Trade War - Part 2

 

The Travellers take their first prize in the trade war and become irretrievably committed to Oberlindes.

This note is from our May 10th, 2015 session and was mostly written by Carl and Kay with additional material provided by myself. I did the pictures using Sketchup and Kerkythea.

Continued from: Trade War - Part 1.

Date: 095-1105 Imperial.

Location: Aramanx system in the Aramis Subsector.

We left Aramanx station and headed to Oberlindes site in the outer system for final preparations. Paint and some physical camouflage will hopefully keep the relatively distinctive Skylark 2 from a visual identification.

Our cargo bay held spare fuel tanks and life support modules holding three prize crews for a total of 12 crew members. The other two ships held more prize crews for a total of 48.

All three of us had spoofing transponders showing us to be either a Tukera Lines ship or be off entirely, going fully dark.

099-1105
We got to the staging area, ready for a fresh coat of paint and have modifications done to the hull, disguising the Skylark 2's outline.

The New Horizons and Guardian arrived shortly after we did.

We made note that the New Horizons had a shuttle that we could use for conveying the prize crews to the prizes that we would (hopefully) take intact.

Guardian was a 400 tonner with decent fire power, good for persuading ships to surrender.

While the painting was being done, we ran a three ship simulation of things to come. We actually ran the sim 4 times, and learned some valuable lessons:

1. The New Horizons has NO dodge capability in a fight and should NOT be the one that leads the charge. (Left as an exercise for the student to determine what likely happened in the first simulation).
2. If you want to take ships relatively intact, every one of the attacker ships firing every weapon they have is a BAD BAD BAD idea.
3. Not only should it not lead the fight, the small ship that has the only shuttle should not even BE in the fight.
4. Courier vessels have to be dealt with RAPIDLY. Whereas Mammoth class have a minimum of two hours between jumps, courier delay times are less than an hour.
5. Staying together is a good idea, as long as you remember lesson 3.

On 100-1105 all three ships jumped to a location near (but NOT within detection range) the area in which we were told the Tukera ships would emerge from their jumps.

Once we were all together, we pointed the formation at the center of the anticipated emergence zone, and built up some velocity. Then we shut off the engines and coasted with all lights out and communicated by low power narrow beam signals.

Knowing that a Hercules class has 15 crew, we had planned to take the first one as an augmentation to our weapons. The plan for the crew was: Captain and Medical Officer would be kept on separate ships (Captain on Guardian, Medic on NH) The crew would be put into low berths by the Hercules Medical Officer (4 on the Hercules itself and the remaining 9 on the New Horizons) We hoped this plan would set the capturees at ease as much as possible.

Coasting in toward the center of the area, we detected a ship's transponder. Hmmm, if a ship were already there, our plan of coming in slowly should give it plenty of time to jump out before we were in detection range. Good that we planned for this eventuality.

Coasting in and taking a day to arrive the transponder did NOT jump out... Hmmmm, didn't plan for that.

We decided to just continue coasting, and only react if we were detected.

A good plan, but as we got closer it became clear that the transponder was not a ship, but instead a barge. Large, cameras on the outside, fuel tanks, a few life habitation areas and cargo containers. It looked like a repair/refueling area for ships passing through.

The New Horizon sent its shuttle and a team over to check on things. Breaking in, one of the team was injured by a defensive shot, but they neutralized the barge. We got the recordings out, and disabled the cameras. Cargo was repair materials, life support and fuel. The station log, kept automatically, showed us that more than just Hercules and Courier class ships came through.

On checking the logs, we learned that occasionally a 400-Ton patrol cruiser passed through the system. Sam the Reluctant became Sam the VERY Reluctant, urging us to leave rather than face a real fight. Not a bad idea, but as we discussed it Kipenzi remembered that it was a 400 ton ship of this exact kind that took several of the Oberlindes ships and killed some of the crew. Especially when the barge log showed one of the patrol cruisers that came through always gassed up there.

Her vote switched from Go to Stay at that point, and we stayed. Lest there be any doubt, this was a vote that did NOT include the New Horizons, the Guardian, or any of the 12 members of the prize crews that we had in the cargo area.

Not really sure what we would have done with them if the vote was to go...

107-1105
A Hercules class freighter, the Cyclops, jumped into our area within 100,000 Km.

As we had rehearsed, we approached the Cyclops. Guardian and Skylark spread out for good shooting angles, and Kipenzi (disguised voice and features) trying to talk the captain into surrendering. We truly did not want to fire a shot at all if we could avoid it.

Whether by hook or crook or just the luck of the day, the Cyclops captain saw reason or took a chance or whatever, but 5 hours later the New Horizons shuttle had gotten all the people where we had planned, and both a prize and a gunnery crew on the Cyclops.

 

The Cyclops and all of us were maneuvered back near the barge, and the only transponders in the system were the barge and the Cyclops. We positioned the the cargo barge and the Cyclops to hide us.

108-1105
A transport ship jumped into the outer region of the arrival zone. At 3000 tons, it was the Golden Harvest, an AT Class Tukera Freighter. Unlike the targets we were here for, this ship could have as many as 8 High Passage and 2 middle passage people on board.

Seeing that it was a passenger craft, we decided to do nothing if it didn't come toward us or seem to detect that we were here. We weren’t set up to handle passengers.

The Golden Harvest captain hailed the Cyclops, and the Cyclops captain said his ship had a minor drive problem and it was being repaired by his crew. Shortly after that the Golden Harvest jumped out.

If it was omitted in the last missive in these annals, we figured that we had three weeks from the time the first ship did not make its scheduled jump out of system. That time began with taking the Cyclops, and we all had day 128 as our departure date from this ambush zone.

We believed that, at worst, if the Golden Harvest did suspect something, the only likely result would be that ships from its target sector would not jump into this one. That would leave all other sources of jump still coming, and make it no more likely that any armed response would arrive. However, on reflection, they could jump to another system in 7 days, raise an alarm and send an attack ship back, so preparing for that possibility, our window had now shrunk to 14 days, tops. We jump out on 122 now.

We also planned that if a large force or a Navy ship showed up, we would jump out.

Also, the barge logs show a patrol cruiser coming in this system about once a week, and not the same one. So if we kill the cruiser, having a dead cruiser in the vicinity is a BIG clue to incoming ships that something is wrong.

Thinking through things a bit further, Kip realizes that if Oberlindes was fed this information to set him up for an attack, when we needed to jump out we needed to land outside the 4 hour range at Oberlindes’ base back at Aramanx system just in case we come out of jump with our prizes and find the base under attack there.

109-1105 0555
A Courier class ship jumped in: The Nebula. It was some ways out from the barge area so we needed to move fast.

Continued in Trade War - Part 3.

See Also: Dramatis Personæ, Skylark 2, Campaign Starts, The 2nd Adventure, The Chamax Plague, Horde, Shadows, Research Station Gamma, Twilight's Peak, Prison Planet, Leedor on Aramis, First Call at Zilla.