Session 3 - Take Our Leave and Go

Session 3 - 28 Jan 2025 - Take Our Leave and Go

Lt Cdr Lee and Chief "Steve" Axton covertly gained entry to Kingston's apartment in a Ravenna arcology, discovering:

• Kingston was gone, evidently abducted two nights ago by three armed men.
• They'd knocked him out and lifted him out the (23rd floor) window into a grav-sled.
• The grav-sled had been authorised to operate outside city traffic control, which suggested some degree of official influence applied.
• They'd put a middleman box on the line to his terminal, which had intercepted his duress message to Jerry Rookson.
• They'd booby-trapped the apartment with a Navy-issue frag grenade wired to the bathroom door.

The INI staff were able to track through the city's traffic system and locate the grav-sled, now parked in an industrial area on the edge of Ravenna.

Capt Halloway authorised a covert operation to raid the location and try to recover Lt Kingston, without alerting local law enforcement or anyone in the subsector fleet. INI deployed "the Frisbee", their covert observation platform to build up a densitometer and NAS profile of the target area over the next couple of hours, while Master at Arms Rugger put together a strike team of half a dozen regulators, to be delivered in an INI unmarked ship's boat to the site. All were armed with shotguns, half loaded with slug and half loaded with nonlethal beanbag rounds; beanbags to be used in preference.

The raid went pretty smoothly, with Rugger blowing a window in with a frame charge, stunning the first target and allowing him to be subdued and detained. Pushing further into the building with flashbangs and gunfire met with some resistance; one regulator was wounded by a shotgun blast to the ribs but all five targets were taken alive. Rugger narrowly to stop the last one from badly wounding Kingston with a shotgun blast that severed his femoral artery; urgent first aid managed to save him. One target ran but was apprehended by Cdr Coltin and his door gunner in the extraction boat.

LCdr Lee made a rapid collection of what evidence she could on site; a banner with a black phoenix symbol, a video camera, a cache of guns and of course the five prisoners. Fifteen minutes after arrival, the team was gone - long before any local law enforcement would show up.

Kingston went straight to Iron Horse's medical bay to receive the best TL-14 care the system could provide and survived, albeit with the loss of his right leg. He was allowed to rest and recover while INI and the MAA interrogated the prisoners. The runner broke immediately and fessed up to being a member of the "Phoenix Rising" organisation, an association of Solomani "patriots" who would see the return of the Rule of Man. He tried to feign only peripheral involvement and denied detailed knowledge of the plan, but pointed his interrogators to Chief Beckett Santisteban, the ringleader of this crew and subsector fleet NCO.

Halloway had left the sensor crews closed up and keeping a tight watch on the five nearby Navy destroyers, with orders to wake her if anything changed. Several hours into her sleep, the officer of the watch apologetically woke her with the news that INS Alabama, a Sabrewolf class fleet destroyer of the subsector fleet, seemed to be preparing for a departure. An enquiry to Navy traffic control eventually returned that she was heading out under orders to "patrol in way of Haven" - given her Jump-4 performance that would mean stopping by either Teta-Lise, Vald or Ben's Oath, and Halloway's gut told her it would be Ben's Oath.

As Alabama headed out for the jump limit, Halloway rapidly reached the decision to follow. Shore leave was cancelled. The planned drive refit was cancelled and the spares requested from the naval base to allow Cdr Svensson's engineers to make the repairs themselves. The prisoners were rapidly interrogated, then transferred to Lt Rookson's custody. The Marquis was apologetically contacted and informed that if his son wanted that lift then he needed to be aboard the boat that Cdr Coltin was already flying down for him. And Kingston was brought around to consciousness. In the short time before departing the ship he was able to tell INI that:

• There is definitely a conspiracy and he'd won the trust of some key members.
• They'd offered him command of a larger ship - a Porphyria class battle rider.
• But he'd had to pass a test of loyalty and join them in killing some "race traitor", which he had balked at
• Saying he needed time to think about it, he'd sent his emergency signal to Rookson and then been jumped in his apartment.

The Porphyria was a weird bit of information - those are battle riders, and really old ones at that. TL-11; designed nearly 200 years ago and out of service even with the subsector fleets for well over a century. Why the hell was anyone being offered command of one of those?

With all the prisoners and casualties offloaded and Toshii Yamamoto installed in the most comfortable quarters available, Iron Horse made her current best speed of 3g for the jump limit, and Lt Cdr Miklas busied himself in the most careful calculations he could, to shave any time at all possible off the jump duration.