The Kylen Extraction

Re-cap of session 66 played on 6 June 2025.

Location: the Darran-Kylen System (Halcyon 1918)

Dates: 021–5601 to 031–5601

Within a few kiloseconds of emerging from jump-space at the outer edge of the Darran-Kylen system, it's clear that something unusual is going on here. The Dejah Thoris's sensors are picking up lots of ship activity and your comms are lighting up with urgent messages from various quarters. For those of you with Navy backgrounds, the pieces quickly fall into place: you've arrived in the opening stages of an invasion. The intruders' fleet has apparently just finished forming up on the system's fringe and is now moving in formation toward the mainworld, a moon named Kylen that orbits a large ringed gas giant. The defenders' ships are beginning to deploy as well, screening the moon from attack. Military officials from both sides have hailed you. The invaders command you to go into high orbit around the small gas giant in the outer system, to refrain from refueling, and to await further instructions. The Kylenese government, invoking some obscure article of martial law, orders you to proceed immediately to the mainworld where you may join in its defense. Fortunately for you, neither side seems particularly interested in enforcing those orders: they have far more important things to worry about than policing the movements of a small free trader. But another hail does catch your attention. It's a tight beam communication from Kylen. Someone named Nabonassar Nkanya pleads for you to undertake a mission of mercy: he wants you to take his spouse to a neighbouring system for advanced medical care. He offers you a million credits to do the job.

You ponder the situation while you guide your ship through the process of refueling in the upper atmosphere of the small gas giant. (The invaders, who forbad this, don't bother sending anyone to stop you. But you can guess they're displeased.) You respond to Nkanya during one of your breaks — it's too turbulent to remain in the atmosphere for the whole five hours it takes to fill your tanks — to ask for more information, and get his reply a half-hour later. It seems his wife, Nazia, has a rare condition and requires advanced treatment at the TL-10 medical facilities in the neighbouring system — which, ironically, is where the invading force has come from! The Kylenese, however, have prohibited all ship departures: virtually every vessel capable of mounting weapons has been requisitioned for system defense. It's not clear how long this interdiction will last, but everyone knows that the timeline for a planetary invasion is measured in days and weeks. Nazia can handle a week in jump but any further delay could be fatal. Nabonassar wants her to get underway as soon as possible. Anticipating your reluctance to land on the moon and see your ship impounded by the Kylenese, he proposes a solution: he will get his wife into orbit via an air/raft — a vessel so small and unthreatening that it may escape notice — where you can scoop her up without any landfall required.

After checking Nkanya's bona fides — he's a wealthy industrialist and a member of mainworld's governing oligarchy – you agree to do it. But there's a problem: the invading fleet's drives are faster than yours and they're going to reach the mainworld before you do. Some fancy navigational computations reveal a solution: by taking advantage of a gravity slingshot maneuver around the red subdwarf star, you can cut a day off your travel time to Kylen.  Flawlessly executed, it brings you close to the moon at almost the same time that the opposing fleets are clashing less than 2 million kilometers away. Sure enough, you detect the air/raft: Nazia, unconscious, is strapped into a passenger seat. But it seems the Kylenese Defense Forces have noticed you: a fighter has been dispatched to deal with potential hostiles. Torka gets on the comms and manages to talk the pilot and his superiors out of attacking a non-military target, but to succeed he has to establish his credentials by revealing his name, rank, and former affiliations. With that threat now averted, you can focus on Nazia. With some stellar piloting by Nogudnyk (box cars on the roll!), you match trajectories and quickly retrieve the spacesuited patient, bringing her to your med lab for care. 

As you race toward the jump point, Nazia awakes and asks for Nabonassar. You inform her that he wasn't in the air/raft and, seeing her reaction, realize that he obviously lied to her about his plan. She asks if you can open a communications link to him. You eavesdrop discreetly on their conversation (made awkward by the multi-second time delay between transmissions that grows ever longer as your ship speeds away from the moon). It seems Nabonassar sedated Nazia for the ascent and, contrary to what he had told her, stayed behind to make the craft lighter and faster. Now he's trapped on a world about to experience a planetary assault while she rockets to another system alone. When will they see each other again? It's unclear.

As you prepare to make the jump, Torka analyzes the available sensor data. It looks like the invaders have achieved effective control of the system. Soon the ground assault on Kylen will begin. You're glad to get free of the fighting. Now, you've got a week before you have to explain to the six low passengers on board why you're bringing them out of cryosleep 3.2 light-years from their intended destination....

Battle of Kylen (not to scale)

Next stop: Randin (Hacylon 1917).