News comes of a ship off its flight plan: filed for L4, burning for L5. Communications are down so we burn to intercept. The target is a Steptoe-class, Erasmus Groenevelt, refitted as a cargo hauler, carrying a musical group to Islandia; Inspector Barlow of the Luna City Police has suspicions that they might be bioroid traffickers.

Audio exfiltration from on an onboard *AI confirms hijacking, and suggests that the destination may be Sakharov. The biocrew is being held hostage in the control room, with two non-hijacker passengers in the passenger area, all under guard.

The ship’s AIs can control sensor inputs to some extent, so we consider ship plans and viewport angles for a low-visibility approach. The plan is to contact with the boarding pod, while Alacrity stands off offering assistance.

Images from the control room, relayed to Luna City police, confirm that these are the same people; they seemed unusually jumpy and possibly rabbitted when a policeman incorrectly thought he’d recognised them. The musical group cover looks good, but is flimsy when prodded.

Boarding tents are dropped off from the assault boat while we provide distraction from the ship. They encounter mild resistance (tangler grenades, which make the following exchanges of fire rather more challenging) but electrolasers and some gyroc fire win the day. With plating from the junk box, we restore environment and indent for a civilian tug to return Erasmus Groenevelt to Luna.

We consider the possibility of hostage rescue training, as well as adding electrolaser capacity to the Microgravity RATS.