Thanks to K'pok's superlative navigational skills, Our Heroes popped out of hyperspace right inside the Pantokrator system. As an added bonus, there was nothing solid in front of them when they appeared in realspace at a substantial fraction of the speed of light.
As expected, soon after exiting hyperspace they were hailed by an Imperial Navy cutter and ordered to come to a halt for a customs inspection. A gunboat came alongside and sent a shuttle to dock with the good ship Vulcan-ships-don't-have-names-stupid, and the customs team — two marines, a Naval officer, a TES officer and an unidentified civilian — came aboard. They immediately began a log scan and a physical search of the vessel. They were interested to know why Our Heroes had so many corpses stowed away in various places about the ship, but since corpses aren't strictly speaking contraband, it was purely a matter of curiosity. Kappo experienced some qualms about having a crate of explosives under his bunk, but apart from noting the fact of its existence the marines didn't give it a second thought.
K'pok registered their salvage claim on the Hzeel derelict now floating somewhere in hyperspace, and it was duly witnessed and date-stamped by the naval officer (Lieutenant Hendry Albert Wittleson III, as a matter of fact. Just thought you might like to know that).
Once the search was complete, the naval contingent left and the remaining two — the TES officer and the civilian — took Kappo aside on to the shuttle for a private discussion. The civilian identified himself as a local TIC field agent with orders for Kappo concerning a covert mission within this system. Kappo was ordered to land on the planet Ierisiou at specified coordinates, enter the remains of what had once been a TES monitoring station (originally thought to have been destroyed in the war between the two planets), and retrieve datacubes from the station archives. He would then rendezvous with a naval craft before proceeding on to one of the Pantokrator lagrange berths. There was a suggestion that the debilitating war of a century ago had been engineered; one theory was that the Thorgons were responsible (that, of course, being the default conspiracy theory), but more likely, and more useful for the Empire, was the possibility that the war had been purposefully engineered by the Pantokrator of the day, in which case the present government would be liable for some very, very heavy reparations (though to whom they would be paid was a matter left unsaid; most likely the money would go straight into the Imperial coffers). Having evidence of the case would provide a potent stick with which to keep the uppity Pantokrations in line, and it was hoped that the old datacubes would provide that evidence. The mission budget included provision for a fee for his civilian team-mates: 750 credits each per day (up to 3 days on-planet), plus the berthing fees for the V.S.D.H.N.S while our Intrepid Crew finished their own business on Pantokrator.
Kappo went back to the V.S.D.H.N.S and let the rest of the crew in on the secret; they shrugged collectively and said something about not having anything else to do that day anyway, and set about compiling lists of all the equipment they hoped to weasel out of the Navy arsenal. One thing which gave Jek some considerable satisfaction was getting hold of an XXXL environment suit, so that he could stay safe in the glowing ruins of Ierisiou without giving himself a permanent wedgie. Kappo got some more demolition charges, since you can never have too much high explosive, and everyone (except K'pok, who declined) was issued with ancient chemical-mechanical projectile assault rifles and pistols for reliable use in a hard radiation environment. They were given a quick familiarization course by the naval armourer, who failed to laugh at any of their jokes about muskets and blunderbusses. No sense of humour, these navy types. K'pok did ask for, and got, a riot foam sprayer sufficient to cover about 10 square metres in quick-setting immobilization foam. They also got an air raft, which they attached to the hull with magnetic grapples, and they were issued with 24 1-hour doses of RadPro to help stave off the hair loss and bleeding gums while they were in Ierisiou's glowing ruins.
Once fully briefed and supplied, K'pok lit the blue touchpaper and they blasted for Ierisiou orbit.
They decided to go the long way round, leaving the plane of the ecliptic and approaching Ierisiou from the shadow of the sun to minimize the chance that they might be observed by watchers on Pantokrator. A brief passive scan showed one small ship in orbit and another on the surface not far from their own planned insertion point; there was no way of telling who or what they were without a more active scan which would reveal their own presence, so they just crossed their fingers and started the landing cycle.
As they entered the outer atmosphere, the computer started making those "Whoooop! Whooooop! Warning! Collision alert! Collision in 12 seconds!" noises that always indicate something really bad is about to happen. Immediately everyone began scrambling desperately into their spacesuits, except for K'pok who called up the obstacle on the viewscreen — it proved to be a missile rising towards the V.S.D.H.N.S from the surface. K'pok immediately went into an evasive pattern,trying to use the anti-debris laser to shoot it down, but the missile kept on coming. Flying like crazy, K'pok managed to maintain separation and even landed a hit with the puny ship's laser, but its only effect was to trigger the warhead to flower into a dozen smaller warheads. The general consensus was that things had just got a lot worse. A momentary miscalculation by K'pok gave the pursuing missiles an opportunity to close the gap; our Brave Heroes shut their eyes and put their fingers in their ears as the missile swarm tore into the ship.... and bounced tumbling away off the outer shields. All except one failed to detonate, which was a very good thing, because the one which did detonate took down the shields, stripped away all the external sensor arrays, destroyed the navigation systems, life support systems and artificial gravity. It also pulverized the air raft on the hull, as well as blowing up a console next to Jek and showering him with sparks and bits of circuit boards.
There followed a full and frank exchange of views; some wanted to skedaddle back out into space and make repairs before risking a landing, others wanted to land as quickly as possible to avoid any more missiles. In the end, K'pok had the casting vote by virtue of being the one actually flying the ship, and she made straight for the surface. Having no sensors or navigational array any more, she had to navigate visually and dropped for a city chosen at random, hoping it was the right one. She flew low over it, hoping to stay low enough to avoid being a nice fat juicy target while staying high enough to see a reasonable amount of the city for comparison with the orbital photos. By a stupendously lucky chance, it turned out that they had found not only the right city, but even a right part of the right city! Spying an more or less open area, K'pok put the ship down into what must once have been a large park, now being reclaimed by the twisted mutant post-holocaust vegetation.
There was a brief moment of peace as everyone counted their arms and legs to make absolutely sure they weren't dead. Then there was a load "BONG!" on the hull. And another. And then some more. K'pok flicked on the viewscreen and panned around to see what was going on, and found a number of humanoid creatures milling around in the undergrowth and hurling things at the ship. Not just little things either; big things like boulders and big tree branches. Rather than risk going outside and being squashed with a rock, K'pok took off again and made for another open space, this time a square surrounded by the shells of buildings. She hovered briefly, checking to make sure that there was nobody in sight, and then settled the ship as far from any cover as she could manage.
Weptish immediately set about crawling around the bowels of the ship to find out what was broken and how to fix it, while everyone else pored over their orbital photos to find out where they were and how far they'd have to go to get to their objective. Not far, as it turned out; the position of the old monitoring station was only a couple of hundred metres from where they'd set down. Kappo set claymores around the ship, and left the detonator inside with Weptish — who took not a blind bit of notice, since he was utterly engrossed in his repair work. Leaving Weptish obliviously fixing things like crazy, they headed off into the ruins.
Moving through the desolate streets, they saw little moving except for the inevitable tumbleweeds (not ordinary tumbleweeds though — mutant tumbleweeds). At one point they startled something which looked like a mangy dachshund covered with sores and with a dozen superfluous legs dangling along its flanks; it ran off making a pathetic gurgling baying noise. Coming to an intersection, they stopped: scanning the surrounding buildings, Kappo briefly caught a glimpse of eyes and noses peering over a windowsill (one head, but plenty of eyes and noses) before it ducked back inside. From around the corner they heard footsteps hurrying away. Peering around, they saw a tall humanoid with a tiny torso and head running away down the street towards a crowd of thirty or forty mutants, all gathered around the intersection of the corner where the old TES station was supposed to be located.
Taking the bit between their teeth, the bull by the horns, and the bouncer by the testicles, they turned on their force fields and began to walk down the street towards the gathered multitude who immediately raised an outcry and began shaking their fists and shouting incomprehensible imprecations. There was a shot from someone in the crowd which went ricocheting down the street, though it didn't come close to hitting any of the Good Guys. Kappo went into Calming And Pacification Mode and emptied a clip over their heads — they immediately scattered to cover, and a desultory fusillade of shots came back, one of which hit Jek, knocking him arse over kite. Kappo tried to change his mag on the run and dropped it in the road; he stopped for it and was hit by a human body which came hurtling out of one of the old store-fronts, knocking him down. He saw a movement in the dimness and let rip, virtually cutting the unfortunate mannequin-thrower in half and spraying blood and gore all through the old shop.
The team ran towards their objective, and more shots began to come from the mutants; poor old Jek was hit again and was knocked senseless. Meanwhile, Kappo went into full MyLai mode, and laid waste left and right. He poured fire into an upstairs window where someone was wrestling an oil-soaked mattress over the sill; the mutie was flung back inside, but the burning mattress fell out into the street just in front of the doors of the station, sending up a plume of choking black smoke.
About then the doors were pulled open — Kappo and K'pok got a brief view of what looked like a huge dustbin pointed right at them, with a sputtering fuse on top. They flung themselves to the side as the home-made bombard blew, showering the street with a shrapnel of old cutlery, nuts and bolts. Alas, Jek failed to spot the danger and just as he was staggering to his feet he was caught in the blast and flung back unconscious again, his shield down and his environment suit torn open.
K'pok charged in through the dense smoke which now completely filled the station lobby, spraying riot foam ahead of herself. Kappo continued the work of massacre, and a lengthy period of hand-to-hand combat ensued. Jek eventually woke up again, and staggered into the lobby a little unsteady on his feet, but gamely ready to rejoin the fray. All was going swimmingly well, from a blood-soaked slaughter-of-minions point of view, when the muties disengaged and drew back. The reason became apparent when, from outside the building, two mutants approached: one huge, muscular and horn-covered, the other eyeless, scrawny and with a nastily-pulsing exposed brain throbbing beneath a slimy membrane. Kappo immediately shrieked as his brain was crushed telepathically; once more and and he dropped unconscious to the ground. It was Jek's turn next (but he was getting used to being unconscious by then) — as he dropped he managed to blurt out "not.... brain... guy...ugh!", but it was too late for K'pok to do anything about it. Her brain was next to be squeezed into pulp, metaphorically speaking, but her Vulcan mental training kept her upright briefly. It was surely only a matter of time before K'pok would succumb like the other two, but then the mutie mentalist suffered a powerful brain fart, his eyes rolled up and he dropped to the ground unconscious, having squished his own cerebral cortex. The little eyeless one threw himself onto the inert body, pawing at it and mewing pathetically.
K'pok fought off the now demoralized remainder of the mutant crowd, giving Kappo and Jek time to recover. They groaned their way to consciousness, took up their assault rifles and cold-bloodedly emptied them into the helpless unconscious mutant and his pathetically sobbing lover. The rest of the mutants fled just as fast as their various numbers of limbs could carry them, leaving the bulk of their fellows blood-sodden hulks lying in the street, more sad victims of the cruelty and brutality of the normals.
