Indeed! Inward I go then! I'm no good to the team hanging in the back perched on some mining equipment.
Nedora flicks the switch on the side of rifle to go from shotgun to needler, and a high-pitched whine cuts across the ringing in her ears. A second later, she begins sending a stream of 4mm darts streaking down the hall at 3 km/s, trying to hit the vague shapes she sees flickering in the hall.
Nedora, the shapes sprint at full speed into the relative darkness of the hallway, with 2BR close behind. Not to be outdone, you pursue the murderbot and find yourself viewing the same scene of rampant destruction of innocent life. Sona, intent on defending you, follows you closely.
You do not hesitate as you evaluate the situation. You enter the barracks, opening fire on what appears to be lifting a dead miner into the air. Unfortunately, your aim is knocked off as a blur strikes you from the left side, biting deep into your left forearm. Take 2d6+2 damage as the creature begins shaking its head violently, your flesh still firmly planted in its teeth. Nobody hears your screams of pain.
2BR: Nedora is struggling with an unseen foe off to your left. In front of you, the airborne body is tossed to the floor. That creature begins walking towards. Roll a defy danger for visual scanning to see if you can pinpoint the creature's location based on the prints forming on the bloody floor. The prints are heading towards a cluster of miners huddled in terror near the north east corner of the room.
Sona and BoT, you can also make defy danger rolls to see if you can pinpoint the location of the creature that 2BR is tracking. You can also clearly see that Nedora is struggling with a distortion.
What do you all do?
2BR activates all of his audio generator functions. All of them.
He has quite a lot.
"NEDORA YOU RECIEVED SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS REGARDING YOUR EDIBILITY"
Via radio:
> Sona, kindly deal with it
> I will assist remaining civilian population
Sona lunges forward and catches the attacking creature with a glancing blow to the side of the head. The creature slides along the pole's length and catches the technician's left arm and the far side of the pole in its jaws.
Fortunately for Nedora, Sona is faster than the blur and it is Sona's arm that the creature grabs onto. Sona's "flesh" proves much more resistant to the gnawing teeth, and the teeth barely dig in. In response, Sona lashes out with her stun baton, striking the creature full in what you can only assume is the face. As the electricity courses through its body, the illusion obscuring the creature momentarily dissipates. It is a large feline creature, with short black fur and spikes running down its spine. It is about 7 feet long, including the tail.
It roars in pain and releases Sona's arm, limping back to the shadows in the bottom left corner of the room. The distortion field remains down for the time being.
What do you do?
> It appears they are susceptible to an electrical override of their cloaking capabilities.
> This One will attempt to keep them stun locked.
Sona begins to emit a low melody, hoping that knowing where there is sound and where there is not will help her pinpoint any other cloak-beasts as she scans for distubamces around the living organics.
Blast-O-Tron's about to scan the thing when Sona jabs it in the face with her stun baton, revealing it to his sight. Grinning in his computer chair, the elf directs his RAB to fire on the retreating feline, now that it's been revealed. No way is it going to get away, only to re-stealth on him!
Once the line of fire is clear, he blasts the thing with his arm-cannon, floating slightly off the floor with his Jetpack in hover mode.
Nedora spots a pattern in the chaos around her. Flecks of blood being kicked up and bloody pawprints appearing from out of nowhere.
Well, not quite.
She can see the shimmer of heat, and can see the creature appear when Sona whacks it.
"Sparx!" she shouts at the top of her lungs.
The Golem looks about at the sound of the teeny whisper of Nedora's voice, but the magic behind the command causes the elemental golem to pay closer attention to what her master is saying and where she is pointing.
"Zap the shimmers," she calls out as she points out the shimmering patch of air to the energetic golem.
Who then proceeds to do just that.
Meanwhile, Nedora finds the feline slinking back into the shadows with Blast-o-tron in hot pursuit. Needle rounds sizzle through the air as the too-tall halfling opens up.
While needle rounds are small and light, they do move at insane speeds, and a needler spits out a lot of them in a short amount of time. Against a huge alpha predator, though, it might as well be a chihuahua chewing on it's flank. Admittedly, one with a hell of a bite, but a chihuahua none-the-less.
2BR, you have no difficulty tracking the creature as it splashes through the blood coating the nearby ground. You pursue, but fail to account for the sickly slick ground.
You catch up to the creature and rip it to shreds before it reaches the five miners cowering in the top right corner. However, you are unable to stop. Choose either 1) you barrel into the solid wall at high speed, taking 2d6 damage, or 2) you barrel into two of the five poor miners, who kindly provide a soft landing area.
Meanwhile, Nedora and BoT's target falls limp as round after round from the two murderbots, one organic and one metallic, slice through it.
BoT and Nedora, in the hazard lighting you can see a commotion in the top left corner of the room.
Sona, you cleverly begin using a modified form of echolocation to attempt to triangulate likely locations of any remaining creatures, now assuming that the dampening fields are centered on each of the creatures. As you send out a series of high speed notes, you are momentarily confused to find that the fields appears to be dampening sound in every direction. Fortunately, this confusion ends as a fourth shadowcat leaps onto your back. As you are knocked to the floor, your probability unit indicates that this creature likely came from the restrooms across the hall.
The creature attempts to latch hold of the back of Sona's neck with its teeth. However, Sparx has no difficulty locating this shimmer, and zaps the creature as it attempts to bite down, thoroughly distracting it and disrupting its stealth field. Sona, defy danger to avoid taking 4 damage from Sparx's max damage hit.
The creature rears up, bares its teeth, and leaps at Sparx, noticeably injured.
What do you all do?
Sparx, crackling madly with delight, zaps at the cat as it leaps.
"Uh-oh," is all the golem can say before the predator gets to her, after it had leaped over the arcing spears of lightning.
Nedora, meanwhile, spots something happening in the upper left corner of the room.
"Blasty! put a light over there," she calls out to the RAB and points to the corner in question before shuffling back and reloading the shotgun magazine.
Aware that the flavor of the day is electric damage, Sona has her internal capacitors on standby, ready for just such a tactic from her frequently trigger-happy companions.
The creature is inside of her Reach, so Sona tests out her new weapon delivery system...
The first katar springs from her bicep and into her right hand, but a clicking sound indicates the other is not forthcoming. Not needing anything but the handle, she activates the high-focus blade, which locks the handle's length, and drives the weapon into the creature behind her.
As the creature's diffusion property fades in reaction to the shock, Sona's voice swells. "Hostile and dangerous animals are to be destroyed under T.E.R.R.A penal
Sona, your internal capacitors are charged by the electrical bolts that flow through the shadowcat and your subsystems. Recover 4 health up to your maximum. Literally energized, you jump to your feet and strike out at the back of the feline. Electricity courses through the target, and it falls limp to the floor. But not before it is able to strike out at Sparx! The energy ball disperses and returns to Nedora's side, flowing over and through her pale skin, creating a warm tingling sensation but causing no damage.
Your target is unconscious, but is still breathing. You are pleased that your elucidation of T.E.R.R.A. legal provisions can be heard by your nearby companions.
You can still see signs of a commotion in the top left corner, but you can't hear anything coming from that area.
What do you do?
2BR doesn't even both slowing down, just smacks into the construction with a thunk and a slurp of overstrained shielding.
The wall ends up worse off than 2BR.
> Sona, kindly designate priority targets
As soon as an appropriate target is located, 2BR is going to load his projectile cannon with as much rock as it can hold, and open fire.
With the reduced number of distortions in the room, it's much easier for Sona to use logical projections to narrow down the location of the remaining creature. The overflow energy is routed through her ORACLE module.
Deactivating the katar and returning the handle to a compartment, Sona brandishes her stun lance and jabs it into the most probable place for the creature to be.
> Continue to dispatch stunned creatures;
With the distortion fields winnowed down, Sona is easily able to get a fix on the final feline in the room. As suspected, it is in the rear left corner in the room. Sona does not hesitate and rushes towards the former predator. You find it chewing on a corpse as three miners cower in terror, each trying to hide behind the others.
Your aim is true, and you jab the creature, discharging additional electricity into it due to your fully charged capacitors . Clearly shocked, it leaps away from the prod, and it's stealth field drops. Unfortunately, it leaps directly into the cowering miners, decapitating one, and literally disarming another. The one-armed miner collapses to the floor, clearly screaming in pain, but you can't hear it.
2BR, the rock wall crumbles at your impact, leaving sufficient rubble to load your cannon.
You fire at the now visible creature, but the rubble partially disintegrates as you fire, affecting your aim. You miss the feline and instead strike the third miner, who drops to the floor.
The creature wheels on Sona, bares its teeth, and leaps at the gynoid.
What do you all do?
Immediately after the cat leaps towards Sona, 2BR kills it.
Sona's echolocation scans indicate that there are no other active sound dampening fields in this room.
There are a number of survivors in here, and now that the sound dampening is gone, their screams of pain and terror assault your senses. The disarmed miner appears to be the most severely injured. The other survivors do not have life threatening injuries.
What do you all do?
2BR wanders over to the disarmed miner
His voice is like thunder. "This should get you back on your feet."
He plugs an adrenalin shot directly into his neck and unloads the entire charge of his organokinetic reactor into his heart.
"TOOBER, NO!" Jamee shouts, seeing even at a distance that the shot the robot was giving the man was far too much for him to take. He winces as he waits for the results...
Raising his voice, he addresses the group of miners. "Don't worry! We're mercenaries hired by T.E.R.R.A. to save you!"
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Ignoring the organic klaxxons, Sona moves to the door and takes a defensive position.
> Ensign, see if you can get them to tell you if there are any executive personnel here or in one of the other rooms.
"Take us to your leader!"
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Sona turns her back to the door, rolling her eyes. It looks something like loading spirals displayed on her camera plates. She points to 2BR. "Pops." Then she points to BoT. "Petit Fils." Finally she gestures to Nedora with her lance. "Red sh-"
Sona procedes to get mauled in the back again.
The Disarminer reacts violently to 2BR's "medicine" and begins flailing. Blood continues to pour out of the limb, but he is not in immediate danger of death. He is in danger of bleeding out.
This only further agitates the survivors, who at this point at nearly incoherent with terror.
BoT's clear voice seems to calm them slightly, but they still collectively rear in terror from the killbots. They stare dumbfoundedly at BoT as he diplomatically requests an audience with the foreman.
MEANWHILE IN THE RESTROOM ACROSS THE HALL
Relif sits contentedly munching on a humanoid corpse, careful to keep his balance on the slick flooring. He continues, uninterrupted and carefree until he feels an overwhelming sense of foreboding.
Mate! Danger!
Relif leaves the corpse behind and sprints towards the restroom door. The great beast sprints forward and sees an odd humanoid standing over Geliss' prone body. Geliss smells alive. The humanoid smells ...
He is unable to place the smell before he crashes into the humanoid's back, driving her viciously to the floor, teeth closing on the back of her neck.
He roars with fury through his clenched jaws as he begins to rend and tear at the cruel humanoid. Sona, you had better defy danger.
What do you all do?
Nedora looks worriedly at Sparx after the fight ends.
"Uh, can you give me a second? Sparx is acting funny," Nedora says as she watches the golem float about, completely, and unnervingly, quiet.
"Sparx? What's wrong? Are you okay," the halfling asks.
Sona curls into the momentum of the jolt and kicks off the floor, hoping she has the strength to buck the creature forward.
When she throws the creature clear, she rocks back and throws herself out into the hall, leveling her right index finger like a gun. The energy built up by her internal flywheels discharges, her hull plating compresses, and steam vents from her back like a pair of wings. The creature, on the other hand, doesn't have wings, so Sona aims along the trajectory she set it on and fires her laser.
The overcharged capacitors are too much for the small laser module, and the poor thing sizzles and cracks. Just, not before it bores a hole through the offending creature. There's a flash of embarrassment on Sona's face before she regains her composure.
"I... don't like surprises."
Relif is surprised to feel the humanoid rolling with his assault, and experiences the unpleasant sensation of a terrestrial creature's first true attempt at inverted flying. Relif has very little time to ponder this new experience before Sona's beam vaporizes a large portion of his hindquarters. Relif shudders, gives one last longing look to his mate on the floor, and expires.
The surviving miners seem heartened by the display, and one approaches BoT. The remaining miners tend to their bleeding friend.
Thank ... thank you. Foreman Thendar ... The miner grimaces. She was up above. We haven't heard from her since ... Do you know what happened?
"We saw no sign of any Foreman up above. The other mining colonies appear to have been shelled from some kind of attack. Are you aware of any enemies that your company has had to deal with recently? Who could have done this? And are these creatures native to this system?" Jamee tries to keep his questions to a minimum to not overwhelm the poor man, but his curiosity burns him, and he leans forward excitedly in his computer chair.
The man blinks at the barrage of questions, then gathers himself.
I'm sorry to hear that the other outposts received the same fate. I'm not sure what happened. The ground started shaking violently and we heard muffled explosions. A few minutes later some of our guys start getting tossed into the air by ... nothing. He looks to the unconscious cat and visibly shivers. Well I guess by those things. We fled back into the living area here and locked the door. That was two days ago. These things are smart. They somehow got through the living area lock. It has a code on it and everything! He is hyperventilating a bit and takes a moment to calm himself.
I'm not aware of any rival corporations operating out near Kanata. Who would do this? As for these creatures, I have no idea. We were warned never to leave the shield perimeter because the fauna here is deadly. This must be what they meant.
I'm Yaelin. Do you have a way out of here?
2BR thumps up.
"Me. Captain has a ship. Meatsacks will attract more cats, so group up and follow my lead."
> BoT. Scouting?
> Sona. Ascertain meatsack travel-worthiness
He also opens up a channel to the captain.
> Query: Short-term lodgings available on ship for refugees?
> "Cancel that, Captain. Consider this base under quarantine. If you're still alive, you'll want to seal all airlocks and dead-bolt the bulkheads. The base is lousy with highly predatory, and barely detectable fauna. It would be best to leave the surface and vent the docking bay's atmosphere until we can ensure we won't be taking one with us. At least until we understand how they breed. I'm not loosing another ship to vermin..."
"No one is getting on the ship until we know we aren't taking one of those things with us." Sona firms her grip on the stun lance, and lets it crack once or twice for emphasis.
"Unless it got blown up, there's the ship we're crew of. I think there's enough room to get everyone in," Nedora says as she continues to look at Sparx with a worried look on her face.
"Sparx, you starting to worry me," she says softly to her little friend.
If robots could raise an eyebrow, thats what 2BR would be doing. As it stands, a crude projector blurts out an emoji instead.
> Sona, highly predatory, barely detectable fauna are a hobby of mine.
> Then what's the hurry to get back on the ship?
> At least let's not move the perishables until we know the way is clear.
> The homunculus and the fae child can milk the organ donors for information while we clear the rest of the facility and check the ship.
> Thy're not exactly good at staying nearby and out of danger while we're taking care of the pests.
To any outside observer, it appears Sona and 2BR are having a staring contest. Occasionally, one of them displays an emoji. More than once, Sona displays :alienmonster: :pizza: :partypopper:
Avast, Sona! What be ye goin' on abouts? Be no sign o' no predators here... Plenty o' room for human cargo. T.E.R.R.A. will pay fer der people . . . Best bein' careful me thinks.
Bucanero's voice fades as if he is leaning away from a microphone. Aye, best t' be doin' what she says. Climb t' vacuum. Batten t' hatches. Vent t' decks.
His voice becomes clear again: We be back down afore ye know it. And ye don't forget why be we here. Who be t' ones leveled this place?
"They should follow us, so we can protect them while we scout for the remaining predators aboard, and try to find a reason for this attack to have occurred," the robot ranger suggests. "If they stay near Toober, and not enter his crosshairs, they should be safer with us than alone. I'd hate to finish scouting this colony only to find the rest of T.E.R.R.A.'s people massacred."
"I'm ready to lead the way and scout ahead, but I don't want to just leave these people here. If more predators find them, they won't stand a chance. Either we risk bringing them aboard the Sixes and put them in our cargo bay for safekeeping, or we bring them along while we search. Hell, they could be useful for helping us get past the security in other areas of this place."
2BR is rather blunt.
"Which of you has security codes and doesn't mind being a martyr? We have a comprehensive life insurance plan."
To Sona:
> Do we have any insurance plan at all?
A timid looking man inches towards 2BR. I can get us into operations, if that is what you mean. But I don't want to die! He visibly pisses his jumpsuit ... again.
The original speaker turns towards BoT. There were more of us in the living area than just us. He gestures to the survivors and corpses in the room. Did you already save them?
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Sona gives a full and thorough account of what insurance policies that have been taken out on behalf of the present workers, who the beneficiaries are, and what applicable circumstances of death would constitute a valid claim. She reports this information as if she were appraising a collection of gently used mining equipment.
She is still standing in the hall and holding her stun lance.
"Uh, no," Nedora admits sheepishly, "look, if you give me whatever I need to access this operations room-a-ma-jig, I can get in and out without too much trouble."
The miners are thoroughly disconcerted by Sona's emotionless recitation of the nuances of corporate insurance. However, the second man is not so disturbed as to ignore Nedora. Ops has a retinal scanner. I'll need to be there.
He is about to continue when Sona notices a man stumbling down the hallway towards her from deeper within the living area. A visual inspection indicated that he is screaming. An aural inspection detects blissful silence. He is bleeding from a wound in his abdomen.
What do you do?
"Is it connected to the ventilation system," she asks with grin.
At the word retinal scanner, 2BR instantly recognises the solution that would require the man to not, in fact, be present at the scanner. Well, not entirely.
Still reciting figures, Sona sweeps her lance from the man's left side, over his head and down along his right side, then lunges forward, leading with her left hand to thrust the crackling baton into the air behind the man, then reaches into her thigh compartment to brandish the Katar.
If there is a creature within that space, she'll hit it with the lance. If not, and there is a creature chasing the man, it would have a chance to make a surprise attack. Sona is relatively unconcerned, being attacked seems to be the surest way to locate the things. If she is attacked, she'll try to make an attack with the katar. otherwise, the following roll can be ignored, and Sona merely lashes out and swipes at the air ineffectually.
The second miner, Hephaestus, shakes his head sadly. Ops is built like a safe room. Independent life support, emergency rations. The works... Wish I'd been on duty when the s%!@ hit the fan...
Out in the hallway the new arrival is too terrified to stop and process the presence of a female android wielding a stun baton. As he passes Sona, the android strikes out at the air behind him, where her advanced probability algorithms predict a target. The lack of hard data confounds her processors, and she finds herself fully extended in a high thrust when a tremendous weight crashes into her legs. At the same time, the external pressure sensors in her left leg register a series of extreme pressure spikes before being overloaded completely.
The force of the impact lifts Sona entirely into the air, and the vice like grip on her left leg pulls her violently back towards the central chamber. The fleeing man is bowled over.
An external observer would note that Sona appears to be flying, left leg outstretched before her. Sona, take 2d6+2 damage from the initial impact, and defy danger with Con to avoid further damage as you are ripped down the hallway like a large chew toy.
What do you do?
The rest of the group inside the barracks, if they notice at all, see Sona get bowled over and disappear down the hallway to the right.
What do you do?
For some a reason, a short video clip and sound bite from deep storage begins playing in 2BR's primary cortex. He obliges.
First of all, he moves fast. Very, very fast. In a diagonal line from where he was, to the nearest spot where Sona is predicted to be. If anything is in the way, it is likely to be in a bad state.
- It makes a convenient amount of noise (very loud)
- It takes almost no time at all, it doesn't slow you down
- The things that are damaged are not important to you