Five Parsecs from Home - Turn 11: Escort the VIP

I have decided to do invasion checks at the beginning of each turn I remain on the Moon of Tarnicus no matter what. The invasion will be from The Collective, who I have decided will be represented by the enemies "Unity Grunts" who I will obviously rename. The stats look good though, and they have numbers +1 which will hopefully make for an interesting fight if it comes to it. In the back of my mind I am intending to try and link this to some larger battles using the Horizon Wars rules. Whether I do this is another matter. I don't know if I want to put together an actual campaign, but it might be nice to fight a larger battle to give some backdrop to the smaller adventures of the crew of The Pelican. It might be a disaster but whatever.

With the UCS grounding still in effect, and the threat of Collective forces on everyone's minds, the crew decided to explore a little, rest, and repair some of the damaged gear they had recently acquired. Mao actually got chatting to someone in the local drinking hole. Harlan Forgrave - stuck here due to the UCS grounding order and running out of funds. He had a reputation for fixing problems and was known to Govsec - the local governing body as someone who could be relied on in a pinch. Mao brought him to the others and they all agreed to give him a berth on The Pelican for a while and see if it was a good fit. 

Considering there was no option to leave the planet, the crew decided to take on a job offered by Equinet Works - a mid-sized organisation who were responsible for maintaining a number of facilities across the moon. They had their fingers in a few pies, maintaining anything from underground mining equipment, atmospheric resource gathering equipment, to climate controlled storage facilities. The specifics of this job were as follows: one of their technicians needed access to one of the storage facilities in a small built up area, but a rival company was attempting to forcibly take business from them. The board were worried that some hired muscle would attempt to prevent this happening, and possibly worse frame Equinet for some sort of malfeasance.  

The climate controlled storage facility dominated the area. Most of the structures here were lodgings for the transient facility staff. HySys - the mega corp running this place - had to offer to cycle technicians in and out as this moon was a less than desirable place to be stationed for any great length.  Outsourcing some of the facility maintanence to Equinet Works ended up saving money and staff turnover. 

The crew approached up the main road, taking care to avoid any shooting lanes and to make sure the technician was covered at all times. 

Two Black Dragon mercenaries took cover behind one of the structures. They decided to stay put and watch what happens. The technician was the primary objective. Creating the illusion of Equinet malfeasance was strictly a secondary objective. 

The crew split up. Aralay Brenko and the new guy, Harlan Forgrave, armed with hand cannons, blades and grenades decided to rush around the outskirts in order to flank any possible attack. Mao hung back to cover their approach, while Estelle Phillips, Oslan Baratski, Augustus Holmes and the technician were going to just rush up the road and hope to get into cover behind the buildings, or get the tech into the facility asap. There was a monetary bonus available for the speedy completion of this mission.

As Brenko and Forgrave advanced further, Phillips, Baratski and Holmes also approached the facility entrance. Mao engaged two mercs at long range, taking one of them out before falling in a hail of return gunfire. 

The team were close to achieving their objective. Hopefully Mao was going go pull through. Suddenly, noisily two bugs burst out of the back of one of the buildings! These perfect killers were meant to have been eradicated from human space! Civilians panicked and ran. Forgrave fumbled at his belt to ready a grenade - this would at least buy some time for a hasty withdrawl!

With pinpoint accuracy the grenade landed and the resulting explosion tore the bug apart, acidic blood spreading through the air. Brenko deployed her distraction bot which took the attention of the remaining bug!

With the bug distracted the remaining merc tried to take Brenko down but missed. Phillips ran to the corner of the building and fired off her shotgun which cut through the armour of the merc and took him down.

Baratski rounded the corner and pumped some rounds into the bug, sending it sprawling into the ground, slowly dissolving. 

Speed had been achieved. The technician entered the facility while the crew set up a perimiter, ready to defend against any other mercs or bugs. Mao was not in good shape and would need to be hurried back to The Pelican asap but he was at least stable.

Work completed, the technician entered the necessary information onto the corporate system and credits were transfered to the crew accounts, including some quite generous danger pay. It made the team wonder whether Equinet knew anything about the bugs here, or if they were just preparing for mercs. A brief rumage through the broken building from which the bugs escaped uncovered a curious data stick - with interesting information on. This could prove useful in the future. (In reality they got one rumour for it). 

Pleased with the mission and his new crew Harlan Forgrave decided to stick around for a little bit. He also got a "personal breakthrough" as a character event meaning I could increase one stat by 1, but the stat had to be one I hadn't increased yet. I obviously put it on his combat score of 0. 

Unfortunately for Mao he had taken some serious wounds and would need to spend quite a while recovering in medbay. It would be 4 turns!!

It was time to return to port and see where their adventure next took them. 

I wasn't really excited by this game because it was against two mercs. I thought it would be quick and barely worth setting up. They ended up getting paid 8C for the mission which felt like a bit of a joke. However, I then decided to use "Battle Events" for the first time and rolled at the end of turn 2. That is where the bugs came from - "vent crawlers". I was worried as they are quite potent, but the distraction bot and a great roll with Forgrave's grenade stopped them in their tracks. It ended up being a nice 40 minute game followed by like 90 minutes of post battle admin. But I love the post battle admin. 

Five Parsecs From Home - Turn 10: Secure the cargo.

With half the crew recovering in the medbay Augustus Holmes, Lars Nicolau and Oslan Baratski decided to take on a job from the interstellar Dockworkers Guild. Having worked with them before there was an existing relationship there which would on occasion lead to some jobs. 

A carrier transporting some important cargo was lost in a storm a few days ago. The storm had only just passed and the Guild were hoping to secure the cargo and any survivors asap, before any scavengers or other organisations made a claim. 

It was too late though - bunch of tech gangers were also interested in the cargo! It must have been some pretty interesting gear that was being transported for this bunch to venture out so far into the storm regions.

The plan was for Lars to cover from the rear, hugging cover, while Holmes and Baratski were going to move as quickly as they could up the gap made by the crashed carrier as it tore through the forest.

Moving in onto their target was simple, but they saw movement and began being more cautious.

The tech gangers split into two groups. The left team was armed with a blast rifle, a grenade launcher, and a high tech laser. The other team had two blast rifles and a grenade launcher. They were armed to the teeth. 

Lars moved into a cluster of trees to hunker down and snipe. Holmes and Baratski took cover and slowed their advance.

Seizing some initiative Holmes and Lars opened fire on the left fire team, knocking back two of them forcing them to find cover. 

The team leader of one fire team managed to get line of site to Holmes and launched a grenade at him. Luckily he was in enough cover to avoid any harm.

Baratski pumped out a few rounds at the grenade launcher carrying ganger, ripping his modified body open. She made note of where he fell, looking to secure that grenade launcher for herself later. One of the gangers decided enough was enough and took off back into the forest.

Holmes laid down some fire again sending the ganger scrambling for cover again. 

Kaboom! With Holmes concentrating on the gangers in front of him, he had neglected to watch his flanks. The other team had managed to sneak around and get behind the crew of The Pelican. A few grenades launched over and managed to take him down. 

Quite a firefight broke out. Baratski trying to hold down her left flank against the grenade launcher ganger, Lars plugging away at the remainder of the other fire team. Inaccurate fire was flying everywhere.

Lars got sent scrambling for further cover! That was too close.

Baratski managed to rush up to the crashed carrier and get some shots off at her targets. The ganger with the grenade launcher fell while the other dived for cover. That cover didn't help though as Lars got a bead on him and took him down with a well placed shot.

With one ganger remaining Baratski decided to poke her head around the engine and shoot him. He fell never to get up again. 

With the crashsite secured Lars came over to provide overwatch. A disheveled survivor exited the wreckage as a Dockworker Guild crew arrived to check out and salvage the cargo. 

In the end the crew got paid, picked up a grenade launcher and Holmes' injuries were minor. 

When back on The Pelican an emergency broadcast came on - UCS were ordering all ships in the sector to be grounded as there was a threat of invasion from The Collective. It looked like this was going to be a longer stay than anticipated. 

A few days later Mao recieved a communication from home - it looked like there were rumblings of invasion and the UCS grounding of ships was warranted. 

5 Parsecs from Home - Turn 9: The Moon of Tarnicus

 Tarnicus - a giant ball of frozen methane, uninhabitable, lucrative. Tarnicus has a single, small moon dotted with various megacorp complexes set up in order to maximise access to the resources on the primary planet. The crew of The Pelican have landed here to lay low for a little while. While in port they heard about another crew who were trying to steal some sensitive information from Centcon Energies to sell to the highest bidder. They decided to try and get in before the other crew and make some quick cash.

The grav train stopped at the warehouse. It was not an official stop but a few credits into the driver's palm convinced him make an extra stop.

The scavenger crew approached the warehouse in two groups, cautious in case there were any security around. 

The four members of The Pelican crew who were not in medbay hopped off the train and took up positions. Lars was ready to cover the rest of them from behind while Brenko, Holmes and Mao would attempt to beat the others to the warehouse and get the files.

The scavengers must have been quite good at what they did, they were all armed with pretty high tech, long range weaponry, energy weapons included. They had some seriously military grade equipment. Long range pot shots were taken while Aralay Brenko attempted to hook around behind the warehouse.

After some back and forth Lars struck home. The leader of the scavenger crew fell to a well placed shot to the abdomen. 

Unfortunately one of the scavenger groups hooked around and opened up on Augustus Holmes who took a few hits and went down. He would be out of action trying to dress his wounds. 

Brenko opened up with her hand cannon, missing wildly, but the scav also missed. 

Seizing initiative Brenko charged at a scav and sliced through her. At the same time Lars took out the enemy sniper. 

Things were looking great...until they weren't. A scav opened up with his infantry laser. At close range it was devastating, Brenko's flak vest somehow managing to disrupt the worst of the energy. She was still going to be needing a stay in medbay though. Mao also took some shots, knocking him down and putting some serious damage on him. He would need emergency surgery but would pull through.

Alone and outgunned, about to be surrounded, Lars decided that discretion was the better part of valour. Parlaying with the other scavengers he was able to hotwire a van, load the rest of the team in and rush them back to The Pelican but not before picking up one of the lasers from a dead scavenger.

I had never lost a battle. It was a strange feeling. Then I realised I had been playing it wrong! I had not been adding the combat score to the attack rolls. This meant there was a lot of back and forth, ineffective shooting where people were unable to roll a hit. I also forgot that Mao had a luck point - meaning he shouldn't have been a casualty. 

Due to this I downgraded Mao's stay in medbay to just one turn. They would return to fight another day.

The rules also say you can't take weapons from dead enemies, but I happened to roll an infantry laser on the loot chart so made it fit into the narrative. Of all the rules I got wrong, this is not one of them.