Campaign Diary
Led by Sera, the crew traveled along the drainage pipes that ran from the Science Dome, and eventually emerged at the agricultural laboratory.
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As they made their way to Dr Oren's office, Kumra picked up the scent of Grens in the air.
The crew was able to ambush Dr Oren as he came into his office, and quickly subdued the elderly man. They accused Dr Oren of creating the Grens as a bio-weapon, and accusation which the scientist scoffed at. The Devourers, as he called them, was an extra-galactic species that ventured into our galaxy several years ago, perhaps by chance - they and their bio-ships were such perfect killing machines, Oren gushed, that technology alone could not create them.
Going through Oren's file, the crew learned the history of the Serrans' encounter with the Grens:
Several years ago, a Serran ship, carrying settlers to Koskara, came upon and were attacked by a Gren bio-ship. The unarmed passenger ship could not retaliate, and it seemed that the Serrans were doomed. But then the attack stopped suddenly, and the bio-ship came to a dead stop in space. Boarding the bio-ship, the Serrans found the Grens in a dazed state, and captured a few for further research.
Dr Oren and his team were later able to discover that the Grens were a psychic species, much like the Serrans, and they used their psychic abilities to communicate with each other. This made them uniquely sensitive to the Serrans' psychic abilities - it was the psychic emanation from the frightened crew of the ship that paralysed the Grens.
With further experiments, Dr Oren's team managed to lure Gren ships to themselves, and managed to capture more Grens. They subsequently developed a psychic technique that allowed a trained Serran to kill a Gren with a single thought, and they named the ability Raze. Over the next few years, they trained every adult Serran on Koskara to use Raze, and the safeguard the secret then locked the memory of the training inside their minds. The password to unlock the memory was known only to Amahrius, Coban, Oren, and Admiral Karragan.
The crew tied Dr Oren up and proceeded to the adjoining Council Dome. When they entered the dome, they found the revolt already in progress. The Resistance fighters were trading fire with soldiers, and they seemed to be doing worse.
Gyan Rosling caught sight of the crew, and shouted at them to pursue Coban into the Central Command building, from where he could block access to the Council Dome and prevent the populace from joining the uprising.
The crew ran into the building, took out the few guards outside the Central Command Room, and Jet opened the door with the access card on one of the soldiers... to find himself in the line of fire of half a dozen soldiers.
The crew tried to storm the room, braving the hail of fire, but Coban threw them back with his psychic force. As the door once more started to close, Kumra grabbed RB, and using him as a shield, charged past the soldiers and their fire, and crushed Coban against the computer console. Seeing their governor dead, the soldiers surrendered.
Looking at the screen, they realised that Coban had been in contact with Admiral Karragan, who still commanded the Serran fleet and had two thousand marines under his command. The crew needed to help the Resistance gain control of the Domes before Karragan could react.
Jet got to the console and shut the link between the Military Dome and the Council Dome, unlocked the connection to the Residential Domes, and opened a broadcast to the populace of Koskara.
The crew began give an account of the Gren invasion and the Serrans' part in it. From the screens inside the Central Command Room, they could see the civilians pouring into the Central Dome and thence into the Council Dome, but their faces seemed more confused than indignant. They decided to change tack and repeated what Gyan Rosling told them about the violation of civil liberties that had been visited upon the populace lately - that seemed to work. The crowd began to advance slowly but deliberately towards the Central Command Building.
The crew watched with bated breath as the crowd came closer and closer to the cordon of soldiers who had formed outside the building. Then, as the crowd came to within an arm's length of the line, the soldiers lowered their weapons.
Just then, the crew received a transmission from the Serran Fleet: Vice-admiral Freant had led a mutiny and arrested Admiral Karragan after the latter fired upon and destroyed the Telenet satellite. The Serran Fleet would stand down, and Vice-admiral Freant would land and begin negotiations with the rebels.
The Resistance had won, for now.
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