We were woken around 2330 by Station Security Chief Komarov. He alerted us to a report of a murder - visiting Sirian Forerunner expert Chandra Suresh had been found dead in his rooms. The manner of the murder was bizarre - the door had been cut open as though by some industrial cutting tool, and Dr Suresh had been stapled to the wall by a variety of kitchen implements
- including spoons, ladles etc. The top of his head and his brain had been cleanly removed. Two of his grad students who had been staying in the same suite were missing. Security cameras had not worked in the area for 20 minutes around the incident, although an outline image of someone in a baseball cap could be made out hanging around nearby prior to that.
Neighbours had "heard some banging" but didn't like to interfere...

Lakshmi Station doesn't exactly rise to a forensics lab, so we got Doc to sweep the room for DNA and other traces, take the body down and conduct an autopsy. Hiro Nakamura was given the task of going through the Professor's pass-coded electronic notepad, diary etc, and all outgoing shuttles were searched for people fitting the description of the suspect. However, it transpired that two people fitting the descriptions of the grad students had headed planetside (to the Jerusalem 7 colony) two hours before the time of death, and six people fitting the description of the suspect had left planetside in the half hour between time of death and station lockdown, five to Spring
City, and one to New Jerusalem.

Professor Suresh had been visiting to see something found by the Jerusalem 7 colony which they suspected might be a Forerunner artifact. A call was put in to the colony asking them to locate the students and the suspect, and detain them, but it was decided it was best to send some people planetside - Komarov detached two of his security people, who were accompanied by Bennie Parker (as liaison, since she is a fundamentalist Christian and so are the Jerusalem 7 people), Leon MacDuff, and Marines Pilar Winfield and Rob Feynman.

The autopsy and sweep of the rooms turned up little of consequence, and the Professor's notepad had nothing out of the ordinary on it, but tireless work on matching the 300 people fitting the suspect description to station personnel, visitors etc found that one had arrived six hours before the murder - a Mr Grey, the same person who had departed for Jerusalem 7 a few hours later. He had stated his purpose as 'business', but no-one could be identified who had done business with him. He was now promoted to prime suspect. He was also originally a native of Organia in Q4, as was Professor Suresh. Various wild speculation (much of it from Tony Silverado) about rogue cyborgs, killer AIs etc now focused on mutants (the strength required to drive the implements through the Professor was considerable, and no known cutting tool matched the marks on the door).

At Jerusalem 7, after a short two-hour prayer meeting, Bennie and MacDuff persuaded The Jolly Reverend Flanders to allow them to interview the grad students.
One, Nicky (???) broke down in tears. The other, Ande, proved more stoic, and was soon discovered to be a Sirian robot citizen. Fortunately his recollection of the previous evening was total, and so he was able to remark how the Professor had suddenly stopped talking to the two of them and whispered "he's coming," and then shortly afterwards made arrangements for the two
of them to head down to the planet early, saying he would follow on the next day once they had had time to view the artifact and draw conclusions for themselves - it would be a good learning opportunity.

As for the artifact - it was a carved stone Easter Island-style head about 60cm tall, and Ande had
already decided that it was definitely not a Forerunner artifact and quite likely simply a fake.

A search for Mr Grey revealed he had headed on by public transport to the North Settlement after
landing, so it was decided to proceed there to interview him. At this point I decided that the planet
team needed backup if they might be encountering a man who can nail people to walls with spoons, so I put together an 8-person Marine squad with full armour and weapons and half the APGWs and set down just outside North Settlement so that we could be present in seconds if needed.

Parker, MacDuff, Winfield, Feynman and the two station cops, together with two local security officers (Jerusalem 7 has a very lax, lackadasical attitude to security, but North Settlement is a red mercury mine run by a mining company and a bit more switched on) went to arrest Mr Grey at the hotel where he was staying. MacDuff and Winfield took up position on the roof, while Parker, one Lakshmi Station Cop and the two locals burst into the room. At this point an explosion knocked all four back across the corridor, unconscious. I ordered the shuttle in, and we hovered above the hotel. MacDuff tried to throw a grenade into the room through the window, but missed. Then the roof
around him (above where the room was) began to disintegrate. He and Winfield headed to the stairs down, dropping a grenade as he did so, but this bounced back out and 20m into the air before exploding. I ordered multicannon, SCA and APGW fire on the area of roof.

Something left the window heading out of the settlement at increadible speed. The shuttle managed to track it and I ordered pursuit. As we closed we discovered it to be a humanoid figure running at 200kph - too fast for APGW. Multicannon fire appeared to deflect away from it. I ordered us closer, to use SCA fire, at which point the left nacelle of the shuttle began to disintegrate and the pilot lost control. The last thing I remember saying was "brace for impact!"

It appears we crashed into the forest at 200kph and cartwheeled for several hundred metres. Fortunately all of the passengers were in Marine Combat armour.
The Lakshmi station pilot however, is (I assume) dead.

Our casualties:

Parker: downed but uninjured.
Lakshmi station cop: unknown
Local cops: unknown
Myself: 'just a scratch'
Marine Odumuke: 'just a scratch'
Marine Chinzi: 'just a scratch'
Marine Tung: dead
Marine Anders: dead
Marine Billingsby: serious wound
Marine Stachilov: unhurt
Marine Tableski: 'just a scratch'
Marine Mu: 'just a scratch'

[OOC: I rolled randomly for who the 8 marines were and what their injuries were. I don't know if proper medical attention could be got to them within the hour or not, but given that we had to be physically cut from of the wreck of the shuttle I'm guessing maybe not. Up to Jim.]

So. We are now left with the issue of WTF Mr Grey is, and who we tell what to...

Minogue.