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.