Episode 126. Ambush
Present: Terri, Maer, Bobby, Jay and Tony
Air Date: 16 Jun 2009
Monday, 14 Aug 2519
Somewhere on Haven
Blue Sun (Qing Long) system
23:35 hrs, local time
We spend 10 days on the dirt of Haven, scavving parts to weld to our ship as armor, filling our empty cargo containers with dirt and rock for buttressing, rigging our shuttle to fly remotely as a decoy, and generally girding our loins for the lion’s den we know lies ahead. Once we get that done, there’s no further reason to linger. We take off late on the evening of the 14th and set our course for Miranda.
Tuesday, 15 Aug 2519
Kuiper II class, Summer's Gift
En route to Miranda
06:17 hrs, ship’s time
Given Haven’s proximity, Miranda is only a few hours out. En route to Miranda, we encounter some heavy military message traffic and try sussing out the encryption. We’re not able to get far with the hacking but are able to determine 7 points of origin from military ships talking to each other in tight beam transmission. Rina’s and Arden’s attempts to decipher the encryption yields little except this ship-to-ship exchange:
“Return to ship.”
“We are heading back to regroup.”
“Should we stop to assist survivors and/or captors?”
“Leave them for the Reavers.”
Reavers.
Shit.
There is civilian message traffic as well, mostly mundane chatter and some of it garbled. Hmmm. There must be something going on out there, but we’re not sure what.
And we find ourselves pretty damned in the middle of the flight path of the IAV Rumsfeld, an Alliance Longbow class cruiser. Based on the comm traffic we’ve heard and the military exchange, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that there’s been a battle here, possibly against Reavers. The IAV Rumsfeld is travelling away from the origin points of those ship-to-ships transmissions, and its vector suggests it’s bound for Meridian.
It’s also broadcasting the alert message: Get out of our way. We make way, thank you, undesirous of a collision. It passes us at great speed, obviously getting the hell out of here.
We also hear another message on the regular comm band—a mayday.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is the Pandora. We’ve sustained serious damage and we are down to battery power and losing hull integrity. Our current vector is….”
We copy down the vector and suss out the Pandora’s position. She’s nearby and the spacer’s code dictates we investigate and render what aid we can offer.
Christian: I just really hope that all that’s left in Pandora’s box is hope. But I agree. If there’s a chance there are people in trouble, we should go and help them.
Arden: And we want hope, why?
Rina: (to Arden) You don’t read the classics, do you?
Nika: (to Rina) Don’t encourage him, because I’m gonna have to turn around and hit him in just about a minute and a half.
Rina: I could do it for you. Keep your hands on the wheel.
Christian: (to Rina) You should be in engineering.
Nika: Not yet, she shouldn’t.
We drop out of pulse.
We see that we’re in the middle of a vast field littered with ships, some big, some small, and most of them fragged. Whatever battle happened here looks also to have been quite recent, because though the ships we see are clearly dead, their residual readings off their engines still ping warm on the sensors. There are many little ships, obviously small fighters, floating amongst the flotsam and it’s not long before we find the source of the distress signal.
The Pandora turns out to be a Unity class Mid-Bulk freighter and she does indeed have fire on her decks, her hull seriously breached in several places and her engines are growing cold. We can see several wide bays open on her broadside, and looking at the remains of the craft within, we can tell the Pandora has been used as a makeshift aircraft carrier, as was popular amongst the Independents during the War. In fact, looking at the blazons on her conning tower, we see the symbol for the Independent Navy.
The Pandora’s pretty well screwed…and listening to the distress signal we suspect it’s on automated repeat and it’s unlikely that anyone is actually alive on the freighter. However, the code dictates we swing by and make sure….just in case.
Because of the fires burning on her decks, there’s no way to scan for heat signatures of survivors. We’ll have to go in closer. We make another pass and spot a strobe light blinking in one of the hangar bays. It’s unmanned as far as we can tell, the strobe rate is slow, and after a moment’s examination, we determine it’s not a message code. Thinking someone alive and trapped on the ship may have set it as a distress signal, we decide to dock with Pandora and EVA onto the ship to look for survivors. We’re in luck. One of the airlocks is intact and accessible to ours, and Nika docks and seals.
Rina and Arden suit up. Arden takes his doctor’s bag and Rina takes her tool kit. They also take two assault rifles and a grenade each for protection. The vacc suit gloves make it near impossible to shoot the guns, so we end up removing the trigger guards on the rifles before leaving the Gift.
The Pandora yields no survivors waiting for us at the airlock. Having ascertained the strobe’s position relative to the airlock, Rina and Arden take off on their trek down the length of the ship to reach it. Part of the way there, Arden hears what sounds like sobbing coming from his suit sensors. It’s off our route to the hangar and the strobe and he decides to investigate the sound. Rina goes with him, with misgivings. She’s twitchy enough under normal circumstances and putting her in the equivalent of a burning haunted house in space is really sending her Twitchy into overdrive.
But she goes with Arden, to guard his back.
The sobbing leads them to the ship’s mess hall and there, suspended over a makeshift arena of mess tables, hang the corpses of several of the ship’s inhabitants. Blood has dripped into a sizable puddle on the deckplates and crude symbols have been painted on the floor and the walls with the blood. Also adorning the walls are four people and they are all alive. It is their sobbing that led Arden and Rina here and examining them, Arden finds them suffering lacerations and obvious emotional trauma, but little else in the way of injuries.
The corpses overhead makes it clear—this ship has been hit by Reavers and the fact they’ve left living people behind means the Reavers intend to come back to finish them off. In fact, the distress call and the strobe light may very well have been a trap set by the Reavers to snare the unwary.
Like us.
Rina’s all for shooting the poor unfortunates tied to the walls and getting the hell out of there. In fact, she’s got her rifle up and aimed at the one closest to her when Arden protests and keeps her from pulling the trigger. He’s taken a Hippocratic Oath to do no harm and to render aid. Rina retorts she’s taken no such damned oath and we’d all be better off shooting the lot of them and getting the hell off.
Arden is adamant. He’s helping these people. Rina growls and takes up a position at the door, to watch for the inevitable arrival of the Reavers. If they’re lucky, they may be able to shoot their way through the Reavers and make it back to the ship.
What are the odds of that happening?
Arden calls back to the Gift and tells everyone what he’s found, and what he intends to do about it. Nika’s instantly on red alert and orders us back onto the Gift. Arden refuses to go. Nika tells Christian, Rick, and Jake—manning the guns we’ve mounted belowdecks—to go aboard Pandora to assist in our evac. Rick and Jake go and leave Christian behind to man the big guns in case we need the heavier firepower.
Sure enough, as the menfolk on the Gift are gearing up to board, Rina hears growling coming from down the corridor. There’s a transverse corridor cutting across the one she’s watching and leaving the relative safety of the doorway she’s in, she slips down to the transverse and looks both ways down it. To her right, a large door opens and two Reavers step out. They see her and they advance, snarling.
Rina pulls the anchored pin on her frag grenade—exceedingly grateful we finally bought some of the damned things—and launches it at the advancing Reavers before ducking back around the corner. The grenade explodes and does its job: both Reavers are dismembered and dead.
And now the clock starts ticking in earnest—the noise of the explosion will have alerted the Reavers aboard to our presence and we must be gone before they get here. Rina starts screaming at Arden to hurry up. Arden screams back he’s trying.
And Arden has his hands full. He’s cutting down the four unfortunates as fast as he can, but he will not be able to get all of them down before the Reavers arrive. The four are capable of moving under their own power, however, so getting them to the Gift won’t be a problem, provided they’re still alive to walk aboard her.
In the corridor, Rina’s taken position at the transverse, the better to cover the three-way intersection with her rifle. Despite several sessions of rifle shooting under Nika’s guidance, she knows she’s hopelessly green with the weapon, and sets the thing to wide dispersal fire, all the better to thin the Reavers out while their still outside striking distance.
Three more Reavers exit the door the first two had, and Rina puts her plan in motion. She sprays the Reavers with the wide-dispersal fire, and disables the foremost two. Of course, they’re only injured and now they’re mad. And like wounded bears, they become even more fierce.
Rina yells for Arden to hurry up and switches her rifle to burst fire. Three bullets in rapid succession, all on one target. She hopes it would be enough to take the individual Reaver down. She shoots, she hits, the damned thing is still up.
And it’s on her, slashing her suit and her flesh in a flash.
She fires again and the Reaver goes down. Its compatriots step over him and keep on coming. Rina’s really screaming now and dodging. She backs into the transverse corridor to restrict the Reavers’ angle of attack to front and center and in the tight confines of the transverse, they can only come at her one at a time. Rina shoots again and again the Reaver takes the bullets and keeps on coming.
And then his head explodes in a rain of blood and bone and flesh—reinforcements from the Gift have arrived. Rina barely has time to acknowledge her savior—Jake—before the firefight resumes with Rick adding his rifle fire to hers.
And still Arden delays with the survivors, now clearly the staked goats in this outer-space tiger trap.
The ensuing battle is short, brutal, and bloody. The remaining Reavers are no match for the three rifles brought to bear on them and at the end of it, we’re triumphant. We’re not unscathed, however. Rina’s slashed up pretty badly across left arm and shoulder. She’s got her second wind, she’s still up and moving, but there’s no telling how long the adrenaline will last before she crashes. Rick helps her and Arden shepherd the ressues aboard the Gift and the minute we give Nika the all-clear, she undocks and peels out.
There is nothing fancy in our evac—we fly like the proverbial bat out of hell. We’ve picked up a tail….one that has been subtly stalking us the entire time we’ve been docked. It chases us now and we fire our missiles and canisters at it. We manage to hit it, sending it spinning out of control (and into the debris to its demise, if we’re lucky) but not before we take on a hit ourselves. Nika has not choice but to get us dirtside as fast as possible and she takes us straight on to Miranda, even as we try to make what repairs we can. And repairs include patching the engineer up of her wounds.
We make atmo over Miranda, fighting burn through and turbulence and praying we land on the ground in one piece. Between Rina and Nika both working their magic, we manage to do that, but only just.
When the dust settles we find ourselves in the middle of what is obviously a deserted farm field and our ship is in pretty sorry shape. We’ve lost several containers to damage and burn through. Rick’s arboretum is gone, as are Evil Tick and Smudge. The half container with the car is gone. The Gift is banged up everywhere and is no longer space worthy. We’re also leaking hydro from our external fuel pod and the order is given to evac our ship.
We pack what’s needed for survival, including seven day’s worth of food and all the weapons we can carry onto our shuttle and leave.
We’re marooned. On a planet. Crawling with Reavers.
Sucks to be us.
We fly to a settlement about 20 kliks away and wait for the Zombie Apocalypse to begin.
It doesn’t happen.
No Reavers attack us. No explosions come from the Gift. No ships, Alliance or otherwise, fly overhead to help or kill us.
Nothing molests us.
Venturing out, Rick finds tracks of large ungulates, likely deer and maybe moose, but aside from evidence the animals' gaits are somewhat odd, little else is revealed. And after a few days, it becomes clear that there is nothing left alive on this planet that poses a threat to our safety. Save some dessicated corpses of the unfortunate Mirandans, we’re pretty much alone on this planet.
That done, we fly back to the Gift and assess her damage. It’s extensive. It’ll take a month to repair her, assuming we have the tools and the scrounged parts necessary. We quickly locate a spaceport within the shuttle’s range and go there to scav for parts.
As we’d hoped, there are any number of ships to choose from, lying there for the taking. And as we feared, we aren’t the first to arrive. Others have been here before us and lots of the valuable parts and pieces have already been taken away. Who removed them—Reavers or normal men—we don’t dwell on overmuch as we pick through what’s left for our own use.
Thus gainfully occupied, Rina gets to work. The four we rescued help as best they can. And while the engineer and the rescues are busy scavving parts, the rest of the crew turn their eyes to our target on Miranda—the island Pala as shown on the map we found on Highgate.
Nika turns our sensors on it and we find the island obscured under what appears to be a Category 6 hurricane, the eye of which is hard to discern at our reading angle…but could be centered over the island itself. Clearly if we’re to investigate Pala, we’ll have some very tricky flying ahead.
God help us.
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