Duty Roster:

Ella Stanbridge (Melissa)
Ertrane “Buck” Buckner (Herodian)
Henri Haank Makruus (Gigermann)
Ibrahim “Abe” Nouri-Abbood (Rigil Kent)
Sam Turner (Winston)
Sae Rraetheg (CommJunkee)

Human Shields

At the base of the Ancients’ tower, the Crew’s quick search of the fallen possible-terrorist revealed few clues other than the suggestion, via tattoo, of his connection to the Ine Gavar insurgent group. Ella took up the dead man’s comm and began listening in, to be rewarded later with an overheard call for the man (presumably) to check in. Haank and Buck produced their bioscanners, while Sae borrowed Abe’s, and they began scanning the area for a human chemical trace. They soon succeeded in finding a trail leading past the tower and down the street through a complex of buildings not unlike a small city or military base, all featuring materials and architecture similar to the tower. Some distance down the street, Ella overheard a new voice on the dead man’s comm declaring that “intruders” were in sight moving straight for “us,” and requesting permission to “take the shot”; she passed the news along, and the Crew decided to casually move into a nearby alley, hopefully out of the line-of-fire, pretending to have seen something of interest there. The first voice, a female, from before, told the “sniper” to let the intruders pass unless they tried to enter “their” building, and declared they would need to take a few of the prisoners along; again, Ella passed on the information to the others. They deliberated over how to proceed, while Haank switched his hand-held sensor pack to radar mode to scan for movement, and Sae, looking “lost,” wandered back into the street to see if he could work out the most-likely vantage point for their otherwise-invisible assailant. Eventually, they decided to continue down the street as before, Ella listening for further communications to alert them to when they had gotten close. As intended, a short time later, Ella overheard the sniper call back to his boss again to inform her that the intruders were very close, and again, requested clearance to fire; this left the Crew to deduce that their quarry was in one of two buildings before them. The female leader again encouraged the sniper to not reveal their position, but to fire if he must, and that they were “just about finished here.” The Crew flipped a figurative coin and settled on the multi-level, industrial-looking building to the left, and approached tactically, just as the enemy shot-caller ordered everyone “upstairs,” to make for the “emitter”—presumably, the tower. The Crew diverted down a side-access to try to find a back entrance to the building, when Sae spotted a large air/raft overhead, departing the building’s roof, bearing a handful of armed insurgents and three, bound station employees; it circled wide over the complex, obviously trying to disguise the fact that it was indeed headed for the tower.

The Crew quickly forced their way into the building, and inside discovered some sort of large, multi-level reactor; on the level below were around thirty station employees—nearly the lot of them, according to the company passenger/tag-alongs—all bound and helpless; around the reactor were a number of armed limpet mines. As the prisoners were freed, Buck analyzed the placement of the mines and determined that the intent must have been to weaken the heat exchangers and cause a meltdown, confirmed by one of the freed researchers familiar with the project. Meanwhile, Sae examined the mines for some idea how to disarm them—though his expertise only covered placing them—and decided it would take too long. With no clue regarding the countdown, and insurgents about the only way out of the cavern, the Crew decided there was nothing more they could do but get everyone out.

The now-freed station employees were led through the street back toward the tower as quickly as they could. As they reached the cleared area around the tower and elevator, the Crew spotted the insurgents’ air/raft near a couple of small tower outbuildings. At the same time, arcs of electricity accompanied a hum from the tower—it was powering up; one of the researchers warned that the explosion from the reactor meltdown combined with a fully-charged emitter would be catastrophic enough to obliterate the entire moon, or worse. The Crew told the civilians to take cover where they were while they approached the outbuildings, hoping to catch the insurgents and force them to disable the bombs and/or emitter. Over the enemy’s comms, Ella overheard that the group had been spotted, and heard their leader order one of the other insurgents to run back to the reactor and ensure the bombs were still in place; Ella relayed this to the others and they agreed that the runner should be taken alive, as he might know how to disarm the mines. They could also see that the space-elevator, the only way out of the cavern, was 10 meters or so up from ground-level, presumably with someone inside to operate it.

The Crew began to tactically bound forward in teams across the open space, when Buck was hit by a sniper—presumably the sniper—the shot coming from the roof of the nearer of the outbuildings; the Crew took what cover they could and opened fire on the roof while Abe scrambled over to Buck to provide medical aid—Buck was hit pretty badly, but was in no immediate danger. The sniper ducked out of sight, and the Crew sprinted to close the distance, while Haank and Buck covered them in place. Sam saw the runner emerge from behind the outbuilding, and sprinted after him on his own. The sniper popped up at a different point on the roof and shot Sae, the closest target, nearly killing him outright; his vacc-suit trauma maintenance function kicked in and stabilized him, as Abe sprinted forward to help. Meanwhile, Haank and Buck laid down fire on the sniper, hitting him such that he slid down below sight on the roof. At the same time, Sam, now out of sight of the others, made a lucky turn and tackled the runner, and the two struggled as Sam tried to subdue him while preventing the runner from bringing his weapon to bear; Sam eventually won out, pinning the runner beneath him, though the man continued to struggle. The sniper neutralized, the Crew stacked up on the nearer outbuilding and quickly deliberated how they might gain entry into the other, assuming the controls to the emitter to be there, and believing hostages to be present with the insurgents.

Then it all came to a screeching halt.

As the Crew prepared to move in, on a gantry at the second-level (only) entrance to the other outbuilding, one of the insurgents emerged holding one of the station employees in front of him, a gauss pistol to his hostage’s head, and a gauss rifle in his other hand pointed in the general direction of the Crew—leaving little un-shielded save for his head. The hostage-taker called out to the intruders demanding to know who in hell they were, and insisting they lay down their arms for the sake of the hostage. Ella began trying to negotiate, refusing to lay down arms. Sae continued to aim carefully at the hostage-taker’s eye—a shot he’s made many times in the past—and as he saw the briefest of opportunities, he pulled the trigger; the insurgent was somehow alerted to Sae’s trigger-pull and simultaneously fired his pistol into the hostage’s temple, while ducking down behind his human shield, narrowly avoiding Sae’s otherwise-accurate shot. The hostage was obviously dead; the hostage-taker dove back into the outbuilding, avoiding follow-up shots from the rest; Ella was furious—at Sae, at the insurgents, at herself. The other hostages within the building could be heard wailing at the loss of their fellow.

Having had enough, Ella called over the insurgents’ comms to demand the release of the hostages; the insurgents now understood the intruders’ apparent prescience. Their female leader, Lara, agreed to parley once more, with lowered weapons, at least, and emerged from the entrance, empty-handed, and was met on the gantry by Ella. The Crew remained in place, weapons lowered, as the two leaders began negotiating—or more accurately, just short of arguing. Lara explained that there was no way to stop the destruction of the Ancients site at this point; that the power it contained (the ability to cut off a star system from jump-space) was too great for anyone to possess, much less the Empire; and since she now assumed the lives of the hostages meant nothing to the Crew, but knew the insurgents would be outnumbered by the civilians and easily overpowered if they all packed into the space-elevator to escape, she needed a new hostage, “one they cared about”—one of the Crew. Of course, they promised to let their hostage go once they reached the station—not that anyone believed that. There were some volunteers, but Ella insisted on being the hostage against her crew’s objections, though her past experience in similar situations (specifically, with Lt. Richards on Kegena) left her highly suspicious of the insurgents’ intentions. As such, Ella continued to argue Lara’s terms until the insurgent leader finally gave up, resigned to futile combat, and turned back into the outbuilding to prepare for the inevitable assault.

Ella shot Lara in the back, and she fell at the threshold, unconscious. Combat was resumed.

There were two insurgents visible within; both opened fire, as Ella took cover beside the doorway and returned fire. Haank and Buck circled ’round and up the stair to the gantry. Haank’s laser detector sounded an alarm, and he turned to see the insurgent in the elevator fire a gauss burst at him; his armor stopped the rounds that hit, and he and Sae (from below) both effectively returned fire, and saw the body fall from the elevator. At the same time, Buck maneuvered to help Ella, and together they dropped one of the insurgents within and wounded another. One of them, the hostage-taker who shot the civilian, emerged with hands upraised in surrender; Buck told him, “You don’t get to walk away,” and shot him in the face with his laser rifle.

The fight now over, Sam brought up his prisoner to join the rest, having held his own the whole time to the amazement of all. The fallen insurgents were collected, living and otherwise, and the civilians were gathered up and ushered into the space-elevator, in a hurry, as they still had no real idea how much time they had to make good their escape. The somber mood in the elevator made the fifteen minutes seem an eternity. At the top again, the Crew ushered everyone into the upper hold of the Spinward Star; Jones was elated at their return, having been fighting minor fires in the contragravity plating all over the ship since the emitter started up. The ship was undocked and they broke orbit in record time, Buck pushing the ship’s engines to their maximum limit; they put as much distance as they could between themselves and the fourteenth moon of Yori II, and watched behind them, aghast, as a massive chunk of the moon exploded in a brilliant blue flash.

Notes

• Sae has points spent in Targeted Attack (Guns (Pistol)/Eyes) (among others) and Overconfidence, and was well able to make the shot; in the rush and confusion of the initial contact there, he took the unauthorized shot, which would have succeeded if not for the GM’s unusually lucky die-rolls that night (consistently rolling 6 or less). Afterward, there was much discussion about the game-mechanics that governed that situation and whether or not the hostage-taker should have been able to dodge; as it happened: Sae fired, insurgent dodged, insurgent fired—though I ultimately cleaned it up a little in the narrative so it, as “simultaneous” made more sense
• Both of our Traveller campaigns, and a handful of others, have featured occasional hostage negotiations; though this is the only one I recall where we lost a hostage, they do generally end in frustration to some degree—this certainly being no exception
• Ella’s player had been lamenting her position as “captain,” having to be responsible for these kinds of decisions and speaking for the group; this session really didn’t make it any better for her. We’re expecting some changes in the future of this campaign, including a refactoring of the character
• Ella’s prior experience as a hostage four-and-a-half months (game-time) prior, early in the campaign, was that the hostage-takers intended to kill them all and bury them in a subterranean ruin—combined with the insurgents treatment of their hostages, this did not encourage her to trust their word
• This session went really long, and as a one-shot, needed to be wrapped up, so the GM opted to have the players dictate the ending—fortunately, we were pretty close to the end anyway (as we were storming the outbuilding after negotiations had failed), so there wasn’t much left to make up for