Alessandro discovered that Pierre Nova's bank accounts were boring and normal, except that he'd recently bought some personal computer equipment. It was established that this was not the sort of thing you could plot a hyperspace course on.
The PCs sat around discussing plans for some time. Then Rusty Tribble phoned Chester. He said that he'd heard they had a ship with an Andrus 3000 hyperdrive coming in, and he was interested in buying it. The PCs promptly said they were interested in selling, and suggested a price 10% over the odds. Rusty wanted to see the ship, which the PCs claimed was called Sweet Thailand. The PCs also claimed that Vega were thinking of getting into tourism in the area. Rusty agreed that he's make arrangements to see the ship when it was due in. The PCs asked where he'd heard about the ship, and he suggested that people at the spaceport gossiped. He did not mention Alana. However, the PCs knew he was lying as there is no Sweet Thailand.
The PCs asked Anna from Vega for a ship. Anna was not cooperative. The PCs then asked her to book them onto the Hesperus and Anna went off in a huff, saying that she wasn't their secretary. Chester sent her flowers. Presumably it made sense to Chester at the time. At some point during this conversation Anna mentioned that Bill Piasecki was the first person to spot the Hesperus's travel times and report it to Vega HQ.
The PCs decided not to kidnap Alana. They let her turn up and asked her about tuning their hyperdrive. She first suggested that the Sweet Thailand's hyperdrive might have software problems, then hardware. She asked who had recommended her and the PCs mentioned Yoshi. Alana pretended not to be surprised.
The PCs decided to buy tickets on the Hesperus to get to Yed Prior. This was based on the fact that they thought they were more likely to be able to blag the loan of a ship from VTC on Yed Prior.
Karl chased up the fact that the PCs' rooms had been searched, and found a maid who remembered a well-dressed middle-aged womand and an attractive younger man going into his room. Karl asked the house detective, and then discovered that the hotel's camera system has cut out during the critical period. Karl got extremely lucky and saw a picture of the woman in the local paper. Her name is Pima Clarke and she works for Loukides Corp. In the paper she was accepting the cup for the mixed doubles tennis championship. Her partner was Bill Piasecki of VTC...
At this point Chester took some local recreational chemical, and got very high. Alessandro jumped at the chance to exercise his medical skill. Chester didn't appreciate this.
The PCs went to see Bill, who is a spaceship NARG. He sang Andy's song back to him, badly. He told them he'd heard about it from Pima, but he hadn't wanted to get her into trouble with Loukides Corp so hadn't mentioned that.
Alessandro went to Anna and asked her to withdraw Chester's expense account. He claimed this was for Chester's own good, in Alessandro's medical opinion. Anna agreed and did this. Chester wasn't happy when she told him.
The Pcs finally emabrked on the Hesperus. They met Marian, briefly. She seemed very stressed. The co-pilot, Maynard Colbert, was bouncy and given to starting fires and/or cooking. The comms operator, Jens Shankar, was withdrawn. There were two other passengers. These were Anita and Dan Drozdov, twins travelling to Yed Prior to visit their parents.
The PCs discussed hijacking the ship, then dismissed the idea as very silly. They managed to get to a window during the Mysterious Hyperspace Stopover and take some pictures. They then arrived in the Yed Prior system. Things went very quiet. The engines didn't fire. The PCs sneaked out of their rooms and discovered that the twins weren't anywhere on the passenger deck.
Eventually Jens came onto the intercom and tried to tell the PCs that the ship was having engine trouble, but he wasn't convincing. The PCs decided that the NPCs were silly to have hijacked the ship.
The PCs made their way down to the teleport/upper hold deck. They managed to break into one of the upper holds, at the cost of making the hold door no longer shut. They were searching for their weapons when the ship's engines fired and they were thrown to the floor by a large acceleration.