With his remaining action, Janzi pulls out a grenade. Special delivery for a Mister Cultist, Mister Nihilist Cultist.
Most of the party zips to the main deck. The door whooshes open, and the party is greeted by a fourth shade guarding the bridge!
Round 4:
Dunklezahn: Go
Gig: Go
Janzi: Go
Hack-It: Go
Booker: Go
Hostiles: TBD
"Advance team, report!" Booker comms to the first party. He moves to call the lift back up.
"Gig, see if you can't get inna that computer and shut down that distress signal!"
Company, another oblivion shade! Janzi says, darting out the door and down the hall. Three wasn't enough, guess they needed a fourth to play bridge! Switching off the comm, he fires his corona pistol.
"Acknowledged. Still one unknown life form aboard, 'sides the beard," Booker growls.
"Why's he got to talk like I'm some kind of soldier that reports to him?" Hack-It mutters before following Janzi out into the hall.
When he sees the ghost, he points and says, "Alright big guy, he's ready for you." He then lets rip a shot from his zero pistol, intent on starting the job.
When the shot goes wide, he curses. "Yup, he's really all yours."
”I’m on it, Booker!” Gig replies, delighted to try and earn Booker’s favor.
Gig moves to the closest computer terminal and tries to find a way to shut down the distress signal.
Gig immediately gets into the system and pokes around for a couple of seconds. Unfortunately, that's all he needs to discover that the distress system is compartmentalized. In short, you've got to get onto the bridge to shut it down.
Meanwhile Booker makes his way to the deck while Janzi connects and Hack-it misses!
Round 4:
Dunklezahn: Go
Gig: Computers
Janzi: Hit
Hack-It: Miss
Booker: Move
Hostiles: TBD (Klaxon count 1)
Shade: 4
Right off the lift, Dunklezahn cuts into the shade, the nanites doing their work!
The shade lashes out at the vesk. It's utter silence is less macabre with the klaxon drowning out most other sound.
for
Round 5:
Dunklezahn: Go
Gig: Go
Janzi: Go
Hack-It: Go
Booker: Go
Hostiles: TBD (Klaxon count 2)
Shade: 17
Gig double moves down to the lower deck and hopes to find access to the bridge soon.
Gig hustles to the fight.
Dunklezahn's follow up slash cuts away a lot of the shade!
Round 5:
Dunklezahn: Hit
Gig: Move
Janzi: Go
Hack-It: Go
Booker: Go
Hostiles: TBD (Klaxon count 2)
Shade: 35
Hack-It keeps up the steady fire with another shot from his pistol.
"Re-die already!"
The shade either ignores or does not comprehend Hack-it's quip. The cold of the pistol still damages it though.
Round 5:
Dunklezahn: Hit
Gig: Move
Janzi: Go
Hack-It: Hit
Booker: Go
Hostiles: TBD (Klaxon count 2)
Shade: 39
Janzi takes a guarded Step behind Hack-It. Stay there, I'll cover you, he says, quite happy to keep the Ysoki between him and the oblivion shade.
Janzi continues to keep the pressure on as the klaxon sounds!
Round 5:
Dunklezahn: Hit
Gig: Move
Janzi: Hit
Hack-It: Hit
Booker: Go
Hostiles: TBD (Klaxon count 2)
Shade: 44
Booker rides down in the lift with Gig, but while the ysoki steps backwards from the shade, the soldier makes for the bridge. "Come on! We gotta shut that alarm down!"
Booker runs past the shade. A tendril reaches out for and snags the soldier.
He steps onto the bridge to find the strange jangly man shouting into a microphone, trying to call in a "full fleet strike." Upon seeing Booker he turns and prepares to fight. Clearly he feels like his message was sent.
He quickly activates a haste circuit and shouts at the shade to focus on Booker! He then fires his pistol.
but misses in his rush!
Round 6:
Dunklezahn: Go
Gig: Go
Janzi: Go
Hack-It: Go
Booker: Go
Hostiles: TBD (Klaxon count 3)
Improved Get'em on Booker
Shade: 44
Booker sneers. "Nowhere lef'ta run, huh crazy-man?" He levels his cannon. "I got yer medicine right 'ere."
Via comm, he urges the ysoki to jump to the controls. "C'mon! Get up here an' shut that signal down!"
"Dunk! Help Booker! I'll try to keep this turd busy."
And with that Hack-It takes two shots at the shade
Hack-it hits twice, freezing away some of the shade's essence!
Round 6:
Dunklezahn: Go
Gig: Go
Janzi: Go
Hack-It: Hits
Booker: Go
Hostiles: TBD (Klaxon count 3)
Improved Get'em on Booker
Shade: 54
Janzi, hoping that Dunk and Gig can finsih the undead, focuses on Nihiist Cultist with a mk3 mind thrust.
Gig, recognizes the power of force against the shade and cast a full round action of magic missile to send off three arcane bolts at the undead.
”Booker, don’t touch anything. I’ll be there in a minute for damage control. Just clear me a path!”
Dunklezahn's swing is less than a millimeter off target! Gig follows up though with a tremendously powerful trio of missiles, sneding the shade whence it came!
Janzi tries to scramble the mind of the already addled man The spell clearly causes him intense agony, though he fights on!
Round 6:
Dunklezahn: Miss
Gig: MM Kill
Janzi: MTIII
Hack-It: Hits
Booker: Go
Hostiles: TBD (Klaxon count 3)
Jangly: 44 (Improved Get'em on Booker)
"We ain't got a minute!" Booker growls. "Now stop muckin' around wit' the mooks and get yer asses up here!"
He punctuates the invective with two blasts from his artillery laser.
Twice Booker hits the Jangly Man, but he refuses to fall. His will, however, is broken. He tosses his liquidator, "Please please! I can pay. I can pay well. Spare me and let me leave."
The klaxon continues.
Round 7:
Dunklezahn: Go
Gig: Go
Janzi: Go
Hack-It: Go
Booker: Go
Hostiles: TBD (Klaxon count 4)
Jangly: 89 (Improved Get'em on Booker)
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"F@@$ing idiot! You could start by shutting the alarm off," Hack-It swears, rushing forward to stop the klaxon. He immediately starts to work on the computer system, intend on shutting down the noise and sending a message back to whoever may have gotten the alarm.
"Everything's perfectly alright now. We're fine. We're all fine here now. Thank you. How are you?"
Hack-it rushes over to the comm. He doesn't expect it to work. He really really doesn't.
When the lights turn green and nothing comes of it, he's shocked to find out that he did, in fact, pull it off.
"Nice work, Hack," Booker grunts. He keeps his cannon pointed at the jangly man. "Who'd you call?"
Booker scans the deck to find the missing life form, it's a now dead soldier. He's missing his sidearm, the only thing of note he had. The coloration on his suit matches the liquidator that the Jangly Man had.
He answers, though his voice is oddly modulated, like someone is trying to dial in the right harmony on a mixer, "Null-9, leader of our cell. She's on the first gate. I was trying to get back up."
He answers, though his voice is oddly modulated, like someone is trying to dial in the right harmony on a mixer, "Null-9, leader of our cell. She's on the first gate. I was trying to get back up."
Booker points at the dead soldier. "Your doing?" he asks the Jangly Man. He changes out the battery on his gun.
Gig joins Hack to verify that they have done everything they can to stop reinforcements from coming. He checks the sensors to see if there is anything out there that could be approaching.
”So, Hack, what did you do? The ship was sending out emergency signals. Did you put a stop to them? Do we have more coming? Maybe we should just shoot the intercom!”
"Shooting it was my next move, to be honest. I had a smuggler friend who had that as his go-to move for basically any comms terminal. It made for a lot of repairs, and got expensive. But no, all I did was..."
What follows is a series of techno jargon that only Gig understands. "... and with the bi-pass set to the negative current, it turned off. Easy peasy."
"Now, want to see if we can make this ship move? I don't want to stay here, and we can use another ship. Play your cards right, and I'll make you Captain Razorbyte."
Assuming Gig comes along, Hack-It will begin running diagnostics on this ship and assessing the damage.
The Jangly Man looks at the body, "He was nearly through the Blood Door after your last shot, I merely pushed him."
Gig and Hack-it discover that the Sunrise Maiden utterly destroyed the drive. This ship is only good for UPBs now
Meanwhile it looks like Hack-it managed to get the alarm off just in the nick of time. When Gig checks his work, he stumbles on a message in the comms history which might be of note, "If we can get the last console online, the weapon will be within our grasp, and soon the end of all things will follow. Unfortunately, the control board is shot. Zaz has no idea how to repair it, but Eltreth has told us where to find spares. Take the Singularity and patrol the system in case that inevitable managed to send for help. Bring some of Malice’s children. I will contact you again to return to the control center when we have the control board."
"Gig, what's up with creepy-crawly here and his nanite infestation?"
"Dunk, mind searchin' the rest of the ship while I deal with the lunatic? Take Torin with you."
Booker hits the Jangly Man with a barrage of questions.
"How'd your cell get to the surface?"
"How many are down there?"
"Tell me about Zaz, Eltreth, Malice, and Null-9?"
"Why shouldn't I dump you out the airlock?"
Gig investigates the nanites and tries to determine both the source and what they are trying to do.
Hack-It swears. "Bloody Hell. Another opportunity lost. Just had to blow through the drive, eh?" The last bit seems like it's directed at Booker, who had nothing to do with the gunnery on the ship.
He then proceeds to strip off every piece of scrap metal, circuitry, and electrical conduits he can with the intent of bringing it back to the Maiden
Gig gulps when he realizes that he was the one sitting in the gunnery chair. He tentatively approaches Hack.
”Umm... I’m sorry about your ship. I guess I was a little too enthusiastic with the trigger. I did not realize that there was so much bite in the weapons on the Maiden. I guess I maybe just a little bit panicked when I saw all of these enemy ships attacking. Perhaps we can find you a souvenir onboard this ship that you can take with you for the memories. Let’s see if we can take the Captain’s chair and set it up in your room back on the Maiden. I’m sure it swivels and has cool buttons to push on the arm rest.”
"Oh don't worry, I don't blame you," Hack-It says as he works through the dismantling process. He stops to eye the captain's chair, which came out largely unscathed. "It does look comfy, doesn't it?"
No, Janzi says darkly, it doesn't. It looks like it's been infested with suicide cultists. Put it in your quarters so you can dream about the fleet you'll never have.
He reaches out and touches Jangly, creating a mindlink with him to extract all the answers to Booker's questions.
Now this won't hurt a bit, bud. It'll hurt a LOT.
"Geez. Looks like someone let nanites crawl up their butt. It's a ship, Janzi. And if my goals are so bothersome, you can go wait on the Maiden while I do actual work."
He doesn't wait for a response, leaving the bridge to go salvage what he can out of the engine room.
The search team comes up with a few things. The Singularity’s crew quarters contains a battered but functioning suit of spider harness powered armor and a total of five shock grenades III and eight screamer grenades II scattered throughout the former crew’s possessions. Additionally Dunklezahn tears open a panel which reveals 25 cred sticks with 1,000 credits each.
Gig fiddles about and determines that the strange nanites are some weird kind of augmentation. It takes him some time, but he works out what they do..
The Jangly Man spits before answering. "They're members of the choir. They too see Oblivion in the Future. Everyone you name is a devotee, a singer. Null is our leader, head of our Cell. Getting to the First Gate is easy. The planet is inhabitable. We stole the details from Istamak, and now we are here. The descent is upon us!"
"I'm guessin' you don't mind if I toss you out the airlock, then, since you're playin' coy," Booker replies acidly. "I know they're yer cultists buddies already, jack-ass. Tell me what they're good at, what they're bad at, how they fight. Or you're meetin' yer god a mite sooner than expected."
The Jangly Man tries to put up a good front, but Booker's words break through and expose his cowardice.
"Zaz is our yoski mechanic. He's the one whose been working out the details on how to operate this weapon to bring about Oblivion. He's no threat to you, nor is his twin brother Xix. He's the brains. Eltreth isn't a who, it's a what. A kish AI we took from Istamak, but I don't ever hear it's whispers."
He takes a deep breath, "Malice... You've already met Malice's minions. Those shades are things he created. He's one of them. One of Them. Imagine facing another shade, only one who has mastered all manner of spells. Null-9 is our Android Leader. It's sheer ruthlessness is.... inspiring. It could best your vesk in single combat, and simultaneously work out your family history in its circuits, plotting to kill you and your families."
Despite the final attempt to scare you back, it's obvious that the man is terrified of getting spaced.
Booker grunts in acknowledgement. "Good as we're gonna get, I guess."
He pulls up the ship layout on the console and points at a closet near the aft. "Hack-It can we seal that door from the bridge? I'mma stuff scaredy-cat in there an' don't want him pullin' anything while we deal with his buddies."
"I can give it a try," Hack-It replies over comms. "You want to just leave him here, eh? Stranded on a dead ship? I don't care either way, I'm just checking."
The gravitational chaos here is unlike any of you have ever experienced. Landing on the Gate moon requires a Computer, Phsyical Science, AND piloting check...