A Career in Thieving

Whilst making plans the crew were interrupted by King Oleb loudly proclaiming the presence of Margaret Blaine, an old pirate lady who was apparently the Terror of the Space Lanes! After introductions it turned out that Blaine was interested in a ship which used to belong to her flotilla, the Cicendai, a far trader which was now used for smuggling and the contents of a smuggling compartment. After stalking around the gas giant in the Torpol system, the Cicendai was spotted and the Black Swan was brought up close to the Cicendai and quickly boarded.

After a tense standoff, the crew of the Cicendai reluctantly agreed to be robbed after the smuggling compartment had been emptied. The travellers eventually settled for a modest amount of precious metals and after jumping to Blue they managed to sell most of the loot for Cr300,000 and went for some well earned downtime. But during jump Halfnir tried to train Drogo, his new lizard pet to attack. And attack it did! Tex! But after a distraction by Tex and some alphaing by Halfnir, the overactive lizard was brought to heel.

During the jump, Tex took the opportunity to rifle through Blaine's papers from the smuggling compartment and took photos while Blaine herself was distracted by Zhil. The papers seemed to contain details of some of her past exploits together with information about associates.

Later, Bulhai Freeport in the Blue system, while the crew relaxed after a job well done, Tex sought out leads for a next score and met up with Jill Dax, a local custom officer looking to supplement her income, and learned of a naive Captain Johnson in charge of a far trader. Zhil took the opportunity to get aboard the ship posing as a prospective passenger and bashed in the Captain's head on a toilet seat. With the ship to themselves, Zhil and Tex began to snoop around.