Almost everyone manages to show up on time, if somewhat grudgingly: Chris (Peter Sangaree), Tim (Sir Brindal Karth de Hazat), and even Nick (Brother Xavier). We all particularly appreciate Nick's attendance, as the allure of assembling his new PC draws deeply upon him. In grim contrast, Dan (Montgomery Burns) takes it into his head that being in San Antonio is a good enough excuse to explain not showing up until around 17:00.
As the curtain lifts, the characters have gained control of the Western half of the Utag base. The major opposition remains a group of Utag airborne troopers fortified in the northernmost barracks. The characters have men deployed in the Machine Shop, the Control Station, and in the Pumping Station. They also have a few men guarding each of the surviving VERTOL's and some men scattered among the piping near the fuel tanks. Many of Sir Brindal Karth's troops are still scattered, but he has managed to reassemble a reasonable number of them. Altogether, the attacking force has lost some nine men killed and wounded, four of them from Brother Xavier's detachment and the remaining five from Sir Brindal Karth's detachment. The assault is currently only about fifteen minutes old.
The characters pull their men back from the pumping station, in case someone takes a shot at the tanks and sets them off. The other characters set Montgomery Burns to shutting down the electrical equipment in the Control Station, just to make certain that the Vuldrok have no way to send a message back to their main base.
After a quick tactical conference, the characters decide to keep the Utag troops penned in the barracks while the catapults burn them out. Peter Sangaree leaves the ten snipers to the south in place, but has the twelve men originally deployed to cover the catapults move to the west to reinforce the fourteen men covering the barracks. He also orders one catapult crew to abandon their weapon, take up his home-made bazooka and redeploy to the west. Peter goes over to the position occupied by the fourteen troops. Meanwhile, Brother Xavier has the crews of the five catapults to the east abandon their weapons and move in to serve as garrison troops in the Control Station.
By the time the characters have finished moving troops around, Chibren technicians have arranged an isolated phone network among the two catapult positions and the western picket position. The technicians tell the characters that it will take a few minutes to get a phone line up to the Control Station and the Machine Shop, and several hours to link the network into the rest of the Chibren phone system.
The characters have only barely managed to get their phone network operating when Peter hears a strange whistling sound from the barracks. He quickly understands that the Utag troops are ranging a mortar upon the southern catapult battery. Peter acts swiftly, ordering the remaining catapult crews to gather their ammunition and evacuate their stations. They are able to make good their escape before the Utag gunner finds his range and lands a shell directly upon one of the catapults, shattering it into splinters.
Faced with something of a standoff, the characters decide to hold a parley. Peter is the closest to the Utag position, so he volunteers to lead the effort. He gathers up a white flag and heads out to speak to the Utag.
Though Peter does notice a pair of Utag troopers keeping a bead on him with their wicked-looking rifles, he is gratified by their decision to not shoot him. Peter introduces himself a "Lieutenant Peter Sangaree, of the Hazat." He is quickly brought to speak to the Banneret Sieggen Atto, a man whose English accent is quite at odds with his bristly black beard. He claims that he is the commander of the station.
Peter opens up negotiations with the Banneret Atto by suggesting that his men turn in their weapons and surrender. In return, the Banneret Atto suggests that he and his men march to the Landing Curtain, board the Assault Carriers, and depart. Neither is happy with the others' suggestions. Peter is quite forthright about the fact that his Lord wants the VERTOL's currently on the Landing Curtain. The Banneret points out that he too wants the Overtops, but that he can deny them to everyone by shelling the Landing Curtain.
Subsequent negotiations focus on who gets the VERTOL's. Along the way, the Banneret offers a few political suggestions, as he now assumes that the Hazat have claimed the entire area. He urges Peter to turn all of the Chibren into serfs. "Lieutenant" Peter claims that the Hazat intend to turn them all into phone-makers.
The final agreement is that the Utag may have one Assault Carrier, and evacuate with as many men as they can load upon it. However, they must leave some men and one officer as prisoners. The characters are granted thirty minutes to strip the weapons and communications gear from the Assault Carrier. Banneret Atto agrees to this after a brief consultation with the senior Utag officer, and states that he will serve as the officer remaining behind. He promises that he and his men will give themselves and the mortar over only when the retreating Assault Carrier disappears over the horizon.
While Peter negotiates with the Utag (and desperately attempts to hush the incessant radio chatter in his comlink) the other characters do their best to figure out how best to betray the Utag. They alternate between getting their own pilots into the air before the Utag reach the Assault Carrier and then gunning them down and simply taking off afterwards to track them to their base.
The characters eventually have second thoughts about betraying the Utag. Their decision, unfortunately, is not based upon strong morality. Instead, it is based upon the thought that the Utag might simply destroy them and their little dog Toto too if they kill off all the garrison troops. They decide to ward off future attacks by telling them that all this land is Hazat, and Utag presence is unacceptable. Not feeling particularly confident in this threat, they decide to have pilots ready to scramble just in case: Brian the Goat in a Hunter, Linus Cossett in a Hunter, and Montgomery Burns in the Assault Carrier. Fergus Genne ab Marlwen and Horace Redd stay on the Assault Carrier as "crew."
When Peter returns from his negotiations, he immediately turns to stripping the Assault Carrier to be returned to the Utag troopers. He quickly discovers that the Utag use large numbers of modular parts, which makes his job even easier. He strips out the laser communicator, the radio, and the radar set. By the time he's done, the VERTOL's control panel looks like it had a bad case of cavities.
While Peter works on the interior of the Assault Carrier, Chibren Rangers remove the missiles and unload the gatling and machine guns on the outside. Unsatisfied with simply disarming the Utag, Brother Xavier makes certain to render all the guns nonfunctional, in ways so subtle that they might deceive a small child for a few seconds.
The surrender goes surprisingly smoothly. Peter is waiting at the barracks door when a second officer emerges and introduces himself as Captain Helmut Pfass. He is followed by a platoon of some thirty Utag soldiers with assault rifles and heavy armor. This surprisingly well-equipped force makes a very polite journey across the Utag base to the Assault Carrier. As agreed, the troops stack their weapons in neat tripods immediately before boarding the Assault Carrier. Minutes after everyone is aboard the Carrier, it takes off and heads into the distance.
The Assault Carrier takes only moments to disappear into the distance. Soon after it departs, Banneret Atto and his men give themselves (and their mortar) up. The instant the characters have the mortar and the lethally large supply of shells the Utag had stockpiled with it, Linus and Montgomery scramble a Hunter to follow the retreating Carrier.
Altogether, the gear turned over by the Utag troops includes thirty assault rifles, five submachine guns, ninety clips of assault rifle ammo, twenty clips of submachinegun ammo, one light mortar, and fifty mortar rounds.
Sir Brindal Karth sets down to have a bit of a conversation with Banneret Atto. He is primarily interested in getting information out of the fellow, albeit with some consideration for the fact that both he and the Banneret are gentlemen. To further prove that he is a gentleman, he claims that he is a Hazat Baron. To keep with appearances, Peter Sangaree pops by and claims that he is a Lieutenant of the Hazat. Given little basis for comparison, Banneret appears to accept the characters' claims.
With the immediate violence over, Peter heads to the Machine Shop to check out the gear the Utag left behind. He is crushed to find that they did not have a Second Republic-era CNC lathe, practically to the point of striding out and killing Banneret Atto out of hand. The Banneret's life is saved when Peter recognizes that the shop does contain a lot of other nice pieces of equipment, including a drill press and a stamping press. He quickly recognizes that he has all the equipment he needs to manufacture cheap submachineguns from stamped parts, if he can manufacture the dies.
The characters encounter a touch of conflict when they get back in touch with the Chibren, specifically Senator Hareb. He tells them that the Chibren lay claim to all of the weapons taken from the Vuldrok, including the mortar. He is willing to agree to allow the characters to take a couple of individual items for their personal needs, and admits that he would be willing to give over the mortar in exchange for some other considerations. Brother Xavier raises the loudest objections, as he wants all of the submachineguns to equip his personal bodyguard (who are now terribly underequipped, armed only with bolt-action rifles). Senator Hareb, who notes that the entirety of the Chibren Cooperative's militia and Rangers are armed with bolt-action rifles, feels little sympathy for Brother Xavier's position. The conflict is resolved after Peter points out that he can probably get his stamped-metal submachinegun project going in a couple of months of effort. The characters finally give all the guns over to the Chibren.
Having gotten what he wanted, Senator Hareb agrees to ship Machine Shop and Control Station equipment down to the characters' settlement by barge, and details a team of Chibren militia to start packing the equipment up.
Montgomery Burns and Linus Cossett follow the escaping Utag Assault Carrier for about an hour, heading on a course to the western coast of Sulesslund. As they near the coast, they notice two equally threatening things. First, they see the Assault Carrier start to make signals with it's lights, as if it was communicating with a ground station. Second, they notice that someone is using radar on them. Seconds later, they spot the Mother of All Vuldrok Bases, a huge compound featuring landing platforms capable of berthing at least three Assault Landers, massed buildings, and emplaced SAM's. They do the only rational thing: they run for it with afterburners on.
Having put some distance between themselves and the Utag base, they start working on communications. They are able to use the laser communicator to pick up two Vuldrok planes over the Circle Sea and three satellites, all signaling their availability as laser comlink relays. They think about trying to use these resources, then fall back and simply send a radio message to the other characters describing what they found.
Peter Sangaree and Brian the Goat board the second Hunter and fly up to try and make contact with the Hawkwoods. They start with the laser relay satellites, quickly identifying one of them as a Charioteer satellite and the remaining two as Hawkwood Gwynneth Fleet.
Peter starts by getting access to one of the Hawkwood satellites, then using it to try and broadcast a laser message to all available ships. He is quickly answered by Communications Officer Smith, on board the Man-o-War Thundering Lion, commanded by Captain-Baronet Mildred Arabet-Hawkwood. Peter considers this a tremendous stroke of luck up until Comm Officer Smith tells him in no uncertain terms that he is using a restricted channel and must desist immediately. No matter how much he tries, he is unable to get Smith to react to his information. He hangs up, swearing that he is going to make certain that Smith spends the rest of his miserable career cleaning out latrines.
After failing to get anywhere with the Hawkwoods, Peter tries the Charioteer satellite. Within a couple of minutes, he gets a badly time-delayed (and blue-shifted) text message from Captain Wimberley of the Bountiful Harvest, inbound from the jumpgate. Captain Wimberley is substantially more willing to listen than Comm Officer Smith, but isn't really able to offer any useful aid. When Peter tells him that there is a Vuldrok base on the west coast of Sulesslund that is scrambling aircraft, Wimberley's first concern is whether or not they pose any threat to his ship. Peter manages to figure out that Captain Wimberley and his ship are still in approach to Gwynneth, and are unlikely to be a target for a flight of atmospheric VERTOL's. The Captain does promise to warn the WardenCo Station authorities about the danger, but Peter remains unconvinced that such action will do any particular good.
Montgomery Burns finally comes up with a plan that works. He manages to relay through Peter's Hunter VERTOL to make contact first with Tuam Air Traffic Control, and then with an acquaintance of his, the Lord Patrick Maerwyn nef Hawkwood, who happens to be Master of Skies for the South Coast Duchy. Montgomery convinces Lord Maerwyn of the danger, a task made easier by the fact that the base appears to be within striking range of the South Coast Duchy, and gets him to promise some action. Lord Maerwyn breaks off the conversation with the comment that he needs to get on the line with the Captain-Baronet Arabet-Hawkwood, and get her to warm up her CPB's.
With the warning placed, everyone returns to the Fennen Marsh colony. Those characters who remained at the Utag base have the Chibren militia load up the remaining Assault Carrier with the equipment from the Machine Shop and the Control Station, then fly it back. Brian the Goat and Peter are somewhat delayed by a flight of two Utag Hunters, and end up landing on a rock shelf about a mile from the colony with nothing but vapors left in the fuel tanks. By the time everyone reaches the Fennen Marsh colony, they receive a report from Senator Hareb that a flight of a dozen Hunters bombed the Utag base into rubble, then flew off to the East.
With all the VERTOL's out of the sky, everyone gets to watch the Hawkwood orbital bombardment. The Thundering Lion is visible only as a tiny, flickering dot in the sky. A meteor shower glitters beneath it, reaching down to gently kiss the surface of Gwynneth. The only indications of what is actually happening to the West are the thunder-like rumbles that reach the characters.
Sir Brindal Karth brought all the documents he could find out of the Control Station. Among them was an aerial chart with about thirty Vuldrok landing sites listed. Most are on the east coast of Sulesslund, and appear to be little villages with no real military value. However, both he and Montgomery Burns suspect that the information could be sold to any number of folk for real money. They suspect, however, that if certain factions in the Hawkwood military were to get their hands on it the resulting bloodshed would be staggering. Any moral dimensions of the problem aside, the two of them spend a substantial amount of time compiling this and the results of their interrogations of Banneret Atto and his men into a book for Montgomery to shop around in Tuam.
The three NPAE technicians are put to work on the think machines taken from the Control Station. Journeyman Gath grins with febrile pleasure at the sight of the characters carting them up to his lab, then disappears into his portable hut to begin the process of cracking the machines.
The characters also start up a debate upon what they should do with the East Coast Utag settlements. They eventually conclude that the best choice is probably to try and negotiate peace (and possibly trade) with the local Jarls, after having verified that the local Utag are not sophisticated enough to be able to mount a realistic military action against them.
Montgomery Burns makes a quick shopping trip back to Tuam. While there, he checks with his Vuldrok contacts, and learns that the Utag are trying to buy anti-radiation drugs, blood plasma, and other medical supplies in large quantities. He debates whether or not to try and profit from their misery. He eventually drops this ambition in favor of searching out the items on a large shopping list Peter gave him, including powered carpentry tools (chainsaws, table saws), paint, tin or aluminum foil, and enough sheet metal to manufacture twenty of Peter's prototype stamped guns.
Everyone gets 3 experience points.