D20 Star*Drive

 

June 30, 2009 

 

 

The group is taking a break while waiting for the 2 day recharge back at Hammer Star.

Max and Kahana are hanging out together watching races at a bar.

Vince is out with Molly on a private night together.

 

An alarm goes off on Archangel - K'nigley picks up that someone is trying to break into Archangel that he is on.

He turns on the external cameras and can see eight people outside the door placing explosives to try and blow the door in.

K'nigley calls everyone and conference calls them together. As he is explaining the situation when the phones go dead. He then ties into the main planets communications array and calls the dock security. They give him the run around, say they just rent out the docks and don't control security. He asks them to call the police. As he tries to call the others, there is an explosion as the communications array goes down.

Max asks Kahana to call Vince and Gabriel to see if they know what is going on as the two make their way back to the ship.

Vince hears the phone ring. She took him out somewhere fancy and introduced him to people, including the governor, who was very interested about talking over things going on. It's as Vince is talking to the Governor that the phone rings. He ignores it. Kahana tries to send text messages instead.

 

Gabriel, yawning, walks over to K'nigley and says "what are you doing, it woke me up?"

"You are here? Some people are trying to break in!"

Gabriel looks over at the monitors, growls about the lost communication array, and walks over to the weapons locker. He hands a weapon to the shocked K'nigley, who has never shot a weapon before.

 

Vince finally reads after the 3rd text message comes in. "Oh, I'm sorry, I have to take this.  I guess some people are vandalizing our ship."

"Oh dear, is there anything I can do to help?" asks the governor.

"No, I think we can handle it." answers Vince.

 

Another explosion rocks the ship, as Gabriel glances at the monitors again and sighs, "Well, it looks like we have to hold them off; they are in the ship."

Unfortunately, there is nothing to seal off to try and keep the invaders out. Gabriel looks to K'nigley "Well, I used command codes to lock everything down. They can't steal the ship."

K'nigley suddenly realizes the fire suppression system uses halon, and he grins as he takes control of it.

 

The group loads up crates to hide behind as the invaders come inside and open fire:

 

A round flies through the air and smacks into K'nigley.

The AI takes a round as well

One of the attackers move forward, leaving themselves open. But both K'nigley and the AI miss him.

Gabriel takes a shot but misses.

The attackers attack and hit K'nigley again. He dives behind the almost useless cover.

The AI attacks and manages to hit an attacker.

 

The attackers move up to get their wounded person. They throw down a wall of cover fire hitting both the AI and Gabriel.

The AI shoots again, but misses.

Realizing he can't hit anything, K'nigley grabs some batteries and starts messing with them to make them into an explosive of some kind.

Gabriel misses and ducks down just in time for the onslaught of rounds. Gabriel takes another hit.

Another attacker moves forward and manages to avoid getting hit.

AI misses yet again, just not being designed to shoot a weapon.

K'nigley stands up with his bomb, but it only manages to go about 10 feet. It detonates, creates some smoke that helps cover the defenders, but otherwise does no more damage.

Gabriel shoots and hits an attacker through the smoke.

Rounds go off as the AI gets hit three times.

The AI turns and shoots, with a critical hit to an attacker as he hits it in the head (natural 20).

Almost unable to stand from all the damage, K'nigley backs up and makes another grenade like device.

With the wounded attacker, the other attackers fire wildly and miss everyone.

The smoke clears away.

K'nigley hands the bomb to Gabriel who throws it at the attackers. As it rolls down the hall and explodes, hitting 3 of the attackers.

The AI shoots and misses, but the rounds are at least keeping the attackers at bay.

Gabriel throws the next grenade from K'nigley and again lands it right next to another group of attackers. It hit another 3 off the attackers.

Max and Kahana finally arrive, as Max rushes up and motions to Kahana that there are 5 of them.

One of the attackers see's Max and shoots at him, but misses.

Two others turn around and shoot, hitting max twice in the chest.

The others shoot at the AI and hit him again, he's almost down.

Flash-bang goes off stunning Max. Kahana shrugs it off.

K'nigley makes a new grenade, getting it figured out as he makes a 6d6 instead of the 4d6 he has been making. Gabriel throws it and again hits the group of attackers, dropping two from the grenade toss.

Suddenly one of the attackers yells" Unload the explosives" as a missile is fired down the hallway towards the hiding K'nigley and Gabriel. K'nigley manages to shut the blast door just as the missile is moving in and manages to protect the start*drive.

The three attacking Max and Kahana move forward and all shoot at Kahana realizing he isn't stunned from the flash-bang, but they all miss. Kahana shoots and hits one of the attackers at point blank range.

Gabriel, from the safety of the blast door, gets on the intercom and calls out to Kahana "How are you doing?"

He yells back "Max isn't doing so well, but there are only three of them, so I'm ok"

The attackers don't look quite so happy to hear that.

Max, shaking off the stun, draws and shoots at one of the attackers. Hitting him and dropping the wounded attacker in one shot.

Both of the attackers shoot at Kahana, hit him, but he growls and doesn't move. Instead, he aims and shoots one of the attackers in the head, dropping him. "One left!" he yells out, as he aims his pistol at the last attacker.

K'nigley suddenly see's a new alarm as there is some coolant sabotage, he laughs at the childish attempt.

The other attacker, looking at Kahana, doesn't see Max as he shoots him in the chest and drops him.

Kahana can tell the 3 people he shot are down, a 4th one is wounded. He gestures to Max to cover the wounded guy as he moves down the hall. Kahana moves down, he can see three more bodies down the hall. Some of the guys are alive, but are down and not moving. He moves as far as he can and see's a final person standing in front of some sort of explosive device. He quickly identifies it as an explosive device equivalent to about a hundred pounds of explosives. Without hesitation, he charges at the last attacker and plows into him, slamming him into the back wall.

Gabriel, watching the monitors, gets an uneasy feeling at what he is seeing. "Max, run down the hall and help Kahana"

The attacker tries to push Kahana and reach out and press the explosive devices activation button. Kahana pushes him away and shoves his pistol into the guys stomach. Pulls the trigger, and the guy drops.

Kahana turns around and smiles at Max. Parts of his sub-coetaneous armor is showing from under his skin.

"Guys, there is still something jamming us. They must have something outside in the hanger," calls Gabriel.

Kahana turns around and grabs a part out of the device to disable it, and then rushes out the opening of the ship. Outside, he finds some white noise generators the likes of which he has seen before and shuts them down easily.

 

"Sir, I hate to be a bother, but I seem to be in need of repair" says  the Ai to K'nigley.

"You can be fixed after me."

"Oh, then I will get the medical droid."

 

Max checks the attackers and finds three that are alive. He bandages them briefly to keep them alive.

 

Vince shows up, steps around the bodies, and looks at the group. "You guys look like shit!" he says.

"Where were the cops," asks K'nigley.

"Oh, there were a bunch of prank calls made, the cops are all over looking around," says Vince.

 

Kahana collects up all the weapons and ammo that the attackers had.

K'nigley ensures the rest of the systems are ok, goes to his bunk to lay down. He does take the AI with him and tinkers with him trying to fix some of the damage.

 

Molly calls Vince, and while they are talking he suddenly hangs up and looks at Gabriel. "Molly is on the way," he says.

"Hello! Police. Do you guys have any problems here?"

"Problems? Do these bodies and scorch marks look normal to you?"

"Oh! Why didn't you call?"

The looks on the teams face answers the question.

"Ok, I will take these people into custody and take your statements," says the police.

Outside, vehicles can be heard as people begin showing up. The first person in is Molly "Oh good, you are ok. Oh, these must be your friends, introduce me please." she says smiling at the group. She is very polite and nice as she is there talking to the group. Even K'nigley is taken with her as she identifies his "leave me alone" attitude correctly and politely moves on to the rest of the group.

Molly, still in a formal dress, looks stunning.

The governor shows up and flashes go off as photographers are documenting his stance on crime. Vince takes the opportunity to play up the cameras about something like this not slowing down the company's activities.

Molly is also there, looking elegant in her outfit. The gossip person is trying desperately to get Molly alone, and Vince politely tries to shut down the questioning. He succeeds in doing so.

The governor says to Gabriel he will talk to the mayor and chief of police to ensure this is handled.

 

K'nigley from the back asks Vince if he is going to help repair the ship, and Gabriel yells out "take the night off, and you take care of him will you?" Molly smiles a glowing smile back and says "Oh I will," as she escorts the uncomfortable looking Vince off the ship.

 

Kahana handed over a few of the weapons and the rocket launcher to the police, but kept the magazines and the main explosive.

 

The group rests that night.

Gabriel gets everyone together and says "I have some bad news. We lost the charge on the star*drive, so we have to stay here for at least two more days."

 

Vince informs Diane about the delay, who says it is going to be fine. She also hints that she can help find out information about where the attack came from.

Sonja then calls Vince to ask what is going on, if he is ok, because all the upper bosses above her are asking if things are ok and wondered who Vince had been out with because she had some big contacts. Vince sends her to K'nigley to check on any ship needs, much to her unenthusiastic smile, and says he had been out with the governor.

Molly then calls and says "You know, the governor says I can take the day off if you need me?"

"I would like that but we have a lot of repairs to do. I'm not certain we can even get together tonight because K'nigley has me pretty busy."

"Well give me his number, I'm sure I can work something out…"

"Tell you what, I'll just meet you for lunch, ok?"

 

At the end of the next day, the ship is repaired except for the cosmetic aspects of the ship, painting and such. As soon as it gets to that point, Vince starts working on a droid to add weapons to it. This isn't the droid that bumps into walls, it's a different one. That droid has been updated so that it now bumps into different walls. Vince calls it "training" for this droid to become a boarding droid, but K'nigley thinks he is just making things up.

 

Diane calls Vince back and says she has some information. She says that twenty-two were hired, and the guess is that the others will attack the ships. Since only eight were taken out, that means fourteen are left somewhere waiting in ambush for the Archangel and The Seraphim. She also says she is having issues backtracking the money and wants to know if Vince wants the answer or wants to stay clean with the law. Vince then lets everyone else know the information.

 

We also inform the crew of the Seraphim, and hire some guards to protect both ships while the repairs continue. Tim Gatsby shows up asking what kind of protection the group requires, and they are all deployed outside the ships to guard them.

 

The group sleeps and regains healing points. Nothing exciting happens as they take off and jump into drive space. Five days later, everyone is up to full hit points. The AI is also up to full hit-points. Max assists Vince and K'nigley with the mechanical updates to the droids.

 

The new group dropped off were more scientists with more supplies. The existing scientists had been there for about fourteen days without any incident, so they were eager for information. There are whispers between the two groups about the attack back at the dock. It only takes a day to shuttle things down and some people are coming back, but there isn't much for the party to do while these mundane things are happening.

 

The group makes star fall again and heads back to Hammer Star. Nothing happens exciting which means the groups working on the droids are making good progress. Making Star rise back at Hammer Star there isn't any problem there. Gabriel comes back to the group and says "Um, we are going to be in quarantine for twenty-four hours. A strange case of Aegean flu is going through the system and…wait…oh! Because of the governor's help, they are sending doctors up so we will only be here for twelve hours."

"Don't tell Molly about…" starts Vince, only to be interrupted by Gabriel who is still talking "And Molly is aware of the shorter timeline and will be waiting for you at the end of the quarantine."

 

The doctors show up, have some standard questions about where we have been and who we have met . We leave easily enough.

 

Fernando and Pierre are the next two people hired as the third research group. They are given 24 points to get them started and equal to the other two teams.

 

The next leg of the trip goes fine with no problems. Again, it is a lot of crew and equipment switching and materials left. There are buildings set up and mining has begun. There is already some product, but they are going to try and process it before they send it back. The group figures the system will get relieved about every two months, meaning they will need supplies and exchange of people on that schedule. The group coming back is fairly stir crazy, enough that K'nigley was hiding in engineering to keep away from them. Also lots of drinking and gambling. The group ends up with a lot of money easily taking it from the miners/scientists.

 

We arrive back at Hammers Star, and as we get there, one of the cruisers in charge of planetary defense was right where we arrived. Max had to turn quickly to avoid running into it as chatter fills the radio waves.

 An explosion rips through from the defense cruiser as it starts listing to the side and vents atmosphere. Mayday's and individual com units are going off as people are yelling for assistance and help.

 

The cruiser suddenly explodes as inner pressure rips it apart. The Horus takes 80 points ballistic damage as material is thrown in its direction.

 

Vince calls Molly as things settle down, she is excited that he called her first thing, and then says it's odd because the mass detectors still show that our two ships are an hour out. We shouldn't be here yet.

 

She describes how the ship had the flu. Doctors and scientists were sent in a shuttle, and suddenly of the 2000 people on the ship, they all started attacking each other.

"Wait, you have a salvage ship, can you recover anything from the cruiser?" asks Molly

"Yes, we can, why?"

 

She calls the governor to get permission, and he asks that we pick up the black boxes, bodies, etc. Anything that can help identify what has happened. We find several bodies that are mostly in one piece. We get the black boxes from both the cruiser and the shuttle that was docked. It takes about ten hours, but the team actually finds some people who are in EVA suits floating around in space. K'nigley finds 5 resource points worth of salvage material while the people were being located.

 

Fifteen of the forty people that were saved seem fine, with no symptoms. The others are obviously unstable. Acting violently, they damaged the AI and medical droid. The combat droid also helped, although the weapons were not installed yet.

 

Max, Kahana and Vince are all exhausted after the huge gambling party the night before added to the search. Arriving at the dock, the people and equipment are handed over as the group rests.

 

Molly does let Vince know that she has a huge announcement to make about the two of them, and he is unsure how to deal with it.

 

Diane calls and lets the group know that two other cruisers are down and some other star*drive capable ships have been hit. She thinks that someone has been targeting any Start*Drive capable ship. She sends over the guards to protect the ships and suggests that the team stays at the ship tonight.

 

Max has the Horus fixed.

The group identifies that one of the Star*Drive damaged ships had been towed into the dock area.  Looking at it, the group decides to buy another ship since it only cost 40 resource points and K'nigley had to repair it. Unfortunately, he was tired and added a couple of days to the repair. Once the mechanical was done, he began on the electrical. This took longer than they thought. The entire electrical system was wired poorly by the previous owners. So, nothing went correctly, and it took a full week and still wasn't finished. He worked on it one more week, and was able to get it up and running, but it still isn't completely working. It is repairable, but not at the moment. The entire repair took 20 days.

 

The Seraphim was running a couple of small jobs.

 

Vince contacts Justin of the Borealis Republic and finds out he wants some people to be dropped off. Vince catches Justin at a weak moment and manages to get a job for 100 resources but it will require 2 ships and waiting 10 days there, so 33 days. He gives 40 down and 60 upon return. This looks like it will be a very packed journey. Between the two ships we could get 50 people, this will require 140. There are two shuttles going, lots of material, it's just a ton of people.

 

New PL7 Freighter

Linked Anti-Matter Guns ( 15d8)

Heavy mass Cannon  (10d12)

 

The ships depart for the new destination.

 

XP: 750

 

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