LogDeniable Asset-Jason-9

Game log for the 2025/01/05 session of Star Wars - Deniable Asset, as taken by Jason

Ten days after our last mission, mostly spent just loitering around Eygor, listening to local news broadcasts about seperatist activity in the chasms. Benetzia Graz, Precept of Tios, is fairly popular with the surface dwellers. Iros tells us to meet him at the sabacc club. This time, we get a somewhat alert reception. Though most of the staff are new, our reputation seems to have preceded us. The team gets escorted to a back room (not the same one Myyla once had a firefight in) and we meet Iros there, looking dapper. He explains that his master sees an opportunity to change the dynamic of the chasm-dweller insurgency. Colonel Keln knows of a supply cache, and if the contents of that cache got into the hands of the rebels, it would change the shape of the conflict. It's on a moon of one of the gas giants in the Kolnar system. It was a staging point for Imperial incursions into the region, when they were pacifying it during the dying days of the Old Republic. The previous CO of the station, and his troops, took what they could and fled the sector. Keln believes that they left a significant quantity of weapons and supplies behind. He thinks the cache is still there because three weeks ago, someone tried to auction some of the cache off on Elnoor. The cache is much too large for the Deniable Asset, so we'll need to, um, acquire a ship as part of the project. The cargo will be 20 AT-ST walkers. TL-DR asks the Colonel if he has a line on a freigher we could acquire, and he mentions that there's an ore freighter that makes a regular run through the area, carrying high-bulk, low-value off-the-books cargos for the Black Suns. TL-DR and Iros dicker, and eventually settle on 75000 credits for the job, if we deliver all 20.

The ship leaves a few days later. The target freighter is delivering enormous thrusters in the Eggis system, which an EVA crew bolts to an asteroid, allowing the asteroid to be processed centrally for easier refining and transportation. We jump to the target system and start scanning, hoping to guess which rock the incoming ship will appear near. Gar sees a spot where a lot of the smaller rocks are gone, but there's a cloud of dust there, implying someone has been blowing up rocks to make a safe space. We lurk there for a day, posted up on a spinning asteroid, waiting, and then see a ship approaching. It's visibly heaving armed, with dual quad laser turrets forward and aft. We decide to attempt to board the freighter and take over, rather than risking a ship to ship duel. Once the enemy freighter opens its doors and deploys its EVA teams, Igli swoops in, picking a vector that basically allows him to fling the boarding party out of the Asset right at the hostile vessel. The team, roped together for safety, land right in the hostile cargo bay. Myyla and Phex land ready for action, where as Gar and Con land... poorly. The boarding party can see the catwalk along the spine of the ship, and the gantry cranes that control the thruster units when they aren't deployed. Phex and Myyla see someone running forward, toward the airlock at the end of the bay. Phex cuts himself loose from the rest of the crew and launches himself at the airlock, trying to get in front. He makes it and cuts the guy off, so the Black Sun sailor reaches for a weapon. TL-DR draws and shoots the sailor in the back, wounding him and breaching his suit. Myyla fires at almost the same time, wounding him even worse, and holing his suit twice. The guy drops his gun and starts scrambling for suit patches. Out in space, Igli punches it and performs evasive maneuvers. The fire from the freighter misses the Asset, but it does fragment some of the nearby rocks, which makes Igli's course more complicated. Luckily, he's an outstanding pilot, and makes such a frustrating target that one of the hostile gunners overheats his turret and jams it.

Phex aims and shoots the hostile, and this time he puts a round right through the helmet. That's the end of that guy. One sailor from the asteroid field starts working his way back. The crew goes to the foreward airlock where the gravity is on. TL-DR presses the button to close the doors, but that command gets overriden, and the doors stop moving. Con and Gar rush over to the control panel, Con slices the computers, and the doors start closing again. The party then heads for the bridge, Con slicing right through the security around the airlock and cycles the party through it, but as soon as the inner door opens, someone starts shooting at us. Phex shoots back and hits, then TL-DR gets a hit, then Myyla, and the third hit drops the foe, an implausibly muscular Twi'lek. Gar rushes forward and takes up overwatch, and sees a guy drop down from a ladder above, probably from one of the turrets. As the bad guy is drawing his pistol, Gar opens fire, and drops him. We leave TL-DR to watch our backs, Phex to watch the down ladder, and everyone else rushes the bridge. It doesn't take too long for the rear airlock to open again and two men to come through. TL-DR hits the first one who comes through, causing him to recoil, but his buddy rushes forward. Phex shoots at that guy and drops him in one shot, then calls on the other guy to surrender. The guy throws his gun out, but doesn't reveal himself.

The rest of the crew rush forward and find the bridge door sealed. As a kid, Con learned a quick and dirty technique for coring out a hatch to quickly rescue the inhabitants, and this door is the exact model he was trained on. The Black Sun on the bridge surrenders. Myyla rushes over to the helm and starts piloting the ship out. It's not easy but she's able to get the ship out of the asteroid field, bouncing a couple rocks off the hull, but the team has a ship. The remaining Black Sun sailors surrender, and we send them out in two of the ship's four lifeboats, which we hope we make us not pointless mass murderers. En route, Con tries to plunder the ship's computer, only to find that it just doesn't have that much information. He does learn that every time the freighter visits Elnoor, it gets the same customs inspector at Station 4, and now we have that guy's identity.

Keln is favorably impressed by Igli's skill. He and Igli work out the plans for the assault on the cache. Igli tries to convince him to share his codes, just in case something happens to poor Colonel Keln, and he does so, because after all, why does he care about Imperial need-to-know rules? The ships dock up and sweep the freighter. Myyla and Con find a hidden compartment, but it's boobytrapped, and Con's attempt to defuse it fails. Gar rushes over and provides hasty medical treatment, then more thorough medical treatment. A little burn salve and the mechanic is good as new. Igli does damage control on the Asset. It looks like the hidden compartment was full of spice, but no so much anymore.

Gar takes solo control of the freighter, and everyone else boards the Deniable Asset / Wandering Bantha. Approaching the moon holding the cache, the installation is visible from space, and Keln drops the shield, then starts working his way through the defense code authenticator. His codes don't work, but Igli manages to put the ship onto the ground before the code interrogator gives up on us. Right now, as soon as the ship takes off, the defenses will try to engage. The crew will need to disable the defenses. Also, the last guy out from the garrison vented the atmosphere, so we'll have to conduct ops in vacuum. Igli tells Keln to get the team moving while he brings Con up to speed on Imperial procedures, but actually gives Con the codes that Keln shared with him, and mentions that Keln's usefulness might run out. Keln warns everyone that the defensive systems will all be running on independent backup power, but to get the freighter down, we may need to get power on. That seems like a useful step regardless, since central power might enable Con to attack central systems, so the team heads toward the reactor. Keln warns of the possibility of automated defense turrets. The former inhabitants seem to have left in a hurry, since some areas have gear strewn about. Someone has destroyed the defense turrets in the armory, and Keln says the former content of the armory are what was being sold on Elnoor. He thinks the thermal detonator used to kill that New Republic operative a few weeks back might have come from this cache. The team works its way deeper in, using ladders because the lifts are all down. Keln mentions that if they go any further, they'll be fired upon. Igli suggests creating a smoke cloud, and Con does some quick electrical work to get things smoking. The low grav and lack of atmo means the smoke spreads slowly, but it's something. Phex readies his rifle and pokes his head out, aiming with the multi-optic scope to see the Imperial turrets through the smoke. He burns down the first turret before it ever aims at him. The second turrets shoots at him and hurts him badly, but doesn't put him out of the fight. He hits the turret with his return fire, then ducks back in. He hastily stimpacks himself, then he and TL-DR decide that TL-DR will bait it while Phex shoots at it. TL-DR takes a hit, but Phex's shot hits the turret's gas reservoir, exploding it, and opening the hatch for us. Con quickly slaps a repair patch on the droid.

Once he's safely in the reactor control room, Con has no difficulty getting things online. A droid comes up and says that while he appreciates us bringing the facility online, it does not believe we are authorized to be here. TL-DR tells it that things have changed and they've come to give it more useful work. The droid is not impressed and threatens force. The team opens fire, and Myyla hacks the droid with a vibrosword. That's the end of that droid. Con also starts up life support, deploying the reserve atmosphere to create partial pressure and some oxygen. Con and Igli take the time to do some quick repairs on TL-DR. The team then decides to try to climb through the power and data conduit to reach control. Con commands all the maintenance droids to depart from that shaft, and then the team begins crawling through, Myyla in the lead. When they get there, Myyla pushes the inspection hatch out from inside, and then we're all in the control room. We identify the right hangar and barracks for Gar to land the freighter, and then go to work commanding the defenses to chill the hell out. Con then slices through the computer defense controls, breaking one hell of a sweat as he does so. By the time he's done, he's breathing hard, but all the defenses show standby mode. Gar brings the ship in for a landing on the now fully-illuminated pad, and makes it look easy. At his recommendation, Conzenz turns the external defenses back on, just in case someone else shows up.

All 20 AT-STs are still there, still intact, but wired to blow. It looks like someone tried to rig a self-destruct on their way out, but it didn't detonate eveywhere. Barracks A and D exploded, B is heavily looted, but C is intact, and even has a substantial environmental reserve. Con disarms the booby trap, and it's time to load AT-STs. Gar, Phex, and Con leave in the freighter, while Iglie flies everyone else out in the Asset. Just as the two ships have matched courses and are headed toward a hyperdrive egress points, a Black Sun ship jumps in.