GalDate: 4-4-4216

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The group discussed a plan of action to retrieve the blackmail material. Additional research on Phoebe Tameron indicated some increase of her security for the company, roughly the time Mason Pratoria was contacted by the blackmailer. The crew decided to first investigate the company with the entire group acting as a mining corporation seeking a supplier related to chemical engineering products that Phoebe Tameron’s company provided.

With Rom playing the part of the CEO and visiting Phoebe, Syn and Roxie were able to step out during the meeting allowing Syn an opportunity to get into a server room. Once inside she deftly was able to install an override to the security system that could be accessed remotely (provided she was close enough). Later that evening the group returned and made a successful break in, retrieving physical photographs and a portable memory tab from a hidden safe within Phoebe's office.

Back at the Scalawag the crew looked over the contents of the memory tab in more detail. It depicted Mason Pratoria in an ugly sexual tryst with a young woman. Clearly this was something that would damage the reputation of the candidate who ran on a platform of respectable values. However the group debated what to do with it. It was decided to see about getting a better offer from a third party that might benefit from the truth.

They reached out to representatives from opposing political parties and negotiated a 20,000 credit payment for the material that would be given to each faction. It would take some time for each political party to obtain a payment in galcredits however. As the group waited, they overheard on their communication line of Syn being arrested as the Scalawag was raided by starport authorities. Quickly wrapping up the negotiation, the group returned to the starport to find out what they could only to be arrested themselves.

They were led to a detention facility at the starport. Their personal effects carefully categorized, they were told by authorities they were wanted for an inquiry related to the shootout and kidnapping in the Blenavursai system. Fortunately the individual was found only injured in the Scalawag’s medbay. Nevertheless, they were requested to be sent back to Blenavursai to answer questions officially. The Scalawag still would remain on planet. The group several days later were escorted onto a small passenger freighter and taken to the lower berths. As the liquid gel matrix washed over them and they fell into cryosleep, they wondered what final fate would befall them on Blenavursai Prime.

GalDate: 3-4-4216

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The Scalawag jumped into deep space and the crew decided to make another jump to the Prirmagarus system. With a high population planet and D class starport, they felt it a good system to potentially offload their unwilling passenger in cryosleep. After another week in jumpspace they landed on Prirmagarus prime without incident.

The crew split off each seeking to get some R&R and handle pressing tasks after being on the ship for several weeks. Roxie under the protective watch of Deke managed to find a supplier of Pancrosyth, but was only able to secure a two week supply. Grog began work on the ship, but the limited resources of the starport and extensive damage would impede quick repairs. Her estimate was that it would take roughly two weeks to make the Scalawag ship shape.

Being a Federation controlled system, aliens were more commonplace on the populated world. Grog found herself the object of attention from a pair of Yazarian Scout Service crew that were in the system for the week. Everyone else also enjoyed the forced downtime with Rom and Syn also getting to know the people of Prirmagarus better. Both of them got a better feel for local politics and understood that a major capital election was mere weeks away with it likely having a larger impact on the system as a whole.

Syn idly browsing USIN came across GENN, a celebrity entertainment network and found a shocking report. Roxie was in the news, even worse, their exploits on several systems were highlighted, including the shootout on Blenavursai Prime and their involvement in exposing the criminal activities of Bori Trova. Even more distressing was the angle of Roxie working with Rom, a reported industrial terrorist wanted by Atlas Megacorp.

Complications began to ramp up for the crew. Nearing the second week on Prirmagarus Prime, the cryosystems began to falter. They pulled the unconscious thug out of sleep. Deke using his medical expertise was able to maintain the man in an unconscious state within the medbay, but this was a temporary solution.

With Grog overseeing ship repairs (now simply occasionally confirming the status of automated repairs to structural damage), mounting repair bills, topping off with unrefined fuel, looming maintenance costs, as well as an encroaching second week of starport berthing fees, the group felt it time to seek out local employment. A USIN post asked for individuals that could conduct a break in to obtain sensitive data. Following up on the employment offer the crew met a popular local politician, Mason Pratoria. Well liked and a family man, the young gentleman had an established successful career in public service. He claimed that he was the victim of blackmail regarding some sensitive personal affairs but assured the crew it was nothing criminal. He suspected a rival of the same party which he had beaten in primaries earlier in the year was the person responsible.

His primary suspect was a young, driven, company owner, Phoebe Tameron. She was new to politics and known to simply not accept failure. Likely she had made it a personal vendetta to sink his career. He was unsure of where the blackmail material was, but suspected it at her private residence.

The crew did some preliminary recon of the woman’s home and found a well secure structure with surveillance and security from both protection droids as well as a pair of burly servants. The home itself was on a relatively expansive property in a restricted community. Not quite the easy smash and grab, the crew set about planning their break in and hopeful recovery of the wanted blackmail material.

One interesting event happened to the crew. They observed a multitude of the city population walking through the starport. After questioning the locals and some digging of information on local customs through USIN, they found that most residents practiced a religion that required they make a monthly pilgrimage to a holy site located on the starport grounds. Every three days they could expect nearly unrestricted access to the entire port as a multitude of people visited.

GalDate: 4.5-3-4216

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As the crew of the Scalawag left orbit from Blenavursai-2 and plotted a course to Blenavursai Prime, Rom contacted Jose Sonad with two separate USIN messages. He provided copies of the information on Bori Trova skimming profits from mining operations which were intended to go towards terraforming Blenavursai-2. Informed of this Jose Sonad quickly replied with generous thanks for providing this proof of his criminal wrongdoing.

Rom also sent a message with video proof of Project Lightfoot teleportation in operation and stated if they needed help for fighting against corporate oppression, he and his comrades could provide the tech to help. Jose replied in a very carefully stated response that he was not interested in this. Regardless it seems that Jose Sonad made no hesitation contacting law enforcement with information on Bori Trova, for when the Scalawag landed on Blenavursai prime. news reports were being broadcasted of Trova’s criminal activity. Reports stated Trova couldn’t be found as well as his close associates and there was a system-wide manhunt for him. Initial reports indicated that he also had some financial dealings with organized crime on Blenavursai Prime.

Roxie met up with her local criminal middleman contact,Tomono, to pay a promised cut of their heist. She also picked up additional dosage of pacrosynth which seemed to be losing its effectiveness in helping with her narcotic addiction. The other crew members took the opportunity to utilize the improve starport facilities to send out x-boat messages. Deek sent a message to Dame Vera McAllister, asking to know more on the outcome of her nephew’s trial (current news was that he is being held to a lesser charge due to medical reasons). Deek wanted to also know if the information they sent had any bearing on case and if there was any work for them.

Syn made contact with a Torgue representative to drop off the suit and (copied) data on the following day. She was surprised to find her Torgue handler, the enigmatic Ms. White, would be contacting her directly and in person for the meet.

The following day the exchange was made in public outside the Torgue building in a central plaza. Ms. White accompanied by a cyborg technician and security approached. The data was confirmed after the technician scanned through the portable drive (and sparked some worry from Syn that such an enhanced individual might accelerate the process of discovering she made a copy of the data) as well as presence of the suit itself. An envelope full of credits (30,000) was handed over to Syn and Ms. White walked off to return to the building.

Roxie and Grog atop of a building overlooking the hand-off saw a group of men approach with guns drawn. A firefight broke out, with Ms. White and the security team falling back to the Torgue building taking the teleportation suit with them. The crew managed to fight off their attackers, taking one unconscious man with them. As they sped off in their ATV crawler, everyone noticed they were the focus of passerbys recording the event on PDDs, not to mention the likely public camera network in the plaza.

The group quickly loaded up into the Scalawag and broke orbit, seeking to make a jump into empty space. As they were en-route to the 100 DT, USIN programming broadcast local reports of the crew being wanted by authorities for questioning regarding a shooting in the city. The unconscious thug brought with them was loaded into a low berth for cryosleep. While leaving the system, an unmarked craft pursued and fired on the ship. They destroyed the attacking craft taking heavy damage in the process, and were able to finally jump out of the Blenavursai system.

GalDate: 4-3-4216

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The crew of the Scalawag landed in Blenavursai prime and refueled. With a copy of the Lightfoot data, they uploaded it to encrypted, cloud quadrant storage via the x-boat network, so that it could be accessed in the future while in other nearby systems (using their encryption key, it could be retrieved from USIN). Some of the group were eager to do a test run using the teleportation suit, seeing it as an ideal tool to do some illicit activity.

Roxie reached out to system criminal contacts and met a mid-level fixer, Tomono. He told Roxie of a local criminal that was known to have a soft spot for jewelry and precious metals. A likely target for a burglary. His only request was a percentage of any stolen goods as a means to appease his higher-ups within the criminal network. The target in question was a crime lord on Blenavursai-2 named, Bori Trova.

Bori Trova was a large man, thick, muscled, with little bit of a stomach more solid rather than flab. Slicked back hair in his late 40s, with pierced nipples and a love for wearing excessive jewelry, Bori was a walking contradiction. His wardrobe consisted of casual track suits and gaudy furniture adorned his home, but he was known for his excellent taste in art. He appeared uncultured, but had an animal charisma and was capable of being quite charming.

Bori was heavily involved in controlling labor activities for the mining on Blenavursai-2, along with other criminal activities on the thin atmosphere planet. He was known by the system criminal network to be skimming off colony mining profits, hindering funding for terraforming efforts. For the group, he was a likely target not to clamor too loudly to authorities if his home was burglarized.

Landing on Blenavursai-2, the crew went to work casing the target. Rom discovered a local leader and terraforming scientists, Jose Sonad, that was well liked among Blenavursai-2 residents and likely a good contact if any proof of Trovi’s dealings with the terraforming project could be found. They discovered Bori’s love for betting on skulk fights, a local fauna of the planet. They developed a plan to cross paths at a local fight, with Roxie seducing him in order to go back to his home. Once in Bori’s compound, the plan was to make an excuse to leave, dropping off one of the Lightfoot nodes. Syn would jump in, take what she could, and teleport out making away with the stolen goods.

The plan went into action with Roxie successfully using her charm to garner the attention of Bori. They retired to his domicile where the operation began to skew some. Conversation was made and Trova produced some narcotics which Roxie took. Time was lost with Roxie waking up later, clearly doing more with Bori than she had originally considered. She dressed, left a teleportation node behind, and stepped out of the house, leaving the crime lord snoring peacefully.

Syn ported in and went about stealing what she could, including making a copy of incriminating evidence of skimmed profits from mining operations. She ported out, with Deek capturing the use of Lightfoot with a video unit. As Syn ported in there was a flash of light and a dull rumble of thunder. The group realized that the teleportation suit wasn’t as stealthy as expected. Regardless, they left orbit for Blenavursai Prime with a small haul of jewelry, some cash, and computer files of his criminal dealings in their possession.

GalDate: 3-3-4216

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The crew of the Scalawag made their way to the Dedsyere System. Dedsyere Prime is a mountainous, bitterly cold planet with sparse vegetation, but has a high population in densely packed cities. The planet is run by a council established by 4 mega-corps (Atlas, Dahl, Eridian, Kisuton) and Dedsyere United Corporation (DU Corp), a national conglomerate of planetary companies.

Some communities spiral out of the mega cities, but the majority of the population lives in networked hive city/industrial complexes. Almost everyone is a corporate employee of one sort or another. There is little private commerce. The exception being eateries which are the most common private businesses, as all other goods are sold from various company vendors.

The group set about planning how to infiltrate the NovoHaas corporate headquarters located closer to south pole. The building was on the periphery of a smaller city among other industrial buildings. Its entrance was limited to outside traffic through two main tunnels; one for larger vehicles and one regulated to passenger rail and foot traffic. There was an aircraft landing pad for visiting VIPs and about 200-300 yards of clear ground surrounding the building which rested next to a frozen channel.

Investigating the company, Syn discovered that security was tight and would require extra effort to get through various areas within the building. The headquarters had limited outside access with high security, and unofficial visits would be very difficult to arrange. The building itself served as both headquarters and also as a research facility. Interestingly, more dignitaries and social visits were arranged by aircraft landing on the roof rather than through the light tunnel traffic on the ground.

Additionally, the USIN link to NovoHaas was limited. Hacking security would have to be on site as outside network traffic was regulated to simple communication and on different servers from the NovoHaas mainframe. Internal communication which needed to be directed outside would go through PUSIN used to communicate with other NovoHaas company facilities. Syn identified PUSIN as a likely weak link they could exploit.

They decided to work in two teams. One team would try and infiltrate NovoHaas directly in a synchronized effort with another team hacking into the orbiting PUSIN node. Some preliminary legwork indicated that there would be a visiting delegation from another company at the end of the week. Syn also identified the local food company that would cater the event. Some hacking of the food business system (with its paltry network security) allowed her to successfully forge delivery manifests and information on uniforms and vehicle decals that the company used.

Roxie successfully reached out to her criminal contacts which led her to some individuals that could help with obtaining a transport truck, as well as uniforms and containers that could pass as catered food. The general plan would be that Deek would ‘deliver’ the food carts holding both Roxie and Rom. He then would drop off the truck and take a rented flier to NovoHaas HQ for extraction. To help with the flier rental and coordinating the truck drop off, a local criminal alien named Karo assisted Deek.

The team prepared a few days for their operation and early in the morning just before sunrise, they began their infiltration. Syn and Grog flew the Scalawag up to orbit and then made an EVA to the orbiting PUSIN node using a light sled. They hacked into the PUSIN and managed to reboot the security, just as Deek dropped off the food delivery to the HQ. He then went about dropping off the truck to the huge, fur covered alien, Karo at the airfield to switch into the flier.

With the security system in reboot, the team inside used altered security passes to find the Project Lightfoot hardware and hack into a mainframe server. Using a multikeypass crafted by Syn, this device could be used to help decipher the encryption keys that the corporation used. Meanwhile in orbit, Syn began a remote backup of the encrypted data through the PUSIN node. The team on the ground began to make their way to the roof landing pad.

At the airfield, Deek dropped off the truck for Karo, only to find the lumbering, thick-furred alien was flanked by a pair of criminal comrades. They figured that the group was likely going to break into the corporate building and steal something. They decided it was an opportune time to let Deek’s group do all the work, while they ran off with the stolen goods. With a gun as his side, Deek piloted the flier to the extraction point (but a subtle shift during a pat down meant his pistol was still under his bulky arctic jacket).

In orbit, Syn triggered a defense system during the hack. Remote drones clambered about the surface of the PUSIN satellite node, as Grog fired off laser rounds. Syn was finally able to complete the download. The pair took the sled to the orbiting Scalawag and eventually headed back to the surface starport.

Just as the airship landed, upper floor security was notified of the break in, and a trail of opened doors and elevator lift trips with a particular set of keycards. They pursued the pair first demanding answers, then firing off rounds as the pair fled. The criminals stepped out of the ship and Deek saw his opportunity to take control of the flier and shot his opponent in the cabin. A firefight erupted and the group managed to get rid of both the security and the double-crossing criminals. The outgunned Karo lept off the building roof to land in deep snowdrifts below. His hairy form likely allowing him to survive on the surface of the planet while he skulked away.

With automated anti-aircraft guns blasting, Deek deftly piloted the aircraft back to the main starport. Hours later they disembarked and quickly boarded the Scalawag. With the coordinates of Blenavursai set, the ship jumped to the nearby system. While in jumpspace, Syn decrypted the data and the group forced open the sealed container to determine what Project Lightfoot exactly was.

They discovered a portable fusion reactor the size of a backpack attached to a belt and metal conduit webbing. Along with the exosuit webbing was two slim, handheld devices. The suit could teleport the wearer between these two devices, arriving within meters of their proximity. Syn discovered the teleportation device would eventually cause irreparable cellular and genetic damage to the user. Interestingly, much of the original research for the device was obtained by espionage efforts against an Imperial military research facility. Speeding towards Blenavursai, the group grappled with what to do with this technological treasure in their possession and the decrypted data on the device.

GalDate: 4-2-4216

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The crew of the Scalawag returned to Syroma Prime and went about securing a supply of laser rifles. Syn was contacted and she said her contract work was being wrapped up, and that she would join them on the ship shortly. After obtaining the weapons, Rom returned to the ship with the cargo. Roxie, Deacon, and Grog put their efforts into tracking down Garret Bechtel, their former employer for the first weapons run, to find out why the shipment to the miners was shortchanged. This lead them to a more seedy division in one of the cities. Confronting Garret, heated words were exchanged that exploded into a firefight.

The group escaped and deftly avoided any law enforcement. However as the Scalawag broke orbit, already the local newsfeeds were putting out a notice they were persons of interest in a homicide. The ship landed on the remote moon colony and the crew delivered the weapons as promised. Securing their payment from the rebel miners, they left the station just as Atlas corporation security were alerted of their presence.

Several Atlas Security SFACs went in pursuit of the Scalawag, but the ship was able to escape, making a jump to Flerenoria. During the week in jumpspace, Syn talked about her contract work. She was asked from Torgue to decrypt some data and send it to her employers (which she did). Being curious, she investigated part of it and found information related to some type of military technology using an exoskeleton or a suit. The technology also involved human experimentation which had some complications to the user.

The crew jumped into the system and landed on Flerenoria Prime with no incident. The crew set about maintenance and refueling the ship. They discovered that 5,000 credits were delivered as a secure payment from the Imperial Navy for information provided during the investigation of the research base in the Syroma system. Syn also received the following message:

Urgent Communication: Travel to Dedsyere system. Infiltrate NovoHaas corporate headquarters and obtain prototype and all data regarding Project Lightfoot. Data and all obtained material are to be delivered to local Torgue office in Blenavursai. Hiring of personnel to assist in operation is acceptable. 12,000 credits are being provided to fund operation.