The Peacemakers

[Solluk]

Mission Title: The Peacemakers
Synopsis: The Renari and Rodeli, two rodent-like humanoids from neighboring star-systems, are ready to end a decade-long war which has devastated their homeworlds.  Now they have asked for the Federation's help in mediating a peace conference.    When the USS Yourship picks up the Renari ambassador and begins transporting him to Rodeli to attend the conference, the ship comes under attack!  Now the USS Yourship must navigate a life and death struggle that may decide the fate of two worlds.

Starting Point: The USS Yourship picks up a Renari ambassador from Renar, with the intent to transport him to a peace conference on Rodel.

End Goal: The USS Yourship uncovers the identity of the attackers, salvaging what may have been a doomed peace effort.

Story points that must be passed?:

I) The USS Yourship picks up a Renari ambassador from Renar, with the intent to transport him to a peace conference on Rodel.

II) Enroute to Rodel, the USS Yourship comes under attack by a Rodelian Battleship.  The Rodelian battleship exchanges fire with the USS Yourship.  Although the Rodelian Battleship is inferior in technology, it fights with an almost supernatural understanding of the USS Yourship's weakneses and battle maneuvers.  It is as though they know as much about the USS Yourship and its maneuvers as the Yourship crew themselves.  Despite this knowledge, the battle begins to turn against them.  They withdraw at high speed when a victory seems unlikely for them.

III) Due to battle damage, the USS Yourship is having trouble pursuing.  Meanwhile, telepathic crewmembers aboard the USS Yourship report having terrible headaches.

IV) The USS Yourship Engineering and Ops departments work to repair the battle damage so that the ship can make a successful pursuit.   Meanwhile, the Medical teams on the USS Yourship discover that the telepathic crew members are having headaches due to invasive telepathic intrusion.  It seems likely that their opponents were using powerful telepaths on board the enemy ship to read the minds of the Yourship crew, and the special sensitivity of telepathic crew members caused them to experience headaches as a result.  But oddly, neither the Renari nor the Rodel are known to have telepathic ability.

V) When the USS Yourship is repaired sufficiently for pursuit to be successful, the Rodelian battleship turns back upon the Yourship.  The two ships will meet again within an hour's time.  While the Yourship is likely to be victorious, if the Rodelian battleship experiences the same prescient knowledge as before, it will be a bloody and costly battle.

VI) Fortunately, the Medical staff have the idea to use some means of preventing telepathic intrusion.  (Alpha wave modulators, Synaptic stabilizers, some kind of drug, etc.) Which they are able to replicate and/or distribute to the crew to protect them from telepathic snooping.

VII) The USS Yourship defeats the Rodelian battleship.  When the battleship is boarded and secured by Security personnel, it is revealed that the ship is crewed by K'Normian arms merchants.  The entire attack was staged to ruin the peace talks because the K'Normian merchants have been selling weapons and ships to both sides in this war, and a peace would cut into their profits.  Worse, according to records on the Rodelian ship, this is not the first time the K'Normians have conducted false-flag attacks to perpetuate the war.

VIII) The USS Yourship is able to safely deliver the Ambassador to the peace conference, armed with the knowledge that the K'Normians have been responsible for exacerbating many of the disagreements between their peoples.  Peace looks very likely to follow.

Departments: (To make sure everyone has something to do.)
- Flight: There will be a lot of exciting flying during ship battles.
- Engineering: There will be a lot of battle damage to repair.
- Operations: This thing and that thing will absolutely need transfers of power, and repair teams will need to be dispatched to handle the other thing!
- Security and tactical: Many weapons will be fired, and an eventual boarding action may provide some fun starship hallway shootouts as the enemy is subdued.
- Medical: The Medical team will diagnose the telepathic snooping and work with Science to come up with a remedy and countermeasure against it.
- Science: In addition to performing sensor tricks during the battle to assist Tactical, they may collaborate with Medical to create a countermeasure to the telepathic snooping.

Special Notes: Remember that whatever you use to counter the telepathic snooping will become part of the fleet canon, so make sure there is some kind of difficulty or risk in implementing the solution.  Otherwise, it will become too easy to prevent telepathic powers from working in future adventures.  The countermeasure should be something much harder than changing shield modulation.  Perhaps the remedy might be only usable for a brief time before causing serious health side effects.  This would explain why it is used once in this mission and then rarely, if ever, used again.