So... it wanted to come... here. Rudo mused, deep in thought.
"A little worrying that it could want anything, really. Although I guess the way the drone...zombies...moved and fought meant it couldn't be dumb. I kinda assumed it was just hijacking their brains, but maybe it was more complicated." Arkady shrugged uncomfortably. It was going to be a long time before she enjoyed dancing again, that was for sure. And why did it make her want to dance anyway? That was freakin' weird.
"Maybe it's more complicated than that. Maybe the pilot managed to change course BEFORE the thing completely took over. Maybe whatever it was wanted to make it to Wolf 1061, the Auspicious' original destination, and the pilot changed course as a last act of free will." Janessa shivered a bit; it was a frightening thought that such a thing would make it to a major population center.
Well, true enough... but, this is the scenario I was imagining.
Rudo gathers his thoughts.
The mindbender infiltrates the Auspicious, changing the ship's course.
Attacked by pirates who would surely divert the vessel, it jettisons cargo as a device to slow them down and divert their interest... much like a fighter pilot would deploy chaff and flare countermeasures.
Once the course is set or the ship is forced to crash land, it dispatches the crew members with the only chance of overriding course or repairing the vessel to leave, in engineering.
It may not have been related to the flora/fungus at all. They seemed too erratic and un-thinking.
He quiets down, thoughtful. Eager to be on the way back.
My mother was fond of saying, just because you can't see something... doesn't' mean it's not there. Usually when speaking to non-believers.
But, I can't help but apply that logic to your sensors.
Because our fancy sensors don't pick something up, we assume what it is we are looking for isn't there. A form of confirmation bias?
What if it just can't be... sensed? Like viruses before powerful enough microscopes. He looks over at the catatonic "survivor" they are about to deliver onto civilization.
Rudo resigns himself to the idea that this is not his fight, the entity and it's motives are beyond him. Although he could glean the host's life-death state with some effort, his abilities did not extend to the... rider.
Lt Clausius took solace in that his incident report would be very thorough.
Legion nods at Rudo, "An excellent theory that the fungus may not have been related to the crash of the Auspicious. I am unsure which possibility is more concerning, however."
"It would be nice if everything tied up neatly together," Arkady said with a small sigh. "But things are complicated. K.I.S.S only works in engineering. Real-life gets messy."
Presenting Adventure 2 - Trapped in the Void
In Scene - Commander Legion-12, Dr. Yusil, Ensign Oren Knightgale, and Lt. Vassally-Simmons.
Dr. Yusil watches out the window as the shuttle flies across the icy planes toward McMurdo colony. It's been many years since she set saw this place. When she left, it was little more than a VoidCorp-owned outpost with some supporting businesses and housing for those who worked there. Now, however, it was a full-fledged city.
Rising above it all is the party's destination: A 20 story narrow spike known as the Bluespire Tower. This building is VoidCorp's regional office in McMurdo, and home of divisions linking it's outer-space holdings to its system holdings back in Sol. Your mission is a relatively simple one: retrieve a datastick from Director Joseph Bacchi in the financial review department. It's unknown why the data on the stick can't be transferred via Drift Beacon network, but it's deemed a security risk.
As Such, Captain Cooper assigned some of his most trusted officers to retrieve the stick.
"Attention, OSF Shuttle 774 Alpha, proceed to landing zone F and prepare to disembark at Galveston Spaceport."
Hunh, Galveston... Have any of you been to Galveston, Texas on Earth? Delightful beaches, moody gardens... She shrugs.
"I think I've been to half of places, but I don't think I've been there." Arkady grinned as she finished loading her batteries into her gear and folding the thing away in her kit bag. "Still, I'm not sure this one is gonna have many beaches. Corp worlds tend to be all about efficiency."
"It's different from when I worked here." Irani comments, observing the urban sprawl as the shuttle flies overhead. "Humans to have this tendency to multiply rather quickly, it seems."
A memory teases a smile from her before she can smooth it down. "I'm not much for the 'sun and sand'. There's not much of either back where >'m from."
"We're like bunnies that way," Arkady said with the confidence of someone who knew her contraceptive measures were top notch. "I think it's because we don't live so long, so we have to achieve immortality through our kids and our works, as it were."
"Indeed." Dr. Yusil agrees after a beat, turning her face away from Arkady as she does.
Oren guides the shuttle down to the assigned landing bay at Galveston Spaceport, and you disembark into the concourse. Above you, jets, shuttles and antigravity vehicles woosh about, the skies heavily congested. It's obvious that the Spaceport has not grown as rapidly as the rest of the colony, and is overdue for an expansion.
Following a computerized information guide, you make your way to a magnetic rail system, which glides above the city quickly and smoothly, stopping at two or three destinations before reaching your stop.
Bluespire Tower is impressive from this angle, a marvel of modern engineering. It's size is not at all unusually, and it would be dwarfed by many buildings on many worlds, but here, in the still-burgeoning McMurdo colony, it is obviously king.
A gentle mist begins to fall as you approach the entrance. Outside the city, on the ice plains, this is represented as snow. But here, the city's geothermally powered environment controls liquify it long before it hits ground level.
Arkady looked up at the tower, impressed at it's apparent quality and engineering. It's not like bigger was always better. She'd seen buildings, and even a couple of ships, with wasted space that could have been far better used. She did shudder to consider how much manipulating the environment like this cost, though. Messing with a biosphere was a fricken' nightmare. Not just the tech to do it, but the ramifications on the eco-system. Stop the heavy rains so work can happen? Great, except it turns out that some plant needs those rains or they won't seed. They start dying and suddenly half a colony is lost because it turns out they were what was making the mountain so stable and no sliding down into the valley. Whoops.
The Dokkaran looks up at the spire with a thoughtful expression. Humans seemed to have this strange idea of constantly expanding upwards, rather than the more logical approach of excavating into the crust. She couldn't deny that it certainly looked impressive. New York City was a sight to behold during the time they lived there.
"There are a few theories that the planet's ecology used to be supported by geothermal vents," She comments ofhand, answering questions nobody asked. "Alegea-forms left behind when the core started to cool down are what provide most the atmospheric oxygen. When I was here, half the research we were doing was figuring out how thhose algea-forms managed to survive. The potential benefits for teraforming can't be understated."
As the landing party enters through ostentatious two-story tall glass and metal doors, a young Asian woman in a loose, brightly-colored short-sleeved shirt and blue khakis approaches. She stores her personal comm unit on her belt and welcomes the crewmembers with a broad smile.
"Greetings! You must be Captain Cooper’s people from the Guangzhou. I’m Jane Inthavong. The director asked me to meet you and escort you to his office. We have a lot of security, but just stick with me, and we’ll have you in and out in no time."
Arkady fell into position, taking on a more formal stance and manner as they met their contact. She was curious to see what their security looked like. Sometimes, private corps had forces and gear which put them to shame.
Oren always felt the least prepared, having had to occupy herself with prepping and piloting the shuttle.
Oren steps forward, taking protocol lead. Good day, Jane. I'm Ensign Oren Knightgale and these are Commander Legion-12, Dr. Yusil, and Lt. Vassally-Simmons. A pleasure to make your acquaintance and looking forward to meeting with Director Bacchi.
Please remind your security staff, that we will comply as best we can with corporate protocol. But, we are with the OSF and are not allowed to part with certain... items. She smiles.
Allowing the ensign to take the lead on introductions allowed her a moment's peace to observe their surroundings. This place in stark contrast seems to have changed very little. Something about that felt comforting to her.
Please remind your security staff, that we will comply as best we can with corporate protocol. But, we are with the OSF and are not allowed to part with certain... items.[/b] She smiles.
"Well now, that's a hiccup, for certain. You've flummoxed me on the get-go. I was about to say our first stop is to security to deposit your weapons. Let me check in with management."
The brightly dressed woman ducks away, leaving you standing in the foyer, and activates her comm.
A few minutes later, she comes back. "Hopefully this solves our confusion. I've transmitted a memo from Admiral Revelek to your ship, they should bounce to your personal comms shortly."
Seconds later, you each receive a message from Captain Cooper:
"I don't like this, but Admiral Revelek has indeed ordered us to comply with all their security protocols. If you run into any issues, signal the ship and we'll send a security force down ASAP."
With a sad internal sigh Arkady handed over the modified weapon to the checkpoint staff. "Careful, it's a little heavy," she warned.
Legion deposits their knife and rifle. It wouldn’t matter much when their own body was their weapon.
"They'll take them when we get to security," Jane replies.
Jane presses her hand to a biometric scanner next to the eastern door, which opens for her. "The doors are all keyed to employees," she says. "And of course some areas require special clearance. But I can get us to security. It’s just down this hall."
As they walk down the hall, Oren and Arkady make note of vents along the floor, and several nozzle-like protrusions in the ceiling above.
Jane... Do the nozzles at the ceiling and vents in the floor freak everyone out, or is it just me? Decontamination of some sort? Her professional smile never leaves her face.
Arkady glanced at the nozzles, and nodded. "Decontamination, fire suppression, immobilizing foam, nerve gas, molecular acid...a nozzle is a nozzle, so it's all about what they hooked up to it," she agreed via the comms.
"Oh, yeah that's a defensive security measure. We've got some really sensitive corporate data in this facility, and VoidCorp, as the largest interstellar corporation in the Concord, has a lot of enemies. Plus the occasional hostile employee. At a command, the vents and nozzles send out sleeping gas, incapacitating anyone who's a danger without harming them."
Arkady has her doubts about two delivery mechanisms for one gas, and makes a mental note of it.
As she walks, Jane gestures to the ceiling, where small hemispherical devices can occasionally be seen, on the northern or southern walls. "Motion sensors," she says. "All tied into Argent, our security AI. Hey Argent!" Jane waves to the nearest motion sensor. There is no response, but Jane doesn’t seem to have expected one, and she heads down the hall until she reaches a door at the far end.
Jane presses a button by the security room's biometric lock, and a moment later, the door unlocks. The security agent within the room ushers the party inside.
Beyond the door is a simple square room 20 feet on each side. A door leads out to the south, and a large metal locker fills the northeast corner of the room. A man in a black suit rises from his desk to greet them, hand out.
"Welcome to Bluespire! If you would, please place all your weapons in this locker. They will be safe here for the duration of your visit."
Oren engages the safety on her laser pistol and demurely complies, passing along her riot baton, as well.
The security agent picks up a wand-shaped device from the desk and passes it over each of you.
Legion places their weapon in the locker without complaint, nodding to the man in the suit.
Hm, security AI. Generally reliable. Hopefully no data corruption.
Arkady was intrigued to hear about the AI, but still sad to be parted with her weaponry. Still, orders were orders.
Jane moves to the southern door and waits for the security agent to buzz you in. Outside the door is a small waiting area with another door and an elevator. Jane scans her palm against the elevator's bioreader and waits. Soon, the door opens, and two other employees exit the elevator and walk through the door that does not lead to the security office. "It's a short trip. We're heading to floor six."
Upon exiting the elevator, Jane leads the way through the door, into a very large workspace filled with cubicles. The ceiling is 12 feet high, and the floor is covered in carpeting. Dozens of cubicles fill the space, with VoidCorp employees working at most of them, crouched over computer terminals. “This way,” she says, waving a hand as she begins to walk south, between two rows of cubicles.
Because you're looking for them now, it's fairly easy to spot the motion detectors on the ceiling, same as the ones on the floor below.
What is more difficult to notice, and what only Legion manages to detect (I rolled off-line) is that there are small devices, about the size of a human thumb, installed near the computers in every cubicle. One end is plugged into a power outlet, and the other end is plugged into the cubicle computer.
Getting the Engineer's attention, Legion motions to the devices.
Focusing as Legion nudged her attention to them, Arkady studied the devices and tried to ponder out what they might be.
The device is a basic shock grid. It produces an electrical charge across a small area (basically the 5' square in front of the computer). It would destroy all functional circuits in the computer; it would also be quite dangerous to be in that area if the grid were activated.
Following Jane, Oren tries to understand the cat's-paw. Replaying her greeting, words and studying her body language.
Was she just the self-professed messenger or more in control than she let on?
Thanks to your training to read body language and vocal inflections, it is difficult to lie to you. You believe a truthful statement contains deceptions or that a lie is a truthful state only when you fail a Sense Motive check to detect a deception by 10 or more. Diplomacy is a class skill for you, though if it is a class skill from the class you take at 1st level, you instead gain a +1 bonus to Diplomacy checks. In addition, you gain an ability adjustment of +1 to Charisma at character creation.
Legion narrows their eyes. This level of security was unusual. It was not a cause for alarm yet, but more might have been going on than met the eye.
Was [Jane] just the self-professed messenger or more in control than she let on?
Oren gets a pretty innocent, almost oblivious vibe from Jane. She's a company girl, headfirst into whatever "training" they've pushed on them. She doesn't seem capable of the sort of deception it would take to appear differently.
About fifty feet to the southwest is a door; Jane approaches it before pushing a button on the biometric lock.
A voice comes from the lock. "Yes?"
"It’s Jane, mister director, sir. I have our guests from the Star Force."
The door unlocks and opens, and a voice from inside the room says,
"Please come in."
"Take care!" Jane says, waving as she wanders west. "I’m gonna check in on the lab."
Director Bacchi’s office is spacious and well-furnished, including a broad and handsome wooden desk and comfortable chair, a table in one corner surrounded by a few chairs for more casual conversation, and even a fully-stocked bar along the northern wall. A side door also leads north and a large handwoven carpet in bold geometric pattern fills the center of the room. A transparent aluminum bulkhead gives an impressive view of McMurdo's burgeoning Entertainment District. The man seated behind the desk looks up and says, "You must be the people Revelek sent. I’m the person who sent for you."
The man himself is a short, somewhat pudgy human with Mediterranean features. His eyes give an appearance of calculation and perception, tools undoubtedly great in any accounting industry.
Oren steps forward, once more. Good day, Director Bacchi.
I'm Ensign Oren Knightgale and these are Commander Legion-12 who leads the task force, Dr. Yusil, and Lt. Vassally-Simmons. A pleasure to make your acquaintance and looking forward to being of service.
Galveston does look amazing, she confides truthfully with a nod towards the scene below and all around.
How can we help? Her smile is inviting.
The others should understand that Oren's drawing attention to herself, draws attention away from them, giving them time to observe.
In no way was she taking a lead role, in fact she was only acting as a valet of sorts.
Arkady did the standard 'at ease' position behind Oren, since she wanted to take the lead on this. She was also way better at speaking to people. Arkady had gotten to her rank by talent with machines, not her manner of speaking.
At the security gate, the doctor would've deposited her pistol but kept hold of her 'medical equipment'. The idea to even mention them as such barely crossed her mind, only mentioning them if they were pointed out before insisting on their purpose. Regardless of if they pushed the issue, she moved along with the team.
There were a matter of oddities here today overall, it seemed. If only she'd had a bit longer to finish getting those respirators ready, then the gas dispersal would've been only a mild nuisance. An electrical grid was less easy to deal with, but for now it seemed inactive.
While Oren managed the director, Ilrani carefully took stock of their new surroundings.
Dr Yusil does note the presence of one of the power nodes Vassally-Simmons noted earlier.
She, too, recognizes it as a shock grid device, though she doesn't have a great understanding of its technical specifications.
Bacchi withdraws a small datastick out of his desk drawer and steps back around the desk to hand it to the Commander Legion. He says, "This needs to go to the Space Force HQ, Revelek will know what to do with it. Do not attempt to read it and do not let anyone else attempt to access it, either. It's a matter of galactic security."
Without warning, the lights in the office go out, and Bacchi's computer pops and sizzles, filling the room in complete darkness, save for the light beyond the external window. The sound of several small explosions can be heard from the main work area, through the sealed door. Screams of pain and terror follow, only to be cut short. The distant noise of something large and heavy grinding to a halt, like a closing blast door, resounds from beyond the office.
Bacchi panics, looking at the sparks still shooting through the metal components of his chair. "Oh no… it’s the information on that datastick! They’ve come for it! They’re going to kill us all!"
Oren reflexively ducks and shrinks in place. Who the flux are THEY?
Do you have any weapons in this office? Your people took ours.
Orders, Commander?
For a moment, Legion's cybernetic markings glow blue as their nanite sheath forms around them.
"Tell us who they are and what is on that datastick, and why they might want it. We will get you out of here, but we will need weapons to do so. If you have none here, I can take point as we get to the security station."
Arkady moved to the door, both trying to see what in the various hells was happening and whether this door could be, at the very least, temporarily secured against intrusion. Even if the circuits to control the door were cooked she might be able to make the motor jump, for example Whatever was happening sounded large and she'd like at least one door between her and it.
She also checked the comms, because some fire support from orbit could resolve a lot of issues. Sadly, anyone with half a brain would bring a comms jammer to an attack like this, so she did not have high hopes.
Speaking into her Comm Unit... Guangzhou, this is Ensign Knightgale. Team is in the Director's Office, 6th Floor and under heavy attack.
Requesting immediate backup and evac. Copy.
"Tell us who they are and what is on that datastick, and why they might want it. We will get you out of here, but we will need weapons to do so. If you have none here, I can take point as we get to the security station."
Bacchi looks at Legion gravely. "I don’t know, not for sure. Could be hired guns, could be hackers, could be McMurdo PD for all I know. Some of the corporation’s executives are certainly involved, but under these circumstances, I can’t trust anyone. That’s why I went through the Space Force"
"Far as guns, I don't have any. We have the security drones to protect us, and no one ever gets a weapon past the security office. We don't ever NEED guns. Your best bet is getting your own back at the office downstairs."
"Please just get me out of here. I don’t want to die."
Arkady moved to the door, both trying to see what in the various hells was happening and whether this door could be, at the very least, temporarily secured against intrusion.
The main work area on this floor is pitch dark and mostly—but not entirely—silent. The dozens of cubicles that were easily visible on the way in are difficult for the human eye to navigate, though Dr. Yusil has no problem at all. Two things are easy to detect: the smell of charred flesh and a few soft, mechanical hums that seem to be coming from different locations near the outer walls of the chamber and slowly moving around the rest of the office space.
Arkady easily triggered the manual release to open the door and look around. As far as defenses, she could rig something up, but it wouldn't last long against a determined onslaught. The door and walls are just too weak.
She also checked the comms, because some fire support from orbit could resolve a lot of issues. Sadly, anyone with half a brain would bring a comms jammer to an attack like this, so she did not have high hopes.
The comms are, indeed, being jammed, though not completely.