Cop’Rochi (aka: “Ghost”): Captain! Rachel Starrunner is requesting an immediate meeting with you in the base briefing room and invites you to include key staff at your discretion. She has the maintenance teams ready to prep the Starbound Wayfinder for rapid turnaround and advises that you prepare the crew for a rapid redeployment. Break Out. You’re advised to make the standard serpentine approach to Defiant Core.
Once in the briefing room, Rachel presents the brief about the Rebel Intel team located on Sluis Van. They’ve requested an emergency extract and based on the communication transit times involved, that message was first sent about two weeks ago!
The good news is that the Sluis Van (M19) system is less than a 12 hour jump from Innton (M18), so the rebel team wont need to wait too much longer.
By the time the briefing with Rachel is completed, the Starbound Wayfinder is ready to take off again.
A quick roll call later, and the Starbound Wayfinder is buttoned up and takes off.
With a twelve hour jump, the crew has plenty of time for rest and recovery before their arrival into Sluis Van.
The team has been to Sluis Van a couple of times so are expecting fairly heavy traffic for a Rim World system. (Not nearly as busy as a Core World, but Sluis Van has a strong local navy and run system control strictly, very similar to most Core Worlds).
However when the ship arrives, there is a lot of space debris from an obvious space battle and none of the warships that the Sluis Van navy are in system.
When Ghost calls out to get guidance for clearance to land at the Vanyak star port (the capital city for the world), she receives a voice only message from the Sluis Van orbital shipyards reporting that the Sluis Van system is “closed” and that the Starbound Wayfinder is required to depart the system immediately or they will be attacked!
Wrasp orders his crew to battle stations, as he’s not willing to depart the system.
From the shipyards, six unknown small star fighters vector in toward the Starbound Wayfinder. The attacking fighters look kind of like TIE Fighters with truncated wings and they’re tiny (per FFG Rules they are Sil 2 sized ships while most fighters are Sil 3 in size). Wrasp orders that the starboard gunnery stations engage these fighters, and thanks to the newer long range cannons, the gunners wipe out the six attacking fighters with ease.
Stitches and Slider, in the quad gun turrets, sadly watch the attackers get picked off long before they come into range of the short range weapons that they man.
With that threat neutralized, the Starbound Wayfinder continues its approach and Ghost continues to try to establish communications with the star port located at Vanyak.
Break Out is easily able to plot an approach to Vanyak on his own and when they get closer to the city of Vanyak, it becomes obvious why the star port authorities aren’t responding to hails.
The star port has been destroyed!
While the surrounding city is still intact and untouched, most of the buildings at the star port have been razed, along with nearly every ship that was berthed. Open landing pads have also been damaged.
The attack against the star port was a while ago (about two weeks in the past?) and Break Out gets close enough to see that ground crews are beginning to conduct repairs.
But it’s still impossible to land there.
The flight crew opt to fly directly to the safe house where the team “Rich Shrub” is reported to be holed up.
About 200 miles east of Vanyak, Ghost is able to get in contact with Rich Shrub and they are able to locate a hunting lodge nestled in the wooded rolling hills.
There is a sufficient clearing for the Starbound Wayfinder so Break Out is easily able to land his freighter next to the hunting lodge.
Shortly after the ship lands quite a large crowd empties the house and begins to approach the Starbound Wayfinder. Fortunately this isn’t the first time that DC-01 is meeting with the Rich Shrub team and the Station Chief Kolken Mofaal is among the team.
Mofaal and Wrasp meet up and Mofaal, informs Wrasp that the assembled people are all family members of the workers at Core Consolidated Consultants CCC including the Rich Shrub team. Fortunately, the Starbound Wayfinder has passenger space for 20 individuals, and they can easily house all of the passengers.
While Mofaal’s intelligence resources have been curtailed a bit, he let’s Wrasp know that about two weeks prior, a mysterious fleet arrived at the Sluis Van system and wiped out the defenders. Rumor has it that no prisoners were taken.
Next the attacking force boarded the Orbital Shipyard and took control of those facilities. Once the facility in orbit was taken over, a repeated voice ordered all ships on the surface to remain there.
Ships that tried to launch from the Vanyak star port were pursued and most were destroyed but the new fighters.
A day later the attackers launched an attack and destroyed all of the grounded star ships and most of the facilities at the star port.
There haven’t been any other attacks since that on Sluis Van.
Mofaal is surprised that Wrasp’s team was able to break the blockade and is surprised to hear that there were so few ships that attempted to stop the Starbound Wayfinder.
While Mofaal can’t confirm what happened to the enemy fleet that assaulted the system, it seems obvious that the orbital station is still under the attacker’s control.
Wrasp wants to check out the orbital station and is leery to endanger the civilians. However Mofaal lets Wrasp know that it will take some time for his personnel and their families to get packed and ready to go. Some of Mofaal’s team had actually given up hope for rescue. Mofaal will assemble his people and get them to start packing their gear and that should give Wrasp’s team plenty of time to check things out on the station.
One short trip later . . .
There aren’t any responses from the Orbital Construction station and no warnings or inquiries. All is eerily silent as the Starbound Wayfinder docks to one of the available docking rings.
Wrasp assembles a combat team and they proceed to board the station, but are greeted by armed B1 Heavy Battle Droids who open fire immediately, while issuing commands like “Die biologicals die!”
Wrasp's team has light sabers and those come out as covering fire from the rest of the non force users whittles down the droids.
Initial entry is easy enough against the ancient designed battle droids and the lightsabers are clearly more effective than blasters.
With the exception of the downed droids, the station seems to be in a very clean state. There aren’t any people in evidence, but cleaning droids are going about their business.
The peace doesn’t last long as more battle droids arrive from the largest berth. That berth currently holds a Nebulon B frigate (under construction).
Wrasp's team fight their way (easily enough) to the docking ports for the Nebulon B, but the number of B1 Battle Droids increases as they arrive at the chamber. And on top of that there is a large elevator and it delivers one of those small fighters.
Up close that fighter transforms into a battle bot and the droid ship is evidently a Clone Wars era Vulture Droid!
Marhan (Stitches) takes a hit from the Vulture Droid’s cannons and goes down hard!
Fortunately for the rest of the team Wrasp has been studying his lightsaber techniques and jumps up to fight the Vulture droid. Wrasp is able to deflect and reflect attacks from and back to the Vulture Droid. It’s a tough fight, but Wrasp downs the Vulture.
Meanwhile the rest of the team is able to protect Wrasp’s flanks and are able to down the B1 Battle Droids about as quickly as they arrive.
But the team is beginning to take injuries.
With a small lull in the battle, Wrasp orders someone to grab Marhan and orders a retreat back to the Starbound Wayfinder.
The medical droid, “Drips” is ecstatic to learn that there are finally wounded crew members that he can attend to! Drips politely asks Wrasp if Marhan needs to be “put out of her misery,” the the Captain and crew shut down that line of inquiry! The droid is ordered to stabilize Marhan as best as possible. After all their rebel base is less than a 12 hour trip away.
But first Wrasp has the Starbound Wayfinder return to the pick up point for members of Rich Shrub.
The rest of the extraction takes little time and the team exits the system without further complication or delay.
When the team returns to Defiant Core, Marhan is immediately transferred to a Bacta Tank for treatment of her extensive wounds. She will not regain consciousness for three days.
However, in that time, the rest of the team is able to recover from their wounds and injuries.