Yesterday was the third episode in our Firefly RPG, "Humped." Our heroes arrived at the Bostonian Mining Complex, a joint venture between the Alliance and the Ghost Rock Mining Company. The complex was a cluster of asteroids, linked together by rail lines. Trains traveled along the rails to ferry minerals from the asteroids to the space station.
The mission was simple: go to the habitation asteroid where Mark, the Alliance soldier the crew rescued in the pilot episode, lives, get the keycard he hid in his room, and get out of there. Only problem was the Alliance was ready for 'em. The crew had to figure out how to sneak through the complex and escape with the card.
Heading up the Alliance trap was Commander Martha Austin....Jack's former fiance and commanding officer when he was a spy for the Alliance during the Unification War. This episode's flashbacks revealed the story: Jack gave valuable Alliance secrets to Martha. They planned on getting married after the war. Jack had doubts about what he was doing. In the second flashback scene, the leader of the Browncoat cell he infiltrated...Kitt...discovered Jack was a spy. But rather than just put a bullet in his head like she would anyone else, she took Jack to the aftermath of the Browncoats' biggest defeat...Serenity Valley. Jack saw the full extent of what he and the Alliance had done. Jack then renounced his ways. He tried to turn his fiance, too...she agreed, only to later stab her former love in the back. Using the rendexvous information Jack gave her, Commander Austin launched an ambush on the Browncoat cell. Every rebel there was captured and executed, except Jack and Kitt, who escaped and have been on the run ever since.
(this also gave insight into Kitt's love/hate relationship with Jack...she loves him for his heart, but hates him because he was ultimately responsible for her cell getting killed by the Alliance).
Jack knew that his presence would be a danger to the mission, so he slid into a vacuum suit and hitched a ride on a train bound for the habitation area. Meanwhile Kitt and Q tried to board the train the ol' fashioned way. They ran into an Alliance security checkpoint. They didn't know what they were going to do, so Q decided to create a distraction...she kicked some poor dude in the back of the head and caused a ruckus. A few soldiers left the checkpoint to handle the situation, and Kitt slipped through.
She wasn't unnoticed, though. She got about halfway across the asteroid cluster when the train came to an emergency stop. The Alliance decided that due to the checkpoint breaking down, they were going to conduct an ID check right there in the middle of space. A tense scene ensued: Jack tried to break into the operator's car to get the train moving again, while Sally, onboard the Serenity, tried to hack up some falsified credentials for Kitt. Both tasks succeeded: Jack got the train moving again, and Kitt, with the papers of a mining foreman, got away clean.
Jack wasn't so lucky. When the train arrived at the station, a bunch of Alliance troops were waitin' for him, and took him into custody. In a hilarious and unfortunate coincidence, Dr. Montgomery found his own way across the station and ran into Jack as he was getting captured. Dr. Montgomery used his Blind as a Bat trigger to fail to recognize that Jack was in a bad situation and he should stay away. Jack then used his Guilt By Association trigger and Dr. Montgomery ended up getting arrested as an accomplice.
Meanwhile, Enzo headed over to the supply depot on the space station and began getting parts for the Serenity. He talked Jack through how to wire the train door open. A couple of miners overheard that, and brought him into a secret compartment beneath the station. Turns out the miners have had it up to here with the Alliance and their pushy policies, and they were ready for a revolt. Noticing Enzo's ability to wire that door, they "enlisted" his help in getting him to rig a series of explosives across the rail lines. This would cut the Alliance off from the rest of the complex and make the conditions right for some good ol' fashioned anarchy.
As you may expect, it all ended in a heapin' helpin' of chaos. Jack got a face-to-face with his former lover. Jack had a shoe bomb that Enzo built for him. He threw it at her, blowing off half of her face. The bomb's radio frequency also matched the frequency of the bombs Enzo was planting on the complex, so those all went off at once, plunging the whole complex into hell. Kitt got into the soldier's room, got the key, and fought her way out of the trap and, with the help of some rebellious miners, got back to the dock. The doctor snuck into the communications room and masked the Serenity from the facility sensors, allowing Sally to fly the ship around the facility and pick up the crew as they returned from the mission. At the very end, the crew raced across the dock and had to leap onto a moving Serenity as Alliance guards were bearing down on them. Jack was carrying a wounded Commander Austin with him, holding her hostage against the Alliance. ?Before he jumped, Jack shot dead his former lover, his revenge for her treachery fulfilled.
Everyone made the jump...except poor Dr. Montgomery, who landed in a heap on the dock and got captured by Alliance troops. Looks like next episode, a resuce operation's gonna be in order...
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