The Shipping Sector Ambush

Overview

Kinetic Logistics’s answer to the compound raid, delivered on the crew’s own station during a routine patrol shift. A prepared killing ground on the cargo level: a tripwire, a comms jammer, gas, and armoured shooters with weapons that punch through station plating.

It failed. But it establishes that the crew are now being hunted where they live, and that whoever arranged it knew their patrol assignment.

What Happened

• The crew drew routine deck patrol in the Shipping and Receiving Sector — long dim corridors, conveyor noise, nobody around.
• Six halted the group on spotting a thin wire strung across the corridor near a badly lit intersection. Shackleton Magellan traced it to a small trigger box with a red light and an antenna, concealed under a conveyor belt.
• The crew tried to call station security. Their communications were completely jammed — a silence that had not been there minutes earlier.
• The conveyor stopped. Two armoured figures appeared at the far end of the corridor, rolled metallic canisters down it, and took cover; the canisters burst and flooded the corridor with thick gas.
• Six called the warning, sealed his suit’s environment, brought up the chameleon surface of his Disguised Space Armor, and charged straight into it. Shackleton Magellan took cover under the conveyor belt; Rock Lavey moved to engage.
• An attacker fired a high-intensity beam at Six and critically malfunctioned. The shot went wide over Six’s shoulder and struck a concealed assailant working around behind the party — killing the flanker the crew had not yet seen.
• Beam fire burned large holes through the reinforced corridor walls and damaged the station’s electrical runs, setting the lights flickering.
• Shackleton Magellan worked around the tripwire and dropped one attacker unconscious with his sonic stun rifle.
• Six closed through the smoke, drew axe and sidearm, and fired a burst that struck an attacker through the visor, killing him instantly — a kneeling shot at roughly twenty-five yards, through gas, into the weakest point of the armour.
• The last conscious attacker abandoned the fallen and fled into the dark.
• Searching the bodies, the crew recovered two functional beam pistols and a Kinetic Logistics ID Card from a pouch inside the dead man’s suit.

Outcome

• Kinetic Logistics losses: one killed by Six, one killed by his own side’s malfunction, one captured alive and unconscious, at least one escaped.
• Crew gains: two beam pistols, the Kinetic Logistics ID Card, and — most valuable — a live prisoner who cannot be quarantined out of the system the way the stolen ship was.
• Established: Kinetic Logistics is operating armed teams inside MacMillian Station IV, can jam station communications at will, and knew where the crew would be.
• Damage: the Shipping and Receiving Sector corridor walls are holed through and its electrical runs damaged — a visible, physical incident station security cannot file away quietly.