Game session 03

Summary

New people

Detail of Scenes

Review and Suspicion at Samsara

Returning from the train mission the team discuss what to do next. The popular option is sleep and try to appear normal to Hilpert the following day. Fenton checks out Marcal who seems to be harmless and retiring for the night.

A Shopping Trip Goes Awry

A chopper run to Formbecke Crossroads reveals that part of the town has been torched. Fenton wanders off to gather information, trailed by Bertie and Marcal. Apparently, the killings have been associated with us. Vaughan gets the groceries in.

We learn that TI carried out a punishment raid on the settlement because of the deaths of the two black guards. A local merchant prince, Hallal Nereal, was killed leaving his bodyguard, the offworlder Chip Brown, at a loose end. Chip is hired as Marcal's guard. If we hang around for a long time we could either meet the Telal Hakar'i again to get more information, or muscle-in on a TI recreation visit to the base.

Returning to the helicopter we realise that two Imperial grav APCs have shimmied up to us while inverted and camouflaged. A warning shot (ball of white-hot superheated plasma) persuades us to surrender or we're toast. Marines in battledress load us into the back of an APC. We're transported away.

Dancing On The Ceiling

After a journey of approximately a couple of hours, we are unloaded at the Kochi Mountain mine. We see an enormous open-cut mine with some building complexes and some large futuristic tubes or vents emerging from underground. Also, a large workforce of what appears to be natives is being controlled by armed guards. This seems to be slave labour rather than just local workers. We are taken a long way underground in a lift. Note: We know slavery is illegal in The Imperium

We emerge into what's clearly an Imperial Naval base. We can't identify an official base name, branch indicator or any other concrete identifiers. Equally, it's here, well-established and seems intimately involved with the mining. We are taken past offices to a holding area on the ceiling of a large room. (We walk up the wall and into the holding area on the ceiling controlled by grav plates). We are placed in a communal area with reasonable facilities (tea, coffee, HoloVid, pure fresh air) and can communicate with the one other prisoner. He's a Naval Petty Officer 3rd Class and has been put in the brig for going AWOL. He's not inclined to talk to us.

The following events happen:

• A Marine Sergeant arrives and asks us to change from our clothes into orange jump suits. He meets a hostile refusal from Marcal and unease at it from Vaughan, which rises to some demands for information. Fenton also refuses while pretending to be an innocent falafel seller. Buster joins the resistance to change while Bertie and Kylara both comply. The sergeant pleads but eventually leaves to bring back some armoured help.
• Marines in maroon coloured Imperial battledress arrive to pull the clothes off Marcal, who continues to refuse to undress. As a marine rips the clothes off Marcal, he suddenly, without so much as a puff, bang or flash, dissapears and his empty clothes fall to the ground. The marines are stunned for a short period, and then beat a hasty retreat. Alarms ring, total clampdown, solitary confinement for us all.
• We are left to sleep. Bertie, waking early in his cell, overhears two officers at the entrance to the brig, discussing how to end the problem that we have become. Release us? Kill us?
• Captain Ardesh, along with battledressed guards and a few other men, comes into the cell area. We are asked a few simple questions and then one of the accompanying men gives each of us a good hard stare. A number of us demand to know what's happening and claim we have rights. The man takes a long look at Fenton and then orders him to be taken away.

Conclusion: Marcal was psionic and probably a Zhodani spy; directly or indirectly employed. Summary for planet's population: Just because you're paranoid; it doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

The Truth Will Out?

After a long lock-down we get to mix again. Fenton is elsewhere getting special questioning. The rest of us are taken for a chat with the mine's head officer (we don't know his name or realise that he's a naval captain) in his expansive and plush office with good views of much of the mine. Why are we here? What did we know about Marcal? What did Marcal know about the mine?, etc. While the questioning continues, we see workers being cleared away, and trucks retreating from the mine. A storm brews up. Kylara later points out that the storm clouds seem to form a shear wall surrounding the mine. Fenton rejoins us. They knew all our details. They have recovered our things from Samsara.

Back in the cells, we can feel sub-sonic thumps at regular intervals. We conclude (Breakthrough idea: Bertie?) that the storm seals off the area around the mine and obscures vision up to a great altitude. During this a railgun is propelling cargo pods up into orbit from deep underground. Still unknown: what do they contain & what is the cargo's purpose?

Comparing all our background rumours and info during our confinement, we learn;

1. We believed that SuSAG was involved with the operation here.
2. A SuSAG transponder did not get recognized as a valid ship as the Quality Act tried to sneak in to orbit.
3. A mercenary mission was tricked into coming here by an unknown party.

Also, clearly TI and the whole train schtick is run by the Imperial Navy as an elaborate cover.

Into Orbit

After being in holding for some time, we are led away. We are taken to a Ship's Boat and loaded on board, along with Captain Ardesh and a number of guards/crew. We're worried that might not actually make it safely to orbit, but resistance is clearly useless. We are taken to a dreadnought, The Emperor Eliador, in orbit. It's all vaguely familiar to those who have served in space forces but it's a secure location and we are incarcerated again.

We are interviewed individually and then meet with the Commodore plus a number of other high ranking officers. All are somewhat perplexed as to what to do with us. We are read our rights, which are few as we have all broken Imperial law by breaking the Red Zone interdiction. However, the Commodore has been convinced by one of his Intelligence Officers, Lieutenant Orlean, that we are of more use to them here than languishing on a prison planet. As we are the only people to have associated closely with Marcal D'Olmay, we are offered the job of returning to the planet to help find him. During this presentation, a sudden urgent situation takes Lieutenant Orlean away. When he returns, we here that Marcal has escaped the planet in a stealthed ship and has jumped out of the system. We've lost him, as the best that the Sensors Department can estimate is that he's jumped to one of three possible systems.

Or have we? Vaughan announces he has a Maguffin (a present from his mother) that is a trial system for predicting hyperspace jump vectors from signals left in normal space. Accompanied by Lieutenant Orlean, Vaughn is taken to the Sensors Room where his programme is quickly loaded onto the ship's sensor array and run to track Marcal's jump. The analysis reveals that the ship has jumped to the Penelope system.

Conclusion: We will be going to the Penelope system to track down Marcal. The team prepare to leave Candory in the Essalin Swift, a Fiery class gunned escort.

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