Adventure Source: GURPS Space Adventures

Meetup Link: https://www.meetup.com/star-trek-gaming/events/284738734/

Game Date: March 20 2021

Session Post: No session post

Teaser: Acheron Hyperdynamics was a small but innovative starship company looking for a big break. They got it when they landed their first major contract — their advanced M-66 modular warp drive was the winning design in a contest sponsored by the Federation for the new Argo class deep space colonization cruiser.

The prototype warp drive was sent to the Starfleet proving grounds for installation in the Argo. But it never arrived: someone staged a massive warehouse robbery at a starport storage facility. All 56 drive modules — enough to power a multi-million ton vessel — vanished.

• Cmd. O’Nnyah (Raven)
• Lt. Cmd. Reittan Andreas (Jon)
• Lt Cmd. Taemin Rahn (Garrett)
• Lt. Jr. Wolfgang Ratzel (Terry)
• Dok – Acting Chief Engineer (Kelly)

Important NPCs:

• Denivue Calais (Ariadne Skorpio) – Albino Orion criminal gang leader
• Rafe Scott (Sean Duvalle) – Henchman
• Endrix – Computer Hacker

Notable Information:

Mission Recap: The crew stakes out the Argos Import/Export warehouse in the evening. They watch for several hours and determine the pattern of the guards. They decide to sneak in through the roof and check out what’s inside. After successfully getting in, they discover a Skyrover vertol aircraft in the room and stacked plastic crates, all marked “M-66 stardrive components”. Checking the crates reveals that they are all empty.

They find some additional crates inside the aircraft that are not empty and slip a tracking device into one, then sneak back out of the warehouse. They determine that the plan is to deliver the crates to Reece Flats the following night, arriving there around midnight. The crates are to be exchanged for suits of powered armor. This is the last of three deliveries, each delivery has been at a different wilderness location where they have rendezvoused with an orbital shuttle and loaded it with the warp modules. Most of the modules have been delivered already, there are only a few left to deliver, the main purpose of this rendezvous is to collect the powered armor.

The crew rents their own vehicle and tracks the Skorpio’s vehicle out to Reece Flats. Reece Flats is a dried-up salt lake three miles long and a mile wide, surrounded by scrubby pine forest. It is snowing heavily as they are traveling. At midnight the shuttle appears, but something is wrong. There is a meteor-like streak of light amid the falling snow. At an altitude of a half mile, the craft comes into visual range. It’s wobbling crazily, out of control. It overshoots the site with an earsplitting sonic boom and goes down somewhere to the south, missing the landing site by some ten miles. There’s no flash or explosion, so it seems to have landed intact.

The crew flies to the crash site. The blizzard is still going strong, but starts to die down as they reach the site of the crash. Skorpio and her gang are also at the site and there is a brief skirmish with them and they are captured.

The crashed space shuttle is 33 feet long, with a single airlock and a set of large cargo doors on the side and a large Macotech logo on the tail. The inside of the shuttle is twisted and bent, but fairly stable. The cargo hold contains 20 crates, all but one containing Macrotech Mk VI Assault Armor. One crate is open and empty. In the cockpit some of the dash wires have been pulled out and twisted together, and there is blood on the instrument panel. Later testing will show it doesn’t match anything in the medical tricorders set of data. Leading from the rip in the shuttle’s hull are footprints in the deep snow heading northwest into a deeply wooded area.

The trail runs for a few miles through the woods, they follow it for about 30 minutes. The trees thin out into a snow-covered field. About 200 yards across the field is a two-story farmhouse and a detached barn. There is an air-car parked near the house and the discover a young woman in the car, huddled on the seat, shaking with shock. They manage to calm her down a little, she points to the house and says “A monster! Oh God, I left Jame in there, it had no skin! I could see its organs — and it had six-inch claws!”

They head carefully into the house, almost shooting the family dog in the process. They find a pool of blood in the doorway, leading upstairs. They follow the blood train upstairs, finding an alien body in the upper master bedroom, it appears it was trying to use the vidcom unit, which is on but the screen is blank. it also has a nasty hole burned in it’s stomach. They also discover a thick, silvery disk on a chain around the corpse’s neck which they identify as a holodisk. They also find a young boy, Jame, hiding in another bedroom.

They eventually sort out that his sister Lisa had answered the door, to be confronted by an alien monster with six-inch claws and covered in blood. She panicked, grabbed her Mom’s blaster, and shot him in the stomach. She then ran out and locked herself in the aircar.

When the crew examines the holodisk, it opens up like a flower petal, projecting a foot-high hologram of a young human woman in a red winter jacket standing on a sea shore, feeding a hawk. Below the hologram floats a signature: it reads “Love always – Cybele.”

The crew arranges to borrow the air truck from Lisa to return to the crash site with the alien body.

To be continued….