Four PCs were given an assignment to investigate a shipping company whose hyperspace travel times seemed amazingly fast. The PCs are Andy Kettu, a very youthful hyperdrive expert, Karl Tsiban, a bounty hunter, Alessandro Santori, a doctor and genetics researcher, and Cal San Franciso, a psychologist. The company, Avocado, does a triangular route between Gentian, Yed Prior, and Rassalhague. The PCs were told that VTC had tried to buy the company quietly, through a front company called Meyer Holdings, and all of the shareholders had refused outright to sell except for one, Pierre Nova, who had seemed about to sell and had them changed his mind with no explanation.
The PCs were waiting in the teleport station to depart for Gentian, where Avocado is based, when two security guards dragged in a fifth PC wearing manacles, a torn tuxedo, and covered in blood. The security guards handed Karl Tsiban the keys to the manacles, instructed him not to unlock them until they were in orbit, and asked for a signature. Karl noticed that the document he was being asked to sign contained a note from their boss, Hansel, informing that the prisoner was the fifth member of the party. Karl phoned Hansel and demanded danger money.
The PCs established that their new friend was Chester Arnold Krovny, the waster son of a local poltician. Chester had apparently murdered someone and was escaping the law with a little help from his dad's friends at Vega. For some reason, the story didn't appear on Celebrity Trash TV, or even the news channels. Almost as if someone had suppressed it...
The PCs arrived on Gentian's Kevin Baldridge Spaceport, close to the city of Merwin, and instantly investigated shipping times. Avocado have existed for about ten years. They started out with an Ionian-built ship, the Hesperus, and their times were perfectly ordinary, even slow, as Hesperus has an Andrus 3000 hyperdrive which is a very old and unusual model. At the time Hesperus turned up in the Gentian system, Ionia was in the middle of a civil war. A couple of years later the Avocado company acquired two more ships, the Antikythera and the Melkarth, also with Andrus 3000s, and continued to be slow. About a year previously the times suddenly got dramtically better; first for the Hesperus and then for the other two. This hadn't really been noticed because time is not well synchronised between planetary systems. It could be, but it isn't because no one bothers as long as things are right to within a day. More recently, one of the ships, the Melkarth, seemed to stop running the triangular route and has been listed as being in orbit around Gentian ever since. The Antikythera would normally have been expected to appear at Gentian some weeks ago, but hasn't been seen. The Hesperus is presently in orbit, taking on cargo.
The PCs then made their way to Vega's local office in the city of Merwin and met Anne Arnaud, their local contact. She had booked them into a hotel and provided them an office in the Vega building and some money. The PCs settled down to serious Googling. They established that Avocado is not a publically traded company. There are seven shareholders. The two largest holders are Marian Bennett and Rusty Tribble. Rusty is listed as company chairman. The company's address and Rusty's address are the same: the Argent Hotel. Gentian law does not require a company to list more than its chairman. The PCs observed that this was rather lax. Marian had been the sole owner of the company until the time where the second and third ships were bought, when the other investors turned up.
The PCs hatched various plans to find out what was going on. Several of them (Karl, Cal, Andy) headed to one of the two bars back in Kevin Baldridge Spaceport and started chatting to ships' crews. Karl started a conversation about dangerous cargoes and managed to establish that the Melkarth had once been asked to ship a large, fanged, specimen of the local wildlife to Loukides Corp on Yed Prior, and it had got loose on the ship. The person he was chatting to said that the Melkarth's pilot, Yoshi Elbert, told the story much better, but that Yoshi was on long-term leave as the Melkarth had serious hyperdrive problems. He mentioned that Yoshi hung out at the President Bar by the beach.
Andy wrote a cheery, upbeat pop song containing many hyperspace in-jokes, and found a bar where he could perform it.
The PCs got back to their hotel and discovered that their rooms had been badly searched. Chester called the police, much to the disgust of Karl. Chester managed to persuade the police that it wasn't that important when they finally got there.
The next day, the PCs went surfing. Cal leant how to surf and made a new friend who was a cousin of the co-pilot of the Hesperus, one Maynard Colbert. I think the cousin told him that is was fairly widely known locally that Avocado were fast, and also fairly luxurious, and that they charged huge prices for this. Avocado do not however advertise this widely. Meanwhile Karl poured drinks into Yoshi in the beachside bar. Yoshi ranted about the owners of Avocado, who had sent a hyperdrive consultant to look at the engines on the Melkarth without Yoshi's input. The consultant had apparently wrecked the drive. Avocado were doing nothing about getting it repaired or replaced. Yoshi mentioned that the consultant was Alana Pascoe, of Pascoe Consulting. He also ranted about Melkarth's purser, Connie Manning, who he apparently didn't get on with very well.
Chester called Alana, who asked him what company he was calling from. He panicked and put the phone down. A few minutes later he called back, claiming a mistake had cut them off, and said that he had an Andrus 3000 hyperdrive due to arrive on Gentian soon that needed a tune and could she do it. Alana suggested they had a meeting to discuss it, and insisted she would come to the PCs rather than the other way round. The meeting is arranged for the next day.
Alessandro used his immense Googling skills to check Alana out and discovered that she claimed to have been a senior hyperdrive researcher for Freshwater Industries, but that she didn't seem old enough for this. Also she had never published anything in JHypPhys. The PCs hatched an insane plan^W^W a plan to kidnap Alana, although it's not quite clear what they intend to do with her when they've got her.