Play date: June 10, 2017
In-game date: April 9, EY219
Location: Aiscapo system
Previous events: The Hummingbird's crew killed another 8,000 people
Theme song: Sabotage (duh)
If the Hummingbird is going to disable the jump gate and prevent any reinforcements from coming through from the Vishnu system stealth will be the key. There are lots of ships around the gate, obviously guarding it, but they're stationed some distance away the sooner to intercept incoming ships. The plan is to take advantage of this.
Since no human ships in the cluster are known to have jump ships there's effectively a hole in the defences and a chance to jump in undetected and let Volkova wreak her havoc. If the Iof can jump in on the other side of the gate's structure the large ship closest to the gate might well not detect it. The cloud of objects (mines? ships? cows in spacesuits?) around the gate is far enough away that a good tight jump that leaves the Iof pressed up right against the gate might also lead to the cloud not seeing what's going on.
Calculations for the jump are pretty much done but there's no hurry to jump right this minute if the gate is going to open at its regularly scheduled time on the 11th. Volkova takes a break from her studies on the mechanical and electrical structure of the gate to make three compressed air jetpacks for the sabotage team: Volkova, Vob (who can speak Human and help with the work), and Nana Kim (who will stand watch while the other two work). Compressed gas will be much harder to see on sensors than some sort of real rocket even if it won't provide as much thrust.
Jillian, going over her own notes, remembers that the D'vor are able to track jumps. This may well lead to trouble with all the jumping they've been doing, but she decides not to tell anyone. What would it help? They don't really have any option other than jumping and they'd might as well use this ability while they can.
Volkova's much more open with a realization that she has about jump gates. Thinking about the spacing of the slide points, it makes sense that jump gates are actually set up on a slide point themselves! The machinery of the gate means that more destinations are possible than the single one that naked slide points allow and the trip itself is shorter and safer. There's no reason that jump gates couldn't be built at the other slide points. More immediately, if the Iof is spotted on this mission before calculations for the jump are finished it still has a way out: in theory there's nothing stopping it from simply using the jump gate as a slide point and seeing where that takes it. Good news!
The plan is for the Iof and Steel Hummingbird to jump together somewhat close to the gate but out of casual scan range and separate. Then the Iof will make the calculations for the jump to the gate itself. Just as it's making its jump the Hummingbird will make bluff attack runs on the gate, coming close enough look like a threat and draw the attention of the ships in the area but not close enough to get shot out of the sky. While the D'vor forces are so distracted Volkova's team will do their work on the jump gate while Padb calculates the jump to safety. If things go south the Iof will either use the slide point in the jump gate's centre or fly (and likely fight) through the enemy forces at the gate. If Volkova and her crew are on board that's best, but if not they'll use their compressed gas jets to -- hopefully! -- sneak through the D'vor's cloud as tiny objects and get picked up at a predetermined location.
While plans are being hatched the Grob finally get atomic weapons explained to them. It turns out that their confusion about how three bombs could be enough to destroy Keun was because they had never figured out fission. They thought that the bombs, as large as they were, were no more powerful than RDX!
Everyone catches up on sleep as best they can and finally it's time to put the plan in motion. Nana Kim and Volkova board the Iof and then the first jump happens. It goes well and the two ships quickly unentangle themselves from the other. The Hummingbird flies off a bit and takes position. It takes Padb three hours to make the calculations for the next jump and then the Iof disappears.
Malcolm takes his ship on an attack run aimed at the Manu 2 fuel ship, a valid target that's near the jump gate. With the destruction of the base on Keun the Juche forces will be extremely reliant on the Manu 2 for refuelling and they take the Hummingbird's presence very seriously. While it's mostly a distraction to allow the Iof to do its thing on the jump gate the crew of the Hummingbird will be happy to take out the fuel ship if they can. There's a bit of a surprise when a naval stealth ship that Jillian missed suddenly looms close to them and fires a salvo of missiles! Malcolm veers away from the attack and Bishop, manning the cannon, fires back and hits the stealth ship. The ship is still in the fight, though, and jams the Hummingbird's communications. They're not too committed to attacking the fuel ship, so Malcolm focuses on putting distance between the Hummingbird and the surprise ship. He avoids the multiple missile attacks -- they're homing missiles -- and pulls away to safety.
Jillian has plotted several possible attack runs at the Manu 2, enough to keep the local Juche ships on their toes for several hours. They'll likely never be a real threat to each other, but no one will let their guard down.
At the gate, the Iof pops in just a few metres from the structure -- Padb did a good job with the calculations. The ship will do some passive sensor readings of the ships in the area but will otherwise refrain from any activity that might draw attention to it.
Jump gates are all built pretty much the same: a torus with a 110m inner diameter and with a ring thickness of about 10m. The ring has many knobby sections for machinery and fuel containers, but those bits are all on the outside. There are ten crew who live in a boxlike structure on "top" of the ring.
Nana Kim, Vob, and Volkova exit the ship in their EVA suits, dragging along the compressed gas rockets and a large number of tools. Without any gravity all the equipment has no weight but it does have mass and momentum, making it awkward to move about for everyone but Nana Kim, who as a marine is quite at home in space. Volkova hopes that she got the location on the gate right for optimal sabotage. As it turns out, she did! She and Vob get to work while Nana Kim scouts the area, making sure to circle around to the other side of the ring and get a look at the large ship that's in this cloud of debris.
Volkova's a demon, working at amazing speed. Vob manages to keep up, but just. When they communicate it's by putting their helmets together and shouting: using the suits' comms would be a terrible mistake. Her original estimate was that this would take several hours of work but she pushes herself to get it done faster and manages to do everything in an hour, even with the clumsy EVA gloves slowing her down. She and Vob get a surprised Nana Kim and enter the Iof, where the crew at first thinks that things haven't gone well given how short her sojourn was. Once they're convinced that everything's fine Padb finishes the calculations -- they seem to be easier to do this close to a slide point and they're done before Volkova gets her suit off. Chig uses the Egg to tell Bishop that the mission is done and the Iof jumps to the predetermined meeting point.
Once the two ships meet Jillian explains that, as the D'vor can probably track jumps, they should fly off some distance before exchanging crew. Once this is done and the Iof and Hummingbird attached via umbilical, it's time to relax. Volkova wants to explain the brilliance of her sabotage, but the only one who really understands is Vob, who was there. She's set up the system so that it will look like the failure will be due to mechanical issues, even upon inspection. Fixing the obvious issue will actually set up another point of failure that no one would ever look into based on the initial issue, and by the time the crew on the gate have figured out everything that's gone wrong the time to open the gate will be long past and there's no guarantee that the crew will ever think that it was sabotage. She's so brilliant, but has no one to share it with. If only Olivia and the Resplendent Dragon were back in the system already! And Sabine too, she supposes. Volkova takes a couple of bottles of slivovitz, because "she's awesome", and heads to her quarters for some deserved drunkenness.
Nana Kim draws what the ship on the other side of the gate looked like: it was a shiny black thing that looked kind of like a knobby spine with clenched fingers all along its length, or so she says. Her drawing is bad enough that it just looks like a scribble. The Iof didn't manage to get a decent read on the objects in the cloud around the gate. The best they can figure is that it was a mix of tiny ships, not much larger than a car, and what might well be mines, but everything was powered down and so passive readings were not too much use.
It's been a busy four days for the crews and they've given the Daebak navy an amazing advantage with the destruction of Keun and now disabling the jump gate. The Steel Hummingbird isn't a fighting ship, though, and it's now going to turn into a slugfest. It's time to think about their plans.
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Bishop's Bedpost Notch Count: 1, somehow (running total: 31)
Jillian's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 5.5)
Malcolm's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 15)
Volkova's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 7)