Some help spicing up my TOS scenario.

I'm in the process of writing up a TOS-era one-shot for my players using Savage worlds.

It's a straight forward scenario that runs like this:

An Oberth class ship, the Mercurial has gone missing near the Federation/Gorn border. It was headed to x-planet with a load of vital drugs for an outbreak of space flu. Folks are dying and they need those drugs.

The player's ship, a Constitution Class is the only ship in range (natch) can they check it out, please?

When they get there, they discover the Oberth in a sorry state. A Gorn cruiser is latched on and the Gorn have pretty much stripped it of everything, even it's Dilithium crystals, so it's pretty much running on emergency reserve power with minimal life support. The Gorn were about to depart and leave the Mercurial crew to their fate when the players showed up.

When the player's ship shows up, the Gorn Cruiser detatches and prepares to engage. The players will need to destroy or disable the Gorn ship first (an excuse to try out the superb Savage Words Red Alert rules). They need to be careful because if they destroy the Gorn ship, they lose the drugs that have been looted.

Once that's dealt with, there is then the issue of the Gorn remaining on board the Mercurial and their hostages.

I had it in mind that the Gorn pirate captain would be on board the Mercurial - though why he didn't board his ship to attack the players is a bit of a sticking point.

Hey ho, so he demands that the players either give his remaining crew a lift to Gorn space or they just leave so that they can be rescued by a Gorn ship unhindered.

If they don't he will begin executing the hostages (the Mercurial's crew).

The players obviously need to free the hostages and 'neutralise' the Gorn pirates. Obviously how they do it is up to them but I'm looking for suggested complications to make it more interesting and maybe raise the stakes.

The obvious one that springs to mind is that a player might have a relative or loved one on board the Mercurial.
Political complications don't hold much weight as these are pirates and as such are simply criminals. The Hegemony won't really have grounds for complaint.

I'm wondering how the Gorn captain would hold the hostages. Stick them all in the shuttle bays with an armed guard, maybe? That way he can space them if needs be, at short notice. That way, any team beamed aboard would need to remain undetected until they'd freed the hostages.

Any suggestions?

Crow

The simplest thing I can suggest is this: The Mercurial (why not USS Mercury?) is actually the bad guy here; one of the scientists is actually using it to surreptitiously wage biological warfare (using a probe launched from the ship, laden with an artificially-enhanced version of that space flu) against a Gorn colony; they want revenge for the death of a loved one/mentor/clone/betrothed on Cestus III. Extra points if the Mercurial is staffed by Vulcans or Deltans or some other of-course-they're-good-guys species. The Gorn, believing the Mercurial is operating under Federation orders, are interrogating the crew to determine what really happened. The medicine might be actually needed on the Gorn colony as well, putting the Crew in the position of deciding between Federation deaths now and a future interstellar war.

1. The pirate captain would be easily defeated by transporters. The Mercurial is on battery power and that won't power the shields. The Constitution, after defeating the pirate ship, just transports the Gorn life signs off the Mercurial. Problem solved in 5 minutes at the table.

2. This scenario needs plot complications. TK came up with a very Trek example. Other ideas are that instead of the pirate attacking the Constitution (clearly suicide), they:
a. Threaten to blow the Mercurial apart if they aren't allowed to escape.
b. Flee at high warp while the Mercurial bleeds atmosphere. The Constitution must stop to rescue the crew while the pirates get a head start at running and hiding.
c. Contaminate the anti-virals with a more serious engineered virus. It will still cure your space flu, but will infect you with space ebola. Then let the Feds have their cargo back but hold the virus design "hostage" unless they get certain demands fulfilled.

I'd go with the 'cheating' approach myself. The Gorn have warp drive -- clearly they aren't stupid -- so they would use the Federation's values to their favour.

"Go ahead, chase us -- while the people on the Mercury suffocate from the hull breach! Your choice..."

Once the survivors are rescued, get the sensors going full power to trace the Gorn ship, and have the chief engineer moaning about how the poor engines cannot take the strain of Warp 8 speed!