We just played out the Cog segment of the Whispers scenario from the GM pack and it was a corker, 1 party fatality with a borderline 2nd escaping minus a lung! The PC's have an insanely good Sensor array on their Ship, the Ask Questions later..; they used it to identify the System Ships and Wasps protecting Cog and decided to call in Keel and his big guns. Keel wanted more specific Intel as his sensors just weren't as good as the Rogue Traders, so they managed to "borrow" a Guncutter from him as they don't have 1 and are feeling very hard done by because of this and sent the Pilot in alone with the Admech to do a complete sensor sweep flyby of Cog. A series of mishaps were finished by an almighty 01 on the Sensor roll and the Guncutter legged it out of there with a good picture of the System Boats and Wasps, they'd also picked up the weak signal from the Admech in the Core warning them to attack from the lower levels.
Keel decided that he'd lead the attack with the Rogue Traders' Dauntless in behind; however the aggressive nature of the Ask Q's Machine Spirit meant that it soon poured on the power and ran the gauntlet between the Wasps, battering 1 of them heavily and taking a 2nd right out with a flukey roll of 05 on the Lance Battery followed by a sickening pair of 10's on the damage.. exit 1 Wasp in a blaze of glory (they whacked its void shield out with the macrobattery first). Keel in his Cruiser followed up by lancing both Wasps, the System boats did little or nothing against the Hand and dropped a void shield on the Ask Q's. The following turn was a repeat excercise pretty much leaving a mauled System boat afloat which died quickly in Turn 3 leaving the PC's alone in space. Keel decided to take a high orbit to guard against further attacks whilst the PC's went in with their Redshirts.
They took in 1000 Redshirts with them in Cargo shuttles mostly whilst they headed nearer the core in Flash-hearts pimped out Aquilla lander. They all had sealed vac suits against the Toxic Storm but I was giving them 2d10% degradation every turn that they were exposed to the superstructure so they aimed at getting inside the facility pretty quickly. The best laid plans... They ran into a bunch of admech whisperers which they took down easily over a few turns and a few mm of protection ground off of their vacsuits. It was the Servitors released from the Airlock that caused them the trouble, they killed Flash-hearts bodyguard who had ran out of fate completely and almost killed the Astropath. 1 of the Servitors attacked with a flamer and everybody dodged aside except the Astropath who took an unholy amount of damage and had to burn a fate point to stay alive - I ruled that the Storm had blown out the flame igniter but that he was doused in Promethium which was burning through his suit for another d10 degradation points. When they reached 100% basically the suit was blowing seals, exposing them to the elements, etc. The Astropath followed up by really pushing his powers, caused a Perils attack and got Furies - he spent a further couple of turns wibbling on the deck and being eaten by the elements. The rest of the PC's managed to finish off the Servitors and literally flung the Astropath through the airlock door, by which time he had totally lost his Vacsuit and was making T rolls to avoid taking serious internal damage - he had the affrontery to make 2 of them and the 3rd only resulted in the permanent loss of 1d10 T, and I rolled a 1! He had a lucky escape as he lay gibbering.
The communications with the Admech, upon entering the Cog did not go well... Flash-heart, understandably peeved at losing his bodyguard and almost his Astropath failed to hide his disdain of the Cowardly Admech hiding in the Core (he was a little more colourful in his language though) and proceeded to roll a straight 100 on the Fellowship test to try and talk the Admech into opening the Core up or turning on the defences or something. His apology was almost as heartfelt but as he only rolled a 98 he didn't offend them quite as much he had previously... either way the Admech were none too keen on continuing a dialogue with him. Things were not going well with his Redshirt security contingent either, his command rolls failed by 5 steps and then 3 steps - his dice rolling tonight was obscenely high all night and he was well out of fate. He lost pretty much everybody as he tried to talk to the Admech...
This, of course, left him in a stinking mood and he was contemplating taking off and nuking (well, macrocannoning) the site from orbit when the Explorator suggested that they could take down the Storm Shield and scour everything from the outer levels, leaving only the cowardly Admech in his safe zone. A decent security hack later and a Servo skull rigged with both a viral spirit and explosives and the shield was down. Leaving the PC's to run the gauntlet of the storm back to the shuttle - only 47 out of 1000 of their Redshirts made it back... they shall be remembered. Well, for a while anyways.
Flash-heart was happy to spend a few days in the tender care of the ships Medicae and returned to the surface with all guns tracking the Facility. The Admech were far more willing to receive him upon his return and even agreed to very very favourable terms despite him having caused extensive damage which would take them many months to repair. To be fair, Flash-heart didn't really give them much choice and was so pissed off that he took a fair chunk of the Admech staff as tithe and insisted on them being reprogrammed to replace his Security staff, he also took a few choice items from the Admech and promises of more to come, as soon as they finished repairs.
All in all, it wasn't too bad - they even salvaged the dead PC and replaced the Explorators Servoskull with a Gunskull! Want not waste not. We have even started a new custom - I am building an Imperial Shrine World with lots of statuary of heroes, etc - now there is a shiny tomb with the statue of a Bodyguard adorning it. We've come to the plan that any future fatalities will also have a tomb / remembrance built and added to the board.