It started off as the heroes were recovering from their ordeal with the dimensional horrors.  Their wounds were healed and they were getting set to finish scouting the cluster of systems that the League had asked them to.  As they were about to head out they were contacted by Yoshiko Matsuharu, one of the regional directors of R&D for StelTek, a large starship-building company (the heroes' ship is of StelTek design).  She asked if the heroes were willing to do her a favor.  It seems that one of StelTek's new ship designs had a flaw in it.  It contained a miniturized warp drive, but the drive burnt out, leaving the test pilot and the new ship prototype stranded at a small League water-extraction outpost in the Buffer.  Yoshiko also mentioned that the pilot (Tariel Nuna) had found what seemed to be an alien artifact in a small nebula she had flown through.  All she wanted the heroes to do was go to the outpost (named Walin Station) and pick up Mrs. Nuna and the artifact, then bring them back at the first opportunity.  Since it wasn't that much out of their way (and since Yoshiko offered them $8000 to do it) they accepted and headed out.

After an uneventful trip in warp, they arrived at Walin station and proceeded to dock.  Once inside, Kurknoon and Ezekiel were greeted by a small utility robot who offered to take them to Mrs. Nuna who was currently in sick bay.  The robot took them around the station, giving them a tour of various areas.  Ezekiel asked why there seemed to be noone else on board, to which the robot answered that due to corporate cutbacks, and the fact that the station was largely automated, there was only a skeleton crew here.  The robot continued giving them a tour of various station areas until both heroes got fed up with the robot's distractions and tried to use a video phone in the crew lounge to call C&C and ask them to direct them to the sick bay.  At this point, the robot made a small clicking sound and exploded, knocking Ezekiel unconcious with accumulated wounds and knocking Kurknoon around quite badly.  Kurknoon picked Ezekiel up and ran back to the ship, only to be ambushed in the crew quarters area by three thugs with render rifles and chainswords.  He quickly ducked into one of the crew quarters, laid Ezekiel down, and waited for the thugs to attack.  Only one did, running into the room with his chainsword swinging.  Kurknoon took a couple wounds and some stun damage, but managed to cut the thug down with his claws.  Looting the thug's body, he found not only the weapons, but also some comm gear and a trauma pack.  He used the comm gear to call for help from the ship and used the trauma pack on Ezekiel, all the while expecting an attack (which never came).  Ezekiel got up, badly bruised but conscious, and they both ventured out into the hallway where the thugs were last seen.  Immediately the two remaining thugs opened fire with their render rifles, with Kurknoon charging straight at them, claws and teeth bared.  After a furious fight, Kurknoon managed to drop the both of them, one mortally wounded, one knocked out.  The heroes continued towards the ship until they met up with Mar'eketh and Natasha, who had come to help them.  Both Mar'eketh and Natasha looked a bit bruised up, having just been in a fight with a couple of thugs themselves.  At this point, a voice came over the station intercomm, introducing itself as Teliko Sato.  The man told them that he was in charge, and then demanded the heroes leave or he would have them killed.  They returned to the ship, healed themselves as best they could, then headed back onto the station.

At this point, Rhys got here and Dalek joined them.  They stocked up on weapons (Kurknoon taking his machine gun and weren halberd), brought up a scematic of the station on the ship's computer and headed to the sickbay.  As they entered sickbay, a security robot activated and was about to open fire on them when Kurknoon blasted the thing to bits with his machine gun (after searching through the wreckage, they found the robot had only been armed with a stutter pistol).  Inside the medbay, two robots were keeping six humans heavily sedated.  The group approached the humans and saw that they were not really injured badly, so they tried reviving one (giving him a stimulant to wake him up was the only thing that worked).  One of the medical droids tried to put the patient under again, at which point Kurknoon snapped its arm off.  The other droid then tried to sedate the crewman, this time Kurknoon merely restrained the robot.  Mar'eketh went to work on reprogramming the droid while Ezekiel asked the crewman what had happened.  Apparently, shortly after Mrs. Nuna docked here (she had been taken to sickbay to receive treatment for mild radiation poisoning) a ship posing as a League transport vessel docked, claiming it was bringing supplies.  It was bringing invaders however, and soon the station was taken over.  After that, the crewman just remembers waking up here.  The heroes revive all six crew, and prepare to take them back to the Phoenix when the second of the two enterances to the sickbay opens, revealing an Exterminator warrior! (See Log 3 for details on Exterminators).  The massive cyber-warrior opened up on the whole room with his quantum minigun.  Luckily, there was plenty of cover, and everyone dove out of the way except for three of the crewmen, who were still groggy from the sedatives in their system.  All three were killed instantly by the deadly barage of fire.  At this point, Dalek and Kurknoon open fire at the Exterminator, and a slugfest begins (Dalek's armor saving him from a couple of nasty hits).  After a few rounds, and some help from Ezekiel and the others, the mighty warrior was killed.

The heroes and the crew make their way back to the Phoenix, patch up some wounds, and then head back into station.  Atrus also tells them that an attack class military vessel has dropped out of warp and is heading for the station.  It will be there in several hours.  The heroes make their way to the station armoury, which is quickly blown up by a utility robot inside.  The heroes then head to the C&C of the station.  Dalek enters first, counting on his armor to soak up any damage that may be waiting for him.  As he enters the room, five guys with render rifles open up on him.  He lucks out, and after the first round he has 1 wound point left.  Meanwhile, after Dalek's charge, the others pile into the room and open fire.  Although Natasha and Ezekiel mortally wounded one, and Dalek and Mar'eketh knocked one out, the true credits of this battle go to Kurknoon who, in one autofire shot from his machine gun, mortally wounded two guys (one dead, one dying) and powdered a third (the guy had 5 mortal and Kurknoon did 14 mortal to him :).  After interogating the knocked out guy, it is found out which of the men is Teliko Sato (one of the dying men).  They also find that Mrs. Nuna and her experimental shuttle are somewhere on the surface of the planet they are in orbit of (she fled with some of the crew when the thugs attacked the station).  They try o communicate with Mrs. Nuna from the station, but get no response.  They try to scan for her shuttle, but find nothing.  Finally, they take Teliko Sato back to the Phoenix, put him in sickbay (sedated), and then try to scan the planet again (the ship has better sensors).  This time they find her and are able to communicate.  She says that she has the alien device with her, and wants to get back home, but doesn't want the shuttle to fall into the wrong hands.  So, she brings the shuttle to the Phoenix, then she and the rest of the crew get on board, but not before she sets a delayed autodestruct sequence in the experimental ship.  The Phoenix flees, the experimental ship blows, the heroes get out of the system, and everything is well in the universe once more.....

As the heroes head back to the League, Mar'eketh began working on a device to hook Atrus into the alien artifact (which appeared to be a data storage terminal).  He finally succeeded, and various information about the new race (called the Rakon) began popping up (once Atrus translated the language).  Also, the coordinates of their homeworld, Qua'bal, were given.  The heroes made it back into League space, landed on one of the frontier worlds and were eager to report their findings to League Intellegence.  The crew of the station that escaped with the heroes got off on the planet, and made arrangements to be transported home.  The heroes talked to League intellegence who said that a first contact team would be assembled and sent to the rakon homeworld in roughly ten days.

The heroes kicked back for some well deserved rest.... until two days later they were contacted by the League.  It turns out that those thugs they fought were Puritans (which the heroes had pretty much guessed at already, after fighting the Exterminator).  It also turns out that one of the crew who escaped with the heroes has disappeared.  Apparently, the League did some heavy checking into his background and found that his identity was false (but very well hidden) and that he had been linked to several Puritan related crimes in the past.  Fearing that he may have seen the coordinates to the rakon homeworld, the League ordered the heroes to haul ass to Qua'bal and act as a scout; a fleet was being assembled and would be sent very soon, but for right now the League was worried that the Puritans may try to attack the rakon (it was also learned that the rakon are an extremely pacifistic race).  The League gave the rakon datapad back to the heroes, telling them to learn everything they could about the rakon, their culture, and their possible defensive capabilities.

The heroes raced to their ship and booted it to the Qua'bal system.  After several days in warp through the Buffer, they emerged into the outer reaches of the Qua'bal system.  The system was fairly barren, containing only the rakon homeworld, a dense asteroid belt, and a gas giant with no moons.  Atrus magnified the rakon homeworld, showing the PCs that there was an elaborate system of what appeared to be solar collector satellites around the planet.  They would turn towards the sun for a few moments, then turn and fire a beam of energy down to the planet.  As the heroes were observing this, Atrus notified them of multiple warp signatures coming in a few AU away.  A fleet of 23 ships dropped out of warp, four courier class vessels immediately heading towards the homeworld.  The fleet hailed the heroes, and their hopes that these were League reinforcements were dashed when they saw two Exterminators standing behind the captain of one of the vessels.  The captain informed the group that this system was going to be cleansed of vermin, and that the heroes' would be cleansed right along with it.  Ten fighter craft were launched at the heroes' ship.  Meanwhile, Atrus informed the crew that each of the four courier ships were League made planet-killers; ships that were basically flying bomb-bays.  They were lightly armored, and had no space weapons, but each one could level roughly forty percent of the rakon homeworld and was very fast.  The heroes ran like hell away from the fighters, trying to intercept the planet killers, but the fighters were gaining.  All of a sudden, Atrus picked up multiple warp signatures coming from a slightly different approach vector than the Puritans.  Cheers went up as the heroes thought that League reinforcements were coming, only to once again be dashed when they discovered it was a  fleet of kybus warships!  The kybus commander hailed the entire system, telling all non-kybus to leave, as this system and all of its inhabitants were now property of the Union of Klorr.  The Puritans freaked out and immediately redirected their fighters towards the kybus vessels, and began to move to attack positions.  The kybus responded in kind, even though they were outnumbered.  Meanwhile the heroes got into weapons range of one of the couriers just before it entered the asteroid field.  They fired a missle and got a good hit on the ship's command compartment.  This sent the ship carreening into a nearby asteroid.  As the entered the asteroid field, Ezekiel made an error in navigation and the ship was nailed for several wound (the armor absorbing most of it thankfully).  Also, Atrus showed them the progress in the battle between the kybus and Puritans; each side had received a bit of reinforcements from warp, but the Puritans had received a big advantage.  Somehow, they managed to get their hands on a Vengence class destroyer, a massive ship armed with a zica laser, which it used to cleave a kybus ship in half right before the groups' eyes.  Another courier ship got into weapons range in the asteroid field, and the Phoenix hit it with another missle, this time in the engines compartment, forcing the ship to slow down.  The heroes and planet-killers emerged from the asteroid belt (the PCs began hailing the rakon, but got no response).  The slowed down ship got within range of the Phoenix's plasma cannon, so Atrus was ordered to shoot it down.  Meanwhile, Dalek had a good idea.  He linked into Atrus, who then linked him into the rakon satellite network.  Dalek took control of a fully charged satellite and proceeded to blow the lead planet-killer out of the stars.  Atrus kept pummeling the slowed planet-killer with plasma cannon shots, and finally destroyed it.  The last courier however, was being a problem.  Due to some lousy rolling, Ezekiel couldn't catch it.  Also, Dalek grabbed a hold of several more charged satellites (causing brown-outs in many areas of the planet) but couldn't hit the last vessel to save his life.  With only a few moments until the ship could release its payload onto Qua'bal, the crew agreed to have Mar'eketh overload the ship's engines, which he did (and got a good result).  Although the engines were damaged, it was a small price to pay as the Phoenix got a great boost of speed and got into weapons range of the last courier vessel.  Two missles were fired, both striking, but doing virtually no damage.  With one attack to spare, a missle was fired that hit the ships' bomb-bay, setting of the deadly weapons and destroying the ship entirely.

The group quit holding their breath and breathed a sigh of relief.  Checking up on the fleet battle, they saw that the kybus, when wounded beyond further use, would resort to such desparate measures as kamakazee attacks, and setting their anti-matter reactors to self destruct.  Both fleets looked like hell.  Finally, multiple League ships warped in and began to help the remaining kybus ships shoot down the rest of the Puritans.  The kybus were forced to renounce their claim on the system, and reluctantly left.  The heroes were taken aboard the flagship of the fleet where they were congratulated on their success.  Now, the first contact talks with the rakon begin.....