Marooned on Marduk – 2

Update 101-1105

The action opened with the party barricaded into a single room of an old building on Marduk, alongside three fellow-survivors from the crash and half a dozen locals who seem to eke out an existence in the area and who view all starships and their inhabitants as taboo. What had been seven or eight Garinaembreight (hyena-like beasts) outside seems to have risen steadily through the night to at least a couple of dozen.

The party heard incoming messages from a rescue party: the Maruk native Karina recognised the voice so was able to confirm it was not a trick by the Oghman Raiders.

Penelope noticed that smoke from the fire was escaping through small holes in the ceiling (and that rain came in the same way). She used her cutlass to expand those in order to allow access to the ceiling.

The Garinaembreight quickly noticed the party on the roof. Nicole’s character tried to get higher up ion order to improve the sending signal while the rest of the party and some of the locals fought off the attacks of the predators who, due to Marduk’s low gravity, were able to jump onto the roof to attack. Eventually, contact was made, the party were told to take cover, and the rescue craft did a pass using turreted beam lasers to kill or drive off the attacking beasts. The party and the locals were rescued, and the party managed to persuade the pilot to drop off the locals, contrary to his orders and his obvious nervousness about remaining Raiders.

The party learned that the raiders had attacked the highport and had seized at least one ship and damaged the highport itself, while losing several ships of their own.

The crew of the Lady Luck took a day in the best hotel Marduk Downport had to offer (roughly equivalent to a 2 star budget hotel!) to recover before visiting Alexeis Rabahn, GeDeCo manager

Rabahn laid out the mission he had contacted them about: a group of drug smugglers had a manufacturing facility around 2,000 miles south-west of the Marduk downport, which had been spotted by a shuttle crew on descent recently after comparison with earlier scout service imagery. Rabahn offered 100kCr (100,000 Credits) for the destruction of the facility, and 10kCr for each smuggler taken dead or alive. As a follow-up, he offered 100kCr more if the party would take a sample to Drinax to a contact there for analysis.

Briefed on the smugglers’ operation and the two mercenaries involved for muscle. The party acquired a list of equipment they required for the mission, most due for return to GeDeCo on completion. They were inserted by shuttle some 20 miles from the target (due to the fear of man portable air defense systems) then proceeded by grav-powered air raft closer to an ambush point they’d chosen due to the scout service imagery. They first apprehended two civilian workers when they made the regular water run away from the base. They then drove the seized vehicle to the base and so surprised the facility defenders, taking down one merc in the open, taking the cargo shuttle and then taking down the pilot and remaining Tezcat mercenary.

The party then concealed ten tons of the illegal narcotics at a nearby site for later retrieval before calling in GeDeCo to evac them and to destroy the site.