We were humming along in Honey, our warp shell. The Broken Sword Crew was heading home with our pockets full of credits and looking forward to some rest. Suddenly, Honey lurched and we were heading down. The entire crew was thrown clear of the warp shell. Everything went black.
We woke up in some jungle. We couldn’t see Honey. “Nova, where the hell are we?” said Ziliax, the purple reptoid gunner. “Bringing up the navigation system now” replied Nova. Once his navigation readout came online, Nova determined we had crashed on Aster 12, a backwater jungle covered system that the Imperium had been mining. Grubber, the old mining mech felt right at home. His whirring saws were ready to clear a path to freedom. Sawbones, the crew’s engineer and medic, pulled her wrench from her pack and said “let’s find Honey and get the hell off this god forsaken rock”.
The crew started moving through the jungle. Nova’s terminal lit up and he calmly spoke into his comm link, “Multiple targets north of us and moving at a high rate of speed”. Ziliax took cover in small cave in the nearby cliff. Sawbones attached a second rip saw to Grubber then hid behind a tree. Grubber and Nova moved forward. We were ready for whatever came out of the trees. A herd of Imperium sweepers rushed into the clearing before us. They were not acting normally. Something had spooked them and they appeared to be running away. They couldn’t resist the metal of the mechs though and moved in hoping to catch us off guard. They would die quickly to the whirling saws of Grubber, Ziliax’s pulse rifle, and Sawbone’s wrench. Nova kept us alive with a crystal shield.
After dispatching the sweepers the crew moved on top a nearby escarpment. We found Honey but it was behind a force field and guarded by Squags. A firefight ensued. Ion grenades were flying. Energy pulses were ripping through the jungle. A well timed hit on the force field generated brought it down. Several Squags and their apparent leader known only as “the Hooded One” ducked down into a hatch leaving a lone Squag to face us. He was a brave one though and our crew awarded his bravery with a hero coin which he used effectively. Then we shot him. As the firefight was going on, something large was moving through the jungles north of us. Being a stalwart warp shell crew, we ignored it. This would come back to haunt us later.
Nova and Grubber turned their attention to Honey, or beloved warp shell. It was held in place with some clamps and being drained of energy. We did not have much time before it would be unusable. We needed to save Honey. Nova hacked the lock on the hatch and we entered the bunker. There were a couple of Squags guarding entrance. We were banged up from the firefight above ground so we approached them slowly. Another ion grenade shook the walls and cracks appeared in the ceiling. Ultimately, the two squags were no match for our superior skills.
We continued deeper into the bunker and found the Hooded One working on some controls. Grubber and Nova moved to engage him when all hell broke loose closer the entrance. A Spear Tooth came roaring into the bunker hell bent on killing anything it found. In the blink of an eye, Ziliax and Sawbones were bleeding out on a backwater jungle planet. The big cat was not satisfied with that. He followed the others down into the bowels of the bunker. Grubber, Nova, the Hooded One, and a spear tooth were fighting tooth, nail, and saw. Nova and Grubber disabled the controls keeping Honey locked up while fending off the cat. The Hooded One started some incantations. The spear tooth was pouncing too and fro now using it’s teeth and claws to rip at everyone in the room. For a brief second, the big cat focused on the Hooded One. This was the break the crew needed. They bolted for the exit. The Hooded One finished his incantation and disappeared.
Grubber and Nova passed the body of Sawbones and checked for life. She was gone. Ziliax had fallen behind some crates and couldn’t be seen. Nova said “Ziliax must already be on the ship, let’s get moving.”. After exiting the bunker and making their way onto Honey, they discovered that they were the only two that made it out. They had succeeded in getting Honey back in the air but at a high cost.
As they lifted off, they noticed another warp shell crew on the ground. They also received a message to rendezvous at the gathering point. Honey did not have enough energy left in it to both help the downed crew and make the jump to the rendezvous. As Grubber and Nova made the decision, they realized they were not alone on the warp shell. The spear tooth had made it’s way onto the ship…