061-1104 – Albe Surface
Having infiltrated Eschaton, one of the three major cities on the blighted surface of Albe, the Travellers went about their plan to kidnap GeDeCo Director Skylark Tanlin. Their plan was made more complex by aspects of the environment: the maglev train track was held kilometres in the sky by grav-tech; the atmosphere itself was a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen air with salt-dust and a high chlorine content, rendering it unbreathable without filters; and the heist had to occur while the train was travelling at hypersonic speeds through a violent salt-dust storm with constant electrical discharges occurring. Any signal from the train would lead to armed emergency responders arriving in an average of forty minutes, but potentially less.
Zhana, with her basic ability in Steward skill, was inserted into the train as an employee of AMTC: the Albe Maglev Transit Corporation. As a steward, she would have full access to the carriage.
Travis Drevil flew an armoured grav vehicle procured by Ingabel and lay in wait near to where the hijack of the maglev train was to occur. On-board was Marcus while Roach, Anson and Dr Bilal waited with the ship. The terrifying force of the chlorine-salt sand-storm rapidly began to ablate the armour from the grav carrier, and Drevil had to place it between ruined buildings on the city surface to prevent the hull being scoured away entirely.
Ferric Osmund and Rosa Perre were booked into the same, luxury-class carriage as the target.
Having accessed the train’s ventilation systems, the group on-board the train pumped knockout-gas into the carriage, almost immediately disabling the luxury compartment passengers. Then, using a computer they brought onto the train, they hacked into the train control and detached the rearmost carriages from the rest of the train. Unfortunately, this immediately triggered the train’s emergency braking system, hurling Rosa Perre forward down the train corridor and into the carriage bulkhead, breaking her nose in the process.
As the train stopped, Drevil and Marcus took off and headed for the crippled train, docking with the rear of the separated train compartments.
Entering Tanlin’s compartment, the party found him entirely unaffected by the knockout gas, due to his very expensive cyberware. Although both guards appeared to have been knocked out, one turned out to be faking this, and there was a brief fight as he attempted to defend his principal.
The party then extracted Tanlin through the rear of the train, leaving him bemused as they became distracted by a small-time drug dealer who had bribed his way into the cargo compartment to protect the package he was smuggling between cities. “Is this your first kidnapping? It’s not my my first kidnapping…”
The party then embarked upon the Grav Carrier, which was by now badly sand-blasted, its armour ruined, and detached from the train. As they departed, they could see that the magnetic shielding that protected the train had been disabled for the front compartments, separated from the generator, and that violent lightning was repeatedly striking the stationary vehicle, packed as it was with passengers.
The Travellers then made their rendezvous with Lady Ada Wishart in the Aurora’s Fortune, hidden amongst a tangle of fallen skyscrapers, delivering Director Skylark Tanlin to her. She congratulated them on a job well done, immediately paying them the promised KCr100 and opening an eye-wateringly expensive bottle of 300-year old Drinaxian champagne to celebrate. She then revealed her plan:
“For too long the Foederate has oppressed my people. They rule with an iron fist, keeping citizens in line by controlling the limited supplies of water, which they drug to keep people complacent and happy. Thirty years ago, GeDeCo approached them offering a deal; infrastructure and trade at bargain prices. The princes of the Foederate refused. The only trade they agreed to was to line their own pockets, so that was the deal GeDeCo made.
“Well, I want to alter the terms of that deal. I want you to break into the GeDeCo offices at Senlis Station and swap the contract data with the forgery we’re going to produce from Tanlin’s biometrics. Then, I want you to do the same with the records kept on Senlis, in the princely palace itself.
“If you pull it off, when the contract shifts to phase 2 in a few months, GeDeCo will have full access to distribute water to the beleaguered people of my world. They’ll be able to break free from the tyrant’s grasp. And if Senlis refuses? Well, GeDeCo is a power in its own right, isn’t it? Either way, you’ll be all the richer for it. What do you think?”
The party’s ship, the sleek and stealthy Serendipity, docked to the Aurora’s Fortune for the three parsec jump to Magen. Ingabel had arranged for cold-weather gear, breathers and other survival equipment, since the worlds of the Senlis Federation are universally inhospitable places.
067-1104 – Magen orbital space
Arriving in the Magen system after a week in jump space, Lady Wishart was unable to contact the hidden rebel base in the system, so the streamlined Serendipity was dispatched to the planet surface to make numerous refuelling runs while the Aurora’s Fortune remained hidden in the asteroid belt nearest the planet. The planet surface was hellish: active volcanos threw vast quantities of ash and acidic gases into the choking atmosphere while kilometre-wide lava flows curved down from vast mountains. The local temperature was -63C while landing was made terrifying by the way that the ship would sink into the thick layer of ash that covered every surface. Attempting to breath the air unfiltered would lead to the victim’s lungs dissolving and filling with acidic ash-sludge. Using the ship’s sensors, the party were able to find water-ice deposits beneath the ash which they extracted for processing into fuel, but they were spotted by a drone sent by the local authorities, and had to talk their way out of being attacked, pretending to be a GeDeCo craft.
After laboriously refuelling the Aurora’s Fortune, the Serendipity was filling her own tanks when Lady Wishart contacted them:
“I’ve found out why the rebel base at Redrock wasn’t responding. Military forces are jamming the area. It’s bad news – they’re under attack. They’ve already been bombed and an advanced force is securing the facility. The main enemy force arrives in one hour.
“Those rebels have all the information we’ve gathered about Senlis Station but it’s worse than that. There’s information on just about every rebel agent on the planet there. If the Foederate forces get their hands on it, it’ll be a disaster. But there’s still hope. You’re close enough to help. You can get inside, destroy the computer core and get away with as many people as you can.
“I won’t lie to you. It’ll be dangerous. The Foederate controls its people with propaganda and drugs, and their troops are fierce, crazed fighters. If you do not want to face that, I understand. Bring that fuel home and we’ll regroup in Orsasch. But if you can pull it off, if you can rescue Section Leader Tibious, well, you’ll be heroes, won’t you? And, if that isn’t motivation enough, you’ll have earned yourself a big fat tip. What do you say?”
The party agreed, and KCr50 was immediately transferred to their accounts. Lady Ada also sent them a map of the base and a note of its location.
Abandoning caution, the Travellers flew the Serendipity to the rebel base and found an attack underway: electronic jamming equipment had been landed in a vehicle within the base perimeter, and bomber craft had attacked the base’s anti-aerospace weapons: one of the bombers had crashed into a building on the edge of the base.
Most of the party disembarked from the Serendipity, along with the vargr Roach. They quickly found themselves surrounded by enemies on three sides, and the Travellers split up to suppress each flank while making contact with the rebels within the base.
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