Session 7 - A View to a Kill
Session 7 - A View to a Kill - 1 Apr 2025
Suspicious about the delivery near Crystal Peak, LCdr Lee decides to deploy the Frisbee on a reconnaissance mission. With both the Frisbee's INI flight crews on shre leave that she's unwilling to cancel, she has Koltin and Rugger fly the ship while she crews the sensors herelf. A scan of the Crystal Peak area frustratingly showed nothing; no neutrino except for the resort's power plants, three hotels and a piste, plus a very uniform and brutal looking village a couple of km away.
By chance they hit on a grav vehicle flying out of the darkside towards Crystal Peak. Tracking back along its flight path, after three hours of searching they struck gold - three small neutrino hits that resolved into a small temporary base; a dozen prefab hangar buildings with half a dozen more accomodation shelters. Alas, Rugger only noticed incoming orbital debris at the last moment and Cdr Coltin's evasive manoeuvre was hard - hard enough to throw Lee against the control panel and jostle the "ACTIVE - LIDAR" key, painting the base wih fire control LIDAR. Something evidently noticed, because a fire control radar started hunting for them a moment later. The Frisbee's stealth hull saved them from detection, and Lee was able to classify the radar as a commercial fire control set most notably used in the Locust, a budget model of TL-11 planetary defence fighter.
Returning to the Iron Horse to conference with Halloway and van Steen, a strike against the base was mooted, but discarded since there was no evidence yet to tie them to the conspiracy. Instead Lee wanted to investigate Crystal Peak, and the Captain agreed to take some shore leave and go skiing as a pretext to put personnel into the resort.
Bringing DeShannon in to close orbit above Crystal Peak, Halloway took a boat down to the resort with Rugger and a plain-clothed Lee, while Coltin staged A Flight of Checkmate at the starport, while a boat of marines waited as a QRF in Iron Horse's boat bay.
Halloway had a nice raclette lunch while Lee started to nose around and Rugger fretted about security. Lee clocked several plainclothes security staff, who appeared to be watching the staf rather than the guests; concluding this might be due to the heightened security situation. Rugger despaired of the many access points to the hotel rooms and the long stretch of open ground required to reach the boat's landing pad.
After lunch, Lee started chatting up locals to try and get an invitation back to the workers' village. Halloway took the cable car up the slopes to go skiing, with Rugger accompanying her. Halfway up, in a cable car with four other people, one of them pulled a stunner and shot Rugger point blank. He drew his service pistol to protect the captain, ordered everyone on the floot, and shot the assailant dead. One of the assailants friends drew his own snub pistol and shot Rugger, with their third companion pulling a stunner and ordering Halloway to the ground. She complied, warning them they were making a terrible mistake. For her troubles she was ziptied, bagged and thrown out the cable car's door on some sort of climbing harness - taking the opportunity to trigger her comm to start broadcasting audio on a locatable channel.
When Rugger came round under medical supervision at the top of the lift e found the captain gone and the only other passenger under arest for his presumed assault. He called in immediately to van Steen, who activated the contingency plan. Marines lifted in their shuttle, Checkmate burned in from the starport, and Lee was informed it seemed to be down to her on the ground right now.
