Date Played: 01 July 2001
Game Date: Tuesday, 17 October 2000
The balloon went up at about 10:30am. The team members got phone calls from Alisa St James requiring their presence for a security mission at a nearby Paul Robeson State Nature Reserve. She tells them to be prepared for trouble.
The car park at the nature reserve is full of National Guard trucks and soldiers helping school children onto buses heading back to school. The team are bailed up by a heavily armed sentry who points them towards the action on mentioning Alisa's name.
Between a couple of 6x4s, a couple of Aegis cells', including Alisa and Riggs, are listening to an Air Force Major is outlining the mission and assigning roles. Other cells get missions with cool sounding names such as Moondust and Blue Fly. Our heroes only manage a lowly "security picket, south side". The Major tells them that the cover story is they are recovering a downed military satellite.
Picket duty is boring duty. There's far too much sitting around waiting, secretly hoping, for something to happen.
At one point, a two-man news crew sneaks into the team's allocated area. When stopped, they attempt to interview Martin Osbourne, who responds with years of FBI training in being non-committal. Eventually, they get bored as well and leave. Thomas Malachi follows their exit from his hidden vantage point and tracks them as they leave the trail and join up with four other men dressed in black fatigues, armed and armored.
Before anyone can react to this, sounds of screaming and gunfire echo down the valley from the area allocated to the Moondust and Blue Fly teams. Our heroes are torn between curiosity and duty. Duty wins out and they prepare an ambush for the intruders.
Isn't it funny how sometimes nothing at all happens and at others everything is happening at once.
Just as the intruders, whom the team believe are Black Book agents, are starting forward, there's a rustle of undergrowth behind Flex. A little girl in a pink top and denim overalls, looking sad and lost, says "I want to go home". Flex, who can only deal with one problem at a time, gags and ties the little girl up and hides her behind a tree before resuming her sniping position.
Martin comes over to take care of the girl, screams and empties both barrels of his shotgun into her head. Her did not see a girl tied behind the tree but a spindly, grey skinned creature with a bulbous head and huge almost shaped, wrap-around eyes. He stuffed the creature's body in a kit bag and returned to his position.
The gunfire and screaming from further up the valley ends with a loud explosion. It's echoes hang in the air for minutes.
Malachi, in a sudden attack of either bravery or stupidity, tails behind the Black Book assault team and takes out the last two agents with silenced shots to the head. The third agent in line hears Malachi, turns and sprays the area with lead. Malachi drops him and runs before being gunned down himself.
Over the radio, the team learns Black Book assault squads are attacking on at least two other fronts, which have been weakened by other Aegis picket teams moving on request to back up our heroes.
Flex and Martin move to avenge Malachi's presumed death. Flex takes up a sniping position on the side of a hill about 20 metres below the Black Book assault team and is shot in the back. Martin, who went the wrong way entirely, kept going until he emerged, kit bag in hand, into the car park and the safety of the National Guard soldiers looking after the trucks. Riggs limps into the car park with an unconscious Alisa over his shoulder.
The other Aegis teams trickle out of the valley carrying their wounded and bits of wreckage. The Major calls in three helicopter gun ships to deal with the Black Book assault squads and, after the area is deemed clear, leads the few able-bodied people back in to collect the remaining casualties and bodies, including Flex and Malachi.
During their convalescence, Flex and Malachi sing the praises of kevlar vests and question Alisa about the true nature of Aegis' mission.
Unanswered Questions and Mysteries To Be Solved
All characters now have complete access to any Aegis background material they can find in rule books or on the Internet.