Session 03 - Aerona City Investigation

We begin with Rollo officially joining the squad, after receiving a last-second promotion from his old boss, resulting in his new rank of Lance Corporal in the Stormtrooper Corps. A few days later, the crew receive orders to report to the shuttle to the surface for a mission. They load up and take the shuttle down, which lands in the Imperial Imperial Army base on Placeholder isle.
  The army grunts are suitably impressed by the Stormtroopers marching into their base, who proceed to the base CO's office. However, it is not Army command that meet them there-- it is the Scylla's Executive Officer, Commander Allana Vex. She and Sgt. Kinsey Gren give a short briefing.
  They explain that in two days, Captain Nikolas Arcas will be attending a corporate function at one of the oldest still-operational Belassar Extrasolar Exports Consortium mythra mines on this world. Cmdr. Vex expresses concern because though the event is nominally a family-friendly company picnic, an important labor union contract dispute is being resolved, and she fears that between worker hostility and the remote location of the facility, and the presence of so many high value targets, the possibility of danger is too great. She wants Havoc Squad to attend the party, in plainclothes, to shadow the captain, prepared to defend him. To that end, the squad are given false identities, 1000cr each of pay and operational funds, 3 discretionary fund units, and two days in Aerona City to secure weapons, outfits, and any relevant information. Reading between the lines, they figure out that the Commander wants this anonymous to protect the Captain's ego.
  Once in town, and having left most of their equipment behind at the base, the team spends one of their discretionary funds securing appropriate armament and outfits. They spend another on luxury goods (alcohol, tobacco, drugs, etc) to be used to bribe their shipmates. That takes up most of the day and in the evening they head to a bar frequented by the miners, the unofficial meeting place of the union. There they find many miners, including the head negotiator, Chief Easra. The zabrak woman has no real negotiating power due to dwindling membership and imperial propaganda dividing the worker populace; she is understandably frustrated, but not about to call for violence. Elza flirts her way into the lady's coveralls, while the rest of the crew do some more traditional information gathering.
  At the bar, they observe some miners speaking to an out-of-place man. He turns out to be Zance Syraf, a journalist at the local news organization. Troopers Galaar, Dorne, and Melne shadow him to his home, but along the way they notice him being followed by a Viper-class probe droid. After using Rollo's newly acquired Mandalorian bracer to tdown the probe, he and Keto prevent it from self-detonating and make their escape with its memory core. Upon decrypting the core, they find that the probe launched from the same Imperial army base that they did, and was seemngly tasked to track this reporter! Now that they are looking for them, they can see dozens of these types of probes , and other smaller droids, hovering over the city, tracking citizens.
  The next day passes pretty uneventfully, (except maybe for Elza!) with some of the crew leaving to check out the site, and some spending time around town.