Shalwell's Sharks

Shalwell's Sharks are run by the charismatic Captain Stephen Shalwell. Crewmembers underneath Captain Shalwell have equal rank.

Get rich or die trying.

Shalwell's Sharks operate the aging courier Marathon, which is only capable of one or two jumps before needing extensive repair. Crewmembers are responsible for their own equipment.

Shalwell's Sharks are a relatively new freelancer band operating along the edges of Sun Dynasty, Ballard Constitution, and New Economic Block space. Captain Stephen Shalwell was the kind of middle-of-the-road smuggler who made a decent living transporting between the borders until he wound up on the wrong side of a Sun Dynasty battlefleet. Shalwell left his crewmates to die in their ship, stealing a shuttle and a few tons of unknown contraband. His New Economic Block contacts offered him a decrepit courier for some of his contraband and he hurriedly agreed, using his remaining funds to hire the most desperate thugs he could from neutral stations.   Since then Shalwell's Sharks have moved to the Ballard-Shung-NEB borders to get up to the smuggling game. Under Shalwell's command the Sharks have also dabbled in light mercenary work, often serving as escorts or small-scale pirates to whoever can afford them. Their relationship with their Ballard contacts has slowly declined, and the jury is still out if the Shung Empire or the New Economic Block are ultimately pulling their strings as the Sharks have been involved in intricate quadruple-crosses in recent months.   In their latest misadventure, the Sharks transported an expensive local delicacy- torallian fiddleheads- from the Shung Empire to Aphrodite Primus via Quaddro Station. The containers of fiddleheads contained infected rats that spread through Quaddro Station, spreading a mutagenic disease. The Sharks were detained and quarantined upon return to the station. After their prison term was up they were sent back to their Shung supplier with demands for reparations. Their supplier agreed and sent back a new container of fiddleheads plus some additional funds, and a little extra to pay off the indignant Sharks. Unbeknownst to the clueless smugglers, while they were loading this new shipment NEB operatives climbed out of the Marathon's new bulkheads and began their infiltration of the Shung planet. Also unbeknownst to the Sharks, the newest box of fiddleheads also contained several hundred grams of the highly addictive drug Rhills Natural, a drug so debilitating it's even banned amongst the upper ranks of the NEB. The Sharks were once again arrested on Quaddro Station, released, then arrested again by the Shung at Monad 2. Nobody's quite sure who benefited from this exchange, but everyone knows the Sharks lost.