Going to Harrisburg:
After receiving their part of the reward, the crew can now afford to go to Harrisburg to get their Jump Drive repaired. Using Jump-2, they can get to Harrisburg in two jumps via Elizabethtown. Since there was big Free Traders meeting just three weeks ago, there is no cargo worth taking to Harrisburg.
Elizabethtown:
At Elizabethtown not a lot happens, but they can get a small cargo. 10 tons of jam. A lot of other Free Traders has recently taken this path, so there are not any other cargoes available.
Arriving at Harrisburg:
The Notorious exits jump-space a few hours earlier than expected: and the precision of the jump was quite poor. They exit jump-space close to the Steelton gas giant.
Mayday:
Within a minute Starship Notorious is reached by two messages. One from the Navy, saying that no refuelling is allowed at the gas giant without a permit. The other message is from a the 600-ton passenger liner Kool Celebration. They are in a decaying orbit at Steelton and their Maneuver drive has stopped working.
MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY
After a while (and after contacting the Kool Celebration) the following is known.
- Kool Celebration will be destroyed in about 48 hours. If they don’t get rescued by then, they will try to jump. The odds are not in their favor. They will probably explode if a jump is tried, but the odds are for survival is slightly better than burning up in the gas giants atmosphere.
- The Navy refuses to help. They don’t want to expose the positions of their System Defence Boats that are hidden in the gas giant.
- The Space Patrol say that the gas giant is the responsibility of the Navy, so they cannot help either. This could be changed by a political decision, but this is still being discussed. The ruling politicians do not want a confrontation with the Navy and since the Kool Celebration can “save” itself by jumping, the problem goes away.
- The Belters in the area cannot do anything since they don’t want to offend the government.
- For the COACC it is already too late since they were expecting the Navy or the Space Patrol to do something.
- No other civilian ship can be here within 48 hours.
Big Damn Heroes:
Notorious to the rescue. One way to rescue the Kool Celebration is to disconnect the shuttle and from the Notorious and try to connect to the other ship. The trimmed maneuver drive on the Notorious can achieve 1.6 G thrust when connected to the other ship. This is enough to escape from the gas giant. But this is not an easy maneuver. After a few attempts it will succeed. The saved ship can then be helped to a parking orbit around Harrisburg.
An alternative rescue could be to dock with the ship and save the passengers and crew, but then let the Kool Celebration crash into the gas giant.
At the starport:
The Notorious lands at Harrisburg to start looking for someone that can repair their jump drive. But first, the press wants to talk to the heroes that did what the Navy and the Space Patrol could not do.
Unfortunately the Navy and the government are not very happy about the rescue. No one wants to repair the jump drive of the Notorious, since that would mean that they would risk losing their government contracts. For the same reason no brokers wants to business with the Notorious. So the jam remains unsold and no new cargo can be acquired.
However, the opposition party wants to take pictures with the heroes. They promise that the heroes will get better treated when they are in power.
The insurance company for the Kool Celebration also contacts the heroes and say that they are investigating if and how much the heroes will be paid for the rescue operation.