Session 4: My Enemy's Enemy

In the prior session, our marines, assisted by Marshal James Hyram, raided the insurgent compound amidst the UPP invasion. They linked up with Carvalho, killed Imre Botos, found the bodies of Hammer and Wright, and rescued Dante. Mason was killed during the raid. 

The group escaped and was hiding from UPP and insurgent patrols while they caught their breath and planned their next move. 

Meanwhile, events that the party was largely unaware of were occurring in the colony. Colonel Meyers had anticipated the UPP invasion and had made some plans of his own. He took a particularly virulent strain of their black oil pathogen and added it one of water kegs being sent to spaceport. Meyers identified the infected water container for one his marines, LC Francine. Her orders were to offer the untainted water to the colonists crowded at the spaceport. When the bombardment and invasion began, Francine was told to brew coffee with the infected water and make sure it was available to tempt the UPP soldiers when they arrived.

Francine was aware that the Colonel has entrusted her with the tainted water. She did not know that anyone infected with it would, shortly thereafter, have an juvenile neomorph come bursting out of them.*

While the group was hiding out from the UPP, Marshal Hyram got a call from his old friend Francine. The UPP forces had swept through the spaceport and captured the few, outnumbered marines who had been watching over the colonists there. The captured marines were delivered and placed in the cells at the marshal station. Deputy Dodds slipped a radio to Francine so she could update the marshal on recent events. 

We'd established that Francine was very anti-UPP. So, the marshal was surprised to hear from Francine in good health and strangely good spirits. Francine hinted that something was up. She suggested that that marines at the marshal station didn't really need a rescue, but that they might want to see what's happening at the spaceport - "just maybe stay away from the coffee." 

The players were confused by Francine's behavior. They suspected she had been compromised, and so cut the conversation short. After a brief discussion, they opted to drive the marine APC towards to the marshal station. The APC was quickly spotted by insurgent vehicles. A UPP dropship and APC began to converge on their location.

The party played some cat-and-mouse hiding from the UPP vehicles. Suddenly, the Krokodil dropship circling overhead began to spin out of control and crash-landed a few blocks away. The players went to investigate and came upon an alien neomorph in the street. They shot and ran over the alien. When they arrived at the crash site and found more of them crawling out the crashed ship, they opted to drive away as fast as they could. 

The marines regrouped and decide to head to Fort Nebraska. They arrived at a quiet base, still smoking from it's bombardment, with a UPP APC parked out front. They blew up the UPP vehicle with a lucky shot from the M577 plasma cannon and rolled up to the front door of the smoldering fort. 

Here we introduce the CO of the UPP Forces - Major Zihong Liu. Major Liu was not having a good day. His invasion, which was started off as a cake-walk, was falling apart around him. One of his two dropships had just crashed and he's getting troubling reports from the crash site. One of his two APCs was just blown up. The squad he sent into the fort sublevels has disappeared entirely. And he's getting panicked reports from soldiers guarding the starport.

Major Liu approached the marine APC by himself and offered to chat. He tried, without much success, to find out from the marines what the hell was going on in this colony. He then admitted the invasion wasn't going well, and that he had two choices:

1. Pull out his forces and nuke the entire colony from orbit. Or... 
2. Gain control of the situation.

The major's main concerns where the players blowing things up and the soldiers that had just disappeared in the base. He offered a deal: If the marines would go down into the fort, and clean out whatever was down there, he would allow them, and the rest of the captured USCM soldiers to leave the colony in peace (and he wouldn't nuke it). 

The characters, tentatively accepted the deal. The major allowed them to pull what they wanted from what was left from the base armory. We ended the session (and Act II) with the characters preparing to descend into Fort Nebraska. 

*This was my more home-grown and low-key version of the black oil drop from the adventure. I envisioned a chaotic starport scene with UPP soldiers, neomorphs, and infected colonists who could birth a xeno at any minute. But the players didn't take the hint and skipped it. 

Session 4: played 4/28/2021