The Akata falls over finally dead. Vutra and Poog celebrate by dancing over the corpses.
Vutra SLICE!
Poog burn and cook! EAT BLUE DOG TONIGHT!
The noqual fragments of two more akata cocoons are scattered throughout engineering. They will take up 2 bulk and seem to be worth around 1000 credits. Looking over the various workbays the group can salvage about 300 UPBs. Near the door, close to the outside void, lies a tactical arc emitter. It has 12 charges remaining on the battery.
The remaining unexplored rooms of the ship consist of nothing more than two more crew quarters and a small kitchen area. Looking at the downloaded schematic of the ship you can see that you have gone through everything the poor Aceron has to offer.
"I believe we have cleared the whole of The Aceron. There should be nothing left to present any danger."
With the investigation of the ship completed, Prospero-4 feels the exocortex-induced hypertension to wear off. Time to put away the rifle, at least for a while.
"We should proceed to the Rock, next."
"But what to do with the goblins?" he adds immediately, on the private channel.
Astrianna stuffs more noqual into her bulging backpack, hefting it with a strained wheeze. "Yeah, let's drop off these rocks in ship storage and fly down to the rock. I'm not carrying all this during our weird extra-dimensional asteroid hike."
The half-elf responds on to Prospero on their private channel with a shrug: "Well we can't just leave them here. Or on our ship. They seem happy to follow along." Either we'll be seen as the "good guys" for rescuing them, or they'll tragically intercept a few bullets for us. Everyone wins!
"I'm not sure the Akata is healthy to eat. But maybe that's not a big concern ... Anyhow! Be a bit careful so you don't get bitten you hear? That would suck." Leila chatters with the goblins after the successful battle.
---
"Hmm..." Leila inspects the arc emitter and flips over to private comms. After some quick deliberation she also flips the arc emitter settings to 'stun'. "Hey! Should we hand this to Poog? Less chance he lights someone on fire accidentally ... Of course he'll probably zap someone - but it's low on juice. Or we could let Vutra handle it since she can't aim anyway!"
---
"That sounds perfect!" the halfling chimes in on Astri's plan. She liked the part where they didn't carry around heavy stuff. And the part where they went on more SPACE ADVENTURE! Not airlocking the goblins also seemed like the heroic way to handle thing ... Good thing Astri had such a big heart for the goblins!
Having decided on a course of action the group moves back towards the Hippocampus. The goblins drag the corpse of the last Akata with them into the ship. They will *not* be dissuaded from this.
Poog very good cook! Vutra informs them everytime an objections is raised.
Eyes best part Poog adds before forgetting about the corpse, leaving it behind in the airolock, as he starts to poke about the insides of the station sec ship from Abslaom Station. Ship very nice. But maybe we make faster? Silly biggers put 'saftee' stuff between power core and engine. Remove and ship go vrroooooooom.
The observer bot hovers silently behind Astiranna as everybody straps into the Hippocampus. It's almost not necessary though as it only takes a feather light touch from the pilot to engage enough thrust to travel from the Aceron to the Drift Rock. You can barely feel the ship start to move or come to a stop as Fianh expertly brings it alongside the rock. Only the asteroid looming larger and larger in the cockpit tells the group that any movement has happened.
Additional scanning and a little bit of conference between Leia and Prospero reveals a few things.
One side of the asteriod seems to have been sheared cleanly off, as if it were once a part of a larger body.
Another odd thing; there are no impact craters on the Drift Rock's surface which is very unusual for an asteroid. It's as if it was protected somehow from the ravages of space.
Finally there is a rocky overhang concealing a cave entrance that seems to lead right into the asteroid.
But maybe we make faster? Silly biggers put 'saftee' stuff between power core and engine. Remove and ship go vrroooooooom.
Well so would simply rigging the reactor to blow. 'Very short time' and 'very' are important points! Leila thinks and then assigns herself to goblin-care duty. Following them around and yelling 'don't touch that!!' *might* work but that seemed so bothersome. Instead she tried to get them both to detail their previous exploits. Or Poog's cooking tips. That ought to keep them occupied! As a bonus Leila got some cool stories out of it too... "So! What sort of monsters have you cooked before? Which were the most delicious? Anything you should look out for?"
"I see exactly one way in." Fi scowls at the rock. It's not natural to have no impact craters. "For the record, I don't like this. Could be anything down there. Let's find it and kill it."
Prospero-4 doesn't bother to answer to the ridiculous goblin's offer, but he locks the access hatch to the engineering just in case. But his attention is on the asteroid they are now approaching. He is taps his console, getting more feeds from the ships sensors on the vidboard.
"Strange... This rock must have been part of something larger body. Something with atmosphere, or something resembling a strong magnetic field. Leila, can you scan and see if you can find any field protecting the rock?"
Catching Fianh's comment about going in confuses the android momentarily, but then he also sees the cave entrance. "Yes, you are right, Fianh. I do not think we find anything on the rock - we must go in. Where is the necroglider landing point? Any movement on that direction?"
Leila distracts herself momentarily, hopefully not fatally, from her goblin husbandry duties to take a closer look at the rock. "Hmm. There really aren't supposed to be much stuff in drift-space right? Maybe that's why it is so pristine! And that cut could be from a partial gating maybe? Brr that sounds nasty! Anyhow! The rock had some serious interference last time we looked but it can't hurt to check again right..."
plus ship comp, can't recall atm
Just like before the ship's scanners just can't penetrate deep into the Rock.
In fact the only thing you can really suss out from the readings is a map of a few metrons into the tunnel that you discovered.
Minutes have passed, and the goblins have managed to not blow up the Hippocampus. Astrianna considered this a good omen for the rest of the trip.
Thankfully Leila volunteers to goblinsit, leaving Astrianna to capture some sweeping footage of the Drift Rock in glorious 256k resoultion! "So it's not supposed to be all smooth? I took some pretty advanced physics classes at the Arcanum, and if I recall, Drift technology takes matter from other planes of existance every time someone on the material plane performs a jump, right? So like Leila said, it probably was sheared off from... somewhere."
She considers the tiny hole that Fi pointed out, and ponders what kind of ad-revnue generating treasures, or actual treasures, could be contained inside. Regardless, she types a note into her comm at this particular timestamp that this would be a great place to end her first video on their adventures. The cliffhanger would generate some serious hype for the second video to be released in the following days!
Astrianna clicks her tongue, then points back over to where the necroglider crashed on their HUD map. "We should look at the crash site first. I want to make sure that pilot is down for good, and if its not then I want to know why it attacked us. If there's no sign of it then we head inside the rock!"
Your scans have pretty extensively documented the outside of the asteroid. The necroglider is very much dead but there is no trace of any pilot.
"Well, the ship really isn't going to fit..." Leila points out the obvious. Just in case. She really had no idea what was going on with that rock. But it most likely contained adventure! "So! What do we do? Anchor the ship and hope it stays while we head down? Leave a rearguard?"
"Perhaps the pilot moved into the cave, I cannot detect anything on the surface." Prospero-4 states, his fingers quickly tapping around the console, bringing up new displays.
"Fianh, take us down near the cave entrance. Let us lock the ship and investigate what is hidden inside the rock."
Having secured the ship, the group spacewalks from the two ships to the asteroid.
The complete emptiness of space is familiar to some of you, completely not so to others and it ends with the four of you, plus two goblins, entering into the tunnel the group had discovered via their scanning.
The inside of the tunnel is dark, and there is no atmosphere or gravity so you use the rough hewn interior walls to push yourselves forward.
You're confornted with a choice. Do you continue forward into the tunnel as it curves to the right, or do you go into the passageway that heads left.
The tunnel is only 3 metrons high.
"I like left." Leila chirps. If they didn't have any idea of the layout of the rock this seemed as good as any method of picking.
Prospero-4 nods in agreement, and starts leading the group into the passageway headingg left.
Astrianna feels uncomfortable out in the vastness of space, and it shows. She won't stop talking over comm, seemingly needing to comment on everything. She also insists on being tethered to Leila, who actually has a means of propulsion. It wasn't hard to imagine the half-elf was afraid of drifting off into space forever, though she wouldn't admit it.
Actually entering the tunnel was a relief, and she untetheres from Leila to hang on to a wall.
Clinging to a rock formation in the tunnel, Astrianna chimes into the directional discussion. "Left is splendid! I know a lot of great left-appendaged sentients."
The group pushes its way into the dark tunnel heading into the rock. Using the rough textured wall, celing, or floor of the tunnel the four propel themselves in and choose to float into the offshoot tunnel heading to the left.
Right in the middle of the next cavern, a dead humanoid body floats.
The corpse is that of a human male. It’s still wearing an estex suit with a patch that reads “ACREON,” identifying it as a member of the mining ship’s crew. An inspection of the body reveals it seems to have died from causes other than Akata bites, meaning that it is probably safe from being turned into a void zombie.
Poog and Vutra descent on the body as the experienced scavegers that they are. Vutra comes up with a backup generator armor upgrade from the estex suit I armor from the unfortunate miner. Poog hones in on the survival flare gun floating nearby.
Empty the goblin says over the public comms. Even over the imperfect staticky medium of communication you can hear the sadness in his voice.
There is only one exit from this cavern; heading deeper in. Prospero-4 and Fianh lead the way, pushing off the rubble and other rocky debris in the cavern to proceed.
Four tunnels exit this new cavern to the north, south, east, and west, from whence they came. Strangely, however, while the south and west passages are hewn rock, the north and east passages are finished and lined with some sort of polished, metallic plating on the walls, floors, and ceiling.
The northern metallic corridor goes in a perfectly straight line for about 100 feet until it ends at a hole facing the void of space.
Of course the other interesting feature of the cavern is a miner staring at the six of you. She is wearing a space suit, but the lower half of its helmet is shattered, and a repulsive, bloated blue-gray “tongue” hangs from the remnants of the zombie’s lower jaw.
Those of you who identified the void disease carried by the akata recognize that this 'tongue' is in reality the feeding tendril of the larval Askata gestating inside the former crew member of the Aceron.
It attacks! In complete and utter silence it shoots forwards and its dead hands move in the airless void like a steel bar slamming right into Fianh. Fianh is propelled backwards at an angle and ends up colliding with the south east wall.
"I believe we are witnessing the result of Akata larvae infection. It is... not an attractive fate."
The zombie is uncomfortably close, but without gravity, Prospero-4 doesn't think he can get away very elegantly. So he just kicks himself backwards, and hopes his armor can protect him from the zombie's claws.
As he floats freely in the vacuum, he points his azimuth rifle at the undead menace. A quick mental command through his rig overrides the rifle's energy feed controls, sending a vastly overcharged blast to vaporize the zombie.
Now that they're within a contained space, Astrianna shows a much greater skill at operating in zero g. She bounces from wall to wall like a rubber ball, graceflly catching herself on outcroppings. "This is WAY better than Space Camp!" She exclaims, citing the popular Pact World zero-g training program for privileged youths.
She gets a good shot of the body while the goblins pick them over, hanging (realtively) upside-down from a jutting rock formation. "As I'm sure the rest of you have figured out, if that flare gun is empty they shot it at something before expiring. So... keep your guards up." This statement is punctuated by pointing down the hallway with Leila's semi-automatic pistol and jumping from her perch.
Astrianna whistles over their comms at the strange metallic passageway leading out of the asteroid. "Now things are getting interesting, th-" She narrates, panning over the finished corridors until her infrared snesors pick up a grotesque moving object speeding towards them. "WHAT THE HELLS IS THAT? OH PEACHY, NOW KILL IT!" Bursts of static punctuate her yelling before her pistol muzzle flashes a round.
"Aaaaaah!" Leila cries out in terror/excitement for a while until she realizes that no-one could hear her. After some brief deliberation she flick on the public channel and adds another few 'aaash!'s. She also tried to remember what she knows about zombie movies. It was important to know of course which characteristics this one displayed. Magic, science or nature? And slow or fast... Leant towards the later ones really!
Anyhow! Shooting time! Since she was unsure of the effects her stun gun would have on the dead she went with her needler. No-one liked Shar pokey objects!
Edit: I knew there were something missing ...
Prospero-4 is able to barely avoid the zombie's opportunistic swing as he kicks away to gain some distance. The movement throws off his aim though while both Astrianna, Liela, and Fianh land hits on the monster.
The Goblins whoops and charge ahead. Poog's flame completely misses while Vutra's slice actually catches the zombie a glancing blow.
Vutra's bravery is met with a vicious downward slam from the zombie. It's terminal. The little goblin goes limp as she flies down from the force of the blow and then rebounds off the cavern floor to end up near the ceiling. Her broken face is frozen in an expression of glee.
"If you feel compelled to scream, please shut down the comms for the duration" His eyes ringing after the sudden loud comms chatter, Prospero-4 turns down the volume from his in-helmet receiver.
Clear from the zombie's reach, the android decides to put Vutra's sacrifice into best of use, and fires an overcharged laser beam right between the zombie's eyes.
Prospero's shot rips right through the lower skull of the z0mbie. The humanoid corpse goes deathly still as the grotesque tongue writhes in silent pain as the shot pierces its central mass. Then it goes limp as the body slides away and collides against the cavern wall,bringing its zero g motion to a final halt.
Poog whoops before floating over to Vutra. He hums to himself as he loots her stuff.
The goblins are functioning as intended, excellent! "Vutra, noooo!" She wails in purposely canned acting. "How ever will we get along without her bravery?" Soap-opera level drama was fully engaged, though it ceases to amuse her just as quickly as it appeared.
Astrianna lowers her pistol as the zombie becomes motionless. "That was worse than the Akata! What killed the infected person, though? We keep finding singlular bodies... were they running from something, getting picked off one by one?" She spectulates, kicking off of the wall to sail over to Fi.
The half-elf produces a healing serum and hands it to Fi. "Hey tough girl, I know I could fling you into a comet and you'd probably punch it so hard its tail would pop off, but you should take a rest. We'll look at the other corridors in the meantime."
Astrianna pings from wall o wall, catching herself on the edges of the corridors and looking down them with her infrared sensors.
As Astrianna peers around, she only has time to notice that the north opens up to the void of space and that the cavern to the South looks like it is a room made of metal rather than roughly hewn rock of the caverns thus far before being interrupted by a strangled Goblin yelp from over the public comms.
The group turns around to see Poog's limp body drifting backwards from Vutra's corpse with what looks like an expertly aimed shot right to his skull. Turning around to look down the passage the group just came from Prospero can see an android with a dangerous looking sniper rifle floating in the middle of the cavern taking cover behind the the upturned body of the dead miner. Her eyes meet his and she dispassionately shifts her rifle to aim at him.
Round 1
Astrianna turns her head a little too fast when she hears the goblin-like yelp over the comms, causing her to rotate slightly in the opposite direction. "Poog? Oh Shelyn's tits! get some cover!"
She quickly switches to the public channel they had been using to communicate with the goblins, sending out an unencrypted message to the android sniper. "Hey! Stop! If you're the necroglider pilot we want to talk. We can all make it out of this alive and richer."
If it really was the necroglider pilot Astrianna had every intention of exacting revenge on them, but not before finding out who sent the... assassin? after them first.
"What? Nooo!" Leila winces as Poog too bites the dust. She had barely managed to process Vutra's demise yet and now this! The halfling bit her lip and blinked away a tear. But ... In some sick way she was glad that they had gone together - or close at least. She really had no idea of how to handle a grieving goblin. Or worse: what if he hadn't cared that much ...? All these grim and unfamiliar thoughts bounced around in her head as she herself bounced towards cover.
"Sniper!" Prospero cries out as soon as he figures out what is happening. "Behind us! Doesn't look like one of the miners," he continues, although he has no clue why he thinks so. He hasn't met any of the miners alive, but from what he gathered from the logs and corpses, they didn't seem of the type who would be trained in use of sniper rifles.
Prospero-4 registers Poog's death, but doesn't feel he has anything to say about it. He didn't think the goblins would have lasted long. And even if they did, they would probably have tried to backstab the group sooner or later. So having them dead makes things more simple.
But the sniper... He - no, she - is an android as well, but staring down the muzzle of the gun Prospero-4 doesn't feel any particular kinship. Astrianna tries to negotiate, but she doesn't react in any way, except to move her aim at Prospero-4.
Letting his reactions guide him, Prospero-4 overcharges his weapon, and fires at the sniper before she takes him out like the goblin. He hopes the shot will give him time to move into cover.
Leia, and Astrianna decide to make sure that they cannot be targeted by the sniper while Fianh trains her pistol at the passageway reading an action to shoot whatever comes out.
Prospero-4's shot avoids the dead miner to hit the sniper dead on. Unfortunately, as he himself moves out of her line of sight, he sees that the opposing sharpshooter does not seem to be fazed by the hit, but instead he sees a little flicker of her image vibrate and disappear as he moves out of view.
Just as Astrianna thinks that maybe their attacker is considering her offer the dead miner comes speeding out of the tunnel, behind it is the sniper, now wielding a pistol from behind her morbid makeshift cover. She stops at the entrance to the cavern and fires a laser pistol shot at Prospero that hits and hurts
Fianh from her vantage point fires two shots in rapid succession at the android. Both miss, but her bullets avoid the dead miner and two more blurry after images of the android flicker and vanish.
Leila tries to get a good read on their foe as she throws herself towards whatever cover is available and opens fire.
"By whatever technology or magic, she seems very effective in evading our shots. Keep on shooting!"
And just as he says, Prospero-4 keeps firing on the enemy, hoping to land a hit.
"She's crazy! Four against one?!" Astrianna shouts over their comms while taking aim from the side of the room.
"Just. Keep. Shooting!" The muzzle of her semi-automatic flashes as she tries to place a shot on the assassin-droid.
Leia figures the android to be a hired gun. She fights a lot like Fianh does actually...
As she realizes this she engages in a bit of electronic trickery which distracts the android just enough for the halfling's attack to hit. You can see no more oddly blurring after images as her head jerks with pain.
Prospero and Astrianna's attacks thunk into the unfortunate miner's corpse; chunks of blood and flesh drift away from it.
Fianh darts across the mouth of the cavern seeking to confuse their would be assassin and it works as her shot gets past the miner's corpse and hits the sniper.
The android retaliates. She continues to focus on Prospero with her fire and the laser fire continues to find purchase.
Round 3
I REALLY hope this is some famous assassin. We'll gain so much 'net cred!
"When you meet Pharmasa make sure you tell her how badly you f*$~ed up! Finish this, team!" She taunts the enemy android over their public channel.
Switching back to private with a tap of her wrist-mounted comm, she encourages the flagging Prospero. "She shot first, but I know you'll shoot last Prospero. Hang in there!"
Prospero-4 nods in confirmation - with Astrianna's words he really feels he can outlast the enemy. With the way ahead blocked, there is little he can do except keep shooting. And to his relief, the assassin's defensive holograms seem to be gone, so she's much more vulnerable now.
He might be shot at, but Prospero-4's exocortex shuts down all instinctive reactions to dive for cover. He is barely aware of the laser burn penetrating his armor, as takes aim. He spots the assassin turning to shoot from the right side of the miner's body. Her head appears behind the miners shoulder plate, he meets her eyes - and he pulls the trigger.
Leila spoofed a payment notice on all frequencies. With a bit of luck that'd distract the hired gun for a moment!
Prospero-4 watches as a hole appears right between his adversaries eyes and the glowing green eyes themselves flicker before going dark. Her grip on the deceased miner she was using as cover falls away and she starts to drift backwards. Her hair is delayed in following her motion and so trails in front of her creating a blue nimbus framing the look of determination that is still locked on her face.
Astrianna frantically attempts to silence the notifcation that her subscription for Veskarian Grub & Pubs Monthly is unpaid. "Was that you Leila?! Have you been going through my 'net search history?!"
Accusations aside, Astrianna notices the assassin has stopped trying to kill them, which means that she's probably dead. "NICE shot Prospero! Gods, this is surreal, look at her float backwards. It's like out of the trids. In any case, serves her right... I'm certain this was the necroglider pilot that tried to space us. Android assassins don't just crawl out of interdimensional asteroids like Akata!"
The half elf-chatters, kicking off from the wall to zero in on the android. Thankfully, between the goblins and the assassin, all the loot was centralized in the middle of the room. She starts pawing through things with only slightly less enthusiasm than the goblins. "Oh! Can someone grab whatever she shot Poog with? It sure wasn't a pistol... ugh, I kind of feel bad for him, didn't even see it coming. At least he didn't feel anything... and his helmet kept the mess contained."
On the goblins the only useful things Astrianna finds is the results of their scavenging. Vutra has a backup generator armor upgrade from the miner, Poog has an empty survival flare gun and the flame pistol, checking the fuel level, it has three shots left.
The android is altogether far better equipped. She had a freebooter armor I, an azimuth laser pistol with 18 charges, a survival knife, a clear spindle aeon stone, and a credstick containing 300 credits.
She also has a tactical shirren-eye rifle with 24 longarm rounds and a datapad.
The Observer bot floats silently, taking in everything.
To the north is the void of space, to the south is a another cavern at the end of which seems to be an entance made of metal. To the east the rough hewed caverns continue and Astrianna thinks she can see a roughly human sized figure that seems to be moving around in the zero gravity.
"So before we were rudely shot at," Astrianna chatters over their private comms as she goes though the android's stuff, "I saw a roughly human sized figure moving around the "east" tunnel. It's probably another Akata zombie, so we should take the metallic-walled route to the "south".
The dead android's aeon stone bumps directly into Astrianna's head, causing her to flinch. "Wha- Oh! It's a fasting stone! There was a dieting fad a few years ago, people claimed you could use these aeon stones to lose weight because you didn't have to eat o drink. Of course that's not true considering how it just gives you exactly what your body spends, so... no fat burned. Not only that, any food you DO eat just gets turned INTO fat. Huge disappointment if you ask me. Who wouldn't want to eat? There are way too many delicious things in the galaxy. In any case I'd say this is evidence that this was the necroglider pilot. She probably sat out there for.. who knows how long."
"But we can find out!" The master of segways, Astrianna produces a datapad from the android's satchel. She smoothly tosses it to Leila in zero-g from the center of the room. "Crack that when we get back to the ship. I want to know who this was."
Stuff continues to fly. This time a battery from the laser pistol travels directly to Prospero. "Don't know if you have a spare battery or not Sharphooter-4, but this one has plenty of charges."