Shore Leave: The Abandoned Facility

Alira, Zephyr

Mars sets up two search teams to investigate both facilities at the same time. He is in one team, Zephyr and Alira are in the second. With you are Lisa, who jumped at the request to join your mission and who was quickly recruited by Lt. Mars (There might be a follow up conversation with Alira's mother later, as she has not been involved in this decision yet to speed things up), Julia, who is coming along because she knows the layout of these facilities and can help you with that kind of information, and a security officer by the name of Liam Quinn. All of you have been equipped with spacefleet issue phasers, hand held or rifle, your choice.
Once your team has been assembled, you gather in front of the security station and are beamed out to one of the two decommissioned terraforming stations. It's a huge, ugly building that has been painted completely brown to be less visible in the gigantic forest surrounding it. The temperatures here are noticeably colder than they were back in town. Depending on your preference, it might be either slightly too cold or much more pleasant than the tropical weather you were in before.

Julia looks at the building and says: "The front door is that way. There should also be an access tunnel that would lead us right into the center of the facility. The entrance for that should be not far from here in the forest."

Quinn has a rifle, Julia has a pistol, Lisa is also carrying a rifle. Zeph can choose himself.

Julia looks around to get an understanding of the surroundings, then eventually leads you away from the facility into the surrounding forest. You all notice how eerily quiet it is there. Except for your own footsteps and noises you make while stepping on twigs or moving bushes out of the way, there are no noises. No animals, not even wind.
Julia wanders around a bit, searching for the entrance. After two or three minutes, she stops and points you towards a small trapdoor in the forest floor, obscured by some moss but still visible. She clears the door and accesses the computer screen next to it. "This was designed as an evacuation route, not a way in. It should be stripped of its security mechanisms, though, so I'm confident we'll be able to enter through here." She keeps working on it for another minute before the door finally unlocks and opens into a dark, unlit corridor. Quinn leans in and shines a flashlight into it. "Looks empty and intact. Should I go first or are we all going together?", he asks.

"The facility is off the net. I can scramble the access data again but if anyone else wants to get in, that would only slow them down, not stop them. I would need database access to set up anything safer than that", Julia explains.
Quinn jumps in through the trapdoor and shines his flashlight forward. The tunnel is long, straight and dark. The air smells really bad down here but not bad enough that you can't breathe.

"I got your back, Alira!", Lisa says with a smile as she watches everyone climb into the hole and then follows behind you.

"For sneaking out it'll be the same as getting in. I can slow them down but not stop them. Unless you have an idea, Zephyr?", Julia replies.

Julia seals up the exit behind you and works on the console on the inside of the trap door for a minute. "It should only be two or three hundred meters I think", she whispers. You notice that any loud noises you make echo through the tunnel so she is keeping her voice down to prevent that.
Quinn starts walking down the tunnel, his flashlight clipped to his uniform and the phaser rifle in both hands. He's walking slowly and keeping eyes and ears open for anything unexpected.

You move down the tunnel until you eventuall come to its end. There is an automatic double door that does not have any electricity and therefore won't open on its own.
"This door should lead us right into the central command room of the facility", Julia explains quietly. "It should be abandoned and out of power, though"

See what you can do to open it.

Julia walks up to the door and looks at it and the small, powerd down console next to it on the wall. "If we managed to power up this console, we should be able to open the door. But I have no idea how we could do that, sorry. Or we could just try to disrupt the magnetic lock and open them manually but it would be more..." She suddenly breaks off and leans against the door. After a few seconds, she whispers, much quieter than before: "I hear sounds from the other side. Someone or something is moving around in there. Nobody should be here except for us!"

Zeph and Lisa work on connecting the tricorder's power source to the door to get it to open but eventually, they notice that it's not doing anything. It has to be possible somehow but they cant get it to work.

"I think it should be possible. But phaser power cells are designed to emit short bursts of high energy. If we don't do it right, we might fry up the door controls completely", Lisa says.
Quinn adds: "And we would have to take apart one of our phasers. We might need all of them once we get through the door. We don't know if the people on the other side are friendly"

Julia does what you tell her. Quinn stands in front of the door, his weapon ready. Lisa is also in position, ready to fire her rifle at any movement.
Once Julia shoots the console, Alira pushes the door open. It's heavy but she manages without much trouble. You hear some shouting from the other side. Nothing too informative. "Cover" or "Intruders"...
As she is opening the door, Alira sees six people in the large room behind it. It looks like the control center of the facility, large, deactivated screens and computer terminals everywhere, a huge tactical terminal that can display large maps in the center. The men are wearing civilian clothes in a style that looks like Earth or at least the center of the Consortium. They are all human, four men, two women. They're all armed with spacefleet style phasers, rifles and handguns and as soon as a moderate slit is open in the door, a phaser beam is fired towards Alira.

Alira dodges out of the way at the last possible second, the phaser shooting through the slit in the door right where she was standing less than a second earlier. Quinn immediately moves to the door and opens fire through it into the room but quickly has to dodge to the side as well when another shot goes through the half-open door. "Whoever they are, they know how to fire a phaser", he says.
Lisa grabs her rifle firmly in both hands and moves to the door. She leans into the opening to fire but moves out of it again before she even gets a single shot off.

The phaser fire from the other side of the door stops but you don't hear the sound of weapons droppin to the ground.

You continue your countdown and eventually reach 0. There is no response or even sound of movement

There is a short delay before you get a reply: "Understood, Lieutenant. We are transporting a team to the entrance and an armed officer to your location now."

You still have to wait almost a full minute until a woman wearing resort security uniform with a belt that has three stun grenades attached to it and carrying a phaser rifle materializes in the tunnel only a meter away from Alira.

There is still no sound from beyond the door untli this point.

The newly arrived woman doesn't hesitate. She goes up the door and peeks through the gap that Alira opened. "It looks empty", she says but she still takes one of the grenades from her belt and throws it into the center of the room.
There is an explosion shortly after and you all see bright light for a second. Everyone standing in the blast radius of the grenade should be stunned just the same as if they had been hit by a phaser set to stun.

Immediately after the explosion, Quinn, the woman and Alira enter through the gap in the door. Lisa follows right after them. It doesn't take them long to realize that the room is empty. Whoever the people in here were, they aren't here anymore.

However, they were not able to hide what they were doing in time. A battery is hooked up to one of the main consoles in the control room and unlike everything else in the room, that terminal is running. If you inspect it, you will be able to see that it is accessing terraforming data, specifically the information on the stellarforming that has been done on the star of the Caspera system.

Julia gets to work on the console right away, Quinn stays with her as a guard. Lisa, Alira, the woman with the grenades, Bea Cardona, (and possibly Zephyr) get ready to beam to the other site. At one point during their preparations, the team that Alira requested to the front door of the building comes in and secures the room.

When they beam over and materialize in the other facility, the command center is already secured. It looks in slightly worse shape than the other site but there is no battery hooked up to any of the terminals and no signs of a fight.
Lt. Mars walks up to Alira and says: "We still haven't searched the whole building but the command center was empty. We did not encounter any resistance. We heard about your firefight. I hope nobody got injured"

Zeph

Zeph goes through the information on the screen with Julia. Although he is a scientist and familiar with the basics of terraforming, Zephyr has trouble understanding much of the jargon, abbreviations and calculations used here. If he had more time, he could familiarize himself with it but for now, he's relying on Julia to explain most of it to him.

"It's possible they have a start in mind to stellarform but the equipment is extremely expensive and even if they have the funds, it will take them years to replicate the success we've had here, even with this data, if they managed to steal it. I'm no expert on terrorism but I feel like they probably have something faster in mind", Julia thinks out loud. "With this data, they could in theory revert the stellarforming of Caspera's star - or change the parameters enough to let it swallow this planet - but what would be the point? Destroying this resort makes no strategic sense and there are faster ways of doing that." She keeps looking through the files with Zephyr, explaining things to him and copying data from the terminal onto her datapad. "I can show this to my commanding officer - or maybe to Maen. They know much more about stellarforming than we do and might be able to pick up on a pattern or anything that we're missing."

---

Alira

"I would love to say we're increasing security but with the search and the responsibility of guarding the resort guests, we are already spread very thin. I will make sure to remind all my people again that the attackers are armed and dangerous. And I will tell them to shoot without hesitation when they encounter them - Shoot to stun, obviously", Mars replies.
A man in golden uniform joins your conversation. He shows Alira a datapad and says: "There are obvious traces of transporter activity where you encountered hostiles in the other facility. We have not been able to track down their destination but we are continuing our search. That confirms that these people must have a ship in the system, however, as there are no transporters on the entire planet."

Please let me know as soon as you get a lock on that trace.

For now I guess we just continue searching warehouses.

She taps her transporter.

Please transport my team to the next warehouse on the list.

"Stand by", a voice replies and a few seconds later, Alira, Lisa and Bea are beamed to the first warehouse on their list. The building is old and mostly made of wood. Looking at the surrounding area, you are on the slope of a huge mountain, at the edge of a large forest. Lisa, who picked up a tricorder in the second facility, aims it at the warehouse and says: "I'm not picking up any life signs. Should we still have a look in there or move on?"

Alira receives a message that Zephyr will be joining her group again. A few seconds later, he materializes right in the middle of your little group.
You move up to the front door and find that the lock on it has broken down and you can simply push the door open manually. Once you do so, you can enter. The room is dark, the only light source being the opened door, and, as far as you can tell from the entrance door, empty. Large shelves take up most of the room. You also see a staircase leading to a higher level and a closed door in another wall. You don't hear any noises from this level or another one.

You quickly manage to search this room and don't find anything of importance. When you open the door, you see that it leads down some stairs. With the help of a flashlight, you make your way downstairs and search the basement. It looks very similar to the ground floor with high empty shelves everywhere. Searching it, you come across something interesting. The dust in a large area in the middle of the room has been disturbed and following these traces, you discover a large wooden crate. Inside are military mattresses and sleeping bags as well as rations and a small cooking apparatus. None of this stuff is Consortium design and in fact, under closer inspection, you discover Naplican writing on almost all of the equipment you find here.

"Understood, Lieutenant. We're switching our scan pattern to look for Naplican energy signatures and communication patterns. Stand by"

Lisa steps closer to Alira. She's trying to be tough but the discovery that there are actual Naplican agents on the planet is distressing. Bea is browsing through the crate to look for anything of particular interest. She looks up at Zephyr. "Can you determine how long they've been gone with your tricorder? They might still come back to get their stuff back"