Galactic Watering Hole

This week we played Galactic by Riley Rethal as a small group of strangers brought together to support the Liberation in defeating a Mandate blockade of water to a planet of rocky deserts and no political affiliation. We are Annabelle Sophie, a diplomat or a spy, who believes in peace but knows you can give no quarter to the Mandate; Pickles, an alien, a scoundrel, and a scofflaw out to bank some credits and pester the complacent; and repair-bot 2B-D5 (Two-bee), who collects favors hoping for a chance to build something truly special.

Our story begins with Pickles in a cantina recognizing Annabelle Sophie as someone who’d gotten in their way on a recent job and deciding to confront the diplomat. Annabelle tries to brush off Pickles attention in order to keep a low profile, but Pickles won’t be dissuaded and pokes the diplomat until getting a rise from her. Annabelle pulls a knife to get the alien to back off, even though she’s never actually use it. Having been roped in by Pickles during the provocation phase, Two-bee tries to make peace between them and suggests they repair back to its repair depot. Once ensconced inside the repair depot, the group realizes they can work together on the water problem. Pickles knows of a comet coming through the system soon that could be a source of water the Mandate can’t control. Pickles has the comet’s trajectory and coordinates but needs a crew in order to make the rendezvous. Annabelle remains suspicious of Pickles, knowing that last job was paid for by the Mandate, but agrees to go along to keep an eye on them.

Pickles explains that their ship is in the police impound lot, so first they need to break in and bust out the ship. Unbeknownst to the others, Pickles doesn’t have a ship and will be stealing whichever ship suits their purposes. Annabelle uses her contacts to arrange for the guard to be away from the control room long enough for Two-bee to slip inside and access the terminal. Two-bee changes the sweep pattern of the patrol-bots to create a corridor through the lot for us to enter and take a ship. Pickles selects a ship, hot-wires it, and blasts out of the lot with us all aboard, but we bounce off one of the depot buildings on the way out.

In space, Pickles must take an oblique route to avoid the Mandate patrols, but that brings us to the rendezvous behind schedule, requiring us to adjust our intercept trajectory. As we begin our approach, the ship’s stabilizers come loose due to damage from our rocky take-off, requiring Two-bee to quickly effect repairs while we’re still flying. Thanks to its phenomenal success, we manage to land successfully on the surface of the comet. Because of our late arrival and the relatively small size of the ship we stole, we can only take a sample of water that we can use to secure funding for a proper harvest mission. Unfortunately, we launch ourselves up in the direction the comet is traveling. As we turn to get out of its way, the comet clips the ship and sends us tumbling off into deep space, bringing today’s adventure to a close.