Chapter 3: Red dwarf and purple planet

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Dotty gets the pistol and two magazines with 6 rounds each from the pilot's belt. She leaves the ship, counts three additional corpses around it and rejoins ChiHiRu who is beating his tentacles on the grass. As he notices her he turns around and has two things dangling from his tentacles: a pilot's helmet and a pair of handcuffs complete with a key card. Both of which he just found lying in the grass.

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Derek grabs the shotgun and ready to go. he goes and sees how the drone piloting is going to get them the best view of the situation sh they can rescue the hostages hopefully without any losses.

Dotty grins at Chi, "Nice finds, she points at the gun belt, "huh huh? I hate these things but this looks pretty sweet." Then she points a thumb back at the ship, "Crew of 15, 1 dead in pilots chair, 3 more dead out here so that leaves 11. This thing is mint, like fresh off the factory floor new car smell mint. Well except for that big freaking hole your cannon tore in the side. Anyway, I got some more pictures, we should go scope the camp next."

ChiHiRu extends the tentacles holding a pilot's helmet and a pair of handcuffs complete with a key card to Dotty.

He listen to her report carefully. At the mention of scoping the camp, he turns around and start walking in that direction without saying a word.

"Bon chapeau!" Dotty says looking at the helmet, "may I?" She asks following along behind Chi and extending a hand.

"Chi? Is it okay if I calls you Chi or would you prefer your full name ChiHiRu? I mean I don't want to offend you or nothin'." A concerned look crosses her face, "Are you a he or a she or does it not matter for your species? I mean I grew up on a planet that was pretty much all humans so I ain't never come across one of your peoples before and I ain't quite sure how to address you." Her mechanical eyes study Chi carefully watching for any kind of reaction.

If Chi hands her the helmet she examines it inside and out for markings, anything like that before slipping it on and looking through the visor.

CHiHiRu casually drops the helmet in Dotty's extended hand.

As the barrage of questions hits him, he becomes completely still. Only a few of his floating tentacles drift along with the winds.

After a few long seconds, he finally moves. He silently reach and light a cigarette. He inhale and shudder powerfully before becoming gain still. Five more second later, the tablet mechanical voice let out in a louder volume than usual : "ChiHiRu is Chi." The central pod kinda nod and Dotty gets the impression that the alien feels quite satisfied with his answer.

ChiHiRu start over his stroll in direction of the camp. His movement are measured and relaxed, with the occasional shiver as he continues inhaling his cigarette.

Dotty examines the helmet for a while, people used to hide things in the lining of these things or write their names on the inside. She checks to see if it's a powered visor with data displays or if its something that needs to be plugged in. Maybe there's a recording of the crash or of the data from the crash still inside it.

Dotty plays around with the helmet while following the trail that ChiHiRu carves into the undergrowth.
She finds an audio transceiver attached to the right side.
Aren't there regulations in place that audio transceivers have to buffer the last thirty minutes of conversation in order to help with investigations in case of a crash? Dotty remembers.

Dotty hums while she tries to circumvent the transceiver's security protocols. Just as ChiHiRu announces that the pirate camp is just behind the next hill she manages to access the audio files by making her handheld pc pretend to be a crash investigator's console.

Dotty gestures ChiHiRu to stop and plays the files in the lowest possible volume.

The audio file begins with the pilot celebrating the destruction of the satellite and him telling that they will approach the archeological camp.
An interesting part is the moment just prior to the hit of the planetary defense gun:

Remember the mission! a coarse voice says through the radio We land, we load anything they found into the ship, if we can we also kidnap the professor and then we are back to the base. These few hours of concentrated effort will net us 100000 credits each. So there's no use in stealing anything but the...
The voice is interupted by a female voice Ey sorry capitan but they say they have a big gun pointed at us. Should we stop the approach?
The coarse voice replies Pah! They're eggheads, not military. The only thing they have is the possibily to bore me to death. Continue approach!
A loud noise can be heard and after that a lot of different voices can be heard that bellow commands while the pilot desperatly tries to make a soft landing on the planet. Apparently two crew members use a boarding craft to escape the damaged ship because the coarse voice yells at them that he will find and gut them as soon as he can leave the planet.
The recording ends with what appears to be the crash of the ship.

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Does anyone want to make a flight with the drone? Or maybe prepare an engagement plan while Dotty has a short look at the camp?

"Two more died on the boarding craft," Dotty says keeping the helmet on her head and playing with the visor, "that brings us down to 9. Feeling a little better about this job now."

"Some one was offering them a boat load of money for the artifacts your people had excavated, 100 large each and they wanted to snatch some professor too." She looks at Chi, "How many people back in the real world knew what you was up to here and how many professors you got?"

ChiHiRu gets very close to listen to the low volume recording but does not comment.
"ChiHiru got no professor ... Mmm, camp have professors like leaves in forest. People in camp knew. People in sector government knew every moon. ChiHiRu does not know if government sent to real world or how many people listen in Real World or the other worlds."

Well we have the signal jammer working. What else do we need? Is Dotty back from scouting and do we have the better drone feed yet. After we get that we can plan our ambush.

Dotty nods following Chi. When they get to the site she scans it as before remaining out of sight and in the shadows.

Following ChiHiRu's lead Dotty climbs the hill on front of them, crawling the last few meters through the undergrowth.

From the top of the hill most of the camp can be seen. Dotty is about 100 meter (328 feet) away from the camp. She sees two people in black uniforms guarding the road. Another uniformed person is supervising a group of people who are digging inside the ruins.
The last two uniformed people she can see are sitting under a makeshift canopy in front of one of the tents. All in all Dotty counts five uniformed people and about fifteen "normal" people
Curiously the hatch in the north is blocked by a crate that was put on top of it.

"Four missing," Dotty mutters, "they could be under the hatch, but why locked them in?"

"How many hostages do they have?" Dotty asks Chi, "I count fifteen people outside."

What do the appear to be armed with? Automatic Rifles? Sidearms? Shotguns? And how prepared to they appear to be? ie. Are any rifles the slung or are they in their hands at the ready.

Dotty watches the guards for a while, to see if there's any kind of pattern to their movements, There's always a pattern. She thinks, Guards are creatures of habit, they find something that works and they do it over and over and over again as if they're on autopilot.

For determining the armament make a Perception/Search check
For determining the attitude of the pirates make another Perception/Search check
For determining the schedule make a Knowledge/Tactics check

"There was 21 before pirate fall. Unknown number now."

Dotty observes the camp for half an hour and she can spot quite a lot of details about the camp.

-The two pirates that guard the road are holding rifles. They don't seem to be carrying advanced weaponery like an assault or sniper rifle but rather hunting rifles or anything like that.

-The other pirates have stun batons. Dotty can observe how one of the pirates shocks a hostage with it for talking back. One pirate is also carrying a pistol in a holster in addition to the stun baton.

-The pirates seem to be nervous but also tired. One of the road guards even fell asleep for 5 minutes before the other one woke him up and screamed at him. In addition to guarding the road the pirates also regularily check the hatch in the north.

-As for the schedule Dotty can observe that two pirates closely monitor the road. One of them also regularily turns around and checks in on the pirate that supervises the work of the hostages. One or two of the pirates are supervising the hostages who dig up and clean artifacts that are then put into crates. The rest of them usually rest in front of one of the camps.