving. Daniel, take point. I'll take rear. You stay in between us. We'll move into the room with the phaesite, pick it up, and get out through the entrance we came in. No stopping. No exploring. We stay in formation. We see anything move, we shoot it. Do you understand me?" 
"Okay, but I don't-"
"Do you understand me?" 
Amelia nodded. 
"Let's move, then." Vanai unslung her rifle from around her shoulders and brought it up, sweeping the rest of the aisle, particularly the dark corners. Daniel stood up, shotgun bared, and started walking at a swift jog towards one of the exits. Vanai nudged Amelia. "Move," she said. Amelia stood up and ran to catch up, and Vanai followed, running. "There!" Vanai said, pointing to a door ahead, and Daniel burst through it, only to stop straight in his tracks. The rest of us came to a stop behind him. 
"What is that?" Amelia asked. 
"I was sort of hoping you'd know," Vanai said. The small room was full of uniform square crates. Some of them had burst open, and an orange substance had poured out and was coating the floor. 
"Is that the phaesite?" Daniel asked. 
"Looks like it," Amelia said. "Some of the tanks must have ruptured in the crash."
"I'll grab them," Daniel said. 
"Wait, don't-" Amelia said, but Daniel was already stepping through the thin layer of goo on the floor, leaving bootprints in it that steamed slightly. He picked up the first crate and turned back to us, carrying one in each hand. 
"Do you smell something?" Vanai asked. There was a strong aroma, something like cleaning fluid but with a sort of sickly-sweet note, like poisoned cinnamon. Amelia suddenly frowned. "I don't feel very good," she said. And then she toppled over onto the floor. Vanai herself was feeling unpleasantly woozy, like the time she'd drank entirely too much wine at a teenage party.
"She needs air!" Vanai said, picking up the smaller woman in her arms and carrying her out into the hallway. Out in the mildly cool, machine-filtered air of the hallway, her mind cleared. Amelia picked herself up, coughing. "I probably should've wafted." Daniel stepped out a moment later, carrying the phaesite containers on his back. "These are all the sealed ones." He passed a container to the rest of us, which we strapped on to our backs, Amelia eyeing it suspiciously.

The ship groaned a little, and the deck of the ship began to shift a little under our feet. It settled again, with a chorus of creaks that echoed throughout the ship. "Let's be moving," Daniel said.
"You still haven't given me an answer about what this Dancer thing is," Amelia said. Daniel turned and started jogging up the hall, shotgun in hand. Amelia quickly followed. She'd taken out her stunner, unsure of what to be looking for. Vanai was taking up the rear, gun drawn, scanning every patch of darkness for threats. Suddenly, Daniel stopped dead in his tracks. Amelia nearly ran into him. He fired his shotgun into a patch of darkness ahead, the blasts echoing through the hallway. Vanai pulled up beside him, pistol drawn.
"I saw movement!" Daniel shouted. He fired again into the darkness, and Vanai joined him, spraying pistol shots into the corners of the hallway. As Daniel fired another blast, we heard a horrific screech, and then all of us saw from the corners of our eyes a shape, just the hint of a human-sized form, leaping from a patch of darkness and clinging onto the wall. Daniel and Vanai fired again at that silhouette of a figure clinging to the wall, put it jumped, inhumanly fast, into an air duct in the side of the wall and vanished, our bullets riddling the wall around it.
"What was-" Amelia began, when she was cut off by Daniel yelling "Run!" We ran up the hallway, guns out.

As we reached the airlock that we'd come in through, we practically dashed out and into the hot sun outside.
"We're not safe yet," Vanai said. "We've got the cargo, though, and we're out in the open." She and Daniel trained their guns on the airlock opening. "Anything comes through, we shoot it. Amelia, keep an eye out for anything coming towards us across those dunes."
"We got what we came for, and we're out of the ship," Amelia said. "Isn't that enough?"

"Our ride gets here at sundown," Daniel said. He turned to face the sun. "That's maybe four, five hours from now."
"We have to hold out until then," Vanai said. "We can't afford to let down our guard." She wasn't looking up from where she was sighting down her rifle at the airlock door. 

The sun was high in the sky, and the heat was sweltering, but we didn't dare move away, for fear of letting Dancer slip out of the door. "So what exactly is Dancer?" Amelia finally asked.
"Death on six legs," Daniel replied.
"We heard stories in the navy," Vanai said, "about a creature so dangerous, it found its way onto a space station and killed everyone on board. The Imperium didn't advertise it, but Dancer wasn't just some rumor. Details- confirmed details- got out. Dancer is an alien predator. The Imperial Navy found it on a planet a subsector or so away, or so the story goes."
"I heard it was Imperial Marines who found it, actually," Daniel said. 
"Either way," Vanai continued, "they found it on a planet, and decided to take it up to their research station to study. It got out on the flight up, killed half the crew before they got in tranquilized again."
"These were Imperial Marines," Daniel said. "Wearing power armor, and Dancer cut through it like tissue paper. It's a six-legged monster, bluish skin, claws like a broadsword, and a venom that'll kill you before you can blink."
"And it's nimble and graceful," Vanai said. "Like a ballerina, when it kills you." 
"And...are we sure that these aren't just stories soldiers tell?" Amelia asked. "You have to admit this sounds like something out of a thriller." There were a few moments of silence. 
"Something killed those poor people in there," Vanai said. "And we aren't going to let it kill us."

Keeping watch the old-fashioned way, with eyes focused on looking for threats for hours on end, is a lot harder than people assume. We were baking in the desert sun, eyes and guns trained on a single point for hours. We were sweating under our clothing, although we'd decided to set down the containers of phaesite, which helped somewhat. It's near-impossible not to have your mind drift off during those hours of watching and waiting, and start thinking of a cool glass of seltzer water, or the terrifying story you've just heard (Amelia), the deaths you've just seen (Vanai), or the explosives you're going to buy with your share of the payment (Daniel). To our credit, though, we kept watch steadfastly for hours, even as the sun began to drop close to the horizon. The ship seemed to have settled, and didn't seem to be actively sinking, so we just stood there, guns pointed at the airlock, ready for the terrifying monster that we just knew was about to come out of it. We're saying this just to make clear that what happened next was entirely due to circumstances utterly and completely beyond our control. 

It was getting close to sundown; there was maybe an hour or so left in the day. We'd been pointing our guns at the entrance for hours straight, while Amelia was scanning the horizon with binoculars for our ride, or anything trying to creep up on us. And then we heard a scraping of claws on metal, and Daniel looked up just fast enough to see a monster come out of nowhere and leap on top of Vanai. None of us could get a good look at it in the confusion, but it was bluish, with six legs, too many eyes, and spikes protruding from it's back. It nimbly leapt down onto Vanai's chest, and she screamed, almost falling backwards. Daniel gave a yell and shot it at near point-blank range with his shotgun, as it was clutching onto Vanai's torso with two legs and slashing with the other four. Daniel shot it again, and it turned away from mauling Vanai's face in order to stare at him, revealing a face with too many eyes and an inhuman mouth full of teeth. And then it leapt from Vanai onto Daniel, claws extended. Vanai pulled out her pistol and shot it, once, twice, thrice, but it hung on, slashing at Daniel's faceplate and opening up gouges there. Amelia had pulled out her stunner and was trying to get a clear shot when Vanai dropped her pistol, pulled out her rapier, and slashed at the monster, cutting into it's side and releasing a bluish ichor. This gave Daniel the opening he needed to throw it off, where he blasted it with another shot from his shotgun. Dancer reared up, baring it's teeth, and Daniel shot it again. It then leaped forward, inhumanly fast, and grabbed Vanai around the waist with it's jaws, twisting to pull her off her feet. Vanai kicked to get free, but Dancer kept her in it's jaws and turned back, dashing towards the airlock. Daniel got off another shot at it, which missed, and then Dancer and Vanai were gone, back into the depths of the Orpheon. 

Amelia turned to Daniel. "Why aren't we going in after them?" 
"We're not going in there without a plan," Daniel said. "That could be just what it wants us to do." He shouldered his shotgun. 
"But we do have a plan, right?" Amelia said. "We're not just going to abandon Vanai in there, right?"
"Um...of course not," Daniel said. "So let's think."

Vanai woke up dazed and woozy, thinking of for the second time that day that wild high school party at Sonja Alvarez's place. She blinked a few times, and realized that she was buried waist-deep in a room full of sand. The room was dark, but Vanai could just make out metal walls. She tried to squirm and free herself, but she couldn't move. She tried to move again, and she felt nothing but numbness. It was as if her entire body had fallen asleep. Underneath the deadly numbness, she could feel the dull pain of a wound. She must have been bitten by Dancer, and then dropped here...
She tried to look around, but she couldn't see or hear anything. Dancer's not here. So am I bait?

Outside, Daniel was staring at the gouges on his combat armor. "Look at those claws!" he kept saying, half-admiringly. He and Amelia were walking around the perimeter of the ship. 
"She'll be expecting us to go in through the airlock we came in through," Daniel had said. "We'll find another way in. There must be another entrance that she came out through."
"Since when is Dancer a she?" Amelia asked.
"You saw her! She's clearly a she. No male can jump like that." Unable to argue with that logic, Amelia conceded. 
The two of them had walked most of the way around the ship, when they spied another airlock, half-buried in sand. Daniel walked up and pulled it open, struggling against the sand. Eventually, he wrenched it open, and it stayed put, sand flowing into the ship. He and Amelia walked in, guns drawn, and they were back in the dark corridors of the Orpheon. 

"If I was an alien superpredator, where would I be?" Amelia mused. She and Daniel walked down the hall until she bent down to take a look at something. It was a puddle of some bluish-black substance, adhering to the floor. "Looks like spoor, maybe? Like it's marking it's territory?" 
Daniel gazed warily up and down the corridor. "Must mean we're close."
At that moment, their comms both chimed. Amelia pulled out hers and answered it. "Amelia Straffin."
"Amelia! This is Vanai. I'm, ah, still alive, and I'm inside a room half-buried in sand. I can barely move; I'm half paralyzed. Dancer's nowhere in sight. How are you?"
"We're inside the ship. No sign of Dancer, other than some kind of fluid substance. Do you have any idea where you are?"
"No," Vanai said. "And I can't really move much right now. It took all I had to reach my comm and dial you."
"Don't worry," Amelia said. "We'll find you. Just give me a second..." She typed in a few commands onto her comm, and then smiled. "I've got a lock on you," she said. "We'll be with you in a minute."

Vanai spent a few anxious moments trying to regain sensation in her limbs before the door burst open with a cry of 'BREACHING!' and revealing a hulking figure in combat armor, shotgun in hand. He took a step inside, shotgun raised, and fired it into one of the ventilation shafts, blowing off the shaft cover. 
"Daniel," Vanai said. "I'm glad to see you here."
"Did you see where Dancer went?" Daniel asked. "I was pretty sure she'd be hiding in one of the ventilation shafts."
"Or in the sand," Amelia said. 
"Dancer's clearly not here," Vanai said. "Now let's be moving." She tried to stand up, and fell to her knees in the sand. "I don't think I can walk."

There was suddenly a tremendous clattering sound, and the ship started to incline dramatically, the floor itself tilting under our feet. It wasn't stopping, but instead it continued to shift beneath us.
"This is Dancer's doing," Vanai said. "I don't know how, but it's behind this."
"We need to move," Daniel said.
"I can't walk."
"We need to move!" he shouted, and pushed the door open and started to run, the boots of his armor magnetically adhering to the tilting floor. It was at around a 20-degree angle, and tilting rapidly. It was all we could do to stay on our feet. We braced ourselves into the sand and opened the door to the hallway. We looked down it, and at the end, we could see sand starting to flow into the hallway, like a shipwreck but with sand instead of water. 
"Run!" Amelia shouted. She and Vanai started to run up the hallway, but it was like running up a hill. The ship bucked and swayed again, and suddenly it was immensely steeper. Amelia's ankles were burning, as if she was trying to climb a steep hill. The ship tilted again, and Amelia and Vanai grabbed onto a doorway to hold on. Daniel was far ahead already, his boots propelling him towards the first airlock and to freedom and sunlight, but Vanai and Amelia were too tired to curse his name. Behind and below them, sand was pooling rapidly and gaining on them. The two women pulled themselves up the hallway, using every finger and toe-hold they could find. The ship tilted again, and they found themselves at a 45-degree angle, staring up at the square of sunlight that was the airlock at the top of the corridor. They pulled themselves up the corridor even more frantically, while the ship kept tilting. Vanai and Amelia were more than halfway up the corridor, shooting glances down at the long slide to the sand beneath them, when the ship started to tilt and kept tilting, bringing up the floor in front of them as if it was trying to become a wall. Vanai gave an animal growl and threw herself forward, boots sliding on the floor's surface. And then her weakened, half-paralyzed ankle gave out, and she fell, sliding along the carpet back away from the sunlight towards sand and darkness. 

And then Amelia grabbed her by the back of her jacket, and Vanai clambered to her feet. Amelia was hanging on to a doorframe with one hand, and Vanai with the other. The ship was at a 60-degree angle or so, and the airlock entrance just a few meters away. 
"Couldn't have you dying on us, could I?" Amelia said. And then the ship pitched underneath them, leaving them hanging on for dear life. Visions filled their heads of being buried in a desert tomb ship, with an alien monster lurking somewhere inside. Vanai growled, physically picked up Amelia, and began to pull herself along the wall. The ship's floor lurched up towards them, but by some miracle they held on, Vanai's fingertips grasping the edge of the airlock. Amelia pushed off against the wall and grabbed on as well. They hauled themselves up into the airlock, and then up on their feet, sprinting out of the airlock and into the glorious sunlight. Daniel was waiting a good distance away, and he beckoned wildly for them to run to him. They set off across the sand, the ship sinking into the dunes behind them, knowing that the ship sinking would create a hole that could swallow them up as well. Running on sand felt horribly slow, and they shot glances back at the doomed ship, but they reached the crest of the next line of dunes, where Daniel was, and we all turned to watch as the Orpheon was swallowed up by sand.

"We made it," Amelia said. 
"No thanks to Daniel," Vanai said.
Daniel shrugged, the gesture hard to spot inside his power armor. "I saved the phaesite," he said, gesturing to the cargo crates. "We'll be well-paid for this."
"Can we perhaps have our next job be something where there isn't an alien monster trying to kill us?" Vanai asked. 
Daniel snorted. "We're Travellers. What did you expect?"

Just as the sun was reaching the horizon, the Balthazari government's desert vehicle pulled up to us. The driver gave us a questioning look, maybe wondering why we'd only escaped with a few crates' worth of phaesite, but Daniel and Vanai alike gave him a glare which practically dared him to criticize our results. We climbed into the vehicle and sped off.
"You don't think Dancer is dead, do you," Vanai said softly to Daniel from the backseat. 
"Dancer set that ship to sink on us," Daniel said. "She's too smart to not escape."
"Do you think she'll..come looking for us? For revenge?" Vanai asked.
"Whether she survived or not," Amelia cut in, "she's stranded in the desert. No food, no water...I don't think we need to worry about her."

We arrived back in Balthazar City, and the nondescript fellow in a business suit handed us all credit sticks with our payment. We handed the phaesite to him, and he promised that it'd come in handy. We all knew that he didn't want us asking any questions, but Vanai did. "So what are you going to use that phaesite for?"
"Internal security matters."
We didn't want to know anything more. 

We got back to our rooms at the TAS hostel. Alex was there, and we immediately launched into the story of our escapade. He'd heard of Dancer as well, making Amelia the only person in the party who hadn't known about her (the gender Daniel assigned sort of stuck) beforehand. We would have considered our adventure wrapped up right there, and just tallied it up as a third successful job, but we happened to hear about a murder the next day. 

A Balthazari government employee, working for an agency with an abbreviated name that, to be honest, probably did horrible things, had shown up murdered gruesomely. Guts strewn around his house, blood everywhere, all of that. We would have considered that just another day on the crapsack planet we'd found ourselves on, if it hadn't been for that Amelia recognized the man as the driver from the ride the Balthazari government had arranged. That, and the fact that a mysterious bluish fluid had apparently been found at the crime scene. 
"They drove us out over a hundred kilometers into the desert," Vanai said. "There's no way Dancer could have gotten here that quickly."
"Yes, there is," Amelia said quietly. "If she hitched a ride with us." There was a period of silence.
"Are you saying," Alex said slowly, "that Dancer may have ridden onboard your ride out of the desert with you?"
Amelia nodded. "And now she's loose in the city."

Adventure Writeup: Travellers at a Formal Ball

Good bars are few and far apart in the 3rd Imperium. In the future, substitutes have been introduced to replace alcohol in drinks in order to reduce harmful effects and risk of addiction, sacrificing flavor for safety. These drinks cover the shelves of many bars across known space, and while each bottle is good, they are almost never great. Not that alcohol is gone. If you have a bartender who's willing to go out of their way to get real alcohol that will boost your confidence and destroy your liver, then you know you'll have a good bar. Say what you will about Balthazar; most of it is accurate. It's a burned-out war-torn hellhole that nobody and their mother would ever in their right mind want to visit, much less stay. You don't go to Balthazar; you end up on Balthazar.

But damned if it didn't have one of the best bars in the sector. 

High off our success with the train heist, we all went back to the bar where we'd been recruited by "the resistance". We could have gone back to the hotel room, but it would have been too small for all the party we were packing. The rest of the patrons couldn't have cared less about us being there, but for many of us, it was our first real victory for a long time, the first of many to come, if we didn't die horribly first.

We were causing a real scene, with Amelia having trouble holding her spiked seltzer, Daniel singing a nursery rhyme (poorly) with Alex laughing at him, and Vanai wishing she had been there. Most of the other patrons began to leave because of how late it was. At least, I think that's why they left. No matter. The night wore on, and eventually it was only the four of us and the bartender left. He's probably a psion, the way he talks funny and how fast he gets us our drinks and the way his eyes glow when he thinks we can't see. Psionics are totally illegal, but we aren't exactly saints ourselves.

It was at this late hour that the door opened, and we all turned to look in a drunken stupor. A man, sharply decked out in a tuxedo, strolled into the bar, eyes full of life, and anger, and tears. He surveyed us all carefully before taking a handkerchief out of his coat pocket and dabbing at his eyes. He turned to us, and in an imperative tone, asked us-

"Is this the place?"

We looked at each other in confusion. We weren't totally there, and it seemed like he wasn't either, looking not at us but through us, preoccupied with something. Daniel spoke up.

"Um, sure."

The man perked up. "Really? This is where Archduke Ferdinand the 2nd-13th-5th died? Where he was stabbed to death by a madman? The place where my best friend was taken from me?" He began to choke up. We looked at each other uncomfortably. Great, another Balthazar nobleman. He probably knew the guy Daniel had shanked just before we were hired for the train heist. Daniel made a move towards his blade; we knew things were going to turn ugly fast. The man looked up again. "Then you all must have been here when he died. You must have seen the murder-" He was overcome with emotion again. "You all were here. And now- now you must-"

He pulled a few pieces of paper out from his jacket and handed them to us. They were invitations to some kind of formal ball.

"You were all there. You saw what that killer did to Ferdinand. I'm sorry you had to witness the death of a good man, and now I want you all to attend his funeral."

We stared at him uncomprehendingly for a minute.

"So... you don't know who we are, then?" asked Amelia.
The man looked at her with confusion. "No, but clearly you're all regulars at this establishment. You must have been there when he died, so you're invited to his funeral."

We stared at him again. Maybe he was too distraught over the death of his friend to think straight. Maybe he was trying to trick us. Maybe he was just stupid.

Nobody said anything until Vanai spoke up. "On behalf of this fine party of travellers, I, Lady Dame Vanai Cordé of the House of Cordé do accept your invitation to the funeral of Archduke Ron Paul the 2nd-5th- what were the numbers?"
"2nd-13th-5th."
"Yes, that. I accept your invitation on our behalf, sir. What was your name?"
"Lafayette. You may call me Lafayette." He turned to the rest of us. "Thank you, friends. I eagerly await your presence at the funeral."
He quickly turned and left the building.


"Huh," said Alex.

"I didn't think people could be so dense," Amelia thought aloud. "Clearly, I was wrong. Is this a good idea? Who knows the risks of going to a party for a dead guy that we killed!"

"Hey, don't try to take credit for that! That was all me!" said Daniel. "Anyway, parties are fun, and there'll be free food, so I say we go."

"We ARE going," declared Vanai. "Didn't you hear anything I said to that guy?"

"Yeah, but we thought you weren't gonna follow up," put Alex bluntly.

"But that makes no sense! What kind of person would just lie about going to a formal occasion like that? That's rude!"
The rest of us shuffled awkwardly before she continued. "It would be against protocol not to go after I already said yes, and it would be disrespectful to the dead guy. We are going to this party."

"See, I'm with this lady." exclaimed Daniel.

"Not you," she said.

"What? Come on! I'm great at parties! If anything, you should stay behind. You're the boring one. Eh? Eh?" He looked to Amelia and Alex for approval. He found none.

"Juvenile remarks aside, if someone was at that party who actually did see us- I mean, Daniel- kill the archduke, then we'll have real problems. The rest of us can claim ignorance, but not you. Besides, it would require changing out of your combat armor, and nobody wants that."

Daniel began to see the logic of the situation. Not that he liked it. "Yeah, yeah," he mumbled. "I was gonna stay back and, um, protect the hotel room, anyway. I hope y'all have fun."
He clearly did not want us to have fun. He disappeared into the hotel's parking garage shortly after that, muttering that he was going to go work on our stolen police car.

Back in the hotel room, Vanai nodded as if it were all settled and then started looking through pictures of what looked like prom dresses on her comm, sighing in delight now and then when she saw a particularly nice one. Alex checked the invitations, and saw that the funeral-ball for the guy Daniel shanked would be the day after tomorrow. Amelia sat down on the carpeted floor of the hotel room and pulled out a pair of woman's gloves, an industrial-strength battery, electrical wire, various electrical tools, and a soldering iron and started assembling some device while cackling softly to herself. Alex wondered once again what kind of group he'd gotten himself involved with and wandered outside.

Vanai's grey ball dress.
Shame about what happened to it.

On the day of the ball, Vanai assembled Amelia and Alex to look over their outfits before the ball. By golly, she wasn't going to go to a formal event without her 'bodyguards' looking tidy and professional. She was herself wearing an elaborate grey dress, loose and flowing and maybe a bit impractically long, but she had a smile on her face as she wore it. She nodded approvingly upon seeing Alex's pilot's dress uniform, looking well-kept and only about a decade out of style. Amelia had stubbornly decided to wear her lab coat, and was wearing the gloves she'd been working on earlier.

"Shouldn't we go check on what Daniel is doing?" Amelia said as we were on our way out.
"No, it's probably nothing," Vanai said, holding her dress to make sure it didn't get muddy in the gutter.

We learned on the drive to the ball every single one of Vanai's nervous habits. She was clearly worried and/or excited, as she kept clasping and unclasping her hands, and she kept on looking out the window, dreaming of meeting that one perfect guy or girl (after almost a year with her, we're still not sure) or something like that. Alex and Amelia were more wondering more about whether using the plastic baggies they'd brought to bring food home with would get them ejected or not. Balthazar may be a hellhole, but it's got good seltzer water.

We showed up at the building where the funeral was to take place, and we honestly couldn't tell whether it was supposed to be a funeral or a party. There was a live quartet playing classical music, a bunch of fancy-looking people wandering about talking and dancing, and an honest-to-God caller. "Dame Vanai Cordé, and escort," he announced as we entered.

Basically what the funeral looked like

Vanai practically squealed as soon as she got inside, and quickly went off to go hang out with some of the local bigwigs, ditching us. Alex wandered over to the buffet and made small talk with one of the guards posted around the room. Amelia did the same, but skipped the latter.

The party had been going on for a while, and the unkind, stingy souls manning the buffet were starting to give Alex and Amelia dirty looks, so the two of them quickly made themselves look busy by 'admiring the architecture' of the room. It was while they were trying to avoid making eye contact with the buffet servers that Amelia noticed the suspicious-looking person in a maintenance worker's outfit slipping furtively into an unmarked door near the back of the room.

"I'm gonna go check that guy out," Amelia said. "It'll give me something to do."

"Go ahead," Alex said, shrugging. Amelia went off to go follow him.

Atherton Beryl

On the dance floor, Vanai had just finished another waltz with another young officer in the Balthazari Space Force when she went to sit down for a moment and grab some champagne. She had just taken a champagne flute from a passing waiter when she turned and ran straight into a man in a tuxedo passing the other way, jostling some champagne onto his jacket.
He looked up. "You insult my honor," he said angrily. Then his eyes met Vanai's. "You!" he said. "You're that Cordé woman!"

"You're that Beryl war profiteer," she said. "Tell me, do you still charge your workers for their sleeping privileges, or just for their food?"

"You have no idea of how a business is run," he said coldly. "Perhaps that's why House Beryl continues to have larger revenues and a stronger shipping fleet than House Cordé." A crowd of people, including Alex, had begun to gather around as voices were raised. The two evidently had some history.

"I had no idea that being a merchant of death was so lucrative," Vanai replied. "Of course, I suppose you need the cash to pay for your older brother's- Gavilar, I believe his name was- gambling debts. 7.4 million credits to a Mondasian mob leader, I believe?"

"Slander. Remember, everyone," Beryl gestured to the assembled group, "my family's honor is being slandered, openly slandered, by this woman who has fallen in with a group of vagabonds and Travellers!"

Vanai's lips tightened. "You talk a lot about honor for a man with none."

"Honor?" Beryl shouted. "Tell me, Cordé, how many of your Traveller boys have you slept with? How many? Give me a number!"

With a quick gesture, Vanai dashed the remainder of the champagne in the flute onto Beryl's suit. He looked down at it, then looked up at Vanai, rage in his eyes.

"You Cordé bitch!" he spat. His hand went to the sword at his side. Vanai turned to Alex, who had a shocked expression on his face.

"Sword," Vanai said. "Pass me my sword."

And then the old guy we'd met at the bar, Lafayette, swept in. "This will be an affair of honor," he declared. "Dame Cordé, you may prepare with your retainer in that corner. Mr. Beryl, you may do the same over there." The two duelists did as he instructed, and the assorted nobles watching split into different camps surrounding their preferred victor.

"Huh. Did you just get yourself into a fight at a fancy party?" Alex asked Vanai. "I kind of figured it'd be me doing that."

"His family's an old enemy." Vanai said. "I'm fairly certain that provoking duels with Beryls is a family tradition. Pass me my sword."Alex handed her Navy rapier to her from where he'd been holding it, and she swung it around experimentally. "I'm going to stretch beforehand," she said. "I hear Atherton Beryl's good with a sword."

"Don't you want to change out of your dress?" Alex asked.

"I'm wearing my cloth armor underneath," she said, "and, FYI, dresses are actually fairly easy to move around in in combat. Ask me how I know this."

While the insults and duel preparations were going on on the dance floor, Amelia had snuck into the maintenance door and was looking around. It was dark back there, as maintenance passageways tend to be, and so Amelia felt her way along to the left until she bumped into something on the floor. She looked down. It was a body, dressed in a maintenance worker's uniform, and he was not breathing. Oh shit. Gripping her only weapon, her gloves modified to give an electrical shock, she crept past the body and encountered a set of stairs leading upward. She considered for a moment, and then crept up them.


Back in the main room, Vanai stepped forward, blade in hand, to face Beryl. He had a rapier in his own hand, and crouched slightly, blade in front of him. Vanai turned to assume a classic fencing stance, side turned to face Beryl.
"Begin," Lafayette called. The poor guy held himself together pretty well, considering that there was going to be a swordfight at his best friend's funeral.
Vanai charged forward, slashing at Beryl, who easily parried. Vanai stabbed at Beryl's chest, and he stepped to the side, slashing at her head. She brought up her blade just in time to parry it, once, twice, and then again, before stepping back to recover. Beryl gave her no time to rest, however, as he stepped forward, slashing at her defenses. Vanai blocked the first slash, and the second, but the third slash nicked her arm. Despite the bleeding, she recovered quickly, pressing the attack and forcing Beryl backwards behind a flurry of blows. Beryl fell back, forced to defend himself, as Vanai slashed at his cheek, cutting it, before using a superb riposte and lunge which caught Beryl in the torso.

Back on the maintenance stairway, Amelia had just crept up to the top and was looking out. There was a balcony there, overlooking the entire ballroom below. Behind the balcony railing, out of sight, crouched an assassin in the classic 'I'm-about-to-shoot-someone" pose, staring down the sights of a sniper's Gauss rifle. The assassin was wearing full battle armor, which had some form of camouflage active which made it blend into its surroundings. Amelia took a look at the assassin, took a look at the combat armor, took a look at the sniper rifle, and glanced down at her own electrified opera gloves. Deciding that discretion is the better part of valor, she carefully took a step backwards towards the stairs.

Back on the ballroom floor, the look of shock on Beryl's face was beautiful to watch. He'd evidently been expecting to win, and was staring at the bloody hole in his torso with a look of complete dumbfoundedness. Then he recovered his composure, and bowed theatrically to Vanai.
"A good day to you, Dame Cordé," he said. Then, smirk on his face, he stepped aside to give the sniper a clear shot at Vanai.

The sniper fired, a magnetically-propelled tungsten-alloy dart exploding out from the barrel at a speed of over 3,000 meters per second towards Vanai. And inexplicably, it slammed into Beryl's back, sending blood spraying out over the assembled guests and Vanai's gorgeous grey dress. And the ball erupted into chaos and screaming. Alex, with the trained reflexes of a combat veteran, yelled "Move!" at Vanai, and ran for cover, pulling out his own cutlass as he went. The nobles were practically tripping over themselves to get out of there, and Vanai was staring blankly at Beryl, who was lying in agony on the floor, and wondering how it all could have happened.

And then the Imperial Intelligence kill squad broke in through the massive picture windows on one wall, and the chaos really started. There were four of them, wearing full tactical gear, brandishing automatic rifles and spraying bullets at anything in sight. The nobles who had been fleeing in that direction turned and ran, some of them falling to the kill squad's indiscriminate fire. From the balcony overlooking it all, the assassin fired again, the Gauss dart splitting the air directly above Vanai's head. She finally saw sense and ran for over, sensibly hiding directly below the balcony with Alex, the only place in the room where the assassin couldn't fire at her.

Near the window where the kill squad had burst in, Lafayette, the host of the now horribly off-track funeral-party turned to his retainer. "Give me my sword," he said. The sword in question, Adrienne, was a massive broadsword, a family heirloom of the Lafayette lineage. Forged in the fires of Mount Hestian on Imperial Prime using techniques now lost to the ages, it was the blade of centuries of great warlords and leaders. Now, it was being used in it's eternal purpose: to kill or maim as many of the enemies of the Lafayette line as possible. Lafayette drew Adrienne from its scabbard, crying "For the memory of Ferdinand the 2nd-13th-5th!" He swept upon the kill squad like a storm, hacking and cutting at those who had dared dishonor his dear friend's memory.

Seeing the chaos that had erupted in the ballroom below, the assassin, known only as 'Wolf', stood and crossed quickly to the stairs leading down, shouldering her sniper rifle. She would have to deal with the target quickly, lest she escape in the chaos. She quickly took the steps down at a jog, and was about to exit the maintenance chamber when, from behind a corner, a pair of hands in white gloves grabbed her armor by the neck. "Got you!" said Dr. Amelia Straffin, before clenching to activate her gloves. Thousands of volts of electricity arced into Wolf's neck.

And did nothing. The combat armor was completely insulated, and impervious to pesky little things like water, the elements, and near-lethal doses of electricity. Amelia suddenly realized, with her gloves ineffective, exactly how much trouble she was in. The faceplate of Wolf's helmet turned to face Amelia. "Give me one reason that I shouldn't kill you right now."

Outside, Vanai and Alex were firing potshots at the kill squad from their cover, and Lafayette was carving his way through the would-be assassins, his broadsword seeming to gleam with bloodlust. He ran an assassin through with Adrienne, before wrenching it out and hacking at another, a fierce grin on his face. And then, as if fate herself had flipped us the middle finger, a band of anarchists burst in through the front doors, firing at everyone in sight.

"Today is just not our day," Alex observed dryly.

Vanai ignored him, firing at the assassins threatening to overwhelm Lafayette from all sides. One of them, seeing the muzzle flash from her autopistol, fired a quick burst at her, and she screamed, blood spreading outward over her dress.

Amelia, back inside the maintenance corridor, was utterly terrified. To her credit, she tilted her head to the side, as she always did when she was concentrating, and started to think. "Well," she said, "you were probably hired by my brother, Erik Straffin, the Mafia boss. You know him? Looks like me, but a bit taller, scar on his cheek, and a burning psychopathic desire to utterly destroy his enemies?"

"Yeah, actually," Wolf said. "Sounds like him."

"Think about it," Amelia said. "Your target's Vanai Cordé. A tough target at the best of times, but you failed. She's still very much alive. As I've said, I know Erik well. I should. I'm his sister."

"Really?" Wolf asked, looking up and down.

"Now, in our family, I'm the nice one. I don't work for Erik. But do you know what Erik does to people who fail him?"

Wolf furrowed her brow inside her helmet.

"Trust me when I say you don't want to find out," Amelia said. "He's a sadistic and extremely inventive man. Right now, your best move is to run, and run as far as possible. Trust me." Wolf thought about it.
"What did you say your name was?"

"Amelia. Amelia Straffin."

"See you around, Amelia." She quickly strode out the door. "I'd love to talk with you more, once this whole thing with your brother is sorted out."

Amelia watched as the professional assassin in full battle armor reached the grounds outside and started sprinting away.

Inside the ballroom, it was complete and utter chaos. Machine pistol-toting anarchists were spraying bullets at the nobles, the Imperial kill squad, the Travellers huddled in the corner, the walls, and basically anything that moved except for each other. A stray bullet hit Vanai and she went down, clutching her arm. Alex picked up her autopistol and returned fire, pumping shots at the oncoming anarchists. Lafayette thrust his sword into the chest of one of the assassins, and the man fell, dead before he hit the ground. Alex fired at the anarchists, killing one, while fire from a member of the kill squad dropped another, and the remainder fled. In another part of the ballroom, surrounded by the corpses of fallen foes, Lafayette faced only two survivors from the original kill team. He swung at one, a vicious overhead cut which bit deep into the assassin's neck. He screamed, and then his partner shot Lafayette in the back. As Alex watched, Lafayette staggered, and the assassin shot him again. Alex desperately fired at the assassin, who shot Lafayette once more, before fleeing towards the window.

Alex surveyed the room. The shooting had stopped, and those who had survived began to stir. Alex quickly assessed Vanai's condition, noting that she was still breathing. He tore off a few strips from the bottom portion of her dress, and quickly binded them around her wounds. "Much appreciated," Vanai said. "I don't suppose you could help me walk?"

Alex helped her up, and together, they slowly walked over to Lafayette. He was on the floor, and in bad shape. He looked as if he was quickly bleeding out, and his breathing was ragged and slow. "Thank you," he whispered, "for doing...your...best." He relaxed, and grew still. Alex felt for a pulse, saw there was none, and stood up. The few nobles able to walk had gathered around Lafayette's body, heads bowed. Outside, they heard the sound of police sirens, coming to the scene. Vanai and Alex walked to the door, slowly, to greet them. Amelia came out from the maintenance area and fell in alongside them. "Hey guys! I just bluffed this professional assassin into fleeing! How cool is that?"

"Huh. That is something," Alex said.

"Also, you two look like hell. Actually, just Vanai," Amelia said. Vanai was bleeding in two places, and her dress was torn and covered in bloodstains.

Alex patted himself up and down, as if to check all his limbs were still there. "I seem to completely fine," he said. "How about that?"

Afterwards, there was a lot of bureaucracy to wade through. The police had to investigate and tag dozens of bodies in what was already being billed as the massacre of the century, which was pretty impressive, given that the new one only started eight years ago. Of course, given that this was Balthazar, there'd probably be another one equally horrific next month. We had to do a great number of interviews with police and detectives, in which we expended a lot of time and energy in proving to the police that we weren't, in fact, in cahoots with the assassins. Beryl's official cause of death was the crossfire from the kill squad, although the Gauss rifle shot to the back probably hadn't helped him. We didn't hear anything from Wolf, but given her occupation, we presumed that was a good sign.

As an unexpected plus, it turned out that the party guests who gave interviews to the police had been suitably impressed by our heroism (or rather, to Alex's disgust, the heroism of "that brave young noble lady with the sword and gun, and her plucky sidekick") that when the executor assessed Lafayette's will, we were given a small portion of his estate. Lafayette's family had all died years ago, and, as befits the man who we learned was in fact Lord Admiral Gilbert Lafayette, of the Balthazari Space Navy, that we were given one of his older ships, an aging 'Free Trader'-class ship with a full jump drive, multiple staterooms, and a 64 H-ton cargo bay. So like that, we were real Travellers, in possession of a good ship and the means to fly her. We weren't quite sure what to call her: Vanai lobbied for a suitably grand name, such as Atlantica or Lady of Aquitaine or Galactica, while Alex was reportedly partial to Battle of Dessel. In the end, though, Amelia won out, and our ship was called Wolf.

Character Profile: Daniel Warren

Daniel Warren: Oft-Forgotten Warrior

"Never trust a commissioned officer."- Daniel Warren, after being asked how he has managed to be the sole survivor of yet another mission. 

Daniel Warren was "born" on a small, unnamed ice-planet that had been abandoned by the Imperium for unknown reasons. Daniel never knew his biological parents, his DNA having been removed from his mother before she was even aware she was pregnant, and was instead brought to life in a vat in a secret laboratory in the year 1068. He grew quickly, and soon was removed from the tube he was born from and moved to a strict schedule of physical and mental exercises. However, Daniel quickly began to develop an incredible bloodlust, and was soon contained in a small room, where human contact was entirely removed from his life. Unfortunately for the lab, the power systems all fell offline due to unknown reasons, leading to the climate systems of the lab shutting down, and the lab quickly was abandoned, leaving Daniel to die in his cell from either frostbite or starvation. However, an old scavenger happened upon the lab, and saved Daniel from his otherwise inevitable death. Daniel, who had not been in the same room as another person for about 11 years, killed the old scavenger and stole his supplies. Daniel then wandered off into the icy wastes, where he continued to kill and steal to survive. Eventually, Daniel came across a small Imperial encampment, where he was captured, and after claiming to have great combat experience, was recruited to the Imperial Army. About two years later, the planet was destroyed due to it's sun expanding and swallowing the planet.

Daniel quickly proved himself to be adept in combat, being sent on multiple missions during the war on Balthazar and returning alive after each one, despite being sent on the some of the highest casualty missions, although his superiors noted how many soldiers in the same squads seemed to die to accidents and being shot in the back by ambushers. It was during his time in the military that he met Anne Redman, who was a armored vehicle pilot, and was one of the few people to serve multiple consecutive missions with Daniel and be completely uninjured every time. She and Daniel entered a relationship, although Redman was transferred to Dessel due to the slow collapse of that front for the Imperials. Daniel continued to fight in the war, until General Hardcastle, the head commander of the Imperial troops on Balthazar, deemed Daniel too dangerous, and had his platoon sent on a suicidal charge towards enemy fortifications. Daniel's platoon was completely wiped out, except for Daniel, who had retreated once he realized the impossibility of his given mission. General Hardcastle, always scheming, used his retreat as a charge for disobeying direct orders, and Daniel was dishonorably discharged from the Imperial Army.

After being discharged from the army, Daniel wandered Balthazar for about a month, trying to find odd jobs, when he was approached by the Mondasian Mafia. He was informed that he could be of great use to the Mafia, and all he had to do was rough up some people who weren't paying their debts off fast enough. However, Daniel quickly found himself going against the Mafia after he killed his supervisor on his first job and stole his wallet. Daniel, who was at this point getting tired of constantly being shot at on sight, took the first opportunity to get off of Balthazar. It just so happened that said opportunity happened to be joining the Imperial Marines.

The Marines, who had access to his personnel files from his army days, were well aware of the havoc he could wreck, assigned him to one of their Breaching squads, who all wore heavy armor. Daniel took to the posting like a fish to water, and quickly proved his worth in combat engagements. Nonetheless, he had to be reprimanded multiple times for being too trigger happy, which all came to a head when he was sent on an operation and he opened fire on the enemy during negotiations, effectively killing any leads the marines could have gotten on possible Greycoat activity. The marines had to do something, and so they gave him his suit of combat armor, a shotgun, and some credits and sent him on his way. Daniel, not really caring where he went, simply boarded the first flight off planet he could. Unfortunately for him, the planet he was headed to was Balthazar. Daniel then decided the only way to avoid the constant trouble he had once had was to hide his identity, and so donned his combat armor and began walking to the nearest bar he could, hoping to avoid any trouble once he got there.

Traits and Personality
Daniel is 6' 1" in height, with blue eyes and short, brown hair. He is very determined in his beliefs, and is very unlikely to change his opinion on something once he has one. He is also pragmatic over most anything else, and will often break promises if it means he or the party will gain something. Daniel does have a code of honor, but he only applies it to himself, meaning that a promise from the rest of the party may not be a promise from him. He also will more often than not attempt to hide his personality at all costs, and has killed more than once to keep his privacy. Daniel is almost always wearing his combat armor, and his face is almost entirely covered when he's not. Daniel doesn't really like the Imperium, but also believes that it's opponents aren't much better.

Daniel primarily uses his Shotgun in combat, alongside his Blade, which is just a big knife. Daniel's biggest asset in combat however is his combat armor, which allows him to ignore most small arms fire, allowing him to both distract enemies for his team mates and to stop him from getting killed while charging his enemies in order to most effectively use his weaponry.

Adventure Writeup: The Train Job

The Train Job (Artist's Impression)

The Imperium is simultaneously the most powerful and the most impotent institution humanity has ever created. It is the most powerful in that it rules over a vast and endless expanse of worlds, uniting them through a common military and a common government with the Emperor at its head. And yet it is the most impotent, in that it's government sets few laws and does little to regulate the worst abuses of its member worlds. One of those member worlds is Balthazar.

Located in a small corner of a backwater subsector of an unfashionable sector of the Imperium, the world of Balthazar is unremarkable. With a population numbering in the tens of millions, and few exports to speak of, Balthazar has little influence over the rest of the subsector. It is ruled by an authoritarian hereditary monarch, Archduke Ronald 'Ron' Paul VIII, and the Imperium can do little to temper his iron rule. 

One day, four roguish-looking mercenaries walked through the front doors of a prefabricated bar by Balthazar's spaceport, identical to countless others throughout the Imperium. An assortment of shady-looking patrons (lowercase p) looked warily up at them as they entered. The woman in the lead smiled cheerily at them. "Well," she said, "I'm glad to be here."

Those four mercenaries (actually, we prefer 'Travellers') were us, in case you hadn't picked up on that. We'd met at the spaceport, as we were all too broke to do anything besides hang out around the spaceport looking for work. We'd met, and, as these things go, we'd decided to be a mercenary company. It's probably a scathing comment as to the state of the economy in the subsector that a bunch of highly qualified, otherwise respectable veterans like us couldn't land any better jobs.

Our leader, however reluctantly, was Dame Vanai Cordé. She had the highest social standing of any of us- a knighthood, granted for 'distinguished service to the Imperium'- and so she'd look the best on our business cards and brochures and the like. Make us look almost-reputable, maybe. She'd done four terms in the Navy, become a Lieutenant, did various heroic and completely ethical things, and altogether made a series of good life choices. Good for her.

And then there was Alex Movithi. He was also a Navy veteran, but from what he left out when he was telling us about himself, we gathered that'd he'd been doing some shady shit since his military days. Still, he was apparently a good pilot, and he looked fairly scary, with the bandanna of his he always wore, and the huge cutlass strapped to his side.

Dr. Amelia Straffin was with us as well. When we first met her, she was wearing a lab coat and tinkering with some integral part of the spaceport's fuel tanks. We convinced her that this was a very bad idea, and gave her a stun baton to work on. An hour or so later, she was done, and the stun baton had enough volts pumping through it to stun a horse. We hired her on the spot.

And then there was Daniel. The man would have looked completely generic- someone who looked at him would never be able to pick him out of a crowd, or a lineup. We guessed that the latter was more likely, given that he talked about shivving a guy for a few credits in his pocket. He looked completely generic, apart from the huge knife (he called it a blade) he had with him. Except that he spent half the time inside a huge suit of combat armor. Military grade, at least, and enough to transform the wearer into a one-man tank in battle. In our eyes, this completely made up for his numerous ethical failings. We're pretty sure his last name was Warren, by the way. We just can't be sure.

So there we were, in the door of a shady bar on Balthazar. We walked inside, carting our various weapons (an autorifle, an autopistol, a rapier, a stun pistol, a cutlass, a stun stick, plus Daniel Warren and his shotgun) and pulled up seats at the bar. The bartender was sullen, the other patrons ignoring us, and the decor uninspiring. We were thinking of packing up and heading back out into the rain when the door opened and someone new walked in.

He barged in dressed in suit and tie, and he was obviously very drunk already. He staggered a bit as he sat down sloppily next to us, at the only open seat at the bar. We exchanged looks. He ordered a beer, and then his gaze moved to us. We could see him taking in the guns and swords at our sides, and then he saw Daniel, wearing his full suit of combat armor and toting a shotgun. His jaw dropped.

He marched blearily over to us, and started saying that we should turn over our weapons to the authorities immediately, so that they could serve the benevolent government of Archduke Ron Paul. We were just trying to ignore him, hoping he'd go away so that we could finish our drinks in peace. Then he noticed for the first time that Alex was wearing a coat that happened to be gray. We could practically see the gears in his brain turning as his opinion of us went from "heavily armed n'er do well mercenaries" to "heavily armed Greycoat terrorists". He leaned towards us and said, in what he evidently thought was a cunning way to determine whether we were, in fact, associated with that rebel group, said, "You know, today is the anniversary of the defeat of those filthy Greycoats by our glorious leader, Archduke Ron Paul VIII, during the War!" We also tried to ignore this, because we'd all served in the War, and we knew better than most that Ron Paul's regime had likely been covertly supporting the Greycoats themselves.

"Say", the man continued, "that coat looks kind of grey."
"So it is," Alex replied, returning to his drink.
"Hey," the man said, "I think that you're one of those filthy Greycoat scum!"
"I'm not," Alex replied, "and I think that you should go away and let us enjoy our drinks in peace."

The man paused for a second when he heard this, and then bawled out that he was in fact a very important government official, who had the ear of Archduke Ron Paul himself, and that if we didn't immediately give him weapons and come with him to the police station, there'd be consequences. He said some other things too, but we couldn't quite make them out. Something about 'what we do with Greycoats around here'.

Vanai was about to step forward to try and calm him down with her superior social standing, when the man reached into his pocket and, quick as a snake, Daniel whipped out his long knife and stabbed him in the chest.

Because of the noise he'd been making, everyone in the bar was watching us, and so everyone in the bar was watching when Daniel's blade entered his chest and then pulled back out. The man slumped to the ground, blood fountaining from his chest. We looked at each other, and then at Daniel. He shrugged. "It looked like he was reaching for a knife," he said. No one was in any hurry to check if he was correct. We just grabbed our drinks and hustled outside before anyone could see us.

We hurried out into the drizzling rain, and back towards the hostel we were staying at. When we got there, there was a man waiting for us in the lobby, trying very hard to look inconspicuous behind a newspaper. Long story short, we ended up in a dark alley, listening to him explain his elaborate plan for us to hijack a train.

So apparently, this very sketchy-looking guy was with 'the resistance'. No specific name, just 'the resistance'. Apparently, they'd gotten word of the Archduke's regime planning to smuggle a trainload of heavy weapons into Balthazar City from the backcountry spaceport where they'd unloaded them. Those weapons would be transported onboard a mag-lev train tomorrow under heavy guard. The reason that 'the resistance' couldn't just bomb the train is that the regime was disguising this as an ordinary passenger train, complete with several dozen civilian passengers. The guy had a full timetable for the train, and told us that 'the resistance' would reimburse us handsomely if we could pull this off. It's probably a testament to our desperation at that point that we didn't even argue or try to bargain with him.

So we went back to the hotel room to figure out what we'd gotten ourselves into. We threw around a lot of ideas about how we could pull this off. Maybe we could shut off the power to the track to stop the train (too hard). Maybe we could buy tickets and sneak onboard (all the seats were taken). Eventually, as the night got darker and our thoughts less lucid, we decided that we'd jump onto the train.

This wasn't as crazy as it sounded. Looking at satellite images of the train track, we could see that the train would pass below a low hill, so that it would only be a short jump from the hill and onto the back of the train. The train would also have to slow down there in order to go around a bend. We were desperate and possibly drunk at that point, so we agreed that it sounded good and decided to go ahead with it.

Late that night, Vanai got a call on her comm. She took a look at the caller ID, stepped onto the balcony outside, and spent a few minutes talking. She then stepped back inside and coolly informed us that she needed to stay back tomorrow and 'guard the hotel room'.

We didn't take that very well, but she refused to budge. After a long argument, with Daniel muttering disparaging things about 'smug commissioned officers', the three of us all just decided to go to bed and handle the job ourselves. We woke up the next morning, grabbed our weapons and gear, and headed out to go rob a train, leaving Vanai behind to 'guard the hotel room'. It was probably a euphemism for something, we just weren't sure what.

The first thing we realized is that we didn't have a way to actually get to the train car. If Vanai had been with us, she probably would have suggested that we rent a car, and then drive there. We decided that that would be too risky. What if we were recognized? Besides, we'd have to sign for it, and we could be on some government watch list for stabbing that guy in the bar last night, or whatever Alex did in his past life. So, being Travellers, we decided to carjack someone.

We had to do a lot of wandering around in order to find a car. Daniel told us that he was a 'great driver', and that he would be able to drive us to the site as soon as he got exactly the right car. We did a lot of wandering around the streets of the city, looking for cars that would work. We'd see someone getting out of a car, and Daniel would shake his head. "Not fast enough," or "wrong color". And then we saw one car, and his eyes lit up.

It was a cherry-red Lamberrari GT X18, one of the finest- and coolest- cars on the market, with an unbeatable engine and acceleration to die for. And some random old man was stepping out of it, holding the keys in his hand. "I'll distract him," Alex said. He stepped forward nonchalantly towards the old man.
"Hello there," Alex said. "Nice weather, isn't it?"
"It certainly is, youngster," the man said. "I should say, back in my Army days- I was in the Balthazari State Security Forces, by the way- I saw plenty of weather just like this. You see, it was in a little town right here on our great nation, I don't recall the name, where..." Alex just nodded in the appropriate places, as if he were listening intently. Behind him, Daniel and Amelia ran to the car, only to find that it was locked. Amelia somehow picked the lock on the car door and then hotwired the car, all in a matter of seconds. We didn't even see her take out lockpicks, she was so fast. "Alex, I'm in," she called. As soon as he heard that, Alex practically tackled the guy, knocking him over, and holding him down. He jabbed with his fingers at somewhere on the guy's neck, and he abruptly slumped backwards, unconscious. With a random civilian calling for the police behind us, Alex leaped up and sprinted towards the car. We then all piled in as the car's owner was struggling to regain his footing, and took off with a screech of tires.

That car was a dream to drive. Plush leather seats, sporty red paint scheme, smooth streamlined profile- it was the best car any of us have ever driven. Daniel was in the driver's seat, whooping as he crouched over the wheel like a race car driver. Amelia was in the passenger's seat, smiling as we zoomed through the city streets. Alex was in the back, sprawled over the seats, keeping a wary eye out for any pursuit. We got out of the city and into the countryside, and it was glorious. No other cars on the roads, just us and the pavement. And then we figured out that we'd stolen the car from a war criminal.

The Butcher of Balthazar, war criminal during 'the War'.

Daniel was messing with the radio, trying to find a station that played something besides government propaganda, and he finally got to a station that sounded like a police frequency. It was a bit strange that a civilian car was picking up government chatter, and then we heard someone on the radio say something like "Butcher's been carjacked. We're deploying assets to intercept. Wouldn't want him to get upset." We all looked at each other, and then Amelia rummaged through the glove compartment and found a pistol and what looked like a regimental insignia dating back to 'the War'. We were puzzled for a minute, and then remembered that a noted war criminal who served in the Balthazari State Security Forces had become known as the 'Butcher of Balthazar' had been given sanctuary by Archduke Ron Paul. This was probably the guy we'd stolen the car from.

So there we were, driving down the highway in a car we'd stolen from a war criminal, on our way to rob a train full of guns. We could hear the voice on the police frequency saying something about how the police units were on our way, and we freaked out. And then Amelia realized that the radio had a transmit function. She practically cackled upon realizing that she could now transmit lies and false reports to every government agency in the area.

Long story short, a few minutes later, we were still driving down the highway, having told the police, the army, the secret police, the civil defense ministry, and the local firefighters that there was alternately:
1, a Kreynos invasion outside the city;
2, an assassination attempt on the life of an important government official;
3, a band of scruffy yet inexplicably-well-armed Travellers holding hostages inside the spaceport;
4, a Greycoat terrorist attack on civilians at a shopping mall;

5, a little old lady who needed help crossing the street.

Pleased with ourselves for distracting the authorities' attention so easily, we sped on towards the ambush point, still on schedule to intercept the train. And then we saw a police barricade ahead. The entire road was blocked, and the police officers behind it pulled out guns and motioned at us to stop as we drove towards them. They pulled out pistols and started shooting at us, as we instinctively ducked for cover inside the car. Bullets hit our car, and Daniel wrenched the steering wheel to the left, swerving the car into a ditch.

The car stuck in the ditch, partially on its side, with us inside. The police from the barricade stopped shooting, and we all quickly grabbed our guns and crouched behind the car. The first police officer stopped as he approached the car, gun drawn. He turned to look over his shoulder at his colleague behind him. "It doesn't look like..."

Alex shot him in the shoulder, and the man fell. His colleagues behind him started shooting at us, but we sheltered behind the car, so their bullets did little more than damage the paintwork. Amelia got off a shot from her stun pistol, dropping another. There was only one more police officer behind the barricade, and he stopped shooting and ran once he saw that we'd taken out his fellows.

Once he'd run off, we stood up from behind the car and cheered. We'd won our first gunfight, but our car was stuck in the ditch and riddled with bullet holes. And then we saw that there was a police car parked behind the barricade. We couldn't find the keys anywhere, so Amelia picked the lock and hotwired the car, and off we were.

We sped down the highway with no more problems. There were few other cars on the road, and they pulled to the side quickly enough once Daniel turned on the sirens. It was a fun ride, although not as fun as the Lamberrari had been, and we soon pulled down a country road, parked the police car on a hill, and went to walk the rest of the way to the train track.

We were well equipped, although we weren't sure about how many guards we'd be facing on the train. We found ourselves a comfortable position atop the hill and settled down to wait for the train to come. We checked our weapons (Daniel: A shotgun, a 'blade', and a full set of military-grade combat armor; Alex: a cutlass, an autopistol; Amelia: a stunstick, a stun pistol, and her incredible intellect) and settled in to wait.

The train came in right on schedule. As we saw it approaching, we noticed that it had only four cars, pulled by an engine on the front.
"We'll jump onto the roof of the last car," Alex said. "Move up from there." The train was rapidly approaching, and we all tensed for the jump.
"I've just thought of something," Amelia said. "I'm not in the best shape; I'm not sure if I can make that jump."
"Then I'll carry you," Daniel yelled. He grabbed Amelia, slung her over her shoulders, and we all leaped out onto roof of the speeding train.

We landed on the roof of the last car, the wind whooshing past our ears. We looked at each other, and started crawling gingerly towards the back of the car, trying not to look out at the landscape whizzing past us on either side. There was a small balcony on the back of the train, where a single guard with an assault rifle stood, facing away from us. Daniel looked to Alex, who nodded, and Daniel leaped onto the balcony, wrestling with the guard for a minute before throwing him over the balcony. Alex and Amelia looked at each other for a minute, as if to ask "what kind of person did we get involved with?" We hoisted our weapons and got ready to go inside. Then Amelia spotted a communications panel, and she bent down to open it up. She produced a screwdriver and a datapad from somewhere, and started fiddling with its interior workings. "I can get control of the intercom system from here," she announced a few moments later. "Want me to say something?" Alex nodded. Amelia turned back to the communications terminal.
"All right, punks, we're stealing your cargo and there's nothing you can do to stop us!" she yelled into the speaker. Her voice echoed around the train, startling the passengers. On the back balcony, Alex turned to Amelia. "Why would you do that?" he asked.
"In order to intimidate them," she replied matter-of-factly.
"We need to move," Daniel said. "I'll take lead. Alex, stay behind me. Amelia, stay back here and keep messing with their communications. See what else you can do."

Daniel, wearing full combat armor, kicked down the door to the last train car, shotgun in hand. The car was a second-class compartment, full of passengers who turned to stare at the burly figure as he entered. They ran through the central aisle, guns drawn, towards the entrance to the next car. Daniel broke down that door as well, and the two Travellers continued into the next car, which was full of first-class passengers. One of the men there stood up to block the way, but Daniel shoved him aside and continued on to the door to the next car.

"This is probably the cargo," Alex said. "If there's any more guards, there'll be here."
"What do you think the armor is for?" Daniel replied. With a cry of "BREACHING!" he broke down the door and burst through. There were two parallel rows of dark containers, and Daniel crouched behind one, Alex behind another. These must have been the weapons. Suddenly, a guard in a dark balaclava at the other end of the car whirled, pulling out an assault rifle to fire at the Travellers. Two more guards appeared behind him, similarly armed, and fired at the Travellers, who stayed crouched behind the crates. Daniel fired back with his shotgun, and Alex with his pistol, neither of their shots hitting a guard. They quickly ducked back down behind the crates as the guards fired bursts of bullets back at them, sparking off of the wall behind them. "We're trapped," Alex said, making it a curse.

Amelia was sitting in the back of the train, fiddling with the workings of the communications panel via her comm. "Ha," she said, as she reached the train's surveillance system. She frowned at the image on her screen. She could see a gunfight in progress, with her friends pinned down behind the rows of crates. She typed quickly on the device's screen, trying to reach the train's systems. It wouldn't work. Frustrated, she dropped the comm, pulled out her stunner, and moved quickly through the train car, past the passengers huddling beneath their seats, and towards the car with the weapons.

Inside that car, Alex and Daniel huddled behind their respective crates, ducking up every so often to exchange bursts of gunfire with the guards. "We need to do something," Alex called to Daniel. Daniel nodded. "I think that my armor might..." He was interrupted by a small explosion which tore violently through the side of the train car, showering those inside with debris and sending the other crates rattling around on the floor. Wind whooshed through the newly-created hole in the train car's side."Was that a grenade?" Alex asked. At the same moment, Amelia burst through the door, diving behind the crates next to Daniel. The guards, momentarily stunned by the explosion, didn't get off a shot at her.
"That wasn't a grenade," she said. "These crates are full of munitions. If a stray bullet hits any more of these crates..." she trailed off.
"That means the guards will be afraid to fire now," Daniel said. Before Alex or Amelia could do anything to stop him, he stood up from behind the crate, clad in his suit of mechanized combat armor, and charged at the guards, shotgun in hand.

The guards raised their assault rifles and began firing, bursts of gunfire striking off Daniel's armor. He turned to face his startled fellow Travellers and gestured as if to say, 'I'm fine!'. With bursts of bullets continuing to impact on his armor and helmet, he picked up one of the crates and tossed it underhand with mechanically-assisted arms through the hole in the train's wall. Amelia stood and started sniping at the guards with bolts from her stunner, while Alex began to fire at them with his pistol. Meanwhile, they concentrated their fire on the larger-than-life figure in military combat armor who stood picking up and throwing crates of volatile munitions through the train wall only twenty feet away from them, as their bullets continued to have little effect.

Inside his combat armor, Daniel Warren (if that was indeed his real name) was concentrating solely on the crates. Bend, pick up, throw. Bullets continued to glance off of his chest and side, but he mostly ignored them, except to wonder if they were running out of ammunition. Bend, pick up, throw. He could feel the bullets impacting on the outside of his armor as dull shoves, harmless but not unnoticeable. Bend, pick up, throw. The guards shouted to each other, agitated, as if wondering why their bullets were doing nothing to this figure which seemingly ignored them.

As Alex and Amelia saw Daniel toss another crate of weapons off the train, the train suddenly began to slow, sending everyone in the car stumbling towards the front of the train. "We must be reaching a station," Alex said.
"We need to get out of here," Amelia replied. "Let's blow up what's left." As Alex watched, she gestured at Daniel to fall back to their position on the far side of the car from the guards, which he did.
Smirking, Amelia picked up her stunner and pulled loose a strip of material from her lab coat. "I suggest you get behind the door," she said. Crouching behind the crate as the guards began to fire again, she carefully tied the material around the trigger of her stunner just tightly enough not to pull the trigger. "I said, get back!" she said, before tightening the knot and throwing the stunner with the trigger held down as far away from her as quickly as she could. The stunner spun through the air, emitting a solid stun beam as it spun end over end before clattering to the floor of the car. Amelia and the guards both looked at it as the stunner came to a top, the beam of stun energy cutting at a angle into one of the weapons crates.

And then the crate exploded, blowing a hole in the side of the train, much bigger than the previous one. Next to it, another crate blew, and then another, a massive fireball flaring up in the center of the car. We all turned and ran into the next car, as the train car blew itself to pieces behind us.

"That was pretty," Daniel said. "How'd you know how to do that?"
"Knowledge," Amelia replied. "Geometry and engineering, in particular. You might want to consider it." Daniel shrugged and turned away. "Whatever you did, it worked." He pointed to the front part of the train, now pulling ahead as the back two-and-a-half cars we were on began to slow down. The passengers emerged from their seats behind us, and looked at how the train car with the weapons had been ripped in two, with the train's engine and the front half of it pulling rapidly away ahead of us. "Who the hell are you?" one of them asked.
"We're Travellers."