Four against seven. Dante, Cook, Dust and Tinhead were all Old Reliable had left to throw at the raiders now picking through her hold, and there was nowhere on that ship to hide from what was coming.
It started well. Dante caught one of them clean through a gap in the crates, Dust dropped their specialist before he’d even drawn his gun, and a third raider lost his nerve entirely and bolted somewhere into the bowels of the ship, presumably to hide in a cupboard until it was all over.
For a moment, against all odds, it looked like the Lucky Strikes might actually hold the line.
It didn’t last. The raiders found their second wind just as the Strikes were running out of road, and from there it fell apart fast. Dante was cut down by the lieutenant’s clingfire pistol. Tinhead went next, torn apart in the crossfire, and then it was just Cook and Dust, pinned behind whatever cover the corridors offered, trading shots with raiders who kept on coming no matter how many went down.
Cook held out as long as he could before the lieutenant finished him too, and by the time it was down to Dust alone, more raiders were creeping out of the ship’s hidden corners to replace every one he dropped. He took out the one who’d killed Tinhead, for whatever that was worth, before the lieutenant closed the account for good.
Every credit gone. The stash stripped bare. And all four crew members taken out.
Is this the end for The Lucky Strikes?
After the Storm
Dust survived, just, though not without cost, a wound serious enough to leave him permanently slower than he used to be.
Cook got off lightly, a knock that’ll keep him in the sick bay a turn, but nothing worse.
Tinhead’s blast rifle was wrecked beyond use, though the old bot himself walked away untouched.
But Dante, whose luck had run out once before and been spared by the skin of his teeth, wasn’t so fortunate a second time. The captain of the Lucky Strikes didn’t get up.
With no credits left to pay anyone’s keep, and every fit crew member either dead, injured, or still recovering from Valtherus, there was no version of the next turn that didn’t end here.
The Lucky Strikes are done.
Dante Corsaro lay bleeding out on the rusty floor of his ship, Old Reliable. All around him, greedy cutthroats tipped out boxes and drawers, filling their pockets with his crew’s hard-earned gains.
He never imagined it ending this way. Dante was always a man who walked off the set on his own terms, much like Barry Gibb on the Clive Anderson show back in 1997.
“Alexa,” he groaned through bloodied lips, before giving his final command as the captain of the Lucky Strikes: “play Tragedy by the Bee Gees.”
The song starts. Dante’s eyes glaze over as he imagines the ship’s flashing warning lights as glittering disco balls. “We’re getting on like a storm, aren’t we, Clive?” he mutters, falling into delirium.
A nearby raider – coincidentally called Clive – overhears him. He shrugs, points his gun at Dante’s head, and the world goes black.
And that’s it for the Lucky Strikes. But what a journey it has been.
And it’s not the end of the story entirely. Cook, Tinhead, Jaryn, Tace and Dust all survive, battered and scattered as they are, and there’s every chance they’ll turn up again down the line, whether as the seed of a new crew or just familiar faces in a future adventure. But for now, rest in peace, Dante, and rest in peace, the Lucky Strikes.
Next time, a change of scenery: a new diary, a new setting, and a warband setting out into Five Leagues from the Borderlands. Introducing… Jeff’s Stag Party.