The cultist attacks Voxx.
Takeda takes a guarded step to best get a bead on the cultist and fires.
focus Fire (if there is soft cover between me and him I have Sniper's Aim which reduces it by 2)
Surprisingly Gorn refrains from joining the fray.
With a boost from the haste circuit, Maxim springs into melee, determined to end this fight.
Maxim succeeds at his goal and pummels the remaining cultist with his solar mote weapon until he doesn't move anymore.
golemforged plating III (grim trophies, weapon spikes
[tactical knife] [Starfinder Adventure Path #2: Temple of
the Twelve 53]), liquidator disintegrator pistol (Starfinder
Adventure Path #2: Temple of the Twelve 52) with 2
batteries (20 charges each), incendiary grenades II (2),
sintered longsword
One grenade was thrown already.
"They are arming these crazies pretty well. Anyone mind if I grab one of these longswords and a couple grenades?" With no objections, Takeda takes the mentioned items off the dead. He also checks their pockets for any information they may have on them.
Once the dead have been checked, he looks about the room. Short stocking his weapon he opens the closet, checks it and then moves toward the door to the interior. "Me and Gorn up front?" Takeda asks.
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"I don't care. Just hand me the medic supplies if you find some." Imagine replies. "Not that think they have that. They're more like: 'Hey, he broke a leg - shoot him."
Maxim finds a place to sit down for several minutes while the others loot the bodies. After a rest to recover, he looks at what's left and decides he doesn't need any of it.
He nods to Takeda. "Ready when you are."
The door has some touch area which opens it with the door splitting in the middle and retracting into the walls. This corridor is the spine of the control center, connecting the various chambers in the building. Except for a few smears of grease and tracks in the dust, it is relatively free from 'redecorations' like the entrance faced.
Takeda takes point. He gestures to Gorn to watch the hall and listens to the door right across the hall. Hearing nothing that sounds immediately dangerous he opens the door.
This large chamber is lit only by the bluish glow of a single monitor across from the southern door. The other computer consoles that line the walls are dark. A circular platform of some unknown technology is affixed to the floor in the center of the room. The view outside a window in the western wall is completely obscured by thick jungle foliage.
Takeda again motions for Gorn to watch the door and he steps down into the room and sweeps left to check the unseen corner. Once he checks it and finds it unoccupied he says, "Clear." Moving back to the steps he waits for Gorn or someone else to open the next door as they continue to move through the rooms rotating point.
This rectangular chamber has various illuminated panels and monitors along its walls. Some show what looks like the schematics of the entire structure, while others seem to show the interior of the planet. In the latter images, squads of robots skitter along the technology-studded walls of a massive tunnel. A circular platform stands in the center of the room, projecting a hologram of a tall figure clad in white robes. The figure gestures at the various screens, seemingly attempting to direct the robots in their tasks.
"Oh, thank the First Cause! I thought I was going to, be stuck with these lunatics forever. You are here to help, yes?" the hologram greets you.
"Yeah, of course. What is it you need help with, exactly?"
"If you'd take a look at this, I'll explain it to you..." the hologram replies and points to something in the far corner of the room where a robot is doing something on a device which you don't recognize.
"I can't order the robots to stop for some reason, so you need to memorise what it looks like, so you can find it and do that for me which the robots won't. I can tell you where to go to find it. But you need to know exactly which one, so look!"
Maxim stares at the hologram for a moment. It's using words he understands, but the sentences don't add up to anything.
The only thing he can make of that was go look at something in the corner of the room. For lack of options, Maxim goes to the spot and looks.
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Gorn joins Max in taking pause, and offers him a pull from his flask. While resting he switches out the battery for his forcefield.
Gorn merrily follows Takeda's directions (and by 'merrily' I mean 'stoically and with no visible emotion') watching other angles of attack and securing a perimeter.
"Doesn't someone wanna check out that monitor?" he grunts as they rush through the room with only a single glowing monitor. (He has no ken for computers, but has reasoned that the soft, squishy kind usually do.)
"What is your name, hologram? And what do you mean by 'it'. If you want us to do a thing, without payment, and without punching you, you are going to need to be as specific as possible."
Gorn just never did sit well with the idea of sentient AIs.
"You want us to just find a thing? And then what?"
Now morbidly curious, Gorn also looks at the robot.
Yep. It looks like a robot.
As Gorn and Maxim take a close look, the view changes dramatically. The bright points of the monochrome hologram start to group together and then lightning shoots from the wall.
The hologram is gone and and only it's evil laugh echoes through the room.
"Whoa, you guys ok?" Takeda asks from the other side of the room.
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"FUUUUUUUCK!"
"That hurt. Gonna need a minute here." Takeda says leaning back agains the wall.
Maxim sets down next to Takeda. "I forgot the first lesson: never trust a hologram. Incidentally, the second lesson is, always skip the middle rooms."
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"So THAT'S how it's gonna be?!" Gorn rages, picking himself up from the floor.
He vents his venom on several nearby dead monitors for lack of other targets, but eventually his sense of retribution is sated and he clangs onto the floor next to the others.
He does not need the rest as badly as they, but he sees no reason not to top himself off to full vigor.
"I was just making sure we had no baddies behind us. Caught between two groups is never good. What are we looking for, a control room? Try to get us through that space gate?"
Voxx also checked out the dead cultists' gear, but found nothing of interest...except the grenades. Taking the remaining grendades, he looks up and find the others have gone on without him.
Trotting to catch up , he arrives at the doorway just as the curtain of electricity lights up his comrades, "Geez guys, what are you doing in here? " he asks , looking around the room.
Takeda cracks an eye at Voxx's way too jovial question, "Getting an indoor tan, you?"
Maxim follows Takeda into the room marked C4, forcefield already active.
This large chamber is lit only by the bluish glow of a single monitor across from the southern door. The other computer consoles that line the walls are dark. A circular platform of some unknown technology is affixed to the floor in the center of the room. The view outside a window in the western wall is completely obscured by thick jungle foliage.
"Be ready," says Maxim as he approaches the glowing computer terminal. He gets to work to hack it, looking for any information about the Stellar Degenerator, or this place in general.
As maxim hacks into the computer, he manages to activate the other terminal and generally power up the whole room. The platform near the center of the room flickers to life as a luminescent holographic projection manifests above it. Within seconds the light coalesces into a tall, regal humanoid form that resembles the images of the ancient kishalee found on Istamak. The figure is dressed in garb that appears to be a mixture of military and scientific outfits that seems to disappear into the glow of the circular dais at the figure’s feet. Much like the one in the last room.
The holographic figure stretches out an arm and starts speaking strange, spidery syllables with the rapidity of purpose, though her expression remains fixed and stoic.
"Yeah, no," says Maxim in response. "Do you know this language I'm speaking?"
Voxx chuckles at Takeda's joke, even if it wasn't one. He follows the others into the room, looking about suspiciously.
When the hologram activates , Voxx's sword is in his hand in a flash. But, when he sees that's its a harmless computer projection, he shakes his head and chuckles at himself.
Then he crosses his arms and waits for someone smarter talk to the holo.
The hologram looks at Maxim in consternation. After a while, in which the face looks like a humanoid waiting screen it starts over "Greetings strangers."
"He has gone mad. His programming had degenerated and he kept raving about something called the Star-Eater. I confined him due to these critical errors, but now he is out, and I am in here! He and those who helped him must be stopped." There is a brief pause. "From your attire, I assumed you weren’t allied with those cruel marauders. Please tell me you aren’t with them."
"We killed three of those bozos on the way in. We're trying to stop them. Who is out, where did he go and how do we stop him?"
“Several days ago we were invaded by a group of raiders. Some of them looked much like yourselves, but others were like figments, strange dark apparitions with no true form. The raiders call themselves the Desperate Hunger and are led by an android woman named Null-9—I discovered this as they blasted their way into this facility spouting paeans to this Devourer and caught me off-guard. Before I knew it, they had freed Eltreth and forced me into his prison. Luckily, I was able to place some roadblocks in their path to slow them down, but they cannot be allowed to access the Stellar Degenerator."
"As for Eltreth. We have operated here for millennia, keeping this place functional and its terrible secret hidden, until a couple of centuries ago. Without warning, he began to display signs of instability and critical errors. He became convinced that he was the tool of some being called the Devourer. I believed it to be just some sort of manifestation of degradation in his core programming, and I sequestered him to these servers before he could cause any damage. I had hoped he could be repaired, but recent events have changed my mind."
"Truthfully, I fear the Desperate Hunger will be stopped by nothing short of death. Then, though it pains me to say so, I must trap Eltreth again and destroy his programming for good. What I thought was a mere degradation was but utter corruption borne from powers I do not understand. If you know of any other way, please tell me."
"Wiping the thing out seems to be the prudent course. However, we need to know how to catch him." Takeda says rubbing the back of his neck remembering the electrical discharge.
"You cannot do it from here. You must access the sequestering subprogram from the main operations room." At this point, Osteth brings up a map of control center and points out area C8. "This should initiate an exchange of my core programming and Eltreth’s. Beware, though. Eltreth has probably installed countermeasures."
"Any clues what those might be?"
"No. I can't reach out of here. And I can't imagine what happened to him by getting corrupted."
"I could guess one of his countermeasures." Takeda says dryly. "Shall we get moving? One person in the room initially in case something goes south?"
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"So, this is gonna sound dumb, but how do we know that this hologram is a different hologram, and not insane-killer-hologram just trying a different tact to get us to give it greater freedom?
It'd be inconvenient to spend a lot of effort to think we're helping when we actually just make it worse.
Just saying."
"Good point."
"Good point. I have no real answer to that." The hologram replies.
"Another AI is trying to kill us. It must be Monday. Shall we get on with it? I'll follow you, Takeda."
Takeda moves to the room indicated by the hologram (C8). He touches to pad outside the door to have it open. He scans the room from that vantage point before entering.
The door slides open and Takeda sees another one of those dastard cultists and some moving shade without object.
The shadow immediately attacks. Takeda feels the cold touch of the incorporeal form drain his life.