Jehir attacks furiously with his spear, trying to keep the Akatas away from his friends.
Jehir's spear lashes out, striking both akatas. The one in front of Entiren goes down, but the last snarling creature has enough life left in its frame to strike back at Jehir, ripping into him twice!
Diedre, Entiren , Miraj
Aureum , Jehir , Lauren
Akatas
Unwilling to attempt to shoot into the scrum, Diedre continues her stratagy of distraction by reaching up and banging her sword on an overhead pipe.
Hoping to distract the remaining arcata from attacking Jehir, Miraj attempts to tumble his way past and then attack with his sword cane, leaving room for Entiren to attack as well.
Unfortunately, the blood of the two slain creatures makes the floor slippery. He gets where he is going but leaves himself open to an attack.
Leaning heavily against the wall, Entiren grips at his shoulder with his free hand in order to avoid clutching at his wound. With his teeth grinding together, he lowers his gaze at the last remaining Akata. His horns begin lighting up with pinpoints of light, which then begin racing to gather at the tips of his horns in small spheres of glowing light. However, in this instance some of them also travel to collect in a third sphere above his forehead. With a slight twitch of his head, all of the spheres streak off to impact into the creature.
"I can't take much more of that... we need to finish this!"
Jehir swings wildly with his doshko, bringing it down on the Akata's head.
He then carefully takes a step back.
Diedre is able to grab the creature's attention, but Miraj stumbles right into the akata's maw, which tears into his thigh!
Although the damage is significant, the beast misses any critical arteries, and Miraj doesn't seem to fall instantly ill like Entiren did. The nuar, leaning on the wall for support, conjures deific fury and levels their last foe with a trio of force bolts.
There's a moment of silence, swiftly broken by Jehir's doshko, which crashes into the akata's corpse so hard that everyone feels the floor plates reverberate through their feet/ambulatory tentacles.
Aureum , Diedre, Entiren , Jehir , Lauren, Miraj
???
"Everyone into the bridge!" Diedre calls out over the group's broadcast channel.
Once everyone has managed to move through the door, the half-elf closes it.
"Lauren, see if you can close that airlock and get enviro and lights back up. Miraj? Can you check if this ship has an int-sec system? Maybe we can get eyes on the rest of this tub and see if there are any more of those things running around."
She then steps close to Jehir and uses one of her healing serums on him.
Jehir moves onto the bridge and waits by the door, quickly attempting to seal it once everyone is within.
Serum of Healing Mk I: 1d8 ⇒ 8
"Ah, thank you," says Jehir with a nod. "Here... I have one of those to replace yours." Jehir draws a healing serum and offers it to
Diedre.
"I won't be much help with the controls. I'll watch the door."
Jehir turns and stands by the door, waiting for signs of activity.
Lauren hops to, quick to follow the Captain's orders. She runs up to the main terminal and begins fiddling with the controls, first attempting to shut the aft airlock and then turn back on life support (atmo) and the lights.
Miraj starts to look at his wounds, then when Diedre and Lauren enter the bridge, he tries to object, for a moment, "Vait! Zere might be more of zee beasts!" He keeps his sword drawn and follows them in in case any more dangers lurked in the darkened bridge.
If nothing attacks and no traps are set off, he sheaths his sword and tries to figure out the security monitors.
"Aureum?" Diedre says after a moment. "Would you see if you can pull up any logs? Maybe someone documented what happened here."
"Right, yes," Aureum says, and hurries over to a computer console. She begins tapping away at it with one hand, still holding her pistol in the other, and tries to access the most recent logs.
Miraj jumps into the bridge first, but the disguised ryphorian finds nothing out of place, aside from the littering of noqual fragments across the floor. The rest of the crew quickly follows, and Diedre shuts the door behind them . Jehir watches their own exit, taking reassurance that the solid metal barrier would take an akata hours - if not days - to rip through.
Lauren is able to access basic ship functions from an unsecured terminal. She brings up the lights and initiates repressurization, slowly pumping air back into the ship's compartments. From the progress bar on the screen, she can see that this will take minutes. From this terminal, Lauren also notes that she can toggle any of the ship's doors (including airlocks) remotely.
Miraj looks for any kind of internal monitoring system, but it does not appear that the Acreon is equipped with a video surveillance system.
Aureum, typing at the computer with one hand, quickly finds that the ship's log is stored in a secured part of the ship's computer and requires appropriate authorization. Attempting to bypass the security system, she rapidly hits a dead end as the screen flashes "INSUFFICIENT CREDENTIALS" .
As the air begins to poor into the cabin, Lauren visibly relaxes. Several tentacles, once flaring out grasping, begin to droop and sway with the breezes coming through the vents. Over the comms, she announces, "Two minutes on breath." She begins methodically shutting any internal door that isn't currently shut. "Ship is secures. We rests here?"
Then noticing the trouble, she tosses Aureum her hacking kit. "Is help." She adds, hoping the logs might explain what in all hell is happening.
”Thanks, this should help,” Aureum says, catching the kit. Reassured that the bridge is safe for the moment, she stows her pistol and tries again to access to the logs.
Miraj looks over Aureum's shoulder as she works on the security bypass. He offers some advice, "Try a G-cyper."
He eventually will pick up the noqual and cocoon fragments, storing them with the others he's collected. "Zis should keep zee lawyers busy," he comments as he works, holding up a piece to show the video drone. "If these were on zee asteroid, then would zey be part of zee mining claim even if zee asteroid were by rights property of zee corporation who hired them? I don't think having mineral rights for property usually extends to things found on zee surface left by animals."
Having moved into the room with the rest of the party, Entiren will have set himself down on the floor along the back wall. Gingerly feeling around the bite wound, he will try to determine what it is that is currently affecting him. However, remembering anything he learned about ills of the body is more difficult while actually experiencing said ills.
Not able to determine what it is, he will wait until the atmosphere has returned to the room before speaking. "So... did any of you... feel anything when the Akatas... bit into you? Because... it feels as if... something is spreading." With the last statement, he gestures at the region around the bite wound.
Diedre turns to look at some of the reactivating displays. She taps at her comm unit.
She puts her hands up to rub at her temples again.
"Thanks, this should help," Aureum says, catching the kit. Reassured that the bridge is safe for the moment, she stows her pistol and tries again to access to the logs.
Aureum tries to bypass the ship's authorization protocols a second time, and is successful, thanks to Miraj's advice. Access to the system provides navigational data, cargo manifests, and a variety of tools for daily living and maintenance, but when Aureum attempts to access the ship's logs, she's met with a second request for authorization.
Not able to determine what it is, he will wait until the atmosphere has returned to the room before speaking. "So... did any of you... feel anything when the Akatas... bit into you? Because... it feels as if... something is spreading." With the last statement, he gestures at the region around the bite wound.
Entiren doesn't know what's affecting him, but whatever it is has progressed at an extraordinarily quick pace - the nuar appears to have been ill for days.
Lauren nervously presses at her comm unit with one manipulatory tentacle as the air pressure starts to re-regulate. With the other, she turns off the environmental protections on her armor and spreads her sensing tentacles.
Diedre curses under her breath and clinches her fists. She takes a breath and forces herself to relax despite the pounding in her head.
"Hey Aureum? Do we have any logs yet?" she says, trying to distract herself.
She brings up a maintenance console and begins running some load tests on the system hoping to pull resources from the access control system.
"Damn, I should've known the system would be hardened against something like that," she mutters.
Miraj notices Entiren's distress and digs in his pockets for one of the medpatches purchased for just such situations. He reads over the instructions and says, "Aureum, I think zee logs can vait. Entiren seems to have been poisoned by those arcatas. You know more about medicine than any of us. Would you attend to him? I'll give zee logs a try."
Miraj plugs his hacking kit into a port and begins extracting programs that can try to worm their way through a firewall.
Miraj plugs his hacking kit into a port and begins extracting programs that can try to worm their way through a firewall.
As Miraj attempts to worm his way through the firewall, the automated security reacts and kicks him back to the start.
"Miraj?" Diedre says as she's looking over the console. "Could I borrow that for a moment?" She indicates his hacking kit.
Glad to have atmo again, she pulls back her hood and shakes out her blue ponytails.
"I haven't played with one of these since my uni days."
With deft fingers, she begins manipulating the console.
"Dang it! It's been too long," she says in frustration.
"Think, Didi, think," the half-elf mutters to herself. "You're smarter then this piece of silicon."
She reaches one hand up and plays with a loose tendril of hair. After a moment of chewing her bottom lip, she drops her hands back to the console.
"Nobody applies all the security patches and the G-tate exploit is only two years old ... "
Happy to let Miraj and Diedre deal with the firewall, Aureum joins Entiren on the back wall.
”May I take a look?” She asks, rolling up her sleeves and kneeling beside him. ”I didn’t notice anything unusual when I was bitten, but there’s nothing saying it couldn’t affect us differently.”
"Yes, yes. Please take a look." Reaching to his belt, he unclips his medkit and sets it on the floor nearby. "If you need it... here is my medkit. We may... wish to save on other... medical supplies."
Happy to let Miraj and Diedre deal with the firewall, Aureum joins Entiren on the back wall.
”May I take a look?” She asks, rolling up her sleeves and kneeling beside him. ”I didn’t notice anything unusual when I was bitten, but there’s nothing saying it couldn’t affect us differently.”
Quickly reading Entiren's symptoms, Aureum concludes that he's infected by some sort of microscopic parasite, owing to the rapid onset and lack of local inflammation. Drawing on the supplies in Entiren's medkit, the lashunta first dresses the wound with an antiseptic wrap before administering a combination of medications to Entiren in order to try and boost his immune response.
"Nobody applies all the security patches and the G-tate exploit is only two years old ... "
On their third collective attempt, the Starfinders are able to breach the firewall and obtain read-only access to the Acreon's logs, which are digitally stamped with both time and approximate location. Diedre scans to the last entry with star coordinates (as opposed to Drift coordinates), and lets the video logs play forward:
A weathered human, recognizable from Nor's briefing materials as the captain of the Acreon, gives the camera a weary smile. "...and that's the last one in the bag! Twelve weeks, six survey locations, right on schedule. As soon as Jensil finishes his astrogation, we'll be on our way home!" Clicking on the ship's intercom, the captain grins before saying, "I think you've earned a break, boys and girls! First round Station-side is one me!" There's some laughter off screen before the log cuts off.
"So, this is a first for me," the captain starts, adjusting the video camera, "One of the boys was running a test of the long range sensors, and he actually found somethin' - an asteroid, floatin' out here in the Drift. Outta curiosity, I sent a few of 'em over, and it looks like the surface is dotted with these metallic... geodes? I haven't seen anything quite like this before." The captain heaves a lustrious egg-shaped metallic object in front of the camera, which shows another pair of the strange objects in the background. "There's also at least one passage into the rock's interior - I've elected to attach a tow cable to the thing so we can properly assess it on our way back to the Station. Gods know we could use a little windfall."
The video opens on the captain, looking over their shoulder and out the bridge. "Damn things aren't geodes! They're damn eggs! Now I've got these creepy, silent blue tenalce-dogs attacking my crew. Aw, shi- JENSIL! Shoot it, you idiot!" The video cuts off abruptly.
This video, as noted by text in the upper-right corner, was recorded from the engineering bay, not the bridge. A crew member is seen initiating the feed, but then runs out of frame. Screams can be heard, as well as the sound of firearms and a scuffle. "We're being overwhelmed!" The captains voice can be heard in the middle distance. "Get your suits up so I can purge the atmosphere. It might slow 'em - what the Hell is THAT? Did it come from the rock?"
The captain appears in the engineering bay, wearing a space suit and patched into the audio through his comms system. "Venting the ship didn't work. I've set the autopilot to continue to Absalom, but we need to abandon ship. We'll retreat to the rock and regroup there. Acreon out."
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Once the logs have finished playing out, Diedre reaches up to rub her temples again.
"So it looks like they headed over to the asteroid."
She puts her hands down and looks around at the others.
"There's a chance they could still be alive, right?" she asks. It looks like she's waiting for someone to convince her.
She then walks over to where Aureum is treating Entiren.
"How's he doing?" she asks the woman, placing a hand on her arm. Her eyes suddenly go wide. "Oh! Thank! The! Gods!" she enunciates out as she puts her hands to her head. "It stopped! The freakin' pounding stopped!"
She closes her eyes and basks in the apparent relief. Those same eyes snap open after a moment and she blushes and looks at the seated Nuar. "I'm so sorry," she says. "It's just my head has been pounding since we got in that stupid shuttle and it finally stopped. I still want to know how you're doing."
"Is chance... but small." Lauren comments, regarding the point about the crew. "But guess is bigger chance Entiren get worser if he not rests now. What do you say, Doctor Aureum?"
"Don't worry too much about me. I should... be fine for a while." Suddenly, his horns begin glowing with small pinpricks of light, much as when he struck down the Akata not so long ago. However, instead of collecting in small spheres at the tips of his horns, they drift off his horns and begin to float around him. Suddenly surrounded by several small constellations, Entiren gives an involuntary jerk of surprise when the floating lights all rush into him simultaneously.
Not entirely sure what has just happened, it takes Entiren a moment to notice that he no longer feels quite as ill. Looking around at the others, his lips turn up in a faint smile as he adjusts his position slightly. "Not only that, but it appears as if the stars are not quite ready to abandon me. I will rest if that is what Aureum recommends, but I do not feel a pressing need to do so."
"As for the crew, going by what I could notice, they headed over to the Drift rock around seven days ago. Assuming they brought along enough supplies, they very well could still be alive." He falls silent for a moment as he thinks something over. "However, those last two logs worry me. The crew could likely have easily barricaded themselves into the Engineering bay, as the doors seem solid enough to keep out the Akatas. The captain also mentioned something else, as if they were being attacked by more than just these tentacled beasts."
A medpatch allows you to attempt a Medicine check untrained with a +10 circumstance bonus, but only for the first aid, long-term stability, treat disease, and treat drugs or poison tasks.
Seeing that Entiren is feeling somewhat better, Lauren heads back over to the computer and re-watches the logs. After a cycle back through them, she motions for the robo-cam to come over. She replays the first two entries for the camera and bobs a few times for emphasis. "Is... example... Mr..." She fumbles with her phone for a second and then repeats. "Is evidence, Mr Am..bas..sa..dor. To miners, jobs is overs. Surveys is done. Rock is not part of jobs." She then thinks for a minute before adding, "But you is probably knowings that, already."
"Let's make sure ve download und store a copy of those logs," Miraj suggests. "Dump all zee data of ship systems. Zee lawyers will have to work out vat this means for zee miners claim."
Miraj locates a ship map to see what is supposed to be in the rooms not yet explored. "There might still be some goblins on board. They must have entered after zee miners abandoned ship. It should not take long to check out the rest of the ship. Zen ve can see vat might still be on or in zee asteroid."
Miraj exposes the wound to his thigh and asks, "I vonder if you might be able to suture this closed. It is not too bad, but while we are resting, might as well see if it can be patched up. I vill assist."
"Let's make sure ve download und store a copy of those logs," Miraj suggests. "Dump all zee data of ship systems. Zee lawyers will have to work out vat this means for zee miners claim."
"We should also encrypt a copy and send it to the Ambassador. In case something happens to our copy or the computers. Either while we are here... or on our way back."
"If the Log shows that the Acreon had completed the survey it was hired for and was on its way home, it certainly weakens Astral Extractions' case. They may not want copies of that log to remain existing."
"Yes, Doctor Aureum, what is your prognosis?" Diedre says, turning back to the Lashunta with a smile.
Diedre's mental voice comes across with a wildly fluctuating strength.
As Lauren plays and replays the logs for Nor's camera drone with light commentary, Miraj takes a brief look at the log files and discovers they are read-only and copy-protected, a common security feature for data of potential legal importance such as this. Extracting the raw video would require root access , which the disguised ryphorian feels may be above their skill level. The recording taken by the Ambassador's drone will likely have to suffice for now.
"I hate to think of any survivors being over on the rock longer then they need to be," Diedre says, her brow furrowing. "But bringing them back to a ship with hostiles still on it wouldn't help them. We need to clear this ship first."
"Let's start on the starboard side, closest to the bridge and work clockwise around the ship."
Standing up from where he had been sitting, Entiren will nod to Diedre. "That plan sounds good to me. We should probably be prepared for more Akatas, although there was also that Space Goblin out there. If one got here, there is a chance that there could be more of them." He will then move to stand by the door, ready to go back out into the ship.
Lauren pipes up, "Did map captain hardscrabbles give us have kitchen? Akatas is vulnerable to ocean waters. Perhaps they has enough salts to make our own?"
"Wh-what—" Aureum starts to ask, looking suddenly wide-eyed in Diedre's direction, but stops herself. Having grown up among other lashuntas, Aureum is quite familiar with telepaths, and as far as she knows, Diedre isn't one; she was probably imagining things.
She shakes her head a little as she stands up, and then nods at Lauren's suggestion. "If it'll help us fight those things, I'm all for it; there's only so much I can do to patch us up."
"I-I was just asking about Entiren," she replies, her face paling slightly.
{"I didn't say that out loud, did I? No ... didn't ... Is she ... my mind?"}
"You aren't ... you wouldn't ... ?" Diedre begins before shaking her head. "Nevermind, sorry."
Miraj exposes the wound to his thigh and asks, "I vonder if you might be able to suture this closed. It is not too bad, but while we are resting, might as well see if it can be patched up. I vill assist."
"Did map captain hardscrabbles give us have kitchen? Akatas is vulnerable to ocean waters. Perhaps they has enough salts to make our own?"
Checking their notes, Lauren finds that Captain Serissi did, if fact, give a vague description of the Acreon's galley - directly aft of the bridge on the port side.