LogDeniable Asset-Jason-20

Game log for the 2025/05/04 session of Star Wars - Deniable Asset, as taken by Jason

Gar and Con are holed up in the city, and everyone else is back on the ship. The smugglers who got him into the city will get him into the Aldaraani ghetto. As they're waiting for the smugglers in the designated place, they see a police patrol sweeping the area. Gar leads Con into a hiding place, but the spot they find has no ventilation. Con whips up a magnet on a string to hold the hatch shut from inside just long enough for the cops to go by, without the air getting too stale. They're back on the street before the smugglers arrive. They bring Con in, and Gar sneaks in on his own.

Unfortunately, station security is so heavily present that Gar has to back off. Con goes in, in the same old container of gand food, but Con's going to be on his own. He goes looking for a place to hang out, but it's late at night local time, and there's not a lot open.

Con tries a commlink call to the Aldaraani, gets no response, and gets no response. He decides to spend a couple hours fixing whatever is broken, and now the compressor on the walk-in works, and the induction coil for the fryer now heats at peak efficiency. When he's done, he tries the commlink again. This time, someone answers, and tells Con to stay out of trouble a while until they can meet up.

A few hours later, people come in and start prepping, and then customers trickle in. Around this time, Gar tries to sneak in again, since doing so should be less suspicious at this hour.

Con notices that the patrons eating this morning don't talk, and the staff don't seem eager to provide service. He grabs a high top and waits, nursing a beverage. The waiter asks where he's from, and Con reference Alderaan. The resistance POC talks about the situation, but doesn't have any better idea than "keep terrorizing." Con asks to be connected to his crew so they can brainstorm together. He leads Con to a janky-ass cobbled-together com console, from which Con calls the ship. The team sort of reviews the options we've discussed before, but we're going round in circles. Com stops and mentally reviews what he knows about corporate structure, from the old days. He recalls that operations like this can be highly profitable, but they're always leveraged to the hilt. To Con, that implies that we might not need to do lock down the entire system or drop an entire city. A series of small disruptions that add up to a threat to profit might be enough to generate a lot of attention.

TL-DR leads the gang to the New Republic embassy and talks to Helenta Vox. The droid tells her that they've had to scrub the mission, but are taking an interest in the Aldaraani problem. She's very nervous about the idea of a scrubbed operation on her territory, because of the risk that someone else will try to un-scrub it. Vox can see the opportunity for the New Republic in fixing the local situation. Once TL-DR admits that the mission to solve this issue has not been officially sanctioned, she becomes much friendlier, and happy to help. Unfortunately, she already called the clandestine services rep for the Almovar sector (Terek Hanko) about this situation, and once he's here, everything needs to happen so as not to attract his attention. She suggests they should find out who Nerrix (the owning company) owes money to, and why Black Suns leave their shipments alone. She also makes it clear that if this scheme works out and the planet joins the New Republic, Ambassador Vox will look like a hero. If it does bad, she will blame the team and the Aldaraani. TL-DR congratulates her on playing the situation properly. If Terek Hanko asks, she met the team, read them the riot act, and threw them out. Hanko will arrive in about an hour and a half, so they need to

Con discovers that the Aldaraani are concentrated on about five of the ten functioning cities, and there are large work crews on the other two. However, the Aldaraani on the construction jobs are mostly sympathizers or cowed. Con's first job is going to be to set up comms for the different Aldaraani groups.

The Asset leaves the city before Hanko arrives, thus avoiding an awkward encounter. As they take off, they see a huge (silhouette six) gas freighter dock up with the city and start filling up. It doesn't have a bullseye painted on it, but it might as well. The freighter has heavy laser cannons port and starboard, and heavy ion cannons fore and after. Igli isn't confident the Asset can simply defeat a large freighter in a fight, but he could probably put a strike team on board.

Con asks Clem the Aldaraani for help getting to the sort of terminal he needs, and brings Gar in. Clem shares the city schematics and reviews the location of the nearest com hub and the plan for pointing an antenna. Gar leads Con and the Aldaraani through the crawlways and junction tubes to a comms bank, whence he patches into the comm panel. Now he has to drop down a shaft and out the discharge vent, then hand-over-hand his way to the antenna and its attached computer. Gar goes ahead to help set anchor points for him. That's enough for Con to work his way out there. Once he's there, the little details of hanging over a bottomless pit don't bother him at all. That module is in there solid, and gives them a way to use station communications to make one point-to-point call without being logged or overheard.

Gar then explains our plan to attack one of the freighters, and asks for volunteers to go with. Con asks for the volunteers, since he's shown his commitment. Clem can work it so that if we can get the Alderaani into the city, they can work their way back into the quarter. One of them says he doesn't actually want to come back. The volunteers are Marko (doesn't want to come back, ), Legas, and Navor. Igli sets out in pursuit of a freighter.

He comes up behind a freighter that's struggling to boost out of atmo on the night side. He flies right up their exhaust drive plume, pops up, and coasts just over the rear engine nacelles. Then the Alderaani and everyone but Igli and Phex boards the freighter. It's a struggle to move around on the hull as the ship breaks atmo, but Con's able to cut through the hull into an empty compartment, which quickly vents into the outer atmo. Myyla takes point as we board, sees someone in the compartment reaching for a breathing mask, and cuts him to ribbons. Gar grabs his commlink. Con overrides the hatch, but it refuses to close after us. Now two compartments are venting, which is going to be raising alarms.

There's a guy on the other side of the door. Con steps through and to the side as he pulls his holdout blaster and shoots at the guy. Con misses (as Con does) but distracts the guy enough for Myyla to come at him clean. She misses but forces him back, and her next swing absolutely wrecks him. The team comes through, and Con closes the door behind the team. The team's on a gantry over the engineering bay, with three of the freighter's engineering crew now staring at them in shock. Gar orders the engineers to put their hands up. They do. He then offers them the chance to evacuate and tell the crew to do likewise. The engineer gets on the intercom and tells the ship that there's a critical irreperable reactor problem, and then the engineer run for it. Con uses Gar and Myyla's thermal detonator to destroy the coolant condensers, and the ship rapidly gets hot. The pirates evacuate with considerable haste. The Asset detaches and backs off, and gets a good view of the entire back end of the ship deforming under the heat, and then exploding. It is an ex-freighter. The mayday call did go out, but the Asset's plenty fast enough to avoid intereption.