Second session confirms that this is the right way to do a Star Wars rpg campaign! A good sign of a great rpg session is that you ignore all the snacks in the table and reserved for the game for the whole session... This continues the story started in the first session. A new character, Chass 'Jazz' O'Brien entered the game in reinforcements arriving from Alessia II, flying an X-wing.
A fierce mass battle took place; Situation was tense all the time, Republic force was underpowered and in danger of being overwhelmed by a highly superior fighter force. Imperial captain rolled very well, but Jazz and Ferro in their X-wings did some heroic fighting, and Captain and advicing Maxmillian did great job managing their force, and finally before Tie Bombers were able to strike the cruiser and escorting Corellian Corvette, the Imperial carrier recalled the fighters and started retreating procedures.
Republic fighters eliminated slower bombers and were able to deliver hit to the engines of the carrier in hope of disabling it, but it seemed to start a chain reaction which exploded the ship. A number of escape pods were launched, which started to head towards Alessia III, a nearby planet with a lot of forest, rocks and steam-volcanoes. Several pods were captured by tractor beams and one by Chazz's expert maneuvering with his X-wing.
Alessia III, planet of steam
Captain (captain of the ship, which is actually Commander by rank), Senator and both pilots decided to land to the planet with a commando group and started to located fallen pods. They located the first pod and were able to shoot or capture the imperials that had arrived it, even if they missed their change to surprise them as Commander accidentally shot with his rifle (another botched Notice -roll). Intimidation wasn't successful, but a wookie commando insisted he should try; He rolled well, but assisting Senator Von Popol's fumbled his roll and his tongue could't form words well enough in Shyriiwook and slight difference in 'grab and raise him' and 'grab and finish him' made the wookie who hated the Empire with passion to do something unreversable. This made further questioning easier though.
They kept the shuttle circling in the air, using loudspeakers to order nearby imperials to surrender before they would be bombarded. Several warning shots were made with frigate Cavalier's turbolasers, after which they got a first group of surrending imps. They headed towards another landing spot while the shuttle did intimidation rounds. The shuttle got few groups of captives while our heroes got ambushed by stormtroopers in a good position.
The group decided to retreat and call in a bombardment. Chazz (loyal and overconfident) decided to try to save a wounded commando in the line of fire, and then a wookie lying right next to the first one, spending and recovering two bennies - unfortunately the human commando couldn't be helped and died soon. And unfortunately was also that turbolasers aren't actually that accurate, and first bolt happened to hit right next to Chazz and the wookie, making a tree fall on them. Chazz was able to jump away and help the wookie a bit, but unfortnately wookie's feet were stuck under the trunk.
After the bombardment, the troopers were eliminated and tree was lifted off the wookie with the shuttle. Commander found a high-level data storage device from one of the stormtroopers, one which could be the device the spy had carried. He made a trip to the frigate with the shuttle taking prisoners there and without letting too many people know, he ordered the device to be decrypted and then returned to the planet. After an hour he got a message that there was problems at the frigate, as a just launched Longprobe Y-wing had disappeared and a few troopers had been killed. Closer inspection revealed a prisoner was missing and the technican that was assigned the task of decrypting the device was killed and there was a place in a storage area where it seemed like someone had been living for a week or two. The group decided to return to the frigate as another, larger ship arrived to help to clean up the planet. They headed back to Alessia II, center of the Republic administration of the sector.
On the way, captain noticed that one body brought onboard looked a lot like one of the prisoners he had seen when returning to Cavalier to deliver the device. The poor trooper had been shot to neck from short range.
When returning to Alessia II, Cavalier got a message that also a few other ships have had infiltrators, that seem to have resided on the ship for some 2 weeks; One big cruiser's captain had been killed by such infiltrator. There was a bit of loose time on the orbit/planet before the ship had to leave for it's next mission, as diplomatic negotiations had stopped with the world of Duram - apparently because of fear of suffering fate of Caledon if they joined the Republic.