Here we are again, after 15 months off! Ric wasn't able to make it, but Jesse Wales has been "dealt in" to this campaign as his skills and experience are, ahem, relevant.
One fine chilly morning - Collace really doesn't have anything else - a PAN message came in to the Cats' HQ on Botany Bay. A Naval adjutant named Francis Trevor requested their attendance at a meeting with Admiral Khundrak on 104, at the Admiralty. Curious, they accepted.
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Two days later, they were shown by a polite robot into a conference room off the Admiral’s office, where a second person was waiting – Count Gavin Sterling, Collace Founder and captain of the Trenchant – now in his full dress blues as a Captain and with his Founder’s Star, a far cry from how he looked when they rescued him from the freezers on Kitono.
Sterling sprang to his feet and hurried to greet the Cats, shaking hands all around and getting them seated, completely eclipsing the Admiral. He instructed the robot to supply their preferred refreshments and enquired how they had been since they last met, complimented Quin Feng, and so forth. After a while, though, he switched to “down to business” mode.
“Lady and Gentlemen, as you may know, Collace as a government – and a people – has become increasingly incensed by the atrocity perpetrated at the end of the Battle of Collace. President Brooks has come under increasing pressure to ‘do something’, and as a result of this Admiral Khundrak,” at this the Admiral looked up, almost surprised to be included in the conversation, “has assigned me, as an interested party, command of a task force. Our orders are to follow the trail uncovered by yourselves to the source of this infection and – as long as it proves to be in non-aligned space – to put a stop to it if we can.” It seemed to the party not unlikely that the majority of the drive behind this had come from Sterling, not Khundrak.
“My cruiser, the Trenchant, has been repaired and refitted with this mission in mind. Two escorts have been detached to accompany her. We have crews, a ground assault capability and Collacan Marines but have not yet selected a Marine command structure. I would be very pleased indeed if you would agree to fill this requirement. Normal salaries, full rank and privileges in the Collacan service will be matched to your Imperial level, along with standard shares in prize money.”
“Dr Wombat, our survival rates will probably double if you will accept the assignment as Ship’s Surgeon.”
“Colonels, your abilities as combat leaders and veterans of a good, dirty, bloody fight would be invaluable.”
“Mister Wales, your knowledge of how privateers and pirates operate will be extremely useful in the planning stages of each operation”
“Overall command will be mine, but dirtside command and planning input, and more covert missions, will be in your hands. What do you say? Will you come and hunt the scum of space with me?”
This suggestion met with interest and approval from the Cats; apart from the mistreatment of their own steward Faeysen at the hands of slavers, they'd served alongside the Collacan Navy during the battle, and shared the outrage of their adopted world. They did have a few questions.
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They also asked after their robot 'companion' Vespasian, pressing the Navy to release him before the task force departed. Cornered, Khundrak agreed that he'd get NI to finish up with him and send him back.
Their ranks would be assigned roughly as their last Imperial ones, with Feng brevetted to Colonel and Wombat the usual chief medical rank of Surgeon-Commander. Jesse Wales was rostered as "Consultant", while Faeysen was listed as a Steward, nominally under the Purser but assigned to the PCs as their personal Steward. Uniforms were offered, but the Cats elected to retain their Imperial ones with mission patches attached for the task force. Implanted subdermalID chips were provided which would automatically authorize them for door access, computer terminals and so on.
The meeting concluded with an invitation for a tour of the ship the next day.
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The next day, the party joind Captain Sterling in a highport runabout and were flown out to view the task force. The two destroyer/escorts Tybalt and Banquo were docked to the structure, but the Trenchant was too big for that, and it floated in orbit a hundred klicks out. As they approached, the sheer size of the 60,000 ton vessel became more and more apparent.
The Lightning class Frontier Cruiser was an Imperial design, but several had been detached to the IISS, and some to selected client states, including Collace. Originally equipped with a swarm of light fighters, the Trenchant had been refitted for this mission and now carried a half-regiment of Collacan Marines, supported by four grav tanks and deployed with troop carriers.
Piped aboard, the visitors were led to a meeting room where the core command crew waited for introductions.
Also present, but not part of primary command
After introductions, the tank and maintaince officers left, and Sterling briefed everyone else on the mission, introducing the Cats at this point. The formal part over, individual conversations ensued, with Nevada ordering an inspection of the Marine complement in 2 hours. FC Bensman swallowed as his first test came into view, but saluted and headed off to prod buttock.
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Wombat, who had made eye contact with Cmdr Valerani at the briefing, spoke more with her, asking her to set up a meeting with her team, and with her team and the medics from Banquo and Tybalt. She set this up, and he realized that she didn't know who he was, but was happy to work with him anyway.
The ship tour was impressive, even just brushing on the essentials. A 60Kton ship is enormous, and on the scale of evn the Mountain Walk, takes a long time to look at. The forward cargo hold was plenty big enough for the Walk, and for some of their vehicles as well. Docking time was around 30 minutes, although Feng was pretty sure they could do a crash launch in a lot less than that... Nevada considered adding locks to some systems.
Architecturally a "tail sitter", the ship's decks were transverse slices along her length, and each deck was nearly the size of the Long Walk on its own. They'd jokingly speculated on what it would take to nick this ship, and the tour made the answer pretty clear; a couple of hundred more crew...
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Nevada and Feng made their inspection, the Marine complement drawn up in one of the troop lander loading bays. As they walked the neat ranks, they realized that those Marines in battledress were wearing the equipment the Cats had shipped from Glisten. They spoke to one or two of the men, discovering that one at least was a man who had shared the assault on Kitono with them. They chatted about that for a moment, and they could feel the men around them listening in. Feng meanwhile was evaluating those men she met, looking for the real stone cold killers. The likeliest place to find them seemed to be in the Commando company.
Nevada addressed the men afterwards, expressing how pleased he was to be serving with them and generally trying to bond with them.
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Feng admired the extensive biosphere carried, and was already considering adding some of her more lethal plants to it as well as expanding on her project to create a tea plant producing the most sublime, slightly euphoric tea to be had.
Departure day was set for 110.
Two days later, the computer at Botany Bay notified of a request to land from an Admiralty shuttle. A little puzzled, they approved it, and the small craft touched down an hour later. Down the ramp walked a familiar figure; Vespasian the Hiver robot. They greeted him, and his emotion simulation software allowed him to respond appropriately in his usual calm manner. Asked if he was comfortable with this very military mission, his response was as usual, "As long as it does not conflict with my core programming." "What is your core programming?" asked Feng. "To visit worlds as they become available and collect information." was the response.
With mild cheesy fudge it was assumed that Merrick Sturnn was at the Collace end of his trading run when this occurred, allowing the planning of his expanding merchantile fleet.
The Long Walk, divested of some of her more adventurous equipment, was passed over to Merrick Sturnn to add to his trading runs, allowing trade to be opened to the newly liberated Kaldamar. He intended to call on their old acquaintance Garry "Eddie" Stobart and offer him a deal to run the Long Walk as part of the enterprise.
With everything prepared, they packed their bigger guns and best tank into the Mountain Walk, gave instructions to the security shadowcats and agrobots of Botany Bay, and headed out to join their ship.
With the appropriate formalities for a capital ship leaving on deployment, the Trenchant broke orbit and headed for the jump point. With so much brass on the bridge, the duty pilot was a little jittery, but soon the ship was headed out towards the jump limit. Four hours later, she jumped for Motmos.
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During the trip, the crew and troops shook down and got to know each other. The whole crew was now briefed on the mission, and a general sense of a righteous cause could be felt; many had lost friends or kin in the Battle of Collace and now had the prospect of a chance of rescuing some of them. All three trained with their marine troops, adding the Shadowcats to the mix to acclimate the Marines to their presence and approach. Their speed, stealth and agility impressed the troops considerably.
One of the tank crews was selected, with the aid of Tank Captain Zega, and trained to operate the Cats' Invader tank, a tech step up from the Trenchant's Saita tanks.
Wombat reviewed the medical processes and equipment, and made some recommendations. Someone had evidently showed his credentials to LtCmdr Valerani, because she was a lot more attentive and deferential than she had been. He also met with the corpsmen from the marine platoons, adding a few improved drug mixes to their kits and getting to know them.
The hail from the Tyrex starport was just a little nervous as they headed in from the jump point, and Nevada joined the link and explained who and why to their considerable relief. On shuttling down, Barton McKay was glad to see them and greeted Captain Sterling as they were introduced. He explained their progress with the tech they'd been left; the Ancient grav bikes were revealing their mechanical secrets but the psionic interfaces were still a mystery. The Cats refrained from explaining that they'd used psionic rats to operate them the last time! Selma, it seemed, was off-world recruiting; probably a psion though Barton didn't say so. The prototype Shortning batteries were coming on nicely, but were still too big to be practical.
He was very eager to hear details of how their products had performed for the Cats, and watched the footage with interest. Then they got to Kaldamar. "A .... sword?" he asked. "Yep." "A ... sword?!" It took him a long time to come to terms with this idea.
The cats and Hoplite were serviced and their firmware updated, adding improvements developed since they'd last been here.
Fuelling the Trenchant was going to involve shipping refined fuel from the Tyrex plant up, and the next step would be to jump to where Cache 1 had been - to see if it had been repaired, or if any unfortunate pirates were stranded there for lack of the now-destroyed fuel.