Manu Propria on the Evening Star Orbital

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Hi everyone.
I'm a few weeks into my Infinity RPG campaign here in Auckland.
I've got 6 players, who I offered the choice of 12 Life Point characters OR 5 Life Point characters with a bonus Infinity Point.
Everyone went with the latter.
So, here's the crew of the O-12 team which will be codenamed "Manu Propria" once they have finished their first missions on the Eveningstar Orbital.
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Valentin - The Caledonian Wulver who is kitted out to cut (or blast) his way through anything.
Icarus - The ALEPH aspect sniper, deadly at any range and linked in to "Mother".
Joko - The Aristo from the Orbitals who can cut anyone or anything down to size.
House - The PanOceanian girl who clawed her way up from the atechs to top surgeon.
Alejandro - The consummate Corporate "face" with the cash and access for nearly anything.
Tarryk - The Nomad catboi pilot with the skills and the drones to get the team in and out.
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I'm running them through the original Quickstart mission, but starting from first contact with the Tohaa (and through the whole negotiation period) rather than jumping in at the end with the Contact Treaty signing.
They are acting as an "independent security team" on the station, investigating and dealing with everything station security don't have time for.

 

I did character generation with everyone ahead of time, and our first "session" was gear and setup.

On the advice of Nathan Dowdell (who is one of the designers) I gave the PCs one "month" of "purchasing time" and used the usual buy system given in the Equipment chapter.

This resulted in a very varied range of pre-game preparation, from Alejandro and House who could both afford basically everything they wanted and walked in with fully upgraded Geists and all the optional equipment they could potentially use, to Joko and Tarryk who could barely afford anything (and the latter was being nearly bankrupted by the upkeep on a single PalBot).

We worked through everyone's background, discussed expectations for the game and got everyone on the same page in terms of timeline. We were starting in August 66NC, with the beginning of the Tohaa Contact negotiations. Then I walked everyone through their first contact with their faction liaisons and O-12 and walked them through the trip to the Evening Star Orbital. On arrival they had all weapons and all other restricted equipment seized by security before meeting Colonel (rather than Corporal) Felix Yorgos who briefed them on their role.

They were there just in time for the opening of the negotiations, and got to see the big "face the press" moment (and got to scope out the Tohaa, the human diplomats and the press corps). A complicated failure on an Observation roll saw Joko tackle a reporter after seeing them moving towards the stage and mistaking a mic for a gun, but things were quickly smoothed over.

​

 

In their briefing the PCs had been given a rundown of the key security concerns which were currently "known but not prioritised" due to personnel issues.

In other words, what security was worried about but didn't have the people to do anything about.

1: A strike on the docks escalating into violence
2: Injuries and disappearances on Red 15 and Purple 1 with sightings of Pupniks
3: Smuggling rings operating out of the docks

They were also contacted by a Caledonian Clan representative on the station and asked to help with a "special project".

The team decided that the docks were their main priority, but sent part of the team away to look into the security arrangements for the Tohaa-O-12 negotiations. So half the team went up and the other half went down to the docking rings.

​

The PCs didn't find anything of interest at the negotiations, except a breakdown of where the meetings were happening, an overview of their security arrangements and what was actually happening in them. But this kept this part of the team away 'till things kicked off and thus prevented all but the hacker intervening on the docks for several combat rounds.

Down on the docks the three who had headed down, Joko, Alejandro and Tarryk, started looking for workers while they did some background research discovering that the leader of the strikes was a woman named Vera Vermillion (yeah, she'll turn up again later) and the dock workers were protesting for improved wages, conditions and leave provisions. The presence of the Tohaa made the situation “complicated”. The dock workers were largely former Nomads, with a fairly substantial representation from independent stations and Minor Nations.

Eventually the PCs made their way down and found the protest on Dock 6. They found a large number of dock workers protesting around an external docking port which was active and had a ship ready for unloading. A team of four ship security officers armed with Boarding Shotguns were "holding back" the protesters.

A quick investigation found that the ship, a Tunguska registered vessel named the "Black November" had docked in breach of the strike and was attempting to unload. The PCs quickly realised that the security were deliberately provoking the strikers and agitating the crowd in order to draw out a violent response. Before they could get to the front two of the dock workers grabbed one of the security and things went South.

With the other members of the team heading down on a turbolift things went bad quickly on the dock. The security guards lowered their weapons and went to open fire on the dock workers, one literally pointing a gun at Vera's head. But the PCs swung into action, Tarryk pulling Vera out of the line of fire while Joko dove in to cut a guard down and Alejandro used a Psywar action to Persuade the other three to hold their fire.

At this point a Druze fireteam lead by an officer burst out of the ship, sent to deal a lethal blow to the striking workers and allow other labour to take over the contract. With the rest of the PCs arriving the team dealt to this new threat, but not before the ship detached and escaped into the void.

In the aftermath they managed to stabilize the wounded dock workers, and convinced Vera to call off the strike.

 

The players then decided that they should follow up on the request from the Caledonian representative on the station.

Nachton Ranald was trying to get back into a better relationship with the Tohaa (after an “unfortunate diplomatic incident”). Having come up with the idea of a gift, he had struck on offering a unique food choice for them to sample and asked the players to pick up some special ingredients in 4 packages, to collect over the next 48 hours and deliver to the Caledonian delegation chef. If they check on the parcels it’s sponge, jam, cream and coconut.

They first went to retrieve the package which had been seized and which was being held in a high security evidence storage unit. Security Officer Peter Kendric was responsible for signin and security in that evidence lockup. They met with him and, while he was kept distracted by Alejandro, House and Icarus penetrated the Quantronic Network to bypass the security and sign the "evidence" out to one of the PCs (as they are registered as "Security Officers") under the authority of Martin Gerdo, the Section Chief. They then delivered the box of hollow sounding spheres of some kind to the chef and were astonished to watch him unpack fresh Coconuts.

The PCs identified a source of Jam, strawberry to be precise, which was being smuggled onto the station by the "Granny Handcrafts" smuggling ring. "Granny" Pete Dunk was the contact on the station and operated out of the Blue-9 market. Although initially given the run around, having been noted as security officers when they arrived, Alejandro quickly turned that around as soon as he put effort into it and the PCs simply paid for the "package" as the the cost of 9 was pretty outrageous, but well within his price range.

The team discovered that Cream was being produced in an illegal stockyard in a sealed section of Grey-2. Well, they got a lead on where they could get cream from and on following it up discovered an illegal stockyard operating on the station semi-legally under the auspices of a conglomerate which had investment from a range of corporations (including Xerpredes Ominational) and led by Dane Kant an Xerpredes operative. Following up on a source of fresh milk being supplied to one of the station restaurants they tracked back a delivery boy and Tarryk got them into the sealed off section. But cutting through the security was trivial for Joko with his newly acquired TO Camo unit, and between the company connection and smooth talking the team got what they needed and then left the operation intact.

Last but not least the team had one last parcel to collect, which was on a courier ship on the wrong side of station security and (they were informed) was unlikely to make it through. Rather than talk it through, or get it intercepted and then hack their way to possession, the team got Joko to climb around the security checkpoint, using TO, to bypass station security and pick up the box directly off the shuttle.

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And it turns out, Tohaa DO like lamingtons!

...

This whole mission was a troll on one of my players, who hates lamingtons (and anything with sponge really).

 

Thanks @Section9
I'll have to check that out (I do need new scifi reading).

Our most recent game was a "Grey 17 is Missing" inspired story of Pupniks and a Chimera.

​

Before we got into the main plot, we had some bits to resolve from the afternoon/evening they had spent listening in on the negotiations between the Human Sphere diplomats and the Tohaa.

Alehandro (the team "face") had chatted with one of the Triads on security and convinced one of them to be friendly. They had shared some stories about fighting the Combined Army and even shown him some footage of their exploits. However when saved these recordings mysteriously disappeared (deleted by ALEPH as breaches of the Paradiso information blockade). They met again with these Tohaa at brunch and he made some "offline" recordings with a secure camera he obtained from one of his Corporate contacts.

On my version of the Eveningstar Orbital the "Red Levels" are largely machinery and support - 15 levels of them - while the "Purple Levels" are largely high density personnel quarters (slums) mixed in with further processing plants etc.

The players knew that there had been a series of assaults on Red 15 and Purple 1, and after accessing the medical files (the team Doctor used her credentials to get access) knew that these had been 3 assaults and one murder. They also knew that they had been various "animal attacks" with different animal "wounds" caused across the different attacks.

So they went into the investigation cautious.

Starting on Red 15 they found the locations of the attacks easily enough, but didn't do too well on their analysis or observation tests to really pick up any new info. In particular they didn't follow a trail out of the murder site (a hydroponics bay full of plants, half of which were newly planted) and towards the freight elevator... which would have lead to an early attack by a Pupnik defending its territory. They were also distracted somewhat by their Wulver pulling a complicated failure on one "observation" test (for scent) and becoming convinced that there was one particular specific Pupnik that was involved (and that he could track).

They checked out the assault sited on Purple 1 but didn't bother interviewing anyone, again not really gaining anything and missed the analysis tests to notice the difference in the length of the elevator trip between the floors.

At this point the team were heading back to Red 15 to look further into the locations (particularly the murder site) when they realised the elevator was taking too long and one of my players (who had actually been suspicious since the last game, and is a big Babylon 5 fan) yelled out "RED 16 IS MISSING!!!".

They got their technician (the pilot Tarryk) to stop the elevator halfway and forced open the doors to find a floor choked with unfinished equipment, vents spewing steam and general disorder.

In this chaos their lead (the Aristo, Joko) got jumped by a pair of Pupniks (he relied on TO Camo, but they got his scent anyway) and it was "all on".

The combat was extended, as waves of Pupniks came in and the PCs mowed them down. Everyone was particularly impressed by Joko, who has a combination of Deflection, Master Deflection and Riposte which allows him to regularly kill on the enemy action as well as pump Momentum into the pool.

Even the Chimera begging for her babies didn't stop them, 'though that may have been somewhat undermined by her diving into the melee... and with encouragement from Security to "deal with the problem" the PCs dealt with the problem by turning it into a pile of corpses.

...
Well, that's ONE way to resolve things!
...

 

The team finally got mission time again today, and launched back the morning after their successful mission with the Chimera. One player down, which is why you won't hear Icarus mentioned anywhere.

Touching base with Colonel Yorgos, both to confirm what was going on elsewhere on the station and to request access to a little more firepower than the light pistols they had been authorised to use. After persuading the Colonel of their need the players were issued with Boarding Shotguns (but only shells, no AP, and Stun rounds if requested) and Combi Rifles (again, just standard ammunition). They also picked up some more intel on the smuggling operations running on the station and went off to plan.

After closing a station cafe (Alejandro simply threw his credit line at the owner to get him to shut up shop and give them a private space) they began to work through their options, only to be interrupted by Saladin! Having heard about their efforts, the recreation (who is noted as being a key individual in the negotiations) was approaching them to give them all the "Haqqislam Wilderness of Mirrors" mission as there was no Haqq agent in the team. Meanwhile House was asked to actually hack into the Tohaa systems by the PanOceanian ambassador, literally while Saladin was asking them to make sure nobody did!

Once the recreation had left them, with assurances that they would make his mission a top priority, the team began to look more closely at what they already knew about the smugglers. Examining missing cargo shipments from Docking Ring 3 the team quickly realised that several shipments of hydroponics feed were missing... including a significant quantity of ammonium nitrate! Swinging into action the team launched a stationwide search, with them hitting key areas while drones, security teams and even customs officers swept the station. As they hit the main dome the news hit the station via Maya and all hell broke loose, with panicking civilians swarming everywhere. Nevertheless the team maintained a cool demeanour and completed the sweep... with no evidence of any large explosive device anywhere on the station.

Having lost a day to the bomb scare, the PCs reconvened the following morning to find they had been summoned by Yorgos (at 8am, a whole hour earlier than he usually started at the office), only to be informed that the body of a Tohaa was down in the morgue and shown footage of an alien hand striking from behind with a monofilament sword to cleave the diplomatic adjunct in twain. The team split to cover more ground, with House arriving back from a meeting at the PanOceanian consulate to conduct an examination of the body with Tarryk (and his remote) while Joko and Alejandro kept the heat (from the Tohaa and the coroner) off them and Valentyn headed to the crime scene via catching the scent of the security and medical staff who had contact with the body.

Despite the swift arrival of the Tohaa, House got out with samples before she could be stopped (and got them into her readers and samples processing before the Tohaa demanded that everything be returned after smelling her leaving). They watched in horror as the coroners examination room was purged by a Makaul with her flamethrower, while the body was carried away. Valentyn meanwhile identified where the Speculo had struck from, and got its scent. He realised it had impersonated a waitress from the restaurant next to which the Tohaa had died and had laid in wait for an opportunity to strike at the Tohaa. The team went together down to her quarters in Purple 5 and found an immaculate apartment, with the body of the waitress (minus cube) in a giant ziplock bag in the wardrobe.

With samples of blood and pheremones being processed in the lab, and several leads (plus hours of video footage to reivew) the players called it a session, while the news hit Maya with footage of the murder caught from a random livebloggers feed and sold as a "ninja assassination" as all that could be seen was the sword.

They will gather again next time to the breakdown of their leg work, ready to take on the Shasvaasti threat.

​

 

I'm a bit late writing the next game up, and our next session is tomorrow, so I figured I had better get onto it!

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Picking up the next morning, the team decide to split their efforts with some helping with the medical research while others work on the video footage. The next several hours were consumed in a series of analysis and observation tests on the video side and medicine with analysis tests on the medical side. They learned a lot about the Tohaa, especially about the complexity of their genome and the fact that hey have multiple symbiotes but nothing directly relevant to the case. Meanwhile on the footage they only confirmed that the killer literally disappeared into thin air and did not reappear anywhere.

The PCs looking over the footage did identify the waitress who had been killed and see her "accidentally" cut off the Tohaa who went out the rear, resulting in their isolation from the rest of the group at the restaurant and thus being cut off from the front by the crush of humans also attempting to flee. Thus producing the opportunity to attack while the Tohaa was alone.

Meanwhile the more "physical" members of the team checked out the physical location of the attack and determined that, in the chaos following the alarms, the only safe way for a Thermo-Optic cloaked opponent to flee would have been out the back end of the alley (which they realised was fairly easily climbable, over the roof and onto the nearby mezzanine level. They then followed up on missing workers from the previous day, stumbling onto an assault on one worker in his apartment by a Dog Warrior and a pair of Wulvers who Valentin and Joko dispatched before calling medics for the worker who was barely clinging to life.

The team then turned to their Tohaa contacts in order to see if they knew anything more. The Tohaa were concerned that the humans seemed to be blaming one another for the attack, and agreed to share specs for modifications to Holo-Detection visors to allow the biological monitoring which helps the Tohaa to identify the "Gene Killers" (at least, they were told, in the moments before the attack when the creatures return to aspects of their natural biology in order to enhance their deadliness) in return for a fully equipped Killer Hacking Device. The latter was quickly acquired and the first of what the players assumed would be many informal exchanges of technology between the species was undertaken.

Coming back together for lunch the team exchanged what they had learned and pondered their next steps. Just as the conversation about the Tohaa made Icarus realise that he had no memory of the earlier information shared by the Tohaa about the Combined Army, they were alerted by their Geists of another news alert on Maya involving the Evening Star. Reports were coming in of another "ninja murder" this time of a PanOceanian Fusilier on the station after a deployment on Paradiso. The characters rushed to the scene.

On arrival Dr House was quickly able to ascertain that the Fusilier had been instantly killed by a single blow from a monofilament weapon from behind upon arrival at his apartment. With Alejandro holding off the Security from continuing processing the scene the rest of the team conducted a search and scanned through footage from the previous evening in order to identify the Fusilier and his whereabouts prior to the killing. This quickly confirmed that a junior support worker from the Yu Jing embassy had been with him at a club the night before, and had accompanied him back to his apartment. The search did not turn up anything of note however.

Splitting up Valentin chased down the scent from the embassy worker, which was thick and heady with Ikhol. This trail led to the womans apartment, which was guarded by a pair of Celestial Guard who refused to step aside. Once the rest of the team, mainly Alejandro, made it to the scene they managed to convince the Celestial Guard to step aside, by explaining the existence of the "Gene Killers" and their ability to take on the form and personality of those who they killed. Once inside the team began a thorough search and were partway through when their efforts were interrupted by the sound of a pair of gunshots outside!

Into the room strode a Hsien, who immediately demonstrated his dominance by identifying the members of the team concealed by Thermo-Optic systems... and by the pair of slumped Celestial Guard outside with a bullet neatly through the base of their skulls. The Hsien quickly explained that Alejandro had killed the Guardsmen by telling them about the "Gene Killers" and cautioned the group against sharing such dangerous information in future. Opening the full resources of the Yu Jing embassy to the team the Hsien quickly explained that they had no way to tell when the Killer had taken their worker, but given her body was not in the apartment it was likely a futile task to try and find it. But Yu Jing was eager to clear the accusations being made against them and would help where they could in order to find the real killer(s).

With the situation rapidly worsening the players are back in action again soon...

​

 

So, the team were back in action on Saturday minus Alejandro (the player was at a LARP all weekend) hence his conspicuous absence from the action. They picked back up the morning after the confrontation with the Hsien after their initial inquiries into the murder of the Fusilier.

Pulling together the info they had, and the various investigation threads they had hanging (the smuggling ring on the station, the assault on the Engineer, the hacking threat to the Tohaa and the "Gene Killer" attacks) the team decided that they were at a bit of a dead end and should call on some assistance. They were keen to "get ahead" of the killings and take the initiative away from the killer(s) but weren't sure how that would be possible so, skipping straight to the top, they contacted Saladin and asked for a meeting.

​

Saladin had them meet with him at the same Coffee Shop/Doughnut House that they were in the first time. They ran him through what they knew and what they had learned so far, laying all their cards on the table especially regarding the killings and their alien origin. Saladin confirmed his knowledge of what he told them were officially called "Speculo Killers", and reiterated the warning the Hsien had delivered the previous evening regarding spreading that information. He released some of the information they wanted on the two missing PanOceanian soldiers that the Hexahedron had stonewalled them on, while pointing out that Dr House could use her connections to get their full files. The recreation also indicated that he was happy to help them in luring out the Speculo, offering several likely Haqq officers (who had entanglements with Yu Jing, making them excellent choices to continue upping the pressure on the negotiations).

The PCs went out and made contact with their various sources, Icarus chatting with his Russian mob links about what was going on with the smuggling and engineer, while Dr House went to visit the PanOceanian Ambassador. Tarryk busied himself making the required modifications to a pair of Biovisors so that the team could ID the Speculo more easily and Valentin made contact with their Tohaa friend. While Valentin didn't get much additional information on the Speculo threat, he did find out that the Tohaa security were crushingly bored in the meetings and Joko went over to hang out and pass the time.

Icarus got pointed right back at "The Grannies" who the team had already met, as the key people on the station for moving goods and people off the radar of O-12. But as a known quantity who had a "pass" from station security for refusing to deal in anything too dangerous the PCs still didn't feel that they were a real risk on the level they were looking for. Dr House, meanwhile, got a full dossier on the killed Fusilier which confirmed that he had extensive links to Yu Jing due to his deployments during the Ariadnan Commercial Conflicts and was a perfect target to perpetuate the anti-Yu Jing "ninja murders" narrative.

Taking advantage of Joko's position with a Stealth Repeater Dr House then undertook her own secret mission, penetrating the infotech systems of the Tohaa delegation to obtain diplomatic and technical secrets. She managed to penetrate the system quickly and without detection, but then got caught by IC inside the first of 5 sub-systems and got out with everything in that section of the system but nothing else before the Ambassador shut down her comlink and stormed out of the meeting in disgust. In return for his assistance Joko got his conglomerate of independent space stations into the roster of official meetings and a seat at the negotiations, while PanOceania got a lot of information that they can't translate... (yet) and thus of unknown value.

(as only one of 5 sections was downloaded I gave the player of Dr House a 1d20 roll and the team called "One's High"... she rolled a 4 and will learn in future what that good luck has earned)

The team came to the conclusion that they would send Alejandro out, using his cybermask, to impersonate an ideal Haqq target identified by Saladin. They had analysed the pattern of attacks and decided that there was one particular club which was highly likely to be used as a hunting ground by the Speculo. Their plan was to have Joko and Icarus use their Thermo Optic Camouflage and newly upgraded BioVisors to follow Alejandro, while the rest of the team kept their distance while remaining close enough to respond quickly to an attack.

Disguised as a Govad who stayed in his quarters and helped Alejandro set up his cover, including handing over his Comlink, Alejandro headed into the club. With Joko and Icarus waiting outside he was relatively quickly approached by a pretty European girl who the team identified as the daughter-in-law of the Yu Jing Ambassador. Heading out to the Govad's quarters Icarus successfully stayed ahead of the pair while Joko trailed them, both remaining hidden. The rest of the team kept on a parallel corridor, maintaining a safe distance. When Alejandro entered the quarters both Icarus and Joko saw the Speculo begin to shift on their BioVisors and Icarus opened fire with his Double-Action modified Combi Rifle, while Joko hit the creature from behind with his Teseum Chopper. The creature never had a chance.

Quickly moving to secure the scene, the team cleared away the scattered civilians who (luckily) hadn't seen what went down and cleaned up the blood splatter from outside. Dr House got a complete set of samples, which she took back to her lab for processing, and the PCs handed the scene over to station security (under the supervision of a pleased Saladin). The team decided to release another story to the press, leaking some of the details of the "successful" assassination and framing up Yu Jing for the crime once more. The condition for this being that the Tohaa would be told of Yu Jing willingly cooperating with the effort despite their own names being besmirched.

In response to the series of attacks the team were transferred from their "freelance" status to the direct security team for the lead Tohaa diplomat with whom they had already had some contact. They were forwarded her schedule and made preparations to meet with her team in the morning. Being relatively confident in their ability to keep their assigned HVT safe, the team allowed her to continue with her full round of meetings and passed on, to her surprise and pleasure, the success of their effort against the Speculo and the willing involvement of Yu Jing in the coverup. She was to be accompanied by Joko and Icarus in secret and with Valantin visibly supporting her security Triad as she attended key meetings with both the PanOceanian and Station Conglomeration delegates, as well as other meetings.

Meanwhile the PCs established a reason for moving the Plenary Meeting of all the senior diplomats with the Triad of Tohaa ambassadors away from the Silver Arch Dome. To this end they planted and detonated a small explosive charge, enough to cause a scene and scare people. They then set up seating, including tiers of seats on stacked containers to block lines of fire, on the dock where the Tohaa Errant ship was attached. This allowed them to control the environment more carefully. When the time came for the meeting, they were unsurprised by the Speculo sniper dropping from the roof (having bypassed the sensor there) and the Speculo with assault pistol bursting from the croud, both being eliminated easily while Joko protected the Tohaa with his own body.

As the diplomats were being evacuated however the station was rocked by a series of explosions, and the Errant Ship was suddenly torn away from the station by a blast, leaving a gaping hole into space!

The PCs scrambled for a moment, before emergency blast doors slammed into place.

But Icarus shared what "Mother" flicked into his awareness in the last scene of the game, as she took control over the station from the compromised Melissa AI...

Missiles rising from the surface, and station point defenses offline...

A Combined Army Cruiser appearing in range to open fire...

And dozens of boarding torpedoes speeding towards the station starting their final burn...

​

 

When we left off the Manu Propria team were shaken by a series of explosions which wracked the Evening Star orbital, one blasting the Tohaa Errant Ship clear of the docking bay where the Plenary Committee Meeting had been shifted.

With a wave of anti-ship missiles heading towards the station the point defenses had attempted to activate and all had failed, Boarding Torpedoes and a Combined Army Cruiser had also sprung onto the station sensors as they made final attack burns.

​

Icarus asked permission for ALEPH to directly access Tarryk's Comlog (the only one she didn't already have an easy line into) and when he eventually agreed the full tactical situation was made available to all of the characters. They could see the Paradiso Planetary Blockade was almost entirely out of position, only one PanOceanian Frigate being within intercept range in any reasonable time and the Wotan and System Interdiction fleets were simply too far away to respond before the station was shattered.

Surveying the situation the characters realised that while the Tohaa were with them, largely intact after the emergency blast doors had sealed the breach in the docking ring, they would need to collect the human ambassadors if they wanted to extract them themselves. Most were caught behind the swarm of people scrambling towards the central lifts, which a few were turning towards the nearest stairwell. ALEPH flicked up the station plans and "greenlit" a path across the bay to the far stairs, on the planet side of the station. With seconds before the station started to take fire from the Combined Cruiser and minutes before the alien ordinance struck the nearer stairs were currently at the greatest risk of breach.

The PanO Ambassador, Diax and her 2 CSUs, the Yu Jing Ambassador Ming and "nobody" (3 Ninjas), the Ariadna Ambassador Strong and his team of 4 Kazakhs, and the O-12 Ambassador Cullen (whose security was helping to bring order out of the chaos around the lifts) were quickly pulled into the characters orbit.

The Nomad Ambassador Narvaez had one of his 4 Riot Grrls step out Alejandro but he talked them around. Meanwhile the Haqq Ambassador Balawi and his 2 "CSUs" (really holomasked Haqq supersoldiers) nearly made it all the way to the near stairwell before Valentin got to them, all demonstrating their ability to superjump over the small crowd which had followed them. Joko also had his work cut out for him extracting his Orbital Coalition Minor Nations Ambassador Babic from the middle of the press of the crowd, but he mustled his way through.
Once the group was gathered and they started up the far stairs, the wisdom of that choice was clear as the "near" stairs were breached by weapons fire from the Combined Army Cruiser.

At the stairs Icarus turned and informed the team that he was needed elsewhere, (his player was absent but had left instructions) and ran down while the rest of the team went up.

After running flat out up 10 flights of stairs, the missiles hit first. Staying on their feet their route up was now partly open space. ALEPH suggested cutting 'through the Purple market level but gathering suits to cross the gap was discussed, as was dividing the group (sending some of the Ambassadors with the Riot Grrls who could go over in their power armour) but the ultimate choice was made to keep the whole group together.

At the entrance to the market the team found "Granny" Dunk wounded and dying from Morat gunfire. He was coherent enough to warn them that the Morats had taken the market and had Hungries with them before House Cubevac'd him.

Moving into the market Valentin smelled trouble ahead and the Riot Grrls charged around a corner to confront a squad of Morats with a Sogarat. They took up defensive positions and threw up a wall of fire, but when the Kazakhs went to reinforce them the first to turn the corner died instantly. After a quick discussion the team agreed to leave the Riot Grrls in place and the Makaul Dat'ye dropped Eclipse smoke so that the group could "cross the T" and bypass the Morats.

Reaching three unused Crash Coffins the group agreed to ditch the first 3 Ambassadors. After some discussion the Nomad, PanO, and Yu Jing Ambassadors were dispatched towards the surface. The team then flashed the Imperial Seal again to send Ambassador Ming's Ninjas to attack the Morats and help the Riot Grrls get out if possible.

Carrying on to the next cluster of unlaunched Crash Coffins several levels up the team encountered a Yaogat sniper in the corridor. The Ectros Sudel took the first hit on her Symbiont and the characters watched in horror as it peeled away and sloughed off. They traded potshots, glueing down the sniper at the cost of a remote, before leaving the now immobilised sniper behind, not wanting to risk casualties or waste time.

As they moved through the corridor towards the next unlaunched Crash Coffins two security guards dashed out of a perpendicular corridor fleeing Morat gunfire. One was gunned down as she made her turn, while the other took cover around the far corner under a vent, only for that vent to burst open and black toothed maws and claws to burst out and pull him, screaming, up to a messy death. The two Haqq troopers jumped across, one engaging the Morats with fire while the other covered the vent. 5 other Tohaa security swung around the corner and advanced into the fire, taking hits on their Symbionts 'till they made it to cover. Here a pair of Suryat led a dozen Vanguards and a swarm of Hungries coming across the ceiling and the Tohaa were pinned down. The players gunned down the Suryats, and killed Hungries on the ceiling. Alejandro opened up with his Combi Rifle on a vent, nervously overreacting to the gunfight, luckily killing the Hungry behind it. But with reinforcements coming in the decision was made to, once again, drop smoke and leave the combat in place... with the other Human Ambassadors quickly dropped via Crash Coffin. The team was operating on the logic that single Tohaa alone on Paradiso might not be safe, so they should be kept with them to evacuate in Alejandro's Yacht.

Moving up to the customs area under the docking ring where that Yacht waited the characters heard gunfire. They found a barricade in front of the doors with Yorgos and 6 security holding off twice as many Morats. Sending the CSUs to cover their rear they joined the fight from behind barricade. Valentin and Joko went out, with smoke and TO as their cover respectively. Valentin took down the Morat HMG gunner before he too went down, taking his fourth wound. The Kazakhs threw down cover fire for their associate who ran and dove to drag Valentin into cover allowing House to get him back on his feet. Meanwhile Joko went to town on the other flank, murdering the Morat sniper and two others in quick succession. Coming back up Valentin unleashed HMG action and the surviving Morats attempted to withdraw, only to be cut down.

The team grabbed the heavy weapons and began to rally the security, agreeing with Yorgos that the station was unrecoverable. But as they went to head out the doors were smashed in by a Raicho and its supporting Vanguards. Yorgos, the security AND the last Triad of Tohaa (including their friend Torael) turned to face the threat, screaming at the PCs to run.

They ran.

Up in the launch bay Tarryk casually picked off a Shasvastii sniper on top of the ship using his MSV.

After getting the hurry along from ALEPH, the team grabbed their confiscated gear from security and dove onto the ship as the station started to be blown into separate sections.

As Tarryk took the controls ALEPH put up a timer, and he waited for it to cound down, when Combine dArmy weapons fire to blew the exit. Another timer cam up, and they watched as they waited the crippled PanOceanian frigate drift, still firing, into a position where it covered their exit. Blasting clear of the station they saw the individual docking rings being spun off by ALEPH, and turned under the Errant ship as it engaged the Cruiser with a hail of fire.

Diving towards the surface, the team drew breath, and realised how lucky they were.

​

 

Well, they made all the right kinds of friends along the way.

And they made a lot of smart choices as they were going (largely to stick with the ALEPH suggested path despite distractions, but also with the order they dropped the diplomats and how they took on the various engagements).

But, to be fair, they are pretty effective in combat and that's where the worst risk was most of the time.

And they tend to be VERY careful with Heat.