And… Venn’s boss told us he received a distress signal from Venn in the Chiatus system. Near space, binary stars, class G, and class M for the 2nd star, a red dwarf. Five orbits, with the only remaining planet in the third ring, and that with a terraformed moon. Population should be a quarter million independent miners. Venn’s ship, the Resolute, is in an asteroid field.
We leave immediately, just the regular crew and Celi, and take the 4.5 day journey through driftspace. We spend the second half following a dreadlancer, keeping back enough that our excellent sensors can track it without being seen ourselves.
When we get there, we drop out near the asteroid field. We look for an asteroid big enough to hide a ship. There are plenty. We keep finding derelict RC-HPRs — aka rock hoppers, used for mining — crashed on many. We stop for each as we find it. After many hours, we find Venn’s ship. And we see his dilemma. He can’t move with the also-crashed dreadlancer on the same asteroid. Ash and I are going to try to move a rock hopper towards the Resolute, hoping to get close enough while looking like space flotsam. We don’t want to alert any Swarm collecting here. Widget is going along on what he’s calling Operation Rescue Daddy.