The Thermopylae is en route to the centaur class planet Bijan’s world after receiving a distress signal from the UNS Yalta

Gethin receives a data packet

• Bijan’s world has a single small colony, population approximated 2000
• Non-spherical – an impact at some point in its past has taken a large chunk out of the dwarf planet
• There is a mining operation here, both on the planet and of the debris field that orbits it
• It also acts as a resupply station for ships passing through on their way to the outer triumvirate
• Gravity is ⅓g
• No atmosphere
• Mostly covered in solid methane
• They have received a number of highly distorted messages from both the Yalta and the colony itself
• They are clearly being jammed
• One of the messages from the planet claims to be from an Eccumenical Aun cell
• They say they have vital information about an Aun invasion
• They want extracting from the planet in exchange for the info
• The captain has deemed this worth the risk and will be deploying Whisky Squad to the colony to extract the spies
• There is some info on the Eccumen
• They were the original Aun government before the religious revolution
• Now they wage a guerilla war against the Ascendancy, espionage and sabotage

Gethin gets the squad together and briefs them before getting them suited up and into their crash couches for arrival. Hooked into the ship’s camera feeds they can see the planet and amongst its debris field there are flashes of ship to ship weapons fire. The Thermopylae accelerates towards the weapons fire to assist the Yalta and the squad gets their final orders from the CO

• The Aun have likely landed forces on the planet, they will deploy with 2 squads of marines via dropship to identify and extract the Eccumenical Aun for debriefing and if necessary, protect the population

Mission

The dropships ‘Special Delivery’ and ‘Milkcart’ are loaded up

• Benno’s Lancaster is slung underneath the Milkcart, with Gethin attached
• Mirbana, Basco and Aeric are in or hooked up to the other

As they drop towards the planet they get their first look at the colony, a number of large domes made of translucent hexagonal panels, connected by tunnels made of the same material.

Suddenly there is a violent explosion just off the side of the Special Delivery. The pilot takes evasive manoeuvres and enters a steep dive as the squad spots the flares of missile launches coming from near the colony and flak explodes around them.

The squad is initially shaken up, Gethin looks for other places to land whilst Aeric and Mirbana distract the pilots with instructions. As the ship goes into a spin, Aeric’s rude tone gets him cut off from the comm as he receives a very calm, “This is my mission till you’re on the ground” from the pilot. A missile slips through the Milkcart’s point defences and takes out its right engine.

The squad starts opening fire on incoming missiles

• Benno disassembles one with the Unraveller
• Basco makes use of the ships ECM package to scramble their lock on, sending several careening off course
• Benno climbs out of his mech and, activating mag boots, walks along the wing to the flaming engine and starts working to shut it down

Basco launches himself out of the dropship with his EVA boosters to try and draw Aun fire away from the ships. He is hit by several flak rounds and starts to spin out of control towards the ground. Mirbana uses her flash anchor to temporarily lock him in place and Aeric lunges out to grab him as they go past. He snags Basco under the mech-arm which despite its small size, almost rips Aeric out of the dropship. Basco is swung back aboard adrenaline surging, only some from natural causes.

The drophips make their approach to the landing pad and 10m from the surface the mechs are dropped, Slamming into the ice and sending up plumes of crystals and shards of methane. There is no cover here, ahead they can see a a large metal platform between them and the colony dome.

On the platform are a number of ships, cargo containers and ground vehicles. Immediately they come under fire from the Aun on the landing pad as hard light rounds hit the ice around them. The squad storms the landing pad, eliminating several Aun mechs and AAA pieces.

With the enemy eliminated the dropships return to drop off the marines. There are a number of ships on the landing pad including a large cargo vessel capable of interplanetary travel and some smaller orbital ships. The marines identify two Aun dropships which Gethin decides to cripple by taking out the engines. A quick investigation confirms that no one is inside.

With half the marines staying to guard the landing pad, the squad approaches the colony dome. They investigate the hangar door as Aeric broadcasts a message to try and contact the population

• Gets a response from a young, nervous-sounding man
• He is reluctant to broadcast his position
• The Aun came a few days ago
• Aeric quizzes him about any other arrivals at the colony but gets no useful information and is put on hold

Basco hacks the door and gets it open, inside is an unpressurised storage area filled with shipping crates and signs of a battle. There are a number of destroyed mechs, one is white, the others not and several corpses.

Basco investigates the fallen white mech and identifies that the Aun pilot is dead. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to interface with the Aun systems so he checks the other mechs which seem to be a mix of GMS Everests and smaller security mechs. He gets into the memory banks of one and extracts a video feed

• The mech is pointing a weapon at the doorway, around him there is the sound of other mechs moving, dragging crates into position etc. and a voice coming over the comm to the pilot broadcasting, “Alright guys and girls, hold the line, there’s only a few of them, we’ve got a defensive position, I know you’ve all been training for this, just let em have it”
• Over the mech mic they hear the sound of something outside the front door which rolls up to reveal several large white Mechs, the pilot pulls the trigger and we hear a blaze of gunfire from this side at the white mechs, and everything moves in a blur, there is a screech of metal, screaming
• Turning, he sees a white mech has covered the distance and eviscerated the person next to him
• The Aun mech ducks under his fire and the last bit of the video is a sword rising up through the mech before the feed cuts
• Basco rewinds and ‘enhances’/’zooms’ for information
• In the freezeframe where the door opens, Basco catches at least 10 mechs

Gethin orders the marines to sweep this area and Basco gets the next door open into the dome. The kid gets back to Aeric and suggests the first building on the left as the rendezvous point. When Aeric asks for recitation of the three pillars. The kid does badly and Aeric takes note.

Inside the dome there are lots of brutalist concrete buildings and an artificial day/night cycle. The buildings have emergency shutters in case of rapid decompression. There are more remains of dead security forces. Gethin notices most of the fire was outward – and worries that their own weapons could in theory breach the dome.

Gethine sends Basco’s caliban and the Marines to extract the kid, the building seems to be the customs building. Inside it looks like it has been ransacked, someone was looking for something. Basco finds him upstairs and asks, “You remembered the other two pillars yet?” The kid looks to one side, smiles, then looks back and recites all 3 flawlessly (perhaps recalled from a database somewhere in the ether). Basco laughs and beckons him over.

Kid’s name is Jorge, he’s tall, little scrawny, stretched a little from the low Gs, wearing an environmental suit and absolutely knackered and running on fumes

• Aeric asks for info on people, numbers, movements etc. and the kid says he’s seen no one but soldiers searching for the last 2 days
• He tells them that in an emergency the citizens are to take refuge in one of the smaller domes containing the mining, industrial area
• Aeric asks about foreigners
• Jorge doesn’t recollect anyone in particular
• But says that the Aun are clearly looking for something or someone
• Gethin decides not to bring him along and assigns a marine to watch over him

Gethin proposes visiting the mines to see the civilians, and makes a battle plan for moving through occupied enemy territory. Aeric scouts a route ahead

• As they move they see little sign of damage and not much in the way of movement (noone in the street, doors hanging open, signs of ransacking)
• As Aeric moves up ahead, invisible, he rounds a corner and comes across a patrol: 2 mechs and 5 infantry, in white, and not yet having noticed him

Gethin decides to set up and ambush and take the patrol out now

• Aeric initiates by leaping invisible from a rooftop, plunging his blade into the lead mech
• The infantry scatter and the mech at the rear brings up his weapon and opens fire on Aeric
• Benno spots the mech rounding the corner, locking on to give Gethin a target
• Gethin redirects all power away from mech limbs and focusses this power through his laser rifle, aiming at one of the marks from Benno, lighting up a mech and two infantry
• Basco charges in taking the marines with him, blowing out walls to clear the way to kill the remaining infantry
• Mirbana tries to hack the weapon trained on Aeric using one of Bascos protocols but once in has no idea how to shut the weapon down, accidentally overriding its limiters
• The gun burns through all its ammunition, slagging the barrel but catches Aeric in the hail of fire
• The now disarmed mech is easy prey for the marines and their anti-armour rifles and down it goes

Worried that they will have attracted some attention, the team rushes onwards but encounters no further controls in the city. They reach a tunnel leading to the mining dome. Inside there is an airy avenue with trees and a fake river running down a street. Either side are cafés and shops.

As they press on, a mech smashes out the front window of a café and levels a flamethrower, bathing the squad in fire. Several other mechs with flamethrowers and an electronic warfare mech join the ambush.

Mirbana drops her hardlight shield, encompassing everyone except Aeric who comes under fire from the enemy. Benno shifts through the shield, taking damage but is able to fire a winch at Aeric and drag him inside. There is a brief stalemate before Gethin gets Mirbana to drop the shield. The close quarters fight is tough and there is an incident of friendly fire from Gethin but the squad are able to defeat the Aun, although likely not before the Aun got a message out.

The tunnel is exposed with no where to easily hide so they decide to push on into the next dome. This area contains docks, conveyors and furnaces for processing ore. Nothing is currently on. They close up the airlock and start repair work.

20min into the repairs, the airlock into the tunnel starts to cycle. Gethin gets Basco to hack it, the internal cameras reveal 10 mechs and 20 infantry inside. Basco jams the airlock and the Aun mechs start to bash on the door before opening fire through it. As the squad takes cover and returns fire the door is blasted open and the Aun charge forwards.

Realising they are outmatched the team runs into the maze of industrial equipment and buildings

• Basco fires off a spike charge to slow the enemy down before being grabbed by the legs by Benno’s winch cable and pulled along
• Mirbana deploys her turret drones to give covering fire
• The team wind through the maze in a running skirmish
• Benno and Basco drop a building behind them, catching themselves and several of the Aun, giving the party time to escape and rush towards the mines

The mines are covered in something similar to an old missile silo door, several cranes hang over either side. Aeric finds an access hatch and they get the big door open for the lancaster to fit through.

The mine shaft is deep but the low gravity makes the fall easy to control. At the bottom there are several horizontal tunnels, and they follow Jorge’s directions. Along the tunnel they find several security mechs guarding the passage.

They lower their weapons but continue to look nervously at them, and the front hatch of one of the mechs opens and a woman in a pilot suit shouts over, “Thank god, we’ve been waiting for you for ages. You’re from the Yalta right? What took you so long?”

They are led into a larger cavern containing a refugee camp, nearly 1000 people, not looking too great. The pilot continues, “So… Since it’s taken you several days to get down here it’s not going well up there?”. Gethin mentions the Thermopylae has hooked up with the Yalta to try and turn the tide and they are taken to see the commander, Maria Vives. She says they’ve had no comms from the Yalta for several days.

Gethin and Aeric press her for information on the spies, she is angry that they’re prioritising that over rescuing the civilians. They are interrupted by an astronomer who runs up babbling about something on sensors, Maria rebukes her, saying she has bigger issues.

The squad go off to look around

• Aeric takes off to look for the spies amongst the refugees, along with Benno they interrogate a security officer and get locations on three groups that arrived on world in the last 2 months or so
• Benno notes that they have power for intermittent printing but that the printer is running out of mass
• He uses his mech’s reactor to add some extra juice to the system
• Aeric and Benno approach the group that arrived most recently, who confirm they were doing shuttle runs and the like, their ship stuck on the launchpad above
• No look with the other groups either, maybe the Aun are elsewhere?
• Aeric gives up on being subtle and uses his mech’s speakers to demand that the Ecumen come forward, no one moves
• The team are getting frustrated Gethin berates Benno for using his mech to power the reactor and Basco is unhappy with Aeric reciting the 3 pillars over the speakers

The astronomer, Minghan, finally collars Benno, telling him she urgently needs to get to her sensor array. She says the got a ‘warning’ that arrived just before the Aun, got a signal from something bigger than a ship, but she needs access to her NHP to decode it. The array is above in the mining dome. Aeric agrees if they can also use the sensors to look for the Ecumen.

The squad heads back up out of the mine quietly, the Aun are still looking for survivors under the building. To move quietly they only take the smaller mechs and head towards the array control centre and quickly take out a group of 10 infantry before getting inside.

Minghan rushes to her office where her equipment is down, Benno and Basco patch a power supply up for her

• She starts working on the data whilst the team make use of the sensor array
• There seems to be no messaging between the Yalta and Thermopylae, but they are sharing targeting info which suggests they’re still out fighting
• Comms signals suggest that the stadium in the central dome might contain more refugees

Minghan completes her work and they look over the data

• Looks like an asteroid cluster but moving at 0.99c
• Gethin recognises this to be a ‘kill cloud’ – a bunch of debris tugged up to the speed of light aimed at a target
• Can take years to prepare and get up to speed
• This world probably isn’t even the target, just in the line of fire
• They have 4 hours to impact!

They need to evac the civilians and fast

• Gethin reckons there’s enough cargo space for the refugees on the freighter
• They head back to the mine and break the bad news to Maria
• They come up with a plan to get out of the mine, get to the stadium and then to the landing pad
• They get the refugees prepared to move out without giving them the details to avoid panic
• Whiskey will move out 45min earlier than the refugees to clear the way and distract the Aun
• The marines at the pad are told to get the ships ready to launch

Aeric gets the distraction underway, setting off a charge to pull the Aun out of the mining dome

• They set off towards the stadium, leaving Maria to deal with the refugees
• The marines report Aun scouts at the landing pad

Aeric scouts out the stadium and spots the defending Aun forces at the doorways

• Invisible he climbs the walls and gets a look inside, approx 700 people inside under guard
• Gethin continues to grapple with the choice between reasoning with them and fighting them… and Basco points out that scuttling their ships leaves them in a world where there aren’t enough jumpships left off for everyone
• Commander Maria confirms they have found 3 large mining haulers which they could bundle these prisoners in and is directing them to the stadium

As the haulers arrive the attack begins, the squad needs to escort them across the open space to the gate way, overcome the guards and load the prisoners aboard

The squad rush into battle and defeat the Aun guards and reinforcements coming from elsewhere in the dome. The haulers reach the doors and are loaded with civilians. As they load up, Gethin gets a message from the Marines to sat that the Aun have noticed the evacuation attempt and they are having to hold off some of their forces.

Defeating the remaining Aun at the stadium, the transports are away and start trundling towards the landing pad

• The marines report they are under fire
• Ahead of the column there is a bright flash of light then a loud BOOM and the entire column are flung to the floor by what feels like a hurricane, and their mech’s decompression alarms begin to shriek in the cockpits
• The team is pinned by the rush of air feeling like they can’t stand up, and the smallest mechs begin getting dragged along the floor
• The transports start to get sucked towards the landing pad
• As Gethin has fallen off Benno, the winch is deployed to snap onto Gethin, and Mirbana’s flash anchor snags Aeric before he bounces further down the tarmac, then Aeric uses the moment of respite to find an alley to reduce the drag
• Basco has to look after himself, so uses his jets to repel the pulling and then clings onto the vehicles to reciprocally steady themselves and the transport with a bit of extra weight
• It’s not enough to stop the drag, but Basco isn’t bouncing around and a nice hard upcoming turn will stop things
• Above the scream of depressurised wind, Basco hears the scream of the people in the transport feeling things slip away from them
• They spot on the biofeedback that some of the marines are taking casualties:
• One likely dead, 2 critical
• Sgt Stannac is still healthy, so Gethin buzzes and asks for a sitrep
• 20secs later, there’s the sound of heavy breathing, and Stannac quickly responds, “Yes sir, landing pad airlock breached by stray Aun energy round. Lost a man and 30 civilians. A number of people are injured and we can’t move till the pressure equalises, so the casualties can’t be tended to. What’s your situation?”
• Gethin confirms, “We’re caught in a bit of a wind”, “About 10 mins out’”
• During this conversation Benno is slowly winding Gethin back to the Mule-harness
• Gethin asks for some bright ideas
• A suggestion is made to speed up the depressurisation by shooting out the dome – Gethin uses his solidcore to punch a hole in the roof
• They can see the refugee column from the mine, people huddled for shelter, marines dragging people to cover
• The pressure difference drops as the dome empties

They get the civilians to the ship and start loading them on board, it’s going to take some time

• Set up defensive positions as the Aun try and storm the landing pad to get a way off the planet
• The Aun shell the evac zone as other units charge into close range
• Aeric and Basco move to intercept them
• Mirbana and Benno are caught in a grenade blast and both mechs are destroyed
• Mirbana requisitions a mech from one of the security team
• Aeric blinks out to take out the artillery as the Aun start to swarm into the evac zone
• As more Aun reinforcements arrive including what appears to be a commander, several of the local security team rush out of the ship to help in the defence
• Gethin’s mech is gunned down by the Aun commander
• Benno jumps on its back and starts ripping out wires before Basco finishes it off with a shotgun blast

With their commander down and the refugees loaded onto the ship the Aun’s attacks become increasingly panicked as Whisky squad repels attack after attack

• Over the crash of weapons they get the commcall, “Time to board!”
• Running up the ramp they get on board
• Hardlight pings off the hull and the vertical thrusters push the ship up before tilting to the sky and getting into orbit
• The stranded Aun are left behind

Less than an hour later Bijan’s world is obliterated by the oncoming kill cloud.

On the freighter Whisky team are able to find the Ecumen Cell and upon rendezvous with the Thermopylae the squad and the cell are transferred.

The Thermopylae makes a near light jump after the kill cloud, leaving the cargoship alongside the heavily damaged Yalta to make its own way slowly back into system.

Aeric interrogates the Ecumen before the ship’s intel officer takes them away for debriefing

• The Aun have declared a holy crusade against the Union and Cornucopia – led by warpriest Kudra Bin Metat, chosen of Os
• He is >300yrs and ‘functionally immortal’, according to them (and lots of mystic reasons for this but noone really knows)
• He has assembled millions of Aun troops and thousands of mechs and ships, all set on the intent of invading Cornucopia and colonising Union space
• There is some info on the firmament
• A sort of dream-space and despite a mystical description, it’s to be taken very seriously; those chosen to access the Firmament can manifest supernatural abilities in realspace
• Those chosen by Metat Aun, the god of the Aun, get to access the Firmament – which also gives them access to FTL travel without the use of blink gates
• The Firmament could perhaps be pierced and traversed, like an alternate dimension
• No answers to practical questions about how this works, but it’s a major focus of investigation for Ecumen squads back in the ascendancy

Meanwhile, the Thermopylae has charged into the system at near light, firing off warnings to passing ships and getting back into Omninet range asap.

Their warning means that Battlegroup Comet is able to decouple from the blink gate at Fansipan Station. But the gate itself was destroyed by the killcloud, and the Cornucopia system is now abandoned 50ly from reinforcements. Shortly after the obliteration of the station an Aun fleet hundreds of vessels strong was spotted at the edge of the system. As Battlegroup Comet and the CRG home fleet prepared to face them the fleet disappeared before appearing suddenly in near Cornucopian Orbit. Caught in this surprise attack Comet and the CRG were scattered taking heavy losses.