After some thought, Chad decided that she was tired of having to find ways to escape armed ships and the increasing threat to travel caused by the neo-Browncoats in addition to the example provided by the use of cargo bay launched missiles, as seen on the Zephyr, compelled Chan to go looking for a couple of missiles to give the Ghost an unexpected sting.

In a rare occurrence, the entire Crew was out at the same time, but the group broke up shortly after leaving as Li Ming got word of a hot table, and Xavier peeled off to see what the cortex wasn’t saying. Xavier ran into some trouble trying to find an access node, the first try almost ran into a tech, but she faded into cover to avoid the confrontation. Second attempt didn’t run into anyone but did not get a node. With the third try finally getting to a node. (Her roll was only a total 21 eliminating her as candidate. However, Xavier is not notified of this).

Chan managed to find a friend to put her in contact with a friend who has “expanded his business to help during these uncertain times” when the rest of the crew went to meet this contact, they found a salvage yard run by a Norman Fisk. Chan haggled, but Fisk was firm on his price. One hundred and ten credits for a ten pound short range decoy and three hundred and thirty for a fifty pound short range explosive warhead. The Crew debates for awhile and decides on one missile and four decoys.

As the weapons transaction was taking place, Li Ming arrived at the site of the private game. As she approached the house, she was hit with a taser and was taken so completely by surprise she only had time for a puzzled expression before crumpling to the ground unconscious.

While Li Ming was being abducted, Xavier was returning to the Ghost and spotted three men loading a bundle aboard their ship. A gust of wind flipped back the tarp enough for Xavier to spot a section of very distinctive cloth, cloth that Li Ming was wearing earlier. Xavier tried to sneak closer, but was detected. The men started to pursue, but the nimble Xavier was able to slip out of sight. Frantic, Xavier called the others for help.

William gunned the hover mule as Marsh gunned the hover car to race back to the port. By the time the two vehicles arrived, Xavier had run through the start up sequence and had already obtained departure clearance. Unfortunately, the kidnappers had already departed and in a faster ship. Xavier got a scan of the ship before it lifted and knew the ship was the Marigold and was a high speed Traveler-Class courier, much faster than the Ghost. Marsh picked up the kidnapper’s ship just as it went to hard burn and followed at the Ghost’s best speed.

Willis dived into the engine room and managed to boost the Ghost’s speed to catch the fleeing Marigold. A new problem quickly presented itself in that while they had a single missile, using it posed too much threat to Li Ming. After several moments of thought, Chan, Marsh, and Willis put their heads together and it was Marsh who came up with a plan. Namely, he would use the Ghost’s temporarily boosted speed to “scorch” the kidnapper’s ship forcing it out of hard burn long enough to board. Chan had the others armor up for battle with Marsh and Xavier at the helm and Willis in the engine room.

Chan, Williams, and Cindy waited in the airlock in full armor to wait for Marsh’s signal. Marsh closed on the Marigold, and then squeezed every ounce of speed the Ghost world yield. (Ship’s Agility d8 – roll 7, Piloting d12 + d6 – roll 9 + 6, plus five plot points d10 – roll 10 for total of 32). The kidnappers were so surprised by this burst of speed that they didn’t even have time for an evasive action. Left spinning so lazily, that Marsh was easily able to match and dock.

Xavier overrode the Marigold’s security and got the airlock open easily. The nature of the traveler’s airlock meant that Marsh had to roll the Ghost 180 degrees to get the two hatches to mate properly forcing the boarding party to have to rotate as they boarded the Marigold to match the grav plating on the kidnapper’s ship.

Chan sprang aboard almost acrobatically, with Cindy right behind, if less acrobatically than the smaller woman. William’s large size forced him to proceed slower, but he did over successfully get aboard. Chan and Cindy continued to race ahead until coming to a T intersection. Chan spotted a ladder heading down and taking a guess, headed for the ladder. Moving awkwardly in full armor, the two managed to slide to the lower deck, but it wasn’t a pretty sight. The two women were out of sight before William reached the intersection. But he also spotted the ladder and headed that direction.

As Chan and Cindy landed on the lower deck, they spotted a man exiting a cabin. Cindy whipped her SMG up and shot him before he could react, with Chan doing the same with a burst from her assault rifle. The man was wearing body armor and it saved his life, but the combined damage was more than enough to send him crashing to the deck in a boneless heap. The two women raced forward to enter the cabin the man had exited, but due to the body blocking the path failed to make it.

Chan rolled into the cabin hitting another man guarding Li Ming and Chan followed with a nearly identical move leaving the man unconscious, saved only by his body armor. William was covering the ladder to the upper deck when he saw a familiar item dropped through the hatch. The large first mate dove away from the flash bang avoiding the worst of the effects, but the blast was enough to still leave him stunned.

Chan immediately moved to cover the doorway as two men dropped into the hallway. The first moved like lightning snapping off a quick shot that missed due to Chan’s cover of the doorway. Chan’s return burst caused a couple grazing hits that barely slowed the man. The second man landed after the captain fired landing off balance and was unable to fire. As Chan fought, Cindy tried without luck to revive Li Ming before moving to assist Chan. The two men fired on Chan with the second taking three quicksilver fast shots, but were so poorly aimed that Chan barely flinched and easily dodged his fusillade. The first man fired simultaneously with Chan and completely missed as Chan let loose with a full auto fire attack. The confined corridor should have been a killing field, but despite this fact, Chan only hit the first man again, but at least left him barely on his feet.

Cindy was unable to exit the narrow cabin doorway and was unable to assist in the fight, but in a surprise move, William showed his resilience and fired on the second man from where he was playing possum and slightly wounded the second man. The badly wounded first man snapped off three wild shots missing Chan completely before she fired two bursts at the men killing one instantly and leaving the second on his feet just long enough to be killed by William’s shotgun. William rolled to his feet and ran to scoop up Li Ming as Chan and Cindy climbed the ladder to the upper deck.

Between William pushing from below and Chan pulling from above, they quickly got Li Ming up the ladder. However, despite posting Cindy to guard the intersection, the ringing in her ears from the short violent fight prevented the medic from hearing a pair of crew men approaching. William heard the mechanic just before she fired and while he successfully unslung his shotgun, he didn’t have time to fire before her pistol barked and hit him in his chest, fortunately stopped by his vest.

The pilot fired twice at Cindy, but again her armor easily deflected the hits. On seeing their weapons were ineffective both the pilot and mechanic turned to flee. An embarrassed Cindy was having none of that and severely wounding the stumbling pilot before he could get out of her line of fire, the mechanic proved faster and vanished out of sight.

Chan prevented Cindy from pursuing and ordered the medic to cover their escape. Chan assisted William with carrying Li Ming through the out of phase grav plating successfully and Cindy sealed the airlock behind them. Chan hit the intercom to tell Marsh they were back and the pilot immediately detached from the kidnappers ship.

Marsh attempted hard burn, but Willis informed the crew that the overload needed to catch the faster ship had damaged the Ghost’s engines and hard burn would not be possible. As the Ghost pulled away they received a voice only wave from the Marigold. The mechanic growled that Nightblade would never stop pursing Li Ming, no matter where she hid. Now knowing what was going on, Chan quickly figured out the notoriety of the medical cruise had drawn some of Darius Nightblade’s hired goons. Figuring it would b best to drop out of sight for awhile, she had Marsh set a course for Skyplex Jiu Xing for repairs with the Ghost arriving on 7 Aug 2518.