Battle at the Cottage

July 21, 2009

The trip back to Hammerstar is fairly uneventful.  None of the people we are bringing back are gamblers, much to the chagrin of Vincent.

The usual multi-colored corona encompasses the ship at star-fall as they enter the system. Within seconds, a transmission comes over the intercom "Um….Archangel? Did you know there was a rather large warship following behind you?"

"Yes," answers Gabriel, "We picked this up while we were out. It's ours."

Silence follows as the radio operator absorbs this information. "You guys have all the luck. How many ships do you need in your fleet?"

Gabriel explains the scenario. "Ah, ok, should we have the registrar meet you at…where would you like him to meet you?"

"I don't think we can land it in the current shape that it is in. We will have to leave it in orbit until it is more fully repaired."  

"Ah, ok. Bring it in and we will get it situated. It will take a few days to get it into position to be worked on. We will get everything figured out and such. I will tell him to meet you on the planet to fill out the paperwork."

The repair of the fleet is the first priority. It is going to cost twenty-nine resource points for all the ships.

Upon arrival, Sonja stands there looking at it and eventually comes walking over "what the hell did you do to my ship?"

"We saved it." answers Vince

"you think that looks bad, you should see the one in orbit," says Max.

"I heard about that, who's going to repair it? That space dock hasn't been used for years." then she looks over at Vince "I'd ask if you had time for some recreational fun, but I bet you have to go visit a certain female. Is Vince Depaulos going to settle down?"

Gabriel chuckles at this as the group starts to disperse with the things they have to work on.

Vince spends the evening with Molly. She was very glad that he called her first. Then she said "Next time I have to go with. You know, we can talk to Gabe right now!" Vince tries his best to throw her off topic as she answers "So tell me about your new ship, I hear it's huge!" Vince then does his best to make space sound very very dangerous. "I had heard about making a space lane between here and Meredin, if it is that dangerous, maybe I should wait until it is set up."

"Yes, that would certainly be better than now," says Vince, glad to have an out ot that discussion.

A short time later, as Vince is sitting lazily back resting, Molly comes running in "Gabe said that I could come on the next run!" Vince grimaces and quickly starts thinking of some new retorts.

Max and Myr go off to meet some former soldiers they knew that had left messages for Max. It turns out both of them are looking for work having heard about how well the Archangel Trading Consortium is doing. The one is obviously on drugs, and Max gently denies his claim.

Email Reply from Jon: When you reject Adam, he mouths some obscenities at you and storms off, saying he doesn’t need a mother, just a job, can’t trust old friends, that sort of thing. 

The girl seems more promising, having a history of drug use but seeming clean. Gabriel says we need to prove she is clean.

Email Reply from Jon: With regards to Rachael, yes, there are organizations that can certify that someone is clean.  She hasn’t completed any official program, she did it herself, and has been clean for almost three months when she comes to see you.  She is fine with drug testing to start and random testing during so that she can prove that she has straightened up. 

We give the information to Gabriel, and he seems to think that is good enough. He then does a background check on Rachael to find out if the rest of her information is accurate.

Email Reply from Jon: Rachael’s references do NOT check out.  In fact, she seems to be involved, in a bad way, with the same drug dealers that have Adam in their control.  However, while Adam is still a junkie and controlled that way, Rachael is in their control because her younger brother, Nick, has been taken by the drug dealers so that she will cooperate. 

----

K'nigley works on the AI and does some repairing and upgrades on it without leaving the ship. He has issues for some reason, due to a bad port or something, but eventually gets things working.

Gabriel had taken a shower and was just exiting when there is a knock at the door. He sighs and grabs a towel and goes and looks out the peep hole. There is a bunch of women and a guy out there. He can see track marks on their arms indicating they are drug users. He guesses they are prostitutes and doesn't open the door. They try to push their way in "Hey, we were promised a good time! Cash on delivery man!"

Gabriel clicks a plasma pistol and says "You are mistaken, I didn't call for you. Leave."

"No, we were promised a thousand each, cash on delivery. See, here is the address." as one of the women holds up a data pad with his address on it. He doesn't recognize the name.

"Yes, that may be my address, but that is not my name. I need you to leave."

Just then, he has to roll a reflex save. It looked like they were going to get violent, but then they saw Gabriel lift the plasma pistol, and they left swearing and snarling as they walk away.

For the next few days, Gabriel has issues with his front door being vandalized. The landlord complains about it, until Gabriel complains about the level of security.

-----

When the group gets together, Gabriel says "I just wanted you to all know, the frigate that we left back at the Meriden system never showed up. I can block them in this system from working with anyone else, but not in any other system. I'm sending information out to the other systems, but there isn't much we can do other than inform people there."

Max and Kahana tell the others about the idea to get some Marines or other military people, and tells them about Rachael and Adam.

Vince has some sort of fancy dinner that is only done in IM's so I have no idea what went on there.

It's still another week for the ships to be repaired.

Max asks Vince," is there anything you can do to help my friend Rachael and her brother Nick being held by the drug dealers? Any contacts you have?"

He says "I can talk to the government/authorities, but that's about the extent of his related contacts...he could try to gather information."

Vince finds out the dealers are some sort of Chinese triad, they don't want to be paid off, they just want extra money or extra shipping muscle. The amount owned isn't much either, but a full frontal assault isn't possible since the whole team is now  fairly public.

Vince sets up with The Borealis republic and the Orlamu for the Seraph to do some transportation missions on a regular basis.

The group decides to purchase medium combat armor for all 4 group members for 10 resources each.

Pg 74 D20 Future

Myr makes some flash-bangs to be used when needed.

After a really long discussion, really long, the group decides to help Rachael's younger brother. The authorities wouldn't go in due to lack of information (telling them where the cottage was outside of town that he was being held just wasn't enough). We thought about hiring a group of marines to go in, but instead decided to just hire a couple and the rest of us would go with to ensure nobody gets away.

So with Rachael and Myr leading the way, the group heads to the cottage. K'nigley easily gains access to the communications array and disables both incoming and outgoing calls.

All of the doors except for the front seem to be covered over with some sort of dura-steel or concrete, so that most of the house is sealed shut. It seems to be masking heat signatures as well, so we have to go inside to locate Nick.

Myr and Rachel rush the front door and pound it open. As soon as it opens, Max tosses a flash-bang into the room. Without pausing, Myr and Rachel charge in.  Myr unloads on the first person he sees. The guys chest explodes as his dead body is thrown to the ground.

Rachael shoots at the person next to who Myr shot, and the round digs deep into the guys shoulder.

Gabriel moves up to hide behind Myr, but misses on his attack.

Max rushes up to the couch to use it as cover, stands and shoots at one of the men at the table, he hits him in the head with a lucky shot and the guy drops. He then jumps back down behind the couch.

K'nigley rushes up to the guy in the kitchen that has turned with a pistol in his hand. K'nigley shoots and hits him. The attacker drops and K'nigley immediately yells "I hit one!"

Max stands up and shoots at the last guard, dropping him with one hit at nearly point-blank range. No other attackers seem to be present in the room.

Vince searches and doesn't find anyone else the building. Rachael rushes to her brother Nick, who seems still be drugged and groggy. We pick up all the weapons left lying around while looking for anything usefull. Gabe and K'nigley search and find a closet that has hidden cameras contained whithin. Fortunatelly, since K'nigley disabled all communication with the cottage, the feeds were prevented from leaving, but the built in surveillance was recorded. We do grab all the video's in case there is some useful information on it.

We decide to destroy the building, but we don't want anyone to know it was us. Myr and K'nigley work to make a gas leak look like an accident, as they fray the conduit to make it look less like a group attacked.  With gas leaking out, the group gets back into the vehicle and leaves.  About a half mile down the road, the building explodsion can be heard.

Rachael is happy that she has her brother back and is willing to be in debt to us for awhile. She also wants to bring him along so he is close to her. Instead, we decide to put him in a professional rehab facility. She isn't happy, but Vince is able to get him into a very good facility and she relents to let him go as long as he is hidden as if he were in witness protection, which is arranged.

As the group gets to the ship to return all the armor, the ship speaks to Gabriel.

"Good evening Gabriel! How are you doing!" says the AI, now talking from the ship.

Gabriel looks shocked at the voice, and then glares at K'nigley who just shrugs.

"I'm doing fine, how are you?" says Gabriel, still glaring at K'nigley.

"Fine, thanks for asking. Oh by the way, you know one of those communication thingies we got from the aliens...well...one of them went off. Don't worry, I answered for you! They want to know if you got the package and took care of it. By the way, K'nigley wired me up to the ship."

"What Package?" says Gabriel, now more confused than worried about K'nigley's experiments even as the group moves inside the ship to converse.

"The package you got K'nigley?" says the AI.

"What package?" says K'nigley as he was taking off his armor…and then the brain cells finally kick in.

"Ohhhh. That package." as he pulls out a dog-tag like item and shows it to the group.

He explains, when he was on the ship earlier, he got a package delivered to the ship but not to anyone person in particualar. So of course he opened it. It was a dog-tag like pendant. He did some research and determined it was from a member of the battle cruiser Abstraction circa 2356, or 127 years ago. This ship apparently was routed and chased for over a year, eventually they made it to hammer's star, the crew had been in a number of fights and the ship fled to the verge. Once Hammer's Star found out they were cowards, the Abstraction fled the system and hadn't been seen since.

He continued "I haven't done anything else except find out what it was. I do know our new battle cruiser was called the Benedict, so it's not from our new ship. We were told to basically look into this dog tag."

The dog tag does have a chip in it that has some flight plans installed in it. The tags are also radioactive with a unique signature that could be traced, although the radiation itself is nothing dangerous. Probably picked up from a particular place it had been exposed to for too long.

There are some medical records on the chip and the medical droid analyzes these records and says "according to the records you gave me, these are a Joshua McQueen he was possibly alive as little as 30 years ago. He was an officer in his 40's when he was serving, but for him to live to an age of 160's would be very impressive. Wait, there are some anomalies in his genetic markers. There are 2 different scans of him on here and they don't match!" The droid displays the DNA and they don't match. It looks like it could have mutated due to radiation.

K'nigley plugs the flight plan into the ship computer to see where they went. The closest one is Zin Point, 17.6 Light years away, the other locations are farther away. It looks like it would take a few different systems to track it down.

Zin Point is a known system, but it has not been colonized or extensively searched. Nobody has had the funding or reason to go there. The group discusses going there, and then Max suggests not going for free, but seeing if any of the mining groups might be interested in another trip. Much discussion ensues, mainly that if the group needs to go somewhere else, they would be tethered by these miners. In the end, money wins, and Vince calls around for any takers.

Both the Orlamu and Borealis Republic decided they wanted to go. There is room enough to take both groups to Zinpoint, they are open to us leaving them, but we have to pick them up within thirty days or one of our ships has to pick them up. We will take a little lower up front payment because of this, same costs over all. The total mission is paying out seventy resource points when completed. The group is still kind of grumbling over babysitting, but Max thinks things will work out for the best, and he secretly wants one of the gauntlets having seen Vince wearing his new one...that he purchased without asking the group about...the jerk.

Jade with Voidcorp hears about the mission and calls Vince saying she wants to send a small team of five people along as well for fifteen resource points. Some people don't like them because they have numbers instead of names, but we have no issues with them. The plan would be then that they could use the sensors in Horus to search the system. Gabriel is concerned that we would be tethered with these people even worse than the other group since they would be directly on our ship. Gabriel says no, so Vince tells Jade that he has to decline the offer. Instead of accepting defeat, she counters with forty resource points. Gabriel relents for forty, and we take the extra five people with. It's gonna be a crowded ride.

The deals are made, all three teams are ready to go. Voidcorp snuck in a sixth scientist, but nobody noticed until we were ready for departure. The Voidcorp crew take a small area in the forward cargo space for their own research terminals and cots an such. They are very technical, so they actually have K'nigleys interest as he looks at all their cool state of the art gear. Plus they are all geeks, so they don't mind K'nigley.

Gabriel tells the AI to only talk to the five of us when the others are not around. He can use the comm units. Then he starts using other voices, first K'nigleys, and everyone says no but also joked that if he was pleasant we would know it was the AI. Then he talks as Molly, Gabriel say fine but Vince says no. Over the laughs, nobody is really sure who the AI will sound like.

The ship jumps, and the five days of travel do not exactly go smoothly. There is an escalating series of pranks and jokes being pulled that start getting a bit dangerous between all three groups. At one point, it takes an arc welder to open a bathroom that was sealed shut with a Voidcorp person in it. Gabriel gets pissed, and says he will confine them if they can't act correctly. Even threatening a schedule. He uses his "Dad" voice to let them know he is serious.

The group makes star-rise in the system and Horus breaks off with Vince sitting in shotgun.

There are ships there immediately seen. They are human ships, but there are metal additions that are not human made. The ships seem "bulky" and unnatural. K'nigley also figures out the energy signature coming from the ships is the same as the anti-matter power generator they found in Meriden.  The drive engine's are definitely human though, but they don't have any IFF signals and they are in fact a little higher than normal radiation in the background. K'nigley figures that after eight months the radiation would prove to be physically dangerous to the crew. This information just begins to sink in as......

----Cut Scene until next week ---

XP: 350

GM Notes 

• I got some really good feedback on some ideas one player wanted.  That has really helped me firm up some items for next time.  
• The really big change were the ideas.  I, like the players, want their characters in the action.  However, that doesn't really fit them in some ways.  We then stumbled on the idea that the characters might have hired a team to extract the brother and the players could run the extraction team.  It gives the players action and keeps their characters in character.  It's a new idea for us and I am looking forward to fleshing it out.  
• I am still learning Masterplan.  I forgot that if I don't put a tile out there, it doesn't exist!  So, the house where the gunfight took place had no outside area because I forgot to place it!  So, I had to place the tokens of the players as they entered.
• The other thing I learned for Masterplan is that I needed to have NPCs ready and think I have at least the recurring NPCs but probably need to have a few more in standby, if needed.  
• I am glad that player character greed is still there!  And I am glad that our Resource Point system has value so that I could play to that greed.  
• I don't know how well the description was from me to the players but the point of the ships is that they look human but have extra bulges and a different energy signature to be human.  But, there are enough similarities to be confusing.  
• I used Astrosynthesis to make the start chart and like it but it gets awkward at times.  Probably my lack of familiarity with it.  

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