Five Parsecs from Home: Turn 24 - The Moon of Biitas 12

 The Moon of Biitas 12 was an interesting place. Heavily urbanized, it had no right to be as important as it was. It was small but powerful, straddling an important trade route. Decades ago UCS had seen fit to garrison it, in order to keep clear it of pirates. This small garrison eventually evolved into quite a large hub for UCS military forces and became a major trade port. 

The Pelican crew needed to talk to a ship broker who would be able to match the settlers with someone selling a suitable ship. He tended to make himself available at Brunard airbase - a well defended military installation. Luckily, out on the rim, even at UCS outposts they could let you pass with the right fistful of credits finding its way into the right fist. 

As the crew approached the trading post they were waved on through. The Pelican was quite a normal sight in these parts and the grunts on duty knew them well enough.

Brenko and Holmes discussed getting a ship for the settlers while Carrick chatted away to some other travellers. 

Phillips was talking all things engineering with some techs who were running diagnostics on the atmospheric intercepter. A couple of others went to the supply shed. 

Suddenly out burst three horrifying creatures! Two technicians were torn apart immediately, the rest began running for their lives. 

With lightning reflexes Phillips pulled out a grenade and lobbed it over to the shed, not killing anything but disrupting the creatures enough that the others could get involved in the fight.

Mao and Brenko opened fire on two of the creatures, unloading shells and magazines at them, eventually causing them to collapse into piles of steaming, hissing blood and body parts. 

Earl launched a grenade to the top of the shed, making things even harder for the creature to orient itself. It actually fell from the roof, out of line of sight .

The gunshots and explosions drew the immediate attention of the guards. The dismounted infantry ran over, while the sentry vehicles spun around and drove their way into firing positions. 

Before anyone else could do anything, Phillips unloaded with her shotgun, taking down the third creature. 

As the guards approached, Phillips filled them in on what had just happened. Was it some kind of escaped bio-experiment? Who knows. The guards told everyone to evacuate, called in some more civilian transports to remove any other people from the area. They were going to need to go into quarentine, in order to secure the area. 

As the Pelican crew drove away they saw more of those creatures burst out of the shed. There must be a subterrainean nest or something. Soldiers, civilians and vehicles were torn apart. 

Well, this was a problem. No-one was going to get off of this moon for a while. The local UCS governer called for a sector wide quarentine - spaceports were shut down. Reinforcements were arriving. This infestation would need to be eliminated.