Contract: Reclamation of Auctioned Goods
Previous: Fleeing The Hole
Next: Crew Quantity -20%
#Team High Turnover Rate started to talk down the Celonian artificial conscience before being ambushed by Hannah Boucher showed with a crew of technicians and very heavily armed and armored Southern Alliance trooper. The only reason anyone survived was because Scotty the red shirt managed to finally be useful in the fight and deal one point of damage.
We picked up with the conversation with hologram dude. He thinks the Meridath War is still going on like those Japanese soldiers marooned on islands after world war ii. You tried to convince him that you are not on the Meridath side but he pulls up DNA from the samples he took and compares them to DNA from the Meridath. There is a large amount of similarities scattered throughout your strands. You guys remembered he said there was also celonian so he pulled that up as well next to them. The celonian portions were more discreet and grouped together but despite that there was still less than the Meridath portions. He starts running simulations backward through time trying to figure stuff out. The celonian appears around ~50-80k years ago. The meridath pieces in your DNA slowly coalesce into large chunks of pure meridath genetic code about 200-250k years ago.
He says "meridath uplifted" and starts to get hostile again. You again press that the war is over and it doesn't really matter. He wants some form of proof. You say it ended about 10,000 years ago so he powers up a sensor array that looked very unused and again rapidly watches through years of recorded information. You saw him zoom in and look at a bunch of supernova and black hole formation in the 100k-10k (ish) range. There was a lot near what corresponds to the end of the war and then few and far between after. He shuts down the stellar collapse system as he's looking through this star record. There is also a large metallic clunk through the station while he was reviewing this.
Very shortly thereafter Hannah and her crew arrive. She orders the technicians to get the data and the trooper to "destroy them." A fight immediately breaks out. You guys take a couple shots at the trooper as the technicians move up to the consoles. Jerzac Scarlewe sends a grenade at the two technicians at the main console killing them, hurting Tralia Lightfoot, and damaging the main computer core. Hologram guy shouts no and the gravity of the station is suddenly doubled.
Trooper calmly shoots tralia and almost kills her in one salvo so she's running away to hide and heal. The captain demoralizes the trooper, Bash takes a couple ineffectual shots, and Roquesta (Rocket) Strauss focuses on the trooper.
Next 2 round were much the same. Hologram started venting the station, the station started to shake, Hannah made Bash off target, the captain calmly lights a Lho stick to numb the pain of a brutal hit he took, and Scotty starts pulling data off the computer himself. The remaining SoAll tech and Boucher start to run after grabbing the data
Then the gravity went away and the radiation started becoming a threat. The crew had to deal with disadvantageous positions while the trooper had his jump jets to maneuver however he wished. He would duck in and out of cover taking devastating shots or throwing a grenade. Rocket was able to calmly wait for a target and deal some serious damage to him. During the first exposure of radiation about half the crew started feeling the effects of radiation poison and they only went downhill from there.
Seeing the threat the crew makes the wise move of trying to run (drift) for their ship. The trooper pursued them laying low the captain along the way. Part way down the hallway heavy gravity returns and everyone slammed to the ground. The captain was able to return to consciousness and continue stumbling away. The debilitated bash fired some shots that hurt him more than the enemy. Tralia and Rocket get on the ship.
The trooper turns the corner and shoots the captain in the back as he's running away. Bash weakly lifts his gun to take a final shot before falling unconscious. Tralia thought a little longer than she should have about just shooting the ship guns to end the threat at the cost of two of her crew members. The trooper makes a final shot destroying part of rockets prosthetic leg when Scotty comes around the bend of the corridor and takes the final shot to end the threat.
The crew (you guys should pick a group name sometime) now has some sweet loot and a new level as they prepare for potential starship combat in a system where the sun is still under threat of going supernova.