Wrasp orders the crew to set a course for Leritor (Q15) because Leritor has a mining operation and their ultimate destination, Fedalle (M10) is a heavy industry world with a chief import of raw metals and raw materials.
The Leritor work crew has moved to a new location and the Swooping Kestrel lands at facility eight. Wrasp has been here in the past but in spite of the new location and the shuffling of the temporary buildings, everything is much the same as when he last arrived.
Wrasp cautions the crew to NOT depart the ship under ANY circumstances on fear of the crew being abducted. The steady heavy rain outside the ship is an additional deterrent.
Wrasp asks Aliz (and Sern) to find the control center and to secure a shipment.
Aliz returns a short time later empty handed and soaked to the bone. “Spice” explains that Bree Venoru, the Operations Manager, doesn’t recognize the Swooping Kestrel and all of his immediate collection of ore is already spoken for and there is none available. Bree even rejected Aliz’ advances in exchange for a cargo. Sern is still with the Ops Manager and Aliz recommends that Pa Pooga speak personally with the manager.
Pooga joins Aliz in the pouring rain and she leads him to the Operations truck. Bree does recognize Pooga and is still grateful for the help that Pooga and his team did in rescuing several of Leritor’s workers. However, the facility doesn’t have a huge lot of ore ready for shipment. However, if Wrasp can fly his ship to the current active strip mine pit, then he can compliment the on site batch for a total load of 900 EC. (An almost full cargo bay). Total purchase cost is $60,000 credits.
The ship is loaded, ultimately without incident, and the Swooping Kestrel departs for its secret mission to Fedalle (M10).
Fedalle is a busy system with extensive traffic, but Unsien Mos (Break out) makes the transition look easy. He’s navigated systems this busy in the past. Fedalle is one of the oldest planets originally colonized and it looks like over the millennia that there’s been quite a bit of terraforming over the course of its history as the continents that the Swooping Kestrel overflies have had their mountains migrated to the east side, with the land between the mountains and the west coast appearing to be almost completely flat. Forests and agricultural lands dominate the plains with industrial cities lining the west coasts. Off of the west coasts are massive geothermal pits constructed into the oceans.
Ghost secures a berth at Fedalle Industrial Prefect Prime (FIP1) and the crew settles into their landing pad at 02:00 hrs. Most of the starport crew are off at the moment and the crew settles in for a couple of hours rest before starting their operation.
In the morning, Wrasp grabs, Boomer, Slider, and Break Out to check in with their local contact “Crucial Rice” aka: Lon Kess a Gotal male.
On the way, Wrasp picks up a bouquet of flowers for his cover.
The team arrives early in the morning and after a brief conversation with Lon’s housekeeper, they are ushered into Lon’s home office.
Lon Kess accepts the bouquet of flowers with gratitude and begins eating the flowers and indicates that they are quite tasty!
After securing the office and engaging anti surveillance countermeasures, Kess briefs Wrasp on this mission.
Kess has established a relationship with a local engineer who has recently completed a revolutionary design for a larger fighter ship sized engine that the Empire has seized but will not utilize. This “Event Horizon” drive is substantially better for its size but the new technology can’t be reduced in size to match the tech requirements for utilization with the Empire’s TIE Fighter program. And since Sienar Fleet Systems is producing TIE Fighters in batch lots at breakneck speed, the Event Horizon drive will be shelved.
The design engineer Charad Unari (Human male) is upset with the obvious disregard for his new development.
Lon Kess thinks that the Alliance may be able to snatch up this technology and integrate it with their burgeoning fighter design and production programs. And if Wrasp’s team can recruit Charad Unari, that would be a bonus as well!
Kess has an invitation to meet with Unari and some friends as Unari has been assigned to work on a new project and they’re throwing a going away party for the engineer. Unari is scheduled to depart the following morning so Wrasp’s team will need to work fast!
Kess gives the team the residential address of Unari, which is located on campus at the local university, as Unari is one of the research professors.
Kess has ‘work’ to attend to and he gives Slider a burner commlink in case the team needs to communicate with him.
DC-01 head to the professor’s residence and find him wrapping up his breakfast.
Charad Unari welcomes the team and entertains their questions about his new engine. Boomer (with her engineering background) is able to understand the innovations and she and professor Unari both get excited over the potential from the drive. (Boomer’s initial thoughts are to mount the new drive on her C-ROC, but the Event Horizon is too small and wouldn’t be able to replace the massive drives that push the Starbound Wayfinder).
But, Boomer reignites Unari’s excitement and is eager to let the team know about the prototypes. Unari informs the team that representatives from the Imperial Navy and Sienar Fleet Systems ‘requisitioned’ all of the materials, prototypes, and data relating to the Event Horizon drive and that the materials were boxed up a couple of weeks ago. Last week Unari was spending time at the world’s resort Pleasure Island. The professor has no knowledge of what happened to his data nor the prototypes. However, professor Unari does remember signing off a transportation order and that record may be available on the campus records.
The professor agrees to take some of the team to his offices (on campus) where they may be able to access the requisition form.
Wrasp also opens up the possibility of having the Event Horizon technology to be used by a third party entity and that excites Unari. Unari seems eager to abandon his new post in light of the opportunity to get the Event Horizon integrated into an actual starship!
Unari joins Wrasp’s team and they hang out at the university that afternoon. Unari talks with his supervisor and requests a sabbatical and makes arrangements to discontinue his assignment to the Sharell project.
After that, Unari takes his new friends to his office under the pretext of picking up personal effects. Boomer is easily able to get a copy of the transfer records relating to the Event Horizon requisition and discovers that the prototypes and tech was transferred two weeks ago to a storage facility located downtown (and proximal to the starport).
It’s getting late and professor Unari needs to get ready for his dinner appointment and Wrasp accepts Unari’s invitation to dinner. The rest of the team will head out to check on their lead and hope to re-requisition the Event Horizon tech. Unari checks out the University’s cargo truck (as the prototypes are quite massive) and Boomer, Slider, and Break Out take the truck downtown in the hopes that the storage container will have their prize!
The warehouse is indeed located downtown at FP1 and the team is arriving on Fivesday early in the evening as normal workers are signing off and starting their weekend.
The storage bay with the Event Horizon is located on the fifth level up and after a quick bypass of the security system, the trio find storage containers matching the requisition order from the university! Boomer checks some of the containers and confirms that the data and design schematics are present. She begins to load up the containers onto the truck.
Before the cargo is loaded up, a security team, contracted by the warehouse, respond to a silent alarm (tripped by Boomer as she tried to bypass the door) and they begin asking questions. Break Out tries to bluff his way to mollify the security team. But Slider and Break Out detect the head security calling in the constabulary.
A firefight breaks out with Break Out and Slider fighting off the four security guards. The two Rebels have the drop on the guards, and using the security vehicle as cover, the two are able to down the security guards with their blaster pistols and a flash bang grenade. They encourage Boomer to continue to focus on loading the truck ASAP as constables are on the way!
Meanwhile Wrasp and Unari arrive at the restaurant and are joined by about a dozen friends and associates for a dinner of celebration. Unari doesn’t tell his friends about his change of plans and accepts their compliments about his assignment to the Sharell project. Unari expresses derision about his new assignment with the Sharell project since the mathematics involved are easily capable of being calculated by secondary students.
Wrasp asks about this project and learns that Fedalle is building a ring world around the system’s smallest gas giant, and that the engineers are planning (long term) are to begin extracting materials from the gas giant for local industrial purposes.
It’s a pleasant peaceful dinner.
Back downtown, Break Out gets the university truck onto the streets before the constables show up, with Boomer riding shotgun, while Slider hangs out in the back of the cargo bay, ready to defend the truck from the rear. Slider has the cargo door slightly ajar so that he can employ his weapons, without destroying the door.
It’s now evening on Fivesday and pedestrian traffic is heavy, as well as street traffic! With sirens blaring from approaching constabulary vehicles, Break Out pilots the truck through a local park and evades the closest responding constables, with the help of Slider, taking tactical shots at the costables, so that the pursuit vehicles get mired into park flora.
Unfortunately, during the chaotic driving, Break Out drives through a hot dog stand and coats the front of the university truck with sauerkraut and condiments, and even gets a couple of dogs lodged into the front grill.
It takes several tense minutes, but Break Out is able to evade pursuit of the constables and sneaks the stolen University truck onto the starport.
Rapidly the team, drive the stolen truck onto the Swooping Kestrel, securing the cargo!
Wrasp and Unari wrap up a pleasant dinner and retire for the evening. While travelling to the starport, local constables are redirecting traffic around and away from downtown. Apparently there’s been some ‘trouble’ downtown and Wrasp nods to himself knowingly. That’s where his team had planned on being . . .
Back at the Swooping Kestrel, Wrasp asks his team to ready for departure while Boomer and Unari start excitedly pouring over the prototypes and the schematics to make sure that they have all of the information and design technology.
Aliz is called back to the ship (she was offered a shipment that would waive the berthing fees for Fedalle) and Wrasp asked her to entertain the offer without commitment. Aliz is contacted and returns to the ship, after which the Swooping Kestrel departs from Fedalle and Break Out plots a course to a secret Rebel Alliance base located in sector Q08 about a quarter parsec out from Sarka.
Shortly after entering hyperspace, Charad Unari approaches Boomer as he has some misgivings. He’s figured out that the team works for the Rebel Alliance and with him being an Imperial researcher with some second thoughts, Unari is beginning to wonder if he’s going to be killed.
Unari is still eager to get his tech to the alliance (so that it will be used) but if he’s going to be killed, he’d rather not wait.
Ultimately Unari’s fears are allayed, but now without the crew playing on his fears.
A quiet trip through hyperspace, the team arrives at the Alliance Research Point and meet up with the Mon Cal cruiser that is hosting the research team.
DC-01 offloads their cargo and introduce Unari to the researchers. In the hanger bay, the team notice the new A-Wing fighter prototypes and briefly interact with the design engineers. The development team doesn’t have a fighter drive system that works well with the A-Wing frame yet, but with some modification, they should be able to seamlessly integrate the Event Horizon drive with this new interceptor fighter.
Mission 030 Manufacturing Agriculture accomplished!