Hell's Kitchen

''The Swan Song is boarded by folk who look to cause trouble. That is, until they meet the ship's cook''

Short Summary
It is January 13, 3200. The crew's current mission is to retrieve an energy core from the destroyer ship Pizza Party and return it to Ximinez Shipyards. The last place the ship was seen was in orbit near the planet Frois in the Vafa'i System.

The crew spends a month getting to Frois and upon arrival, Higgins gets a private message on his terminal from a Kalaya Bia that reads, “Randy owed me a lot of money, where's my money Higgs?” Higgins ignores the message and the crew scans around and finds the XSS Pizza Party among an asteroid field. While scanning the ship, the Swan Song gets fired at by another ship named the Black Aurora that was hiding among the asteroids. The Swan Song gets hailed and a woman comes over the comms telling them to prepare to be boarded. The Black Aurora then hits the Swan Song with its plasma cannon and the crew has no option but to give up and be boarded. The crew is told to put all of their weapons into a storage locker and meet in the cargo hold, but not wanting to just give up, the party prepares an ambush. The Black Aurora docks and a group of people in mismatched military uniforms holding pistols come out into the cargo hold. Mr. Sicarian accidentally farts and gets called out. Mr. Sicarian tells the accusing woman that he is the ships cook. The woman asks Mr. Sicarian to go make her a sandwich and as a response, Mr. Sicarian pulls out his plasma projector and disintegrates her. One person from the boarding party surrenders after Mr. Sicarian kills his three friends and makes a heroic leap onto the enemy ship just as it detaches from the Swan Song. Now on the enemy ship, Mr. Sicarian kills one guy and brings another into a nearby gun-control room. He then hears bashing on the door and threatens to blow up everyone with a bomb. Not wanting to get blown up, a man named Ramirez contacts the Swan Song and says that they will exchange Mr. Sicarian for their safety on a nearby mining base. The two ships dock at the mining base and Higgins goes out of the ship to meet with five crew of the Black Aurora. Mr. Sicarian mentions to the crew that the Black Aurora is preparing to fire their plasma cannon. He then bursts out of the room and kills three people as he runs to the bridge to stop the plasma cannon from firing. Higgins tells Viktor to use the ship's sand-thrower, and starts sprinting towards the Swan Song. The sand-thrower goes off, practically killing everyone including Higgins and seeing this, Piani runs out and carries Higgins back onto the ship. With quick thinking, Viktor smashes into the Black Aurora's bridge windows. Mr. Sicarian kills one last guy before making another heroic leap onto the Swan Song. They leave the Black Aurora behind as it explodes in the distance.

Detailed Summary
The date is January 13, 3200. The crew's current mission is to retrieve an energy core from the destroyer ship, Pizza Party, and return it to Ximinez Shipyards. As a reward, the crew will receive scavenging rights to the ship as well as an additional 10,000 credits. The last place the ship was seen was orbiting Frois in the Vafa'i System.

Failed Navigation Checks
Presently in the Gunnhild System, the crew pays the Swan Song's monthly payment of 8,220 credits as well as an additional 3,230 credits worth in monthly maintenance fees. On their way to Frois, the crew has to make a stop at Strophios in the Varvaressos System in order to resupply on fuel and life-support. While in transit to Strophios, Mr. Sicarian tells the crew about a problem that his home planet, Onintza, has with a drug known as Blue Fever. Due to trouble that the drug has caused him in the past, he holds high amounts of animosity towards the substance. Wilbur Higgins III speaks up and says that Blue Fever is worth quite a lot of money on the black-market. Piani Pic mentions that she has heard that some of the Mandarinate on Onintza have been experimenting with Blue Fever, feeding it to their workers to keep them complacent. After six days have passed, the crew reaches Strophios and resupplies their ship. They then head to their final destination, Frois. Due to a navigational error, the ship loses course and a month passes before they are able to finally get to the Vafa'i System.

The XSS Pizza Party
Once they arrive in the system, Higgins receives a private message from a person named Kalaya Bia. The message reads, "Randy owed me a lot of money, where's my money Higgs?" Higgins doesn't respond back and deletes the message, keeping the information to himself. When they get to Frois, Piani makes a scan of a nearby asteroid field and locates the XSS Pizza Party. She then scans the ship and sees that life support is down and that there is currently no life on board. She also notices that there is a moderately sized compartment in the middle of the ship that the scanners aren't able to penetrate. Looking at the ship, the Pizza Party has a large hole in its side and so while it is still salvageable, any useful parts will require severe maintenance and repair before being functional again. While getting closer to the Pizza Party, the Swan Song sees a ship come out from behind a nearby asteroid and start moving towards them. The ship fires a laser in the Swan Song's direction, just barely missing. Higgins hails the ship and asks if they are friendly. A woman's voice replies, saying that 'friendly' depends. She then commands Higgins to shut down the Swan Song's weapon systems and prepare to be boarded. Higgins asks the woman if they are there to also salvage the destroyer and the woman responds, "Yeah, you and the last four." At that moment, all of the Swan Song's computers get invaded by a temporary message that reads "Highbeam Fleet." The Swan Song gets shot at again and this time Mr. Sicarian gets on the guns and fires back while Viktor Kovacs attempts evasive maneuvers.

Piani makes a scan of the ship which reveals that they are fighting the 'Black Aurora', a patrol boat that has a maximum crew capacity of twenty as well as a plasma beam weapon. As the two ships fire at each other, Higgins gets a message from the same woman as before that says, "What are you doing you idiot? We are just trying to disable the ship, not get you blown up." Right as Higgins is about to respond, the Swan Song receives a massive hit from one of the Black Aurora's plasma beam shots. This hit is too much for the Swan Song to handle and the crew has no other option but to cease all attacks and succumb to being boarded. The woman from the Black Aurora tells the crew to put all of their weapons into a storage locker and to meet her and her boarding party in the cargo hold. Not wanting to give up so easily, the party decides to set up an ambush. Viktor exclaims, "They can have the Swan Song when they pry it from my cold dead hands."

The Black Aurora Boarding Party
The Black Aurora docks with the Swan Song and a group of people in miscellaneous military uniforms holding pistols walk out into the Swan Song's cargo hold. The group is led by a 4'6" woman with bright pink hair wearing a black bandana that has a skull and crossbones on it. Doing a poor job of hiding behind a box, the woman with bright pink hair calls out to Mr. Sicarian and says, "Hey, I see you asshole." Mr. Sicarian comes out from behind the box with his hands up. "Evening ma'am, I am the ships cook," Mr. Sicarian says. "You any good," the woman replies. "As a cook?" asks Mr. Sicarian. "Yeah... no as a fucking astrophysicist," the woman retorts. Mr. Sicarian humbly responds, "I'm okay. I'm not that great." "You! Go make me a sandwich." the woman commands. Without skipping a beat, Mr. Sicarian replies back, "I can do that. You know what? I actually have a sub sandwich for you right here!" Mr. Sicarian pulls out his plasma projector from behind the crate and blasts the woman right in the chest, evaporating her which sprays blood and pink hair all over the cargo-bay.

One of the pirates manages to hit Mr. Sicarian in the shoulder but in return, Mr. Sicarian takes his life. The crew knows that they need to get to the other ship before it's able to detach and cause irreversible damage to the Swan Song. Higgins tells Mr. Sicarian to make a run for it and Mr. Sicarian blasts out from behind cover and dashes towards the Black Aurora. As he is running, he shoots and kills one guy and runs up to another. This man closes his eyes and shoots Mr. Sicarian with his pistol at point blank range. To this man's horror, he opens his eyes and sees Mr. Sicarian in front of him laughing; it seems as if his armor had absorbed his pistol shot. Mr. Sicarian slits the man's throat and then looks toward the only guy remaining. This man drops his gun and steps aside, allowing Mr. Sicarian sprint past him. The Black Aurora begins to detach from the Swan Song. Mr. Sicarian puts it into overdrive, and with atmosphere leaking out all around him, takes a leap of faith into the Black Aurora's cargo hold right as the door closes behind him.

The Swan Song Boarding Party
Piani makes a bio-signature scan of the Black Aurora and warns Mr. Sicarian that there are two people where he is at, and four people on their way. She also tells him that she's unable to temporarily disable the ship's guns and so he will have to do it manually over on the ship.

Mr. Sicarian finds himself in the docking bay of the enemy ship. An alarm is going off, repeating the word 'Caliente'. He looks to the two men in front of him who are brandishing their weapons. Without a moments thought, Mr. Sicarian bull-rushes one of the guys who just barely dodges an attack from his monoblade. The two of them then begin to grapple. Mr. Sicarian spins the man around right as the other person in the room fires his gun, hitting his friend in the chest and killing him. Unable to believe what he just did, the man drops his gun onto the ground and crawls over to his recently deceased comrade. Mr. Sicarian puts his monoblade up to the throat of the man, and speaking in Japanese, asks to be taken to the engine room. After getting word from Piani that there are people closing in on them, Mr. Sicarian ducks into a nearby room which just so happens to be the gun control room. Realizing this, Mr. Sicarian convinces his new friend to temporarily reroute the guns systems. As he is doing so, there are a series of bangings on the door. In an attempt to gain any leverage he can, Mr. Sicarian provides a convincing bluff that he has a bomb and is willing to detonate it, blowing up him and the entire ship if the people on the other end of the door do not comply. The crew that is on the Swan Song starts to hear panicked shouting in Spanish coming from the bridge of the Black Aurora. Higgins goes over the comms and says that the Mexican crew of theirs can come aboard the Swan Song and have a fiesta. The man in charge of the Black Aurora, Ramirez, says to Higgins that he doesn't appreciate his racism, and suggests that they instead go to a nearby mining facility and exchange 'the crazy person with the bomb' there.

The Exchange
The Swan Song and Black Aurora go into an atmospheric dome on a nearby asteroid and land on a metal platform. Five people come out from the Black Aurora and start walking towards the Swan Song. Higgins gets on one of the Swan Song's forklifts and heads out there to meet them. Upon closer inspection, Higgins notices that the inside of the men's mouths are blue. After a brief talk with Higgins, Ramirez sends comms over his ship, telling his crew to bring Mr. Sicarian out.

In the gun control room, one of the screens indicates to Mr. Sicarian that they only have about a minute before the Black Aurora is able to bring their plasma cannon back online. Mr. Sicarian says over personal comms that now is the time to kill everyone. Directly after saying this, he pulls open the gun control room door and greets three people who standing there with his plasma projector, killing two of them. After seeing his two companions fall, the third guy attempts to run away but Mr. Sicarian easily catches up to him and runs him through with his monoblade. Knowing that he does not have much time, Mr. Sicarian quickly dashes to the bridge and kicks the door open as people who are on the other side scatter for cover.

After receiving word that the Black Aurora's plasma cannon is about to come online, Higgins tells Viktor that there is no time and that he must use the sand-thrower against everyone on the platform, including himself. Higgins crosses his fingers and makes a sprint towards the Swan Song, leaving with an "Adiós compadre!" Viktor, not wanting to hurt Higgins, decides to instead use the ships multifocal laser against the Black Aurora. Unfortunately, the pilot of the Swan Song, Viktor, has never fired the laser before and misses the Black Aurora, penetrating the atmospheric dome instead. This initiates propagation of a steady stream of atmosphere escaping from the dome and jettisoning out into space. Upon seeing this, Piani decides to use the sand-thrower herself.

The Salt-thrower
Outside of the ship, Higgins hears a hiss and then a loud pop above him as sharp silicon is thrown everywhere. Because the sand-thrower is designed to damage a ship, it is powerful enough to knock everyone that is on the metal platform unconscious, including Higgins. Enraged after seeing what happened to Higgins outside, Viktor takes three more shots at the Black Aurora and misses all three of them. The atmospheric dome, now having received even more holes in it, leaks out atmosphere at an even faster rate. As Viktor is firing at the ship, Piani runs out of the Swan Song to Higgins and stabilizes him with her psionic bio-stasis ability. She then drags him up onto the Swan Song and closes the blast doors after sending a small prayer to Mr. Sicarian.

The Cavalry Has Arrived
Viktor notices a "weapons lock" warning come over the Swan Song's main interface. Upon seeing this, he closes his eyes and takes one final shot at the Black Aurora. The shot is met with a thud as Viktor lands his first hit. The celebration is cut short however as the Black Aurora fires back, missing the Swan Song and hitting the dome behind it, vaporizing the whole thing in one hit. Knowing that one more shot could mean the destruction of the Swan Song, Viktor says over the comms to Mr. Sicarian that he is going to get him outta there. Viktor then flies the Swan Song over to the Black Aurora and positions it so that the back of the Swan Song is level with the Black Aurora's bridge. He then lowers the Swan Song's cargo-bay door and puts the ship in reverse, smashing the Black Aurora's bridge windows and giving Mr. Sicarian an opportunity to jump on board.

Mr. Sicarian ducks behind cover as men on the bridge fire upon his position. The Black Aurora had just shot at the Swan Song narrowly missing it. Not wanting the Black Aurora to get another shot off, Mr. Sicarian temporarily comes out from behind cover and shoots the man who is controlling the gun, killing him. He then hears Viktor in his headset who tells him to position himself near the front of the bridge. Barreling over his cover, Mr. Sicarian runs headfirst into an enemy and the two of them begin to grapple. Behind him, he hears an alarm that says, "Autodestrucción, sesenta segundos." Immediately after, Mr. Sicarian begins to feel a rumble and then hears a loud crash as the glass windows beside him break and the Swan Song's cargo is revealed. Over the comms, Mr. Sicarian hears Viktor say, "The cavalry has arrived." Not wishing to stay on the enemy ship any longer, Mr. Sicarian propels himself onto the Swan Song and the cargo door shuts behind him. Viktor punches it and a after a minute of flying away, there is a large green explosion behind them as the Swan Song descends into the depths of space.

Crew Status

 * Casualties: Higgins - heavily wounded (coma / 4 days)
 * Casualties: Mr. Sicarian - minor injuries
 * New Passenger: Raul (captive)

Ship Status

 * Hull Integrity: 4/20

Criminal Activities

 * New Crime: Invasion of private property (bio-dome)
 * New Crime: Destruction of private property (bio-dome)
 * New Crime: 1st degree Manslaughter (bio-dome's owner)

Business

 * Credits Acquired: 0 credits
 * Credits Spent: 11,550 credits (debt, maintenance, fuel)
 * Jobs In Progress: Salvaging of the Pizza Party for Ximinez Shipyards
 * Jobs Completed: None
 * Debt Paid Off On Swan Song: 8,220 credits
 * Current Debt On Swan Song: 766,780 credits