Gathering the troops

Salif
Waiting on Salif for the traders to arrive, Sparrow wondered if there were any mercenaries available on Salif. Getting hold of Tiznee took some time as she was in meetings with advisors and delegates but eventually they met with her and asked about the mercenary situation. Tiznee said that she could not spare any of her own armed forces, but that she thought she knew of at least one company based on Salif and that she would get that information to them as soon as possible.

Within 24 hours the party were making their way to the offices of a mercenary company called Audley's Avengers. The door was opened by a ruddy faced stout gentlemen with white hair and mustache. He had a military bearing but was dressed in civvies.

Sparrow declared that they were looking for mercenaries and the gentleman ushered them in to sit around a small meeting table and got them tea. The other occupant of the small office was a younger man with cropped hair who kept at his work.

The travellers explained that they had a ticket for a mission in a system a few parsecs away that would involve ship to ship boarding actions against two large vessels. The agent for the mercenary company looked thoughtful and asked a small number of questions before agreeing that they can start negotiating.

The ticket:

• Employer Details: [Fully identified but information REDACTED]
• Employee Details: Audrey's Avengers
• Service Required: Commando-Retrieval mission.Target consists of two ships in space. Mission is to neutralise any defensive forces, to capture (fully intact where possible) the two ships and free (unharmed where possible) any prisoners on those ships. Unit size set at 50 combatants to achieve this mission.
• Service Location: [Fully identified but information REDACTED]
• Length of Service: Medium - 6 weeks on location, starting in 15 weeks. Duration to be extended should arrival of the targets not take place within those 6 weeks.
• Ticket Exposure: Hidden. Ticket offered only to Audley's Avengers
• Ticket Risk: Difficult. Defensive forces could be trained marines or equivalent. High tech armour and weapons will be required to counter.
• Pre-Ticket Support
• Services: Transportation to and from the location will be required. Location is [REDACTED] parsecs from Salif which can be reached via [REDACTED] J-3 jumps. The Employee to source transportation.
• Equipment: Boarding ships will be made available on location by the Employer.
• Post-Ticket Support
• Repair and Rearm: The Employer undertakes to fully repair and rearm Audley's Avengers on the completion of the ticket.
• Medical Care: The Employer undertakes to provide full medical care for unit members injured during the missions.
• Compensation: Taking into account mission type, location, duration, risk and services, the ticket is agreed at a price of 5.0 MCr, with 2.0 MCr up front to cover expenses and to ensure the unit is equipped appropriately..

Once the ticket was agreed the travellers returned to the space port to await the arrival of the traders. With this ticket in place there was no need to travel to Theev, so the party could instead go to the Space Station with Goff and Gobbo to have a look around and then shut it down and prepare to move all ships and crew to Wildeman's hidden base.

Arrivals
The Far Trader arrived first. It had been 18 months since the travellers sent it on its way, and even with a fairly casual schedule it was able to provide healthy profits, in part thanks to Vii Lon as broker and the fact it was plying a route between a Haven system and a Friendly system.

Next to arrive was the Frontier Trader coming from the space station. Everyone on board was delighted to see the travellers at last, and brought them up to speed with the small amounts of progress made on the station. Unfortunately with the departure of many crew members there was a need to hire new crew fairly soon. Slayed spent some time looking for crew and after careful consideration and vetting brought six new people to the hangar for induction.

To the Space Station
With plans in place retrieving the last remaining crew from the space station and shutting it down became the next task. As Goff and Gobbo had not see the station yet they were brought too in order to allow them to formulate plans for when the travellers returned.

On arrival the party could see that there was progress in repairing small things, but with most of the crew away on the Harriers supporting the party it was only a skeleton crew left on board. The travellers did check to see that the torpedoes were still in place and they were all there and appeared untampered with.

With everything shut down they jumped back to Salif. All ships and crew in the one place for the first time.

Salif, then Number One
Spending only a little time to formulate plans and see if more crew could be found (only one) the travellers prepared to jump their way across 15 parsecs to Wildeman.

They jumped as one group: three Harriers, a Frontier Trader, a Q-Ship, the Far Trader, the Far Scout, the Lab Ship and Goff''s ship. Next stop, Number One.

To be continued.