USS Potemkin: the Actan freedom campaign

Pirates and Monsters

USS Potemkin stops off at Encrastin V to make repairs at the automated Lithium cracking plant there. Space pirates make a daring raid to seize the Dilithium. The Potemkin beams down a security team, but before massive reinforcements can be mobilized the pirates manage to raise the plant's shields. The pirates gain the upper hand by using a transtator-destroying device and use primitive weapons.

The reason the breakdown occured at the plant is because a native life form from the bleak surface of the plant damaged the machinery. The native life form is a Psyleech, feeding off mental energy. The Potemkin crew manages escape their captors when the psyleech attacks, and they gain the upper hand in turn by using macguyver-like makeshift weaponry. The pirates manage to escape, however.

Unknown to the crew, the Psyleech is a product of Vegan bio-engineering.

The Vegan Buildup

The Potemkin crew attempt to find out where the pirates were operating from. By analyzing the transtator-destroying device they discover it was a product of ancient Vegan technology, so the Potemkin travels to Vega to Root out the pirates.

Arriving at Vega, the Potemkin crew discovers that there is a rag-tag fleet of salvaged alien warships, armed civilian vessles, and historical relics of the Romulan war in orbit. Investigating, the crew learns that the pirates are actually freedom fighters trying to free their home planet, Actan, from Klingon Rule. Actan was a lost human colony that was ceded to the Klingons by the Organian peace treaty. The Klingons proved that they could best develop the world, the Federation wasn't ready for another war over an obscure lost colony.

The Pirates use their stolen Dilithium to power their scavanged, pathetic war fleet. The Potemkin's captain chooses to "overlook" the freedom fighters.

Mutiny on the Potemkin

The Potemkin picks up a distress call from a freighter. Damaged by a gravitic mine in the chase, the Potemkin catches up to a freighter that is fleeing an alien ship. The Potemkin beams over an away team to aid the freighter. The away team discovers the freighter is running guns, attack robots and other weapons to Actan. Although illegal, this is for the freedom fighters. The aliens attack again, fighting the Potemkin and beaming over their own away team to retake the freighter. The alien's secret weapon is a field that increases agressiveness, turning members of the Starfleet crew against each other. The starfleet away team defeats the aliens by activating the attack robots, who are unaffected by the agression-field.

Unknown to the crew, the aliens were mercenaries hired by the Klingons to stop the gunrunners. The Klingons would have liked to have done this themselves, but the Organians would have stopped them from fighting.

Revolt on Actan

The Potemkin is finally ordered by Starfleet to aid the Actan freedom fighters. They gain access to Actan by requesting shore leave there, which the Klingons are bound by the treaty to allow. In an epic adventure, the crew is drawn into the revolution. After several misadventures, they finally hit upon the plan of sabotaging the Klingon mining efforts. If successful, the Klingons will no longer be the most efficent exploiters of the planet, and the Organians will award the planet to the Federation.

The crew and rebels stage a commando raid on the Sandminer, a mobile city-sized mining complex that sifts Actan's desert sand for Topaline, a mineral vital to modern life-support systems. Unfortunately, a turncoat in their ranks betrays them and the raid is a trap. Thanks to innovative tactics, the crew is able to hold their own and the ongoing battle critically damages the mining operation. The Organians award Actan to the Federation when Klingon mining output stops.

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