In case the Brigadier didn't hear what K-9 just said, Bryce goes over to him and says "Brigadier, that golden blob in the pedestal is the source of all the problems here. It is alien, and could be used to *absorb* energy from Earth! I think we should talk to whoever designed the Golden Promise immediately, they may be alien!"
Ted struggles against the tendrils, and almost falls against his own force when the tendrils suddenly wither away. He listens to K-9's explanation as he rubs a sore spot on his arm left from the tendril's tight grip. Ted makes a grab for the remote control again, just in case.
After sharing observations about the blob, everyone notices Kyle standing stock still, his eyes wavering slightly as if studying something in front of him, although nothing special appears to be where he is looking. It appears as if he is having another episode.
Moments later, before the brigadier digests the information given to him, klaxons blare and a loudspeaker announces, "Golden Promise launch in t-minus 10 minutes. All personnel report to duty stations and clear the launch area."
The brigadier sputters, "Bloody hell, the launch was not scheduled for another day. What is going on?"
Bryce shouts over the din "It's an alien plot! Aliens are going to use the Golden Promise to seed the Earth with those vines and send Earth's energy to their planet! Let's get to the launch control room, NOW!"
Bryce reflects that he has traveled with the Doctor long enough that that statement didn't even sound strange - which was strange. ;)
Kyle is still lost in his own mind's visions. His past episodes have been over after ten seconds but this one has been underway for at least 20 seconds.
The brigadier looks at Bryce and seems to be considering his options, including the unlikely idea that Bryce is right. Eventually he says, "Right. We'll go to the launch control area and see if Dr. Frutiger has any light to shed on this. This is his bailiwick I'm afraid. We've put considerable expense into this, so let's not go off half-cocked. I say, what's wrong with your friend?"
Ted pockets the remote control and his weapon as the Brigadier speaks. "Kyle?" The detective rubs his forehead as he realizes Kyle is gone. "Don't worry, he usually snaps out of it."
Although it doesn't normally take him this long.
"You folks go, I'll watch him until he comes out of it and we'll catch up."
K 9 had moved next to Kyle and was looking at him in obvious concern.
When Ted speaks, K 9 replies " Affirmative " and then moves to follow the brigadier.
They're all dead...all of them. We were too late. We...we need to go back. whispers Kyle, though he doesn't seem to be responsive at all.
K 9 stops moving to follow the brigadier and returns to Kyle, saying "Mr Kyle, you know something important we don't. Please try to explain, it may be the key to preserving life on Earth."
Bryce says "K-9, please come with us, we may need your nose laser for backup."
Kyle doesn't answer. He can't answer. He's a million miles away and an unknown number of years.
"Yes master" replies K 9 as he moves quickly to join Bryce, moving beside him like a well trained dog, continuing "It is most unfortunate Mr Kyle can't pass on what he knows."
As K-9 goes off with Bryce, Ted stands in front of Kyle, snapping his fingers in a desperate effort to bring his mind back from wherever it's gone.
"Kyle? We need you back here, come on. They're not dead yet, but we need to start moving."
Kyle snaps back into the present. He takes a couple seconds to understand where he is. Ted...I think there’s something very wrong with my brain. Where is everyone?
The brigadier had paused at the door until Kyle snapped out of his state, then he heads out the door purposefully, exactly where he has not said. The klaxons have stopped but people are hustling about frantically. At 15 second intervals, a voice announces the time to launch, starting at 10 minutes.
K 9 continues following the brigadier, following at his master's heel as before. "I hope Mr Kyle is alright. K 9 states.
Kyle follows after the Brig, getting caught up along the way.
Something major is happening, and I’m pretty sure it’s alien related. What aren’t you telling us about this project?
"This is highly irregular. But if Dr. Frutiger approved the launch and the mediator and the agriculture minister approved, well, I'm sure there is a logical explanation," is all the brigadier says to Kyle's question.
The brigadier heads for the office of John Neox. When he gets there, the door is locked and no one responds to his loud and insistent knocking. The brigadier looks around for a security guard to open the office so he can use the phone, but no guards are in the area.
"Blast! I've got to find a phone!" With this, the Brigadier charges down a hall looking for a phone.
"Nine minutes to launch," the friendly voice announces.
"Brigadier!" calls K 9 as the brigadier begins to move away. K 9 shoots the lock on the door with his nose laser.
Brigadier!" calls K 9 as the brigadier moves away. K 9 proceeds to shoot the lock on the door with his nose laser.
The brigadier hears the sounds of the blaster, draws his pistol as he wheels around, fearing an attack, sees the door lock in a smoking and useless hunk of metal with the door ajar, looks back at K-9 with new respect. Then he goes spare and says, "That's government property that is! We'll have words about that later. Mr. Neox is probably in the launch control. Now follow me!"
He turns his back and sprints down the hall looking for a phone. It does not appear he is waiting to see that the group is following him.
K 9 looks in the room for a phone.
Kyle follows the brig closely. This is clearly not “business as usual! What is going on!
Bryce follows the Brigadier, whistling for K-9 (he has a special whistle for "come here").
There is a phone in the room. The brigadier is clearly not thinking as clearly as one might hope. The room also contains file cabinets, scale blueprints of the Golden Promise, a map of the complex, and a blackboard full of mathematical formulas.
The brigadier does not reply to Kyle, heading toward the entrance, where a receptionist's desk sits unoccupied, with a phone on the desk.
The brigadier picks up the phone and dials a four digit number and waits.
K 9 stares a little disconsolately at the destroyed door and the telephone just behind it, then hearing his master's whistle K 9 moves off towards Bryce as quickly as he can. When he catches Bryce up K 9 says "Is anyone heading to the launch site? It may be that whoever or whatever is behind this dastardly scheme is planning an unauthorised launch that will be disastrous for civilisation and all life on Earth."
Ted finds his own hand instinctively reaching for his gun when he hears the crack of splitting metal, despite knowing it's only K-9. Life saving reflexes can be hard to ignore.
Ted hurries into Neox's office as the Brigadier moves down the hall. He grabs the map of the complex and the blueprints of the Golden Promise, then runs to catch up with the others.
"Here, these were in Neox's office. Blueprints and a map. Can't make heads or tails of the blueprints, but I'm going to hurry for the launch site myself."
...
The brigadier picks up the phone and dials a four digit number and waits.
... and waits ... and waits.
"Double-blast!" is all the Brigadier says, slams the phone into its craddle and heads down a different hall which ends in a door that is closed ... and locked. No guards are there. The brigadier has a key but when he fits it into the lock, it does not release the lock. "Most irregular. They've locked down access to launch control. I'm out of ideas."
"Eight minutes twenty seconds to launch."
Bryce says "K-9, would you do the honors, please?" pointing to the lock.
K 9 takes aim at the door's lock and shoots at it with his nose laser.
"You may proceed Brigadier." says K 9, beginning to motor towards the launch site as quickly as he can.
The lock is damaged by the blast, but the door is still solidly in place. A secondary lock appears to have the door securely shut and there is no obvious way to unlock it from the outside.
Ted glances up, distracted by the announcements ringing out through the facility. How were they going to get through the door? As his mind races, Ted hears a clicking noise and looks down to realize he's fidgeting with his pen. Nervous habit.
Wait. The cells we were investigating earlier in the day...
"If we go to the holding cells, there's a clear shot into the launch facility," Ted recalls, speaking quickly. "And we left behind those pieces to form a hang glider... One of us can use that to get in through the window and unlock the door!"
"Correction, you can not."K 9 says. K 9 then moves back and forth somewhat so he can see where the hinges are on the door and the secondary lock is attached to the frame. K 9 is trying to establish if it is possible to get through the door by blowing away the hinges et. al.
I told you that was an excellent idea!
"Do any of you even know how to put the hang glider together, much less fly one? I think that would be suicide!"
The brigadier comments, "I'm not sure how you found out about those gliders, but we put them there to allow us a way into the compound should a hostile group take control of the area. But that doesn't get you into the launch control site. That is underground. The concrete slabs that cover the launch tube will open eventually, but by that time, it may be too late to affect the launch, not to mention dangerous. This passageway is the only way to the control room."
After saying this, he pauses and then reaches for the papers in Ted's hands. "There might be other ways in."
Ted grimaces at learning the launch control site is in fact underground, and allows the Brigadier to take the papers from his hand.
"Like I said, a map and blueprints. Anything look feasible to you?"
K-9:
Kyle:
Ted:
The Brigadier:
The Brigadier holds the papers so everyone can see. "Let's see," the brigadier says, looking around the hall ways and then back to the map. "We're here," he announces, pointing a finger to a hall with a door that connects to a tunnel that descends to the control room.
The brigadier seems out of his depth but the others all spot the same thing at about the same time: a room in the office building basement that controls air flow exhaust out of the complex through a number of air ducts that appear big enough to crawl through. The fans draw the hot air up to the room and send them on up to a vent on the roof of the building There are, however, a number of ominous looking triangles with an asterisk in the center of each spaced at regular intervals along the ducts.
The brigadier's key opens the door to this service room and no guards are patrolling, allowing the group to find the ducts, turn off one of the fans and gain access to one of the ducts. Looking down the ducts, which descend into the depths toward the launch tube complex, lines of light can be seen shooting across the tunnel at regular intervals. The make an dangerous sounding crack as they light up. The duct appears to be designed to draw warm air from the launch area to be vented above ground. Without the fans running, the temperature of the tube is rising.
"Seven minutes to launch."
The maintenance tunnels are guarded by lasers, which flash according to a set pattern: a Coordination + Athletics roll (Difficulty 18) lets
someone dodge past them, while an Ingenuity + Knowledge roll (Difficulty 18) lets them calculate a safe time to pass. You must succeed at both to avoid damage from the lasers. Failure (if both rolls fail, use the worse result) results in injury at rate of 2/5/7 to a randomly determined attribute. Roll 1d4 and look up the attribute affected: 1 = Awareness (laser partly blinded you), 2 = Coordination (wound causes pain which limits movement), 3 = Resolve (if resolve drops to 0, you are too afraid or in pain to continue), 4 = Strength (muscle damage).
Result = Failure (1-3 under difficulty): damage = 2
Result = Bad (4-8 under difficulty): damage = 5
Result = Disastrous (9 or more under): Damage = 7
The exhaust ducts are filled with hot fumes: a Resolve + Survival (Difficulty 18) lets a character endure them without injury.
Same damage amounts as above to the same range of attributes; roll random to see which attribute.
The ducts are narrow enough that each person has to go through on his own and one character can't aid another.
You can give yourself a bonus up to +4 on each of the first 2 rolls by controlling your descent and pausing at each laser to time the next move, but then you have to subtract the same number from the roll to avoid heat damage, as you spend longer in the tunnels.
If you think you can do something clever to increase your roll, describe your idea and I'll let you know the outcome. Using story points might be needed here.
Ted, worrying they've spent too much time already, leads the way down the tunnels.
"Let's see now... Lasers flash at a pattern... One. Two. Three four five... Thinking he has the pattern right, the detective begins to move. Unfortunately, although he understands the pattern his height puts him at a disadvantage, and one of the lasers hits him, damaging his sight. He lets out a gasp of surprise, but realizes it could have been a lot worse, and soldiers on.
He feels the heat, and knows he can't make a single mistake. A blast of steam almost hits him square in the chest, but by some miracle he manages to dodge.
= Strength
= Strength
= Strength
Ted manages to get to the bottom of the duct, which empties out into ...
[dice=Coordination+Athletics]2d6 + 4 + 2
[dice=Location]d4 = Strength
[dice=Ingenuity+Knowledge]2d6 + 5 + 0
[dice=Location]d4 = Strength
[dice=Resolve+Survival]2d6 + 3 + 0
[dice=Location]d4 = Strength
"Master"exclaims K 9 seeing Bryce being injured by multiple lasers, then adds "Calculations indicate... now!"as K 9 launches himself through the gauntlet, his cybernetic mind filled with worry and searching for ways to assist his master.
K 9's cybernetic brain calculates the timing of the lasers without error. Despite the robot dog's unwieldy shape for this purpose K 9 manages to negotiate the laser hazards without damage. Then K 9 realises that the hot fumes are starting to damage his internal mechanisms. He quickly adapts the area where his internal systems are in danger to minimise the exposure to hot gasses for long enough to avoid serious damage.
Ted drops into the shaft first and after a few thumps and moans, he is seen and heard no more. Bryce braces himself for the fall and ...
+ 12 = 18
+ 14 = 22
+ 12 = 21
Seeing way too many laser beams in the ducts for his liking, Bryce takes some time to pick thru the items in the room, shoving his arms and legs thru some tubes laying about, picking up a discarded cover from some panel and holding it in front of his chest, and so forth. Then, taking a deep breath, he lowers himself into the shaft and lets go.
While Ted is preparing to enter the shaft, Bryce grabs some insulation to help him deal with the heat, covers what he can of his arms and legs with pipes, covers all that with reflective foil. Finally, he writes a quick program that observes the intervals that the laser beams fire and from that predict when the nearest one will fire a half second before it does, giving him a little extra time to adjust his rate of descent. He uses a primitive voice modulation simulator but only has time to have it say, "Prepare!" when a blast is imminant. There is also a moment when it has to recalculate and hence cannot warn him, so he lets himself know that by having is say "Reprogramming."
When the slides into the shaft, he looks like a robot from a 1950s earth movie. Even with all this protection, it takes all his energy and strength, considerable for one of advanced years, to manage the physical stress of controlling his fall, dodging beams of intense light when his program says, "prepare," and dealing with the stress of having a laser blast into his armor and endure the heat and acrid odors produced by melting metal and burning insulation during the times when his device is saying "Reprogramming".
After a seeming eternity, he hits a section that changes slope from vertical to horizontal. Just as his momentum is dissolved by friction, he tips out an opening but only falls a few feet.
Ted is already standing nearby, having found a panel that opens out and allows them to escape from the heat venting out the power core of the Golden Promise's fuel storage area, which they've seen before in the simulation. Ted turns when he hears a thump and out of the duct panel comes a cyberman, or rather something that looks like a cyberman, as it's hard to tell with all the venting steam and dim lighting. He hears a raspy barely human voice called out "Prepare" then a glitch of static and then "Reprogramming."
K-9 launches himself over the edge of the opening into the shaft. He tries to use his hover ability as a kind of free-fall directional control, which works sort of when he can properly anticipate the next laser blast. The trouble comes from the heat which begins to make it hard for his advanced brain to multi-task at predicting blasts and controlling his fall to avoid them. Then he gets the idea of using his nose blaster to create smoke screens to block or dim the laser blasts he can't avoid.
But he also has to do something to vent heat that threatens to damage his internal circuits. He remembers Bryce installed some micro units that use heat exchangers to keep certain parts cool to preserve their superconducting properties. By releasing a little of that substance, he keeps his parts cool enough to function and rolls out of the tunnel to hover drop to the level floor where he sees an open door and two figures outside it.