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)

Lost Boys

Continued… The leader of the outlaws reacted to Sae’s hostile realignment and dropped his PA mike, and briefly ducked out of sight, returning with a ready gauss rifle to spray automatic fire down upon the Crew, before retreating again. Haank was wounded in the process, but stood his ground as his suit’s trauma-maintenance programming kicked in to stop the bleeding. Sam bolted for the ventral hatch of the Spinward Star and made for the cockpit. The gauss rifle of the second man, the sniper that had crept up behind the Crew, was destroyed by a long burst of gauss fire from Abe, some of which penetrated the rifle and struck the sniper, wounding him badly; Abe continued to press his target until he crawled out of sight. Sae engaged the third man, which Haank had spotted earlier at the corner of the main building, and after a few exchanges of ineffective fire, flanking, struck him squarely in the chest with a double-tap from his underbarrel gauss shotgun’s memory-baton rounds, cracking ribs and sending him flying back. Meanwhile, Ella, Buck and Haank rushed forward to the main building’s ground-level entrance; Buck was in first, and spotted the outlaw leader escaping in the open-sided industrial elevator down into the mine, and sprayed gauss fire down the shaft after him. No others were encountered, and the fight was over. They recalled the elevator, which they found empty upon its return, save for a great deal of blood, smeared toward the exit, suggesting the leader had been dragged out. The sniper was found unconscious from his wounds, having crawled a short distance away, and Abe immediately rendered aid, removing the man’s environment suit to patch up his wounds before taking him aboard the ship—he would survive the day, though he would need further hospitalization and treatment for mild radiation exposure.

The corner-man was also brought aboard the ship, hurting but alive. Sae, growling menacingly, backed up Haank as he questioned the man, threatening to toss him out of the airlock without his environment suit if he didn’t cooperate. The corner-man confessed that there were around a dozen more in the mine, well armed and prepared for an assault. He demonstrated great loyalty to his fellows and his leader, and unrepentantly insisted they would never stop raiding the colony. Satisfied they had gotten what information they could from him, both prisoners were remanded to low-berth pods, to be delivered to the colony’s authorities, where they might be more properly interrogated.

Before leaving the mine to return to Ifogi, the Crew gathered up the outlaws’ nearby vehicles—all of them—and drove them back to the colony, escorted by the Spinward Star overhead. If the outlaws were to exact some sort of revenge, they would have to walk.

The ship landed just outside the city of Ifogi, and was met by the colony’s President/Mayor/Minister of Defense/General of the Army/Chief of Police/Lead Detective, Chas Ducote, and some of his men. The vehicles were secured, and the prisoners awakened from stasis. Abe followed the sniper as he was carried on a litter to the hospital facility, gave his report to the doctor there, and left him in their custody, under armed guard. Haank debriefed Ducote on what had occurred, showing him recorded video from his HUD-glasses of the encounter. With help from the colony database, Ducote was able to identify the outlaws in the video: one was an off-worlder; another a third-generation colonist with family still in residence. The leader was also identified as a third-generation colonist, named Amelio, a miner and explosives specialist, a charismatic but ill-tempered fellow that inspired loyalty amongst his followers, with a rap sheet that included numerous violent episodes.

With the mine complex the outlaws were using as a headquarters now identified, Ducote was able to get some maps of the tunnels, such as they were before they had been abandoned—the corner-man had claimed the Crew would never be able to navigate the maze below. The outlaws had been raiding for around six months, and the supplies they had taken were accounted for; they raided every couple of weeks or so, and would not likely last long without making another run—but the Crew didn’t want to take the time away from their search for Valerie Vaskor to wait out the outlaws’ supply. Haank recommended the outlaws be somehow drawn out of the tunnels, not fight them on their very-defensible home ground. Not knowing what innocents might be down there, they were reluctant to pump gas into the mine’s exposed life-support processor, though they were considering shutting it off or disabling it, to force the outlaws to emerge to repair it, where they could be ambushed. After some discussion, though, the Crew decided they would go into the mine after them—with proper caution and preparation, they could bypass, or at least, survive the inevitable boobytraps, expecting that in a direct confrontation, the outlaws’ morale would quickly break, especially if their leader could be taken down.

Notes

• The search for Valerie Vaskor began here
• The mercenary contract specified that lethal force was not to be used except in self-defense, which meant the Crew wouldn’t engage until actually attacked—though Sae nearly broke contract, he kept it under control. Haank’s character added an SOP Perk to always record video of hostile encounters, for CYA purposes—we wanted solid evidence we had not broken the terms of our contract. As it stands, we haven’t killed anyone yet, though it looks pretty bad for the leader from our current perspective
• The outlaws were wearing un-armored environment suits, so they weren’t going to take much punishment; just “glass cannons” here
• Abe ended up being the combat-monster in this fight, to his surprise—as a self-defense-only pacifist, and mostly-new to the use of lethal weaponry. He was looking to disable the enemy’s weapon, and succeeded, but gauss rifles aren’t good cover
• Though we did eventually agree that we would be going into the tunnels next session, we haven’t quite decided how we’re going to get around the inevitable explosive boobytraps yet. Our preparations may include riot-shields, and maybe scout-drones, if we can scrape up that sort of thing