Even more Stars Without Number: Faster Than Light

  The great campaign is still ongoing, here's the updates since then:
Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”:
  Searching the rainy city of Gamma for a smuggler, the crew of Le Renard find Kalicilos, an offworlder more than happy to take natural diamonds as a finders’ fee, who has a line on some valuable alien artifacts perfect for an unaffiliated smuggling ship. After a few sidebars with a local psychic and arrangement for a future meeting with the potential rebel defector, the captain and crew found Agent Johnson 9801 (known as Sally), a tough-talking chain-smoking hard-drinking Agency broad with a love of the finer things in life and a willingness to overlook the occasional lost relic., the crew met with Dr. Jing to try and best pull off their heist…all the while aware that the vast chasing rebel fleet is less than a day away from arrival.
 
Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”:
  After a tense meeting with the nervous defector Carl Theseus where they directed the scout to dock with their ship, now we join our crew along with the curious scholar Hu Jing as his “help” in researching the newly uncovered alien ruins…all the while looking carefully at the schematics of the Perimeter Agency’s formidable site defenses. Sneaking away from the approved site and the already-categorized artifacts, the crew follows the irascible Dr. Jing to a forbidden section of the ruins. Forsaking the obvious main chamber and its pair of Agency Warbots, the crew instead go to a chamber only barely breached, spending a pair of precious hours on stealthy excavation to enter a mysterious chamber with a starmap leading to no star upon its black ceiling…and an alien robot made of ceramic that moves with liquid menace in reaction to the trespass.

Previously on “The Flight of the Fox:
  In a tense standoff with the terrifying alien guardian found in the ruins on Glomar 2, the crew of Le Renard fired first in the form of engineer Joel Reynolds, leading to a frantic melee where only sword-waving Slate Bulkhead and revolver-wielding Captain LeBeau managed to hit the well-armored robot, drawing terrible wounds in return. Psychic Percy Crighton fled the chamber in a panic, drawing the guardian out with him. After murdering the hapless Dr. Jing, Percy fled down the trench only to draw the advanced Perimeter Agency warbots into the fray; but the powerful plasma weaponry of the pretech bots seemed only to empower the menacing ceramic death machine, leading to a site-wide alert. While Agency personnel battled for their lives against the alien monster, the crew grabbed handy relics and fled the scene of the crime, setting off a demolition charge to cover their tracks…only for an orbital kinetic strike to be called minutes later, obliterating the alien ruins entirely. Now battered, bruised, and in the case of Joel, blinded, the crew try to make good their escape of the system as the pursuing rebel fleet arrives, transmitting a demand that the fugitives be handed over… 

Previously on “The Flight of the Fox:
  The chase is on in the Glomar System! While ship’s medic Jenny desperately works to restore sight to Engineer Reynolds, the good ship Le Renard tries as best she can to join a dozen other vessels in fleeing Glomar 2 before the vast rebel fleet, as the belligerent Admiral Hiermonious Aiken demands the locals hand over the fugitive corvette…while the Perimeter Agency demands all fleeing ships halt for inspection, fearing a breach in quarantine from disaster at the dig site. After stalling for time desperately with the Agency patrol boats, Le Renard finally provokes a response…but not before, at Jenny’s suggestion, linking up with a heavy freighter who also chose flight to inspection. A flight of fighters launched from the rebel fleet at the same time moves to incept the fleeing ships, but the two ships’ delay proves fortunate as the extra time sees the rebels and the Agency intercept at the same time. While nuclear explosions and singularity surges show that the battle back on Glomar 2 rages fiercely, the captain desperately tries to turn the two sides against one another even as plasma begins to fly. The last rebel interceptor gets swatted down even by the Agency and the boats once more demand to board, just as power flickers and goes out. Thanks to quick thinking on the part of Security Officer Bulkhead, Percy’s cargo manifest wizardry, and clever use of the ship’s smuggling compartment, the inspectors find and confiscate what appears to be excess whiskey, barely missing the stolen alien relics. The captain and crew breathe a sigh of relief and slip at last into metaspace, but not before all seeing the grim report of Engineer Reynolds…the power plant failure was SABOTAGE!
  (Note crew morale here...I've begun monitoring crew morale as they've increasingly been desperate and shore leave is long away. Interestingly, though, I rolled the best result at this point...which makes sense. These aren't heroes, this is a smuggling ship, they're smuggling. I told the players how much more relaxed their crew seems after this narrow escape)

Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”:
  A day in the life of Le Renard…while the captain recuperates under the care of medbot Jenny, the rest of the command crew carefully works to detect the saboteur, with security and engineering rigging up hidden cameras while Percy carefully puts his nascent empathic skills to the test interviewing every crewmember, with an especial focus on the new defector Carl Theseus. The defector passes his first test, but when the prisoner Jorge is set up to take the fall by being freed, drugged, and sent with a screwdriver to cause havoc, the carefully hidden cameras manage to catch Carl in the act of framing the poor patsy, who is once again under guard but down a kneecap. Now the crew descends on the false friend, determined to ensure the ship’s safety and security against the snake in the grass.
  (I would never insert a false defector like Carl here, but I'm not running the rebels...that's my nine-year-old son. He's making clever and really devious choices, and the false defector was a nasty play that's all him).

Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”:
  Death to saboteurs! Double-agent Carl Theseus was interrogated via drugs and confessed to being a plant, placed to sabotage or at least reveal Le Renard…with a ship loaded down with hacks to support the mission. Now with the traitor spaced and the scout ship cleaned, Le Renard is only stronger going forward to meet with the eccentric “Art Dealer” Gan Budike on the vast station Grojec 1 orbiting the tomb world Frost in the Backdoor system. The relics are his, but the command crew also debate selling the location found amidst the alien ruins…a rogue planet in the outer dark, mysterious and alluring.

Previously on “The Flight of the Fox”:
  New patron…and new perils! The crew of Le Renard head out for a hard day’s night on the town while the command crew meet with the mysterious Mr. Budike. While the wealthy magnate is more than happy to pay a fair wage for the alien artifacts and hints at more smuggling jobs to come, it is the intriguing star map that has him most involved. After a high-stakes negotiation, Le Renard is now under contract as an escort for a scientific expedition to the dark planet…and getting its spike drive upgraded to make it there and back again with safety. Pushing for a little more, psychic Percy also requests a precog chamber to aid in the navigation, which Mr. Budike is willing to part with…if the crew will in turn retrieve valuable pretech from the airless tomb world below!
  Without a doubt, this is one of the most enjoyable campaigns I've ever run. NOW it's going to begin to really open up with a new job and a ton of possible new cargoes and destinations. They've had choices before, but with a Spike Drill-3 drive and a full tank of gas, now the sector's their oyster...although the rebel fleet still lurks out there if they linger anywhere too long.