Duo Jie is, for many starfarers, a sight to behold. Standing a smidge taller than a Callistan or a United droid, Duo Jie hails from Terra's Himalayan mountains and serves as First Mate of the Platinum Lion Salvage & Discovery Company. Befitting his remarkable size, Duo Jie is very mellow, rarely, if ever, being moved to any kind of outburst of anger or panic; he always seems in control of himself, and always keeps a cool head in a crisis. He knows well his own strength, and when he wants to intimidate another crew he likes to pick things up and throw them around. Not like, mad-throw, but just grab precious things and turn them into a mess. What are you gonna do, stop him? It's a pretty effective way to get what you want, and most starfarers would rather acquiesce than take a swing and escalate a conflict with a space yeti. When he's not busy with his work, Duo Jie likes to practice painting with gouache and oils. He maintains a large collection of adult literature; crews are sometimes surprised when he picks up dirty magazines from port towns throughout the Sol system, but the truth is he finds the anatomy of different species fascinating, and finds these magazines are a more interesting collection of artistic references for his own tasteful illustrations than a more academic gesture or anatomy book. He'll leaf open one of these skin rags and point out the rich, dramatic lighting that was used in a photo shoot, and how these colorful lights reflect off their surroundings and paint themselve across the nude forms of their subjects. His paintings are artful and tastefully rendered; he'll choose to study landscapes or figure paintings as his mood dictates. He's happy to sell his paintings to people, and if he likes you he'll give you a pretty good price.
As Platinum Lion's First Mate, Duo Jie is primarily responsible for directing, organizing and managing the crew of the Mammoth. An accomplished captain in his own right, Duo Jie was enjoying a quiet career as harbormaster of Terra's Guangzhou Starport when Tybalt tracked him down with a problem: he's got a ship but he needs a crew, if Duo Jie could help get Platinum Lion off the ground he could name his price and live whatever kind of life he wants on Tybalt's dime. It was a tempting offer- it'd been a while since Duo Jie had seen the stars, and he knew how to run a tight ship, but scrounging up a crew of freelancers was more work than he really wanted to put in, so he proposed a deal: if Tybalt finds his own guys, he does his own paperwork and handles his own payroll, Duo Jie will put the pieces together and whip them into a proper crew. Having once been the captain of his own ship, Duo Jie knew how much drudgery actually went into captaincy; if he could get Tybalt to handle the tedium, then he'd get to do the fun parts himself. Guangzhou's been nice, but harbormastering hasn't left Duo Jie much time to pursue his paintings. If Tybalt agreed to his terms, he was in. Poor bastard didn't know how much paperwork he was signing up for.
Duo Jie employs the "soft hand, iron hand" approach to his leadership. His remarkable chillness makes working with him easy, and he's approachable when there's a problem since his crew don't expect to get lit up for confessing to a correctable error; it's better that those things get surfaced early than to be hidden in fear. That chillness runs the risk of inviting slovenly shiphanding, however, so consequences need to be severe if crewmen get too comfortable and it begins to impact their work. Genuine mistakes happen, that's fine, but there is no room for negligence when everyone on the ship depends on each other to make it back to port safely. If a crewman gets too cozy with the relaxed vibe of the soft hand, then an eight-foot tall yeti will show up to their quarters and show them the iron hand. You'll start to care when it's your precious things smashing to bits against the deck. Is this what's keeping you from your work? Whoops! However big you think you are, you're not bigger than the First Mate, so let's all play nice and do our jobs so we don't need to play things the other way.
For his part, Duo Jie took the roster of hotshots and rock stars Tybalt put together and assembled them into a proper crew. Their first test came when both the Jackrabbit II and the Ermine taxied for takeoff on extremely short notice- Duo Jie summoned all hands to the Mammoth immediately, and the crew assembled exactly as planned. Pre-flight ran smoothly, everyone assumed their stations and the Mammoth was able to depart from Old Titan Station quick enough that they didn't lose track of the ships they'd been following. Captain Tybalt made three assessments in his review of the salvage rivals: the first was that Captain Bryce of the Ermine was an experienced and creative navigator, so of the two ships Duo Jie determined that his would be the safest to follow. As expected, the Ermine charted a line through off-beat and backwater warp currents to arrive at the site of the Dromedary, roughly in sync with the much faster Jackrabbit II. Duo Jie's experience commanding a crew let him feel out how close was too close to be following another starship through open space, so when Red Raven and Timberwolf both arrived at- and revealed to Platinum Lion- the location of the Dromedary, the Mammoth crept quietly in from the peripheral. Duo Jie recommended Tybalt give the order to "dive."
The second assessment was that Captain Amy of the Jackrabbit II would be the more dangerous of the pair in how they respond to hostilities. Her ship is more heavily-armed and she had a more volatile personality compared to Bryce- if Platinum Lion were to succeed and pushing two ships off the Dromedary, then Duo Jie determined the Jackrabbit II would need to be the first to go. Listening in on local communication bands, Amy and Bryce seemed to be having a bit of an argument over their claim to the Dromedary, a sleek corsair cruiser bearing Quasar Galactic's markings that looked to have had its bridge chewed off by a giant set of teeth. The aft of the ship was scuffed but intact, it just appeared as though something bit its head off. In practical terms this meant that the decks of the shipwreck were exposed from the front, and it would be easy to simply walk in and recover the Ganymedean tribute the ship was carrying from the hold in its mid-deck. Bryce had secured one of the Ermine's robotic claws to the wing of the Dromedary, boasting over comms that this meant it was his. Amy threatened to magnetize the hull of the ship to the top of the Jackrabbit and tow it somewhere else. Neither crew had set foot inside the shipwreck yet, so by right no claim has been properly staked yet. Amy was preparing to gear up with her away team and do just that when Clover, noticing a blip on the sensor array, reported another ship was in the vicinity, waiting. Duo Jie felt this was the moment to act.
The Mammoth attacked from below. Its multicasters spun up, firing bursts of solid munitions through their sustained laser pulses. These were cutting-edge military weapons, and they worked just as promised, their lasers weakening the Jackrabbit's forcefield projection just enough to let the bursts of solid rounds punch into the tow ship's hull. The ship's comms scrambled into an abrupt and crackling silence, the Mammoth scoring a solid hit on one of the Jackrabbit's enormous thrusters. From visual inspection the thruster looked damaged beyond function, but without hesitation it reignited a moment later- Tybalt's suspicion that the ship's Mercurian captain had an unnatural command over machinery seemed correct, and Duo Jie made note of the nature and extent of this ability, commanding a broken engine to hold together and work through critical disrepair. The Jackrabbit released a volley of missiles from its launcher pods and accelerated straight ahead, quickly escaping the resting place of the Dromedary in favor of somewhere, anywhere else. Since they attacked from below, it took a bit of time for the Jackrabbit's missile deployment to arc around and find the Mammoth- its top mounted turret was able to shoot most of the missiles down, the remainder rippling against the ship's high-powered frontal forcefield. That was one down.
Tybalt's third assessment was that Red Raven and Timberwolf's squabbling rivalry meant neither would help the other, they were already divided so it would be safe for Platinum Lion to pick them apart one at a time. After seeing the Jackrabbit take a hit to its engines and leave, the Ermine hastily withdrew its robotic arm from the wing of the Dromedary, tearing a piece of it off in the panic as its engines lit up for its own rapid acceleration out of danger. The deployment of missiles from the Jackrabbit II had occupied the Mammoth's top turret, affording the Ermine an opportunity to escape. It had a poor angle on the Mammoth, but it fired both of its laser turrets downward at the belligerant ship as it flashed off in the opposite direction from where their rivals had scattered away to. Duo Jie made note of the strange precision of the Ermine's laser deployment- the two beams it fired seemed to curve through space and land on the same spot, putting an outsized amount of pressure on the ship's forcefield projectors. Tybalt's report said the Ermine would be lightly-armed, but something unnatural allowed it to punch well above its weight. Duo Jie suspected another Mercurian.
It wasn't a long, drawn-out conflict, it was a single gunshot, a loud roar from the king of the yard that sent the smaller scavengers scrambling away. The rumors were true: the hold of the Dromedary was loaded with priceless jewelry, gold and gleaming gemstones, a fine tribute befitting the Grand Bloom of Ganymede. Duo Jie supervised the safe acquisition of treasure as it was loaded into the drum hold of the Mammoth, the crew leaving much of the mundane valuables and raw materials behind- Tybalt wasn't here for replacement parts or steel plates, he was here for the good stuff, and his man Duo Jie delivered. The Platinum Lion crew celebrated their first dub in their ship's mess hall, popping bottles and letting the bubbly spill. Tybalt personally made a toast to his fine crew, and to many more successes in their future. Platinum Lion Salvage & Discovery was officially on the map.
Afterwards, Duo Jie retired to his quarters, prepped the cold press paper and started work on a new gouache painting. He was content.