30 04 09

Ben, Rory, and Julie - along with Orlowicza and Frayne - are shipped to the Matanga Station for medical treatment after the plane crash. After they call the Spaceport station to come and get them and Orlowicza (who needs better medical treatment then Matanga can offer), they start suspecting foul play with the plane and go to check it out. They find sabotage, and immediately suspect the Norwegian techie, Ringstad. When a plane arrives to get them, surprise, it's Ringstad. And he's brought friends; a mercenary company.

After locking everyone on base up in the mess hall, the baddies leave only two guards there. Ben and Rory make a ruckus with the help of Julie and local good guys Douset and Chen, overpowering the two guards. After Ben scares some info out of one of them by acting like a total psychotic maniac, the baddies are locked up in the meat locker. Ringstad is going to blow up the terraforming device.

Rory and Chen sneak over to get shotguns while Ben, Julie and Douset go to send a radio call for help. During the trip to the office where the radio is they are surprised by a lone man who was acting like a triggerhappy maniac earlier. Ben shoots and kills the man as he reaches for his gun, and the man is later revealed to be an engineer, not combat trained at all. Douset gives him an enormous dose of morphine so he'll die without having to be in horrible pain. After getting back and arming the scientists, there's a shoot-out in the hallway outside the mess hall where Ben and Rory severely wound two men, one of which is saved from dying by Chen, while the other escapes. Rory and Douset are also wounded. Not daring to leave through the front door, the good guys escape through one of the air vents, taking a scientist with them to fix the terraforming device.

Ringstad is a religious nutcase who is intent on blowing shit up, even if he can't get out alive himself. The mercenaries have however taken some losses, and Quince, their leader, strikes a deal to get out alive and free as long as they stand down and let Ben and Julie get rid of Ringstad's threat. They go down to the control room and have a shoot-out with the gun-toting, maniac, triggerhappy Ringstad, who is hit simultaneously by four shots from Ben and Julie, and he dies instantly. There's also a bomb down there that is defused by one of the mercenaries, and the base is set to meltdown. Julie helps fix the meltdown and the plane is prepped, the wounded people treated, and it all seems to go uphill.

Ben, Rory, and Julie leave Matanga with Orlowicza and the mercenaries, and let the mercenaries sneak out and be on their merry way.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License