- Downed Ilshani Starhunter
- Kirin Vostov Cenotaph Rescue
- The Scout Distress Call
- The Shiva Drop
- The Irari Freighter
- The Pirate Base
- The Medusan Pearl Smugglers on Colossus
Downed Ilshani Starhunter
Major Jeanette Vasquez, commanding; Major Erin Hishport; Major Rafe Birmingham.
Operatives on the neutral world of Videga reported observations that an Ilshani Starhunter invading from the Phoenix Nebula had crashed on Didarnia, an outer iceball planet of Videga's system. Team was dispatched from base in the Monolith system (one jump away) to investigate, to bring back prisoners if possible, and to bring back the central "brain" that is believed to control these cybernetic alien ships.
Team landed on Didarnia a few miles out and proceeded forward in Mark-1 battlesuits. A few thousand meters out from the site of the crashed ship, Team came under fire, evidently from Ilshani Starsoliders who had survived the crash and were defending their ship. Firefight ensued, in which Major Vasquez is believed to have killed one Ilshani with a neutrino-homing missile.
Vasquez, judging that the ship was intact enough to survive the blast, used a mini-nuke rocket to terminate resistance. Following the blast, Team entered the Starhunter hull, Major Birmingham having successfully rigged the door. Firefight with one surviving Ilshani Starhunter ensued, during which the enemy was killed.
Team located structure believed to be the ship's controlling brain, extracted it from several unidentified connecting conduits to bulkheads, and removed the brain.
Team pulled back and used nuclear missiles to destroy the crashed starship, so that any Ilshani or Domain operatives searching would find nothing, nor any indication that the Ilshani brain had been extracted.
Videga operatives report detecting multiple flashes from Didarnia consistent with antimatter explosions, and advised Federation Intelligence that they believe that the Starhunter's reactor had gone critical and destroyed the starship in the blast.Mission successful.
Kirin Vostov Cenotaph Rescue
Major Jeanette Vasquez, Major Yuri Zelenik.
Federation Intelligence received word that Kirin Vostov, a Domain genetic scientist, had been sentenced to life on the Domain prison/mining colony on Cenotaph. Dr. Vostov had attempted to sell research secrets to the Federation, but was caught; she was spared a death sentence only due to the influence of her father, Pyotr Vostov, a minor noble on the major Domain planet of Tara.
According to intelligence, Vostov was dropped at the Cenotaph starport/airlock where the underground prison population is under the control of a local gang leader known only as Crank. Intelligence believed that crank would be amenable to a trade of Vostov for hand weapons. The Federation could not be caught smuggling weapons into a Domain prison colony; the Rangers were asked to perform a stealth operation to extract Vostov.
Majors Jeanette Vasquez and Yuri Zelenik were dispatched from the Monolith system, where they proceeded at warp to the Cenotaph system (a 2-week journey), and finally at sublight to Cenotaph itself. After dodging the sensors of the orbiting Domain station, they landed and outside an airlock and proceeded overland to a personnel entrance. Henchmen of Crank allowed entrance after some negotiation. Team was brought to talk to Crank, who agreed on principle to the swap, although it developed that Crank did not actually know the location of Dr. Vostov.
Crank took team to a room where mechanic Willy Slifter was being tortured; Crank asserted that Slifter has given Vostov a vacc suit and allowed her to escape deeper into the mines. As Crank had understood Vostov's value, he was not happy with her having escaped, even if her chances of surviving long were slim.
Team convinced Crank to allow them to take Slifter, and convinced Slifter that they would rescue him if he took them to Vostov. Slifter and one of Crank's henchmen led Team to the workshop where Slifter services vacc suits. From there, Slifter made contact with Anabelle Lukin, an associate of Slifter's who putatively knew how to contact Vostov. After separating from Crank's henchman, Lukin gave Team directions deeper into the unpressurized areas of the subsurface mines where Vostov may be found.
Team proceeded to a cave where they had been instructed to wait. There, they were met by an unidentified individual. Negotiations were difficult as neither side would admit who they were, but it would later develop that this individual was Robin Lee, a Federation Intelligence officer who had disappeared in Domain space several years previously. Lee took Team to a pressurized area where two other officers, Adrienne Dortmunder and Cyria Bateman and he had created a pressurized safe-house, and where they had access to the equipment necessary to produce the antirad drugs needed for long-term residence deep in Cenotaph. The three intelligence officers had been trading these drugs to Lukin and Slifter in exchange for smuggled goods from above. Also preset in the Intelligence officers' retreat was Dr. Vostov. Team agreed that they would extract all four individuals in the cargo holds of their ships; an uncomfortable, but survivable ride.
Team, accompanied by Vostov and the intelligence officers, began to head back to the upper levels, but were intercepted by a squad of Phoenix Domain light troops. Crank, believing that he could profit more by selling out Vostov and the Rangers come to rescue her than by selling Vostov to the Rangers, had planned with the Domain officers to use Vostov as bait. A firefight ensued, during which surviving Domain troops fell back to the airlock near Slifter's workshop.
Team succeeded in killing all of the Domain troops in the firefight, and from there were able to exit the Cenotaph colony without further interference from the less well armed henchmen of Crank. Slifter and Lukin had been terminated by Domain soldiers prior to firefight.
The three Intelligence officers have been returned to Federation Intelligence, along with Vostov, for debriefing.
Mission successful.
The Scout Distress Call
Major Jeanette Vasquez, Major Yuri Zelenik.
A distress call (cut short) was received from a scout base operating in the Brown Dwarf system at z=-3pc relative to Acamandra. Majors Jeanette Vasquez and Yuri Zelenik assembled aboard a Pulsar Carrier to jump into the system via classified jump point from Acamandra. They proceeded at warp toward the location of the scout base, which was researching the believed existence of a jump point to an M dwarf at further negative z that could represent a gateway to a neighboring sector.
Team attempted to communicate with scout base, received no response. Team detected on sensors small ships circling scout base; further sensor investigation indicated that these were Bullet class STL fighters frequently used by the mysterious and powerful pirate organization Dark Lightning. Dogfight ensued during which Major Zelenik's fighter sustained light damage, but seven enemy fighters were disabled or destroyed.
Following the dogfight, three surviving enemy pilots suicided by shutting down containment in their antimatter reactors upon receiving interrogative communications from Team. No FTL ship was identified, suggesting that either an undiscovered and well-stealthed Dark Lightning base exists in the brown dwarf system, or that a pirate jump ship escaped via a jump point unknown to the Federation Survey Service.
Team entered the scout station, which was unpressurized, and found the bodies of Scout personnel. All expected personnel were accounted for. Team downloaded information from the station's computer core, which was unintelligible to them but which would later appear to be evidence that progress had been made on locating the jump point, and that the Scouts were planning on moving the station to a new, more promising information. Later arrival of a Navy Vengeance class destroyer allowed removal of station personnel bodies for activation of life insurance policies.
Mission successful.
The Shiva Drop
Censored — I will re-run this with different players.
The Irari Freighter
Major Jeanette Vasquez; Major Yuri Zelenik; Major Rafe Birmingham; Captain Irenia Delambarto
Team was dispatched in Pulsar warp fighters to answer the distress call of an Irari freighter. Team arrived to find the freighter adrift, with only an automated distress call running. Boarding the freighter, it was depressurized, and several members of the crew were found dead. Mechanical investigation suggested that the ship had undergone tremendous gravitational stresses. Ship logs did not indicate close passage to any celestial body dense enough to have tidal forces sufficient to induce those stresses.
During the search, Captain Delambarto detected anomalous gravitational readings. Crew returned to fighters, and shortly thereafter an undentified very large (large dreadnaught sized) craft appeared; warp signatures did not preceed the appearance of this craft and the nature of the drive or stealth technology it was employing remains unknown.
The team was able to achieve some rudimentary communication with the craft by utilizing modulated pulses from the fighter reactionless drives to communicate a peaceful intent, and to communicate the threat that the gravitational stresses emanating from that ship pressented. Following this communication, the craft disappeared. The identity, nature, and home of the species responsible for this craft remain a mystery.
Mission partially succesful. Death of Irari freighter crew only partially explained, no survivors rescued.
The Pirate Base
Major Jeanette Vasquez; Major Yuri Zelenik; Major Rafe Birmingham; Captain Irenia Delambarto
Federation intelligence had received evidence that there was a previously unknown jump point... error, data loss, mission logs classified and/or destoryed by a potentially malicious rogue AI.
The Medusan Pearl Summglers on Colossus
Major Christopher Johnson; Major Dri-Poulin; Major Harmon Ruiz; Major Yuri Zelenik
Team was instructed to proceed to Colossus to perform a covert investigation of smuggling. Although normally a patrol affair, the Rangers were sent because this involved smuggling across Federation borders, to the Phoenix Domain and out-sector. The merchandise in question is Medusan megapearls. Formerly one of the most profitable exports from Colossus, trading in them is currently disallowed by Federation rules pending a study on reported subtle long-term affects from their radiation.
Majors Johnson and Dri-Poulin (a Medusan) went ahead, posing as a smuggler himself, hoping to make contact with the underworld there. Meanwhile, Majors. Ruiz Zelenik proceeded in a Polaris class corvette with a small crew to rendezvous with Garthine D'Taya, the D'ken Interstellar Trade Comission (ITC) officer who is the main customs inspector on Observer's Point, the primary space station in Colossus orbit that serves out-system traffic.
Investigation revealed that megaperls were being smuggled out individually in the baggage of tourists. Additionally, it was determined that Manual Smith, a member of D'Tara's staff, was coordinating with smugglers to ensure that megaperls moved through customs undetected and off-world.
Investigation on the ground led to Dor-Mirathin, a Medusan woman who runs a small pearl harvesting outfit. Dor-Mirathin was not implicated, but did share her view that the pearl's putative harmful affects were entirely fiction, and that they were created by anti-parahuman forces in the Federation government to cripple the colonization efforts of Colossus. She also, reluctantly, indicated that if she suspected anybody of contacts with smugglers, it would be a Medusan pearl dealer named Al-Mithonquist. One of Al-Mithonquist's main contacts was a mysterious human woman named Yollin, who would coordinate sequestering pearls into passengers' baggage at Megaport (the Class III surface starport on Colossus).
Majors Johnson and Dri-Poulin posed as potential smugglers and met with Al-Mithonquist. Meanwhile, Majors Zelenik and Ruiz waited outside, armed, to serve as backup. Evidently they had been observed, for they were attacked by a group composed of Medusans and other parahumans. Al-Mithonquist, Johnson, and Dri-Poulin escaped through a back exit from Al-Mithonquist's shop, while Zelenik and Ruiz neutralized the attackers.
At the end of the mission, Johnson and Dri-Poulin were aboard their "smuggler ship", departing from the Colossus system on route to Rhad, a putative pearl buyer, in order to investigate that end of the smuggling ring. Meanwhile, Majors Ruiz and Zelenik were waiting on Observer's Point to receive instructions from Ranger Command as to how to proceed with the identified smugglers' ring on Colossus.
Mission success status: smugglers identified, but further investigation pending.