Do you know how to play Mah Jong Tepha?

Fritz’s sudden gaming question comes out of nowhere.  Tepha had been looking at the most recent scan data.

It seems there’s actually a pretty extensive gaming library installed in the ship.  And Mainframe always cheats.

System engages in similar analytic strategies-

The point is…While we’re waiting, we may as well-

Fritz stops just as the floors and walls and ceiling begin to vibrate.

Seismic activity detected

Thanks.  We wouldn’t have noticed without you.

---

There’s a rumbling through the ground and walls of the alcove the door is situated on.  The door, which sits at the back of the alcove, begins to raise.

Slowly Rig and Ledo see…

---

Silver feels the rumbling.  The vibrations bounce her around inside her suit.  She realizes she can’t hear anything other than her breathing and that fart she just let off.  That’s odd. Obviously sounds not going to travel in a vacuum.  But shouldn’t she hear Ledo saying something stupid through her comm?

---

Tepha, we’ve lost comms.

Tepha watches as the scanners go dark, one a split second after another.  The rumbling increases.

Jamming field has been engaged by unknown-

Never mind that!  Look at the ground!

---

…A small nook behind the door, perhaps two meters deep.  Wedged inside it is a corpse in a space suit holding a large thermite charge. Rig and Ledo blink.

The top half of the suit’s helmet has been bashed in.  A large gap in the face plate indicates how the man inside the suit probably died.  Someone crushed in his helmet and decompression did the rest.  On the lower half of the face plate, across the cracked plastic shielding, someone has spray painted a grin.  A large, shit eating grin in blood red paint.

They even painted in a tongue lolling out the left side.

The thermite charge clutched in the body’s arms isn’t live per se.  It looks like it was placed there in case someone tried to blast open the doors.  Rig can tell that had they done that, the charge wouldn’t have been enough to damage the ship.  But it would have been enough to damage the wall of the gorge.  The charge was set to start an avalanche if someone tried to blow open this fake door.

Which begs the question of course, where’s the real door?

---

Silver blinks.  Oh.  Yeah.  That makes more sense now.

A large section of the gorge’s floor is starting to descend.  Looks like the Tia landed on a station ship’s lift.  It’s just been covered with sections of the natural rock to camouflage it.  The lift has activated, accounting for the rumbling.

Tia is descending down into wherever that lift goes.

The walls of the gorge are also starting to shift.  Apparently, the sides of the gorge swing down from the base like covers to close over the descended lift.  Clesing, or whoever built this, covered both sides of those covers with rock from the asteroid,  again for camouflage.

Convoluted camouflage mechanism?  Traps for Navy landers that try to blast their way in? Check and check.  This place is starting to seem more like a smugglers base to her now.

Oh.  The wall covers will descend over the lift in a minute or so, cutting Silver, Ledo, and Rig off from the Tia.  And a jamming field’s been activated  clogging up the comms.  Rig and Ledo are staring at some dead guy and haven’t noticed yet.

---

Tepha stares out the viewer as Tia descends down into the asteroid.  The ship is in some kind of lift shaft.  Mainframe can’t signal the guys.  Fritz is trying to get the scanners back on line so they can see where they’re going.

Illuminated by Tia’s landing lights, the shaft walls look grimy.  Large blotches the color of old, dried blood are smeared across the smooth, greyish stone.  As the surface is lost from view, a large word painted in a silverish fluid that has a high reflectivity quality shines up from the landing lights.

WELCOME

The descent continues.  Then another message in the same medium.

NO ONE HAS TO DIE

Then after a few more meters, another message, but this one is painted in a fluid so black, it makes the void look bright.

BUT THEY DID

The lift stops.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:39, Tue 12 May 2020.

Tepha looks around.

Tia has come to rest in a large, underground cavern.  To the south of her, another trader sits, dark and abandoned.  Even to Tepha’s untested eyes, the other ship saw battle.  There are large burn marks along the hull and gaping hole in the top of it.  The other ship is dark.

Against the far wall to the west is what looks a corridor.

Other than that, this place is quiet.  Dark.  And deserted.

Scanners online.  Comm’s still jammed to the surface.  But I think that’s more the rock than anything.  Detecting movement beside us. Fritz is quiet a second.
It’s inorganic

Fritz brings up a camera shot.

A drone, about the size of a small child, comes whirling across the cavern floor.  It’s a long thin pole on wheels.  At the top is what looks like a camera or holo projector.  The drone stops about fifteen meters out and then the camera lights up.  No.  it is a holo projector.

A holo of a large hairy man wearing nothing but a ballerina’s tutu pops up on the ground beside Tia.  The man has a lopsided grin.  There’s more hair on his chest, back, and forearms then there is on his head.  Tattoos cover his torso, but due to the holo’s quality, their detail can’t be made out.

The man grins shyly at the ship, bows, and begins to dance.  Tepha recognizes it as the forest scene from Act II of Minkus’ Don Quixote.  In that scene, a wounded Don Quixote wanders into a forest, imaging all sorts of monsters are lurking in the dark, waiting to devour him.

Across the cavern, to the west, the lighting in the corridor comes on.  It flickers weakly.  But other than what Tia is giving off, and the light from the dancing bald man, it’s the only light in the darkness Tepha can see.

So.  Lot just happened.

Upshot:

Tepha and Fritz are now below ground.

Rig, Silver, and Ledo are about to get locked out on the surface.  Due to the tension of the fake door opening, Rig and Ledo haven't quite realized comms are down.  They will once they try to communicate though.  No rolls necessary.

The three of them may have time to get over to the shaft opening and throw themselves down it.  Or they could let it shut and try some other means to get inside.  Your call.

If they want to hoof it, I need a Vacc Suit/End roll please.  Whoever makes it has time to throw themselves down the shaft.

It's 0 G.  So a fall shouldn't be an issue.  Unless there's an artificial gravity field inside.  But hey. Life's about taking chances, right?

Let me know if there's questions.  Thanks.

Silver taps the other two on their helmets and points before taking off at a sprint. Her years of drinking and smoking work against her as she almost immediately starts breathing heavy enough to temporarily fog up her helmet. Still she is able to make a shallow dive into the elevator shaft.

Her goal is to end up near one of the walls so she can carefully move her way down while still being able to stop in case she does hit a gravity plate.

Given that gravity is an inverse squared force she should be able to detect the presence of gravity long before it can overpower her and suck her down to her death.

OOC: 08:53, Today: Silver rolled 9 using 2d6.  +1 Vacc Suit -1 END.

This message was last edited by the player at 13:59, Tue 12 May 2020.

Ledo sees Silver and sprints off after her. He might not be nearly as comfortable in a vacc suit as she is but a lifetime of not smoking and drinking lets him cover the distance just as easily. At this point he is trusting his life in her hands entirely as she is the most experienced zero-g operator by far. He dives in and tries his best to mimic her movements.


08:56, Today: Ledo Typhin rolled 9 using 2d6+1.  +0 Vacc +1 END.

Rig, who is neither experienced nor in great shape falls behind in the mad dash towards the shaft.

OOC: lol

08:59, Today: Gary 'Rig' Rigan rolled 7 using 2d6.  +0 vacc +0 end.

Tepha feels her breath coming shorter once more. Their very next caper and here she is, completely isolated from the rest of the crew with a potentially crazy facility between her and the others.

She patted the PD laser at her hip and tried to calm herself. Unlike before with the assassins she was armed and she wasn't alone.

"Fritz, can you begin scanning. What are we dealing with? Is there an atmosphere? Is there gravity? If I have to leave the ship what am I taking with."

In reply to Tepha Pezal (msg # 7):

Fritz squawks back to Tepha.

On it.  No atmo....wait.  Looks like there's life support and artificial grav in this place.  But it's just being switched on.  Hmm.  Seems like a robust system.  The atmo should be thick enough for breathing in an hour.  The gravity will only take a few moments to calibrate.

---

If a group of one hundred travelers were asked the way they would least like to die, 74 of them would answer being stranded on a rock with no atmo, watching the power gauge in my space suit run out.  That tid bit was from an article Rig had once read in the Traveler's Aid Society Journal.

His mind pulls it up out of his memory banks as he watches the covers shut just after Ledo leaps into the shaft, cutting Rig off from all the others.  Top side.  With no ship or help.  And no real way of knowing when or if he'll see either again.

Ain't that a pisser?

He stops, getting his breathing under control.  The power gauge is still at 98%.  It's a good suit.  Estimated power left is 7 hours, 34 minutes.  After the power goes out, he'd have twenty five minutes left of air.  But the cold would kill him within ten minutes.

So.  He's on the clock.  And there's options.  Of course there are options.  There's always options.

Right?

---

Ledo follows Silver by about two meters, ducking under the descending covers and just squirming into the lift hold as the cover comes down.

A quick glance confirms what he was afraid of.  No Rig.  Silver is floating nearby.

The shaft is deep.  The bottom can't be seen from up here at the top.  It will be a long swim down. The comms still aren't working.

Silver sees the maintenance ladder the same time he does.  It's on the far wall.  They will just need to shimmy over.  Then they can use the rungs to climb downwards.  It will be faster than trying to 'swim' down.

As long as no arty grav kicks in, they should be fine.  Even in one does kick in, who would install arty grav this far up a lift elevator shaft?

---

Finished the prelim scan.  Kicking over the read outs to you Teph.

Tepha scrolls through the data.  It's not terribly helpful.

This huge space...call it a 'hangar'...is empty except for Tia, the wreck, and the Hairy Dancing Holo guy, who is still doing his thing.

There's no organic matter detected in the hangar.

The scan pulses sent down the corridor indicate it continues back about fifty meters.  It looks like it hits what might be an airlock door.  After that, the data is sketchy.  On the other side of the airlock there is a slightly larger space. Some rooms.  Lots of clutter.  But the atmo scan from that area isn't any different than it is here in the hangar.  If anyone is down there, they haven't been breathing until just recently.

Or their an alien who doesn't need to breath.  Wouldn't that be lovely?

Still no luck with the comms.  The jamming field or the rocks...the others aren't close enough to get a feed.

Rig skidded to a halt as the doors slammed shut sending a cloud of dust up into the cloud. He felt a surge of panic but this wasn’t the first life-or-death situation Rig had ever been in, although it was the first time he had been stranded in a suit.

”This is why you don’t leave the ship, Rig. This is why you don’t leave the ship...”

Rig took another moment and took a long steady breath. Panicking wasn’t going to solve the problem. It was a problem, there was a solution. First of all if the others got inside there is a chance they could get control of the station, lower the jamming field and open up the doors for him. Until then though he had to consider his options.

He looked back at the floating corpse strapped with thermite. Now there was a useful tool. Turning back around he slow hopped his way back across the surface towards the dummy airlock to get an inventory of stuff he could salvage from the booby trapped body.

Silver didn’t even bother asking for permission. She knew what needed to be done and didn’t bother pausing to ask questions. She grabbed Ledo’s tether cable with a good solid grip and then kicked off of him. He shot out one way and she drifted towards the ladder. Once she had a good grip she yanked him over so he could grab the ladder too.

She couldn’t trust that there wouldn’t be gravity somewhere down the line. It would be faster to go face first but if gravity did kick on that was a good way to face plant into the bottom of the shaft so she turned feet down and then began propelling herself down. She would grab the ladder and propel herself while keeping a loose grip on the sides. The friction of her gloves kept her speed in check and if she hit a bump and started to drift away from the ladder it was an easy adjustment to make.

She led the way descending down into the darkness.

”Hey! What are you...”

Ledo let out a quick protest at being used as propellant but when he finally spun around to see what had happened he understood and after Silver tugged him over he two copied her movements. Luckily his suit wasn’t nearly as bulky as hers and it allowed him a chance to check on her and copy her movements. He wasn’t unfamiliar with using a ladder like this, he was experienced in the navy, but still he was amazed by how well she moved in her armored suit.

Like her he kept in close contact with the ladder viewing it as his lifeline as they descended down.

Tepha didn’t have access to a proper vacuum suit. She had an emergency soft suit but that wasn’t something worth exploring. She needed to wait until the atmosphere had kicked on. Besides, she was sure the others were coming down to see her shortly.

”Fritz, keep monitoring the station on the other side. Let me know when it becomes breathable. Also keep pinging the comms. Maybe if they get close enough we’ll be able to talk to the rest of the crew again.”

In reply to Gary 'Rig' Rigan (msg # 9):

Silver and Ledo descend the ladder.  They pass by a large, painted slogan saying WELCOME.  And then, in a twenty more meters, another reading NO ONE HAS TO DIE.

After fifteen more meters, Silver can see another message coming up.  It's in red, but she's above it and on the other side of the shaft.  She can't read it yet.

As she descends, she suddenly feels a pull on her feet.  She's crossing a border where arty grav is kicking in.

Suddenly both her and Ledo's comms squawk. A loud booming voice on a channel filled with static suddenly screams in thier ears.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCKCKKKKKKKERRRRRRRRRR!

---

Incoming transmission

Fritz barely seems to have a chance to say it before a vid pops up on the screen.

A man in what looks like a dark red jump suit is staring at Tepha on the other side of the vid.  He looks tired.  From his silver hair and stubbly chin to the bags under his eyes and scars lining his chin, he just looks tired and defeated.

You shouldn' a' come back here. We-

His head seems to turn suddenly to the right, then he's suddenly staring back at Teph.

-We-

It happens again.

This seems to be a recording the station's playing on auto.  Trying to clean it up.

Comms for Commander Typhin and Silver detected.

The vid of Tired Guy suddenly jumps.  Tears are rolling down his weathered face.

Ain't you taken enough from us?  Can't you even let us rest in peace?

---

The dead guy with the painted smile grins up at Rig, clutching his bomb like a child clutching a new puppy.

Rig tries to estimate how much of a punch this charge actually has.  He really wasn't measuring thickness or assessing materials of the covers when they were closing. But considering them now, he thinks, with some work, the charge could punch a decent enough hole through the rock.  It's the actual door itself that will be at issue.

He'll need to tunnel down the rock covering to the door and plant the charge.  He's got the tools he brought with him to make the key.  Not the optimal tools for the job, but he'll manage.

As he bends to study the charge in more detail, another detail shows up.  The body has a camera installed in it.  Someone cut through this dumb fuck's back and scooped out his insides and stuck in a camera.  The lens is hidden in the front buckling apparatus.  Rig would have noticed sooner if not for the whole 'hey we're about to be stranded by the big doors closing' bit.

What's more, this camera isn't on remote.  It's got a line patched into it which runs out the dead guy's backside and into a hole in the ground.  In fact...

Rig paws at the rock.  It moves easily.  More rock camouflage.  Covering up a metal grille the dead guy is sitting on.

It looks like the grille is the entry to a maintenance shaft of some kind.

As stated earlier, there are always options...

---

Mr. Shouty has a potty mouth.

The screaming continues.  ASSSSHOOOLEE HOMESICK ABORTION SUCKING...

This guy cusses like eighth grade never ended.

It's obviously a recording and it's obviously on loop.

Ledo can see why a moment after it starts.  It's a distraction.  Coming up the shaft are three drones.  Small attack class Cetas.  Dated.  They stopped making those seventy years ago.

But antiquated as they are, they'd still be able to gun down two people on a ladder.

---

 If it's money you want, it's where you know it is.  Take it 'n go.  Just leave us be.

Tired Guy keeps rambling on.

I do have their comms, but it seems like they're getting blasted on all channels by some kind of recording.  I'm trying to patch into their suit visors so we can at least send a visual.

Activity noted.

Mainframe pops up a diagram of a sensor pulse sent up the shaft.  It looks like there are two dots, organic...probably Ledo and Silver...about 100 to 120 meters above.  There are three small dots flying up the shaft towards them.

Teph...we got issues ourselves. Movement coming down the corridor.

Fritz pops up another scan image. From down the corridor an large dot is moving towards the hangar.  Fritz brings up a visual.  It looks like an automated cargo hauler. One of the big ones that moves large pieces of equipment.  There's no driver.  The only thing on it is what looks like a ship's cannon.

That's a MXC 2990 Pulse Laser.  It's pretty old school. Uh...and it's active.  Tepha, the laser is moving into position.  I think it's going to fire on us.

Patched into Silver and Ledo's visuals.  Will have their audio in a mo.

Holy Multiple Engagements Prauge Man!

Rig has a choice of how to proceed:  Shaft or Bomb.

Ledo and Silver have three attack drones flying up to blast them.  They are within Silver's range.  Will be in Ledo's right after her attack.

Tepha has laser turrent issues.

Your turn.  Thanks

Rig made sure the guy was secure just in case he needed to come back for that thermite charge but for now he figured he might as well take the maintenance hatch. It had to be a better choice then handling thermite, right?

Silver curses as she lowers the volume of her radio. No time to get in contact with Ledo, she just hoped him and his laser that could actually fucking fire in zero-g would go to work. Until then she wasn't going to go down without a fight.

With one hand she grabs her emergency tether and hooks it to the ladder. The drones might pack a punch but chances are they couldn't handle 75 kilos of a pissed off and armored Silver hopping on top of them. Even if she missed just being able to fling herself off at them and arc back down to the ladder would make her a difficult target to hit. Better than just waiting for a shot to get through her armor.

OOC: Okay this one is going to be a bit weird. She is going to try and jump off at the border of zero-g space to try and grab one of the drones. Not sure if you want that to be an Athletics or a Melee attack. I'm guessing Dex is the other side as it deals with coordination so either way she's rolling the same:

19:40, Today: Silver rolled 10 using 2d6+1.  Grabbing a drone, +1 Dex

After that it kind of depends how the drones are built but let's just say she uses her piston fist to just smash the thing:


19:41, Today: Silver rolled 9 using 3d6+2.  piston fist.

Can I just say Silver is fucking bad ass!

Ledo looks down and sees Silver go airborne. His brain can barely comprehend her actions though as he is too busy dealing with incoming hostiles. Ignoring the Silver/drone mess he unholsters his pistol, braces himself to take aim and lets out a laser blast from his pistol right on target. At least according to the smart gun and the targeting information being displayed into his retina from his combat lenses.


19:44, Today: Ledo Typhin rolled 8 using 2d6+4.  +1 Dex, +1 Gun, +1 Aim, +1 PHUD.
19:44, Today: Ledo Typhin rolled 12 using 3d6+3.  damage.

Tepha felt more confusion than panic. Mostly due to ignorance the danger she should have felt wasn't hitting her. It was just such a curious thing, with tubes and power supplies tacked on haphazardly. It was almost comical how they had managed to mount it up but while she didn't feel scared she did recognize that it had to be dealt with.

"Fritz? Is the pulse laser still warmed up and the virtual gunner still active? Let's just get rid of that thing now."


"Actually that's the thing. I ran a scan of the ship's computer software and I don't see any code for the automatic control of the turrets."

Now Tepha felt panic. She was sure Ledo had talked about buying software to control the turrets.

"Alright then this is going to get messy. How quickly can you teach me how to use the laser turret?"

OOC: Lol. For some reason I didn't buy the virtual gunner after all. Maybe it's 1 MCr for even a +0. /shrug. This is about to get interesting.

I'm calling in a Boon if possible. Don't know if I have any saved up but at the very least having Fritz assisting should provide some aid. This is going to be a tough shot no matter what because it's unskilled...

OMFG.... RIP EVERYONE...


19:57, Today: Tepha Pezal rolled -1 using 3d6-3, keeping the 2 highest rolls with rolls of 1,1,1.  -3 untrained, using a boon?

triple snake eyes. WTF OMG BBQ!!!!

:D

edit: LMAO

Okay so I wanted to test the dice roller. I found in another game that if you put certain things into the dice roller it glitches out and makes it seem like you failed even though the dice roller just didn't know what was happening.

So this is what I got for the test roll to make sure it wan't defaulting to 1,1,1:


19:58, Today: Tepha Pezal rolled 8 using 3d6-3, keeping the 2 highest rolls with rolls of 6,5,2.  test.

That would have actually done it! Probably... Hot damn. Anyway have fun with this

This message was last edited by the player at 01:00, Thu 14 May 2020.

Engaging training program for gunnery system-

Yeah, we don't really have time for that-

Please activate turrents by switching gunnery system to enabled mode

Jez.  Can't you just do that for her?

Active turrents can be accessed by the engagement controls. See the lit button on the gunnery system screen.

Uhm.  Wait.  Aren't you-

Tepha presses the lit button.

Wait! No!  You didn't tell her-

There's a screeching noise and a huge echoy boom.  The ship rattles slightly.

Fritz sighs. -how to aim...

Then there's another set of noises.  And the ship really shakes.  Tepha almost tumbles from her chair.

Direct hit on sections 8, 12, and 14.  Damage report...

Fuel tanks breeched at sections-

Not helping!

---

After removing the rock layer and dead body, Rig moves aside the grill and peers down the hole.

It's a small shaft, about two meters in circumference.  As long as it doesn't narrow, he can fit.

The shaft seems to descend for fifty meters or so and then turns, heading in the direction of the ship lift that Tia went down.  So at least it's headed in the right direction.

The walls of the shaft are covered in some kind of lubricant.  Rubbing a stone against the wall gets a sample.  It's not acidic and from the basic chem scan his suit visor can perform, it's not flammable.  So it's maybe safe enough.  There's no way to avoid it though.  Rig realizes he'll get at least some on his suit as he descends.

---

The drones are shaped like semi flat disks a meter wide.  A gunnery attachment hangs below each one, next to a camera stalk.

Silver leaps...

It would have been an athletics roll just for informational purposes.

...and lands on top of one of them.  Without waiting, she pulls her fist overhead and then smashes down.

The drone is forced downwards from the impact, it's hull cracking open.  It smashes against the wall, and bits of it's components fly out, like a fat bug's guts gushing out when it's shell is hit from above with a boot.

Ledo, fires once and nails a second drone, cutting it into pieces with his shot.

The third drone whirls backwards, firing as it goes.  Silver drops out of the way and Ledo is above the shot.  The bullets sink into the metal plating like a hot knife into soy lecthin butter substitute.

Below, farther down the shaft comes a distinctive TCHOW ziiiiiing noise, followed by another, and then two more after that.  There's also the sound of metal and stone blowing up.

Both Ledo and Silver know exactly what that means.  Tia is firing. And something is firing back.

Their ship is fighting for it's life.

Oh, and Tepha too.

---

Tepha.  Listen to me.  To the left of that button you pushed is another button marked Targeting display.  Flip that.

A camera shot fills up half the screen.

There should be two cursors.  The blue one moves the camera.  The green one targets.  Move the camera until you can see the laser that's firing on us.  Then set the green one on top of it.  The trick is to keep the camera moving if the target is moving.  Then press the button you pressed before.  You got this.  So don't sweat it.

So I really did well on the damage roll.

Oh.  Riggy Baby is so not going to be happy.

One drone left on top of Ledo and Silver.  It's on the other side of the shaft, so Silver's hand to hand won't work.

Tepha can fire again.

"Alright, just move the cursor onto the thingy and hit the button. Got it."

Thankfully her first experience with using a turret was against a (mostly) stationary target. She thumbs the cursor over onto the thingy and fires.


OOC: So the roll is a 6,5 = 11 - 3 + 5 = 13!
19:58, Yesterday: Tepha Pezal rolled 8 using 3d6-3, keeping the 2 highest rolls with rolls of 6,5,2.  test.

I don't trust myself to try and roll it again, although I can if you think this is a little too cheaty...

Unfortunately Silver's little leap only works once. Now she has to scramble back up to her anchor point before she can make another leap...or does she. If the gravity is low enough she might just be able to leap upward enough to catch the other drone.

OOC:
17:53, Today: Silver rolled 11 using 2d6+1.  athletics again.
17:53, Today: Silver rolled 13 using 3d6+2.  faalllcon punch!

Ledo watches as Silver tries to make another leap. If she punches down the third drone he will start descending, moving down to unhook her tether so she doesn't have to climb back up. If she doesn't take it down then he will again aim and fire.

OOC: Just in case...

17:55, Today: Ledo Typhin rolled 7 using 2d6+4.  +1 Dex, +1 Gun, +1 Aim, +1 PHUD.

Rig looks at the goo and doesn't trust it. At all. Still the shaft was his best chance so he grabbed the dead guy and shoved him int the hole first, rubbing his suit against the walls to try and clean as much of the gunk off as possible. It would be slow going but he can use the dead guy as a guinea pig to make sure this stuff isn't dangerous.

In reply to Tepha Pezal (msg # 19):

Dead guy moves easily down the shaft.  This stuff really is good lube.

Rig has some trouble at the point the shaft turns.  The intersection isn't as wide.  He has to ram the body around the bend, before crouching uncomfortably and shoving the body ahead.  There's no lube on the walls of this cross tunnel.  But the lube left on the body is more than enough.  The dead guy moves easy enough.

No atmo yet either.

The shaft ends about ten meters ahead.  It opens on to a large circular room.  Pipes run along the ceiling and walls.  Rig recognizes it as a life support depot.  Systems for heat and air filtration are stacked up in the middle of the room.  Lights wink and dance across the systems.  It looks like they both just came online.  The heat is still calibrating.  The air filters are running diagnostics on atmo that's being manufactured out of chem tanks somewhere else.

There's a bulkhead door in the far wall.

A large hatch is set in the floor halfway between the life support and the bulkhead door.  In contrast to the dark grays and blues coloring the rest of the room, the hatch lid is a stark white.

There's a monitor station right in front of the life support systems.  Screens on the system are flashing up grids and gas level readings.  Rig can't see too much data as there's a big guy sitting right before the monitors.

The guy is suited up like Rig's lubricant friend, though from the back, it doesn't look like the guy's helmet is bashed in.  But the guy isn't moving at all. Not even a twitch.

Rig will have to approach him to learn more.

---

Silver leaps, launching her fist upwards as she flies...

Need her damage.  Falcon punch hits.

---

Unless otherwise stated, you can assume you get to make all active character rolls.  Including damage.  I only roll for when the PC doesn't know there's an issue.

Let me know what kind of damage she does, cos she does it.

Thanks

I posted damage: 11 to hit, 13 for damage.

17:53, Today: Silver rolled 13 using 3d6+2.  faalllcon punch!

Oops.  Sorry.  Forgot to ask for Tepha's damage too.  You would not apply the ten factor in this case.  It's just the straight up damage roll.

Let me know if there's questions.  Thanks

21:03, Today: Tepha Pezal rolled 6 using 1d6+1.

In reply to Tepha Pezal (msg # 26):

...and connects.  Silver's arm almost goes through the last drone, sending it falling down the shaft after the others.

She swings backwards, hitting the wall near the ladder before the tether line snaps too.

It's quiet below.  Whatever happend to the ship has happened.  The two continue to descend...

---

As Tepha brings the green cursor over, the enemy cannon fires off another barrage.  Tia groans and shakes.

She hits the button and returns a salvo.  The shot hits, flipping the transport over and sending the enemy laser screeching along the floor of the hangar.

Great shot Tepha!  You're a natch!

Now listen up.  We need to work quickly.  You protected the ship, but now you gotta save it.  We took some damage.  Most can wait.  But some can't.

Tepha, we need to manually seal the second fuel tank.  But first we need to shut off the main power plant.  Head back there now Tepha.  In fact, you need to run.

---

After a few hundred more meters Silver and Ledo can make out the bottom of the shaft.  Tia is below.

There's hole in her side.  She's taken some laser hits.  Liquid hydrogen is pooling around the struts.

---

Okay Tepha.  See that panel over there by the orange switch?  Not that one.  The one to your left.

Tepha has found out that when her AI says run, he means it.  A couple of screen displays in the power plant got toppled over.  But nothing else seems wrong.

There is however a couple of displays showing gauges that are rapidly lowering.  And there's another gauge that seems to be moving to the right quickly, which somehow seems disturbing.

Tepha lays her hand on the panel Fritz indicates.  Yes.  That panel pops out.
 You need to find something to help you pop it out.  A crowbar or something.  See what you can find.

When you get it removed, you'll see a number of wires.  You need to find something that will let you cut the wires.  There should be a tool kit around.

When you do, you need to check each wire.  The wires are color coded, but also have a tag with a label.  Like Blue wire Tag YK24.  You are going to cut some of those wires.

You'll need to cut them in order too.

Blue wire Tag YK24

Red wire Tag HV08882

Blue wire Tag YU88

Blue wire Tag YK09

Yellow wire Tag 80-20-72

Got that?

There's a piece of one of the broken screens that Tepha can use for a crow bar.  She finds some wire cutters.

Fritz will guide her through, so no roll needed on this bit.  You can narrate it if you like

Good.  Now.  The tricky bit.  There should be a ventilator mask around.  Tepha finds one hanging on a hook on the wall.  It smells like Rig does after he's been doing a lot of welding.

Okay.  See that grill on the wall to your left?  The one with the DANGER BREATHING APPARATUS REQUIRED printed on it?  So, put on the mask, open that grate, and crawl inside.  It's going to seem dark, but I'll turn on some emergency lighting.  When you crawl in, you'll see some yellow signs on your right.  Crawl past the first two until you get to the third one.  The sign will read DANGER CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE

The sign will be on a panel.  You'll need to get that panel off.  But you need to be careful when you do that.  Just slow, steady pressure.  When you get it off, there will be a switch.  A blue one that will say Manual Pressure Override.  You need to turn that to your left. LEFT.  As far as you can.

Sure sounds easy, doesn't it?

The only roll I'm calling for is a strength roll for that panel.  You can make as many of them as you want until she gets it.  This is more about how long it takes to get it done than whether the roll actually succeeds.

---

As Silver and Ledo hurry down, their comm units squawk.

Hey Guys!  Glad to see you're not dead yet!

Can't really talk as I'm trying to help Tepha in turning off the power plant before it blows up and ignites all the leaking fuel.

Mind your step.

Questions?

Rig shoves the dead guy in first, just to be safe although he is pretty sure that this guy is going to be dead as well. Dead doesn't mean there isn't a booby trap though so he will proceed very carefully looking for hidden trip wires or sensors that might trigger another canister of thermite somewhere.

Tepha follows along the instructions as best as she can. Sometimes it takes Fritz a couple of times to get through to her...

"Wait...was it YK24 or YK42?"

Tepha isn't dumb by any stretch but this is about as far removed as one can be from her experiences. Without Fritz talking in her ear she would  have had little hope but she did her best. She was fine cutting the wires but crawling through a tight maintenance corridor with a breath mask on was very uncomfortable. All she could think about was how the hell a bulky guy like Rig could squeeze around in the bowels of the ship like a greased up penguin.

"Okay Fritz, I'm at the panel let me...see if..."'

She paused as her fingers slipped on the stuck panlel.

"Fuck...okay how about...shit..."

No go. She took a moment to dry her fingers thoroughly and the on the third try the panel popped off.

"Got it! Okay blue switch...turn left....got it!"

OOC: 3rd times a charm!

22:06, Today: Tepha Pezal rolled 8 using 2d6.  strength #3.
22:06, Today: Tepha Pezal rolled 3 using 2d6.  strength #2.
22:05, Today: Tepha Pezal rolled 5 using 2d6.  strength #1.

"OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT!"

Liquid hydrogen wasn't the greatest thing to have leaking all around. Ledo was seeing visions of his beloved ship (and his maybe beloved) going up in a giant fireball before his eyes.


"Fritz, start the airlock cycle. We're coming in! Silver, get your ass to a turret pronto. Whatever is firing at the ship I want you to make sure it doesn't happen again. Tepha? Tepha are you there? How are things going?"

"Uhhh...is Rig there?"

"No, he was trapped on the surface. Fritz, is there a computer signal you can get access to? We need to get in control of this station ASAP. Rig is up there and I don't want him to do something stupid..."

In reply to Gary 'Rig' Rigan (msg # 28):

Rig shoves the dead guy at the dead guy like some kind of pimp for necrophiles.

The second dead guy tumbles out of the seat.  He hits the floor and...doesn't explode.

Other than the whirr of the heating unit and vhooosh of the atmo filters, there's no sound at all.  Well.  Some distant thumping.  Like something large blowing up.  But that's probably just the imagination.

Now with second dead guy out of the way, Rig can see what was at the desk he was sitting at.  There's a small personal holo deck.  It's an old, old model.  The size of a palm, it would be considered bulky these days.

But that's all.  Rig's choices appear to be door or hatch. Or he could look around or see if anything's on the holo deck.  He'd have to find some way to power it though.

---

Well, three outta four ain't bad.

Actually Captain Ledo, before you enter the ship, could you see if you can locate the hangar's fuel overflow ramp?

Fritz has an idea.  Fuel leaks aren't uncommon.  And even a smuggler base, probably especially a smuggler's base, would have to deal with the issue.  There should be some kind of portable manifold that can be used to sop up or suction up the loose fuel.

Though the idea of manning the turrents isn't a bad one either.

Now that Silver and Ledo are at the bottom of the ladder, they can get a better idea of what's going on.  The hangar is a huge space.  It could fit seven or eight freighters with no problem.  One other ship, a burned out wreck of a far trader, sits not far from Tia.  A cargo transporter, or what's left of one, lays on it's side, smoldering from recent laser fire.  Beyond it, a pulse laser turrent or what's left of it has tumbled against a far wall.

Other than Tia's lights, the only illumination comes from a corridor at the far end of the hangar.

Also from a hologram of a big, hairy guy wearing nothing but a tutu dancing around.

The airlock is cycling open.

---

Tepha barely has time to crawl out of the passage before Fritz is cracking the whip.

Good work!  Okay, now see if you can find a welding torch.  Then head back down the corridor to supply room 1.  The manifest lists some sealant jelly in locker 2.  Load the biggest bag you can into the grav-barrow in the room.  Also, there should be some plastic gloves and an apron. Oh, and keep that ventilator mask.  We need to try to patch the fuel tank.

It might not be the smartest thing but he still had plenty of power reserves. Especially with all the spare suit parts he had available between the dead guys it should be possible to hook up the holodeck to his suit's battery to turn it on. It might help him figure out where to go, it might waste a couple of minutes of power. Rig figured that was a worthwhile exchange.


13:11, Today: Gary 'Rig' Rigan rolled 9 using 2d6+3.  jury rig - engineer power plant + EDU.

Tepha didn't like the sound of this. She was really out of her depth but figured if Fritz was giving her orders she didn't have the time to argue. As she gathered the supplies a thought struck her and she voiced it to Fritz.

"Don't we have a spare fuel tank? The inflatable one in the cargo hold. Can't we just pump the fuel there and let it rest until Rig gets back? Or someone else who actually knows what they're doing?"

She paused in hauling out the jelly bag, crossing her fingers that Fritz would think it was a brilliant idea and she could avoid learning how to weld around a liquid hydrogen leak.

Silver didn't need to be told twice. She had been itching to hop into the gunner's turret since she had found out they had turrets and getting revenge on the bastards that had shot at her was her idea of a fun time.

She passed through the airlock and didn't even bother to strip off her vacc suit, figuring she would need to put it back on soon enough. Instead she did pop the helmet to allow her environmentals to relax and when she was sat down in the gunner's seat she pulled out her suit's spare charger and plugged it in to top off the battery.

Ledo watched Silver head up the ramp and turned back around to deal with the fuel spillage. Fritz had a point, it wasn't smart to leave fuel lying around, especially when lasers were flying.

He started searching for the overflow ramp that would drain the spilled fuel away from his precious ship.

In reply to Gary 'Rig' Rigan (msg # 32):

That's good thinking Tepha.  And I've already started pumping fuel out.  But it will take time.  And we'll keep losing fuel.  Considering how things are going, we probably want to make sure we can preserve every drop we can.

Also, if we get attacked right now, we want to make sure we've got as much patched up as we can.

Tepha finds a pair of overalls, which are Rig sized so are too big for her, but might be worth shrugging into regardless.

She loads the grav wagon and pulls it down to the fuel tank.  As she puts on the safety gear she sees the issue.  The hole in the tank is like a deep gash treated by an incompetent doctor.  They cauterized the sides of the wound rather than using the hot lance to seal it shut.  There's a hole in the hull right across from the tank's wound which is how the fuel is leaking out of the ship.

Okay.  You'll use the sealant to patch the hole.  Don't worry about being neat.  Just slap it on.  It will be pretty gummy, but will harden fast.  So work quickly once you open the bag.  Don't get any in your hair...which of course Rig never has to worry about.  And your skin.

Again, Tepha needs to make me a series of rolls until she passes.  No skill since she's literally slapping goo into a wound.  But she is having to contend with fuel gushing out.  So Str DM if she gets one.  Need to know how many rolls it takes her to get it.

---

Silver flips through the targeting screens with a practiced ease.

She runs a standard quadrant check, reviewing her six, three, nine and twelve.

Nothing.

Bastards aren't even going to give her the satisfaction of kicking their asses.

Typical.

As she scans, she sees Ledo outside, looking around for that manifold Fritz was going on about.  The dancing holo-hairy-tutu guy is prancing around in Ledo's vicinity.

Huh.  Now that she's looking at it...

Streetwise/Edu please

---

A simple patch.  Takes Rig all of two minutes to get it up and running.  He taps on the holo deck.

The image pops up, forms, and then scatters.  It reforms again.  It's the dead guy.  The second one.  Not the greasy one. Just before he was dead.  Before the second guy was dead.  The greasy one might have already been dead by then.  Who know?

Second dead guy is in his suit.  It looks like he used the holo deck to make a recording.

...knew he'd be pissed.  But he wasn't just pissed.  She was just some stupid stripper.  Fuck Cles.  Did you really have to go this off the chain?

The image scatters and then reforms.  Same guy.  Same position.  Seems like the recording has gotten corrupted and is skipping.

...left the bag in locker 14.  Combo is 18-7-

Image scatters.  Reforms.

...gonna die.  I'm scared shitless honestly.  But there's nothing I can do now.  As long as he's got that thing on the atmo and grav...Hell.  I'd be dead already if he knew where I was.  So.  I guess I just gotta wait.  Wait to die. If you're watching this Cles, fuck off.  We were mates man.  No woman is worth what you've done.  And if you're some dumb sonuvabitch who's just wandered into the wrong place, you probably deserve what's comin' your way.  No one comes to this place unless they're bound for a hanging.  You'll get what's comin' to you.  Same as us

Rig watches Second Guy's hand reach towards the holo projector, growing larger likes it reaching for Rig's eyes.  And then the deck goes dark.

---

Ledo turns only to have that Tutu man rush through him, like a ghost through a wall in a cartoon.

The bot projector is rolling around after the ghost, like a little brother, keeping enough of a distance to stay out of Ledo's reach.

There's no equipment visible in the hangar.  The only place to check is around the burnt up wreck of a far trader.

Ledo hoofs it over.  On the opposite side, there's a huge hole in the side of the ship.  Sort of like Tia, this ship took a hit in the fuel tank. Unlike Tia, the fuel caught fire.  There are two corpses fused into the rock floor by the hole.  Looks like the crew were trying to patch the hole when the fuel went up.

The manifold is there, as well as an emergency fire hazard tank.  The hazard tank still has a full supply of fire suppressant foam.  Maybe that's ironic.

The manifold is mostly unscathed.  Ledo tries to kick start it, but it doesn't budge.  Of course.  The battery is dead.  He'll have to haul it towards Tia, plug it into an external port, and start it up.

As Ledo turns, the holo dancer comes bounding up, twirling and pirouetting, bounding through Ledo yet again.  The hair man seems to give Ledo a coy grin before turning and bounding towards him again.

Tepha was so far out of her depth she was underwater on a distant moon. Still she was being a trooper and powering through it.

"It's just like a moisturizing mask. Yeah. I'm just applying face cream...to the ship...that will dissolve my skin if it splashes onto me. Yep...just an ordinary day in the life..."

5 minutes later

"WHY DOES IT KEEP PUSHING BACK OUT AGAIN!"

OOC: le sigh. Attempt #6 got above an 8

18:08, Today: Tepha Pezal rolled 8 using 2d6.  str check.

18:08, Today: Tepha Pezal rolled 5 using 2d6.  str check.

18:08, Today: Tepha Pezal rolled 5 using 2d6.  str check.

18:08, Today: Tepha Pezal rolled 6 using 2d6.  str check.

18:08, Today: Tepha Pezal rolled 6 using 2d6.  str check.

18:07, Today: Tepha Pezal rolled 3 using 2d6.  str check.

Silver gives a shrug. When you've seen one naked hairy man in a tutu, you've seen them all.


18:10, Today: Silver rolled 5 using 2d6.  +1 streetwise -1 EDU

Ledo glowers at the running ball man and fingers the holster of his pistol.

one shot...free and clear...nobody would miss it...

But it seemed to be minding its own business for now and he had more important things to worry about. He started hauling the manifold towards the Tia to fire it up. On his route there and back again he also kept an eye open for platform controls that would get the Tia out of a puddle of fuel.

With a second thought he grabbed the fire hazard tank. Just to be safe.

Rig's interest is piqued by the "bag in the locker". If this guy wasn't a plant then he might have something useful on him. Rig takes the time to check the suit pockets of the dead guy and hunt around for the locker in question or anything else that might be useful. A weapon, a map of the facility, an access card.

Once his search was exhausted he tucks the holodeck in one of his suit pockets and tries the door. He carefully arranges the two dead guys to form an unliving barricade in front of him. If this place was booby trapped or guarded he wanted whatever was "that thing" to be shooting at people other than him.

Of course he made sure to remove the thermite charge from dead guy decoy #1, as well as cutting the camera cord.

In reply to Tepha Pezal (msg # 37):

Poor Tepha...

As Hairy Tutu whirls and twirls just out of range, Ledo hooks the manifold up and starts it.  After about ten minutes, he feels it's gotten enough off sucked up that he can risk a look into the ship.  He glances through the hole in his ship's otherwise beautiful hull and sees Tepha, done up from head to toe in protective gear.  Even with the mask on, he can tell she' frazzled, and for good reason.  She's just pushing the last glob of Exacto-Seal temp putty over a large tear in the fuel cells.

Good work Tepha.  I think we are good to go.  I'm pouring a hot bath in your suite.  Just throw what you're wearing in the garbage.  Actually, throw it in the hazmat bin.  Take a good long soak.

Fritz speaks to her over an intercom.  There's a squawk in Ledo's ear.  Fritz continues on a private frequency directly to the Captain.

I have a damage report.  But it's not like there is anything you can do with it at the moment.  Short version is we need Rig and about about ten to fifteen hours of repair.  But if need be, we can lift off.  We've lost a lot of fuel though.  We won't make it out of the Belt, even if we reclaim what's in the manifold.

Things would have gone much worse had Tepha not stepped up to the best of her ability.  You really should think about giving her some training you know.

---

A search of Second Dead Guy's pockets comes up with an ident card; an obscene picture featuring a blonde, a redhead, a plate of sardines, and a Hiver; a harmonica, and a pocket flash.  The flash still has some charge on it, wonder of wonders.

The ident card shows Second Dead Guy's name to have been Azley Lote.  Lote was a member aboard the Kingston's On Fire.  Rig's never heard of that ship before.

There is a locker, but it only appears to have some spare parts for the atmo unit.  There is a servicing schematic on the wall.  But someone has sprayed it with paint.  And not the see through kind either.  Rig can make out there there is some kind of east/north corridor under this room that the hatch opens over.  He has no idea what's past the other door.

There's no live feed to the mainframe here either.  Which is weird.  Rig glances back at the warming up atmo and heating units.  How did those come on then?  Now that he looks at them, they don't have a manual interface.  The units are triggered remotely.  But they're either tied into a mainframe through some cable Rig can't access at the moment or by remote.

The atmo is over the half way mark now.  Rig could take off his helmet in about another five minutes at this rate.

The arty grav has kicked in.  Pushing Greasy Dead Guy and Lote will be a manual process now.  He can't just push them along as they float any longer.

Is Riggy going to go for the hatch in the floor over the corridor or door number 1?

Considering he just went through a small tunnel and found it unpleasant he'll head to the door. He'll take Azley's body, if only because he can give him a name. Something to throw at the alien chestbursters when they come swarming at him...

Fritz' command is just what Tepha needed.

"I'm not going to be available for a long, long time. Find Rig, get him to fix the ship."

And with that Tepha carefully disposes of her gear and heads for a much needed bath.

Ledo hits the comm for Silver.

"I think we're about done here but we need to get to Rig. That means getting deeper into the facility. Given that we don't have Rig to hack for us, Fritz do you think you can scout for us in a Bugee? We can tape a comm unit to it and you can check out the facility for usu. If this thing has booby traps I'd rather not stick my head through the door first."

Whether or not Fritz can handle that he will top off his suit's' power as well before heading back out with Silver to through the airlock and deeper into the facility. Silver will go first. Their goal is to disable the jamming field and find a way to get their engineer back.

I think we still have a Bugee around Captain Ledo.  But they're not really optimal for this kind of thing.  Crawling through air duct yeah.  Crossing a large open area on stubby little legs?  Not so much.  If any of the doors are triggered by weight, I may not have enough mass to trip them.

I don't mind making a copy and sending it for scouting duty.  But you probably want to use something better than a Bugee Captain Ledo.

What about that holo projector?  Capture it, pop out the board, and plug in a new one.
 It's not that complicated a task and I can download a copy of me into it.

---

The door is locked from this side.  There's no power going to it, but Rig finds the manual release and triggers it.  The door clicks and slides slightly to the left.  Rig pushes it the rest of the way.

There's a short hall beyond that runs southwest.  It ends at a junction.  To the left the corridor goes down about ten meters and turns back to the north.  The other way goes down about twenty meters and ends at a ladder.  The ladder heads upwards.

Rig's suit lets him know the air quality is about 42% now.  Still not breathable.  But grav is at acceptable limits.  He's still light on his toes, but he doesn't need to worry about bouncing around any longer.

---

Let me know what you want to do about Fritz.  Bugee or Holo Projector.

We will move on from there.  Thanks

Ledo nodded, genuinely impressed by Fritz' creativity. For a split second he forgot that he was talking to an AI and when that fact came back to him it sent a chill down his spine. He pushed past it though, after what they had gone through he trusted Fritz not to go all "murder the humans" on him and the others.

"That's a good idea. One stupid holo-ball coming right up."

He switched to the general comms.

"Silver, I need your help. We're going to capture that holographic ball thingy and put Fritz inside of it. That way he can scout the place out ahead of us."

Rig shoves his decoy/body armor in front of him and hits the junction. For lack of a better plan he heads left not wanting to have to climb upwards if the ship was down below.

In reply to Ledo Typhin (msg # 46):

Rig takes the bend to the north, shoving along his new bosom buddy.

The corridor runs ahead a surprising distance.  Maybe a hundred meters.  At the far end, it looks like there is a set of stairs, but they head upwards.

Halfway along the corridor is a hatch set in the left hand wall.  There's a sign above it.

LONG TERM STOR GE

---

That stupid little holo projector turns out to be a real pain in the ass to catch.  It's as twitchy as a cat with a flare shoved up it's ass.  Worse, it keeps swivelling it's head, beaming the dancing tutu guy directly into Silver and Ledo's face plate.

Ledo probably has to spend more time talking Silver out of just shooting it than he does catching it.  He probably has to remind himself of that on a couple of occasions.

But catch it they do.  With an almost gleeful feeling, they slip the unit over to pull out it's CPU.

On the compartment cover where the CPU is stored, someone has scratched out a message.

For you Azley.  Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy

Whatever that's about.

Switching out the boards is a snap.  No Rig necessary.  After a moment, Fritz Jr. is rolling the unit around.

Hmmm.  This is a well maintained bot. I can still access it's logs.  Last upkeep on it was two months ago.  The bot wobbles a bit now on it's left side.  I'm guessing one of the two of you got a little overzealous during capture phase though...

The grav is at acceptable levels now.  You guys shouldn't have any issues with it.  I can't log into the station's mainframe.  It's either shielded or a closed system. Fritz Sr. downloads a program into Ledo and Silver's suit.  Until that jammer is out of action, we'll probably lose radio contact when you guys reach the end of that corridor.  If something happens, I've installed a boost to your suit's beacon.  If something happens, trip it.  That way we'll know...Well.  I guess we'll know you're probably dead.

Wow.  I am a peppy kind of program, aren't I?

Analysis of prior evidence indicates that it is a false hypothesis, chimes in Mainframe.

I wish I had an ass so I could tell you both to kiss it.  Atmo is almost acceptable.  Keep an eye on your suit gauges though.  If I were whoever this was, I'd start bleeding the atmo out of the stations once you were out of radio range of Tia  Fritz Sr is silent a moment.  Don't die.

Fritz Jr rolls ahead.  Silver had replaced the holo projector with a cam.  Now she and Ledo get a vid projection from Jr's POV displayed on the upper right quad of their visor.

The corridor is wide and long.  It runs further into the core about 150 meters.  Along it's length are eight open rooms.  Probably served for warehouse storage.  There are signs above each one.

LOT A
LOT B
LOT C
LOT D
LOT F
LOT G
LOT H
PARTS

The storage units are mostly empty.  A couple of crates litter LOT B, D, and H.  There is a pile of trash in the PARTS warehouse space.  It looks like someone dumped a bunch of old parts into one big pile in the middle of the space.

At the end of the corridor is a security checkpoint.  A blast door is drawn across the hall, cutting the hangar and warehouses off from the rest of the complex.  A couple of small archways have been cut into the blast door, offering access to whatever is beyond.

Each arch is wide enough for a single person to go through at a time.

Above the arch on the left, someone has painted  a large 1.

Above the arch on the right, someone has painted a large ZERO

Between the two, someone has painted the words what number is left when nothing remains

Above all that, painted in that same dark blood red paint you saw on the descent down, in huge letters, someone has scrawled

WATZ MISSING MUTHAFUCKERS

---

Finally...Finally...Tepha feels like she's scrubbed the last of the goo from her skin.  The bath salts have a wonderful lavender scent to them.  Honestly, she hasn't felt this clean in a while.  Funny how you never appreciate cleanliness until you're dirty.

Tepha.  Just wanted to give you a heads up.  I think Captain Ledo and Silver will be moving out soon.

So much going on!  Decisions decisions.

Rig:  Move ahead down the long hall and go upstairs, look in LONG TERM STOR GE, or head back to one of the earlier options.  Or whatever else he can come up with.

Ledo and Silver will need to tell me what, if anything, they are looking at first.  Yes they can split up...pleeeeeeease split up!.. and investigate separate areas of the corridor.  But only give me one area they are investigating at a time please.

Obviously you understand what kind of situation you're in.  You can assume the characters get it as well.  You forget the details at your own peril.

Thanks
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 02:05, Tue 19 May 2020.

Rig was here, there was a door. Who knows what might be behind it. It could even be LONG TERM STORAGE!

Keeping his bosom buddy in front he'll open up the door and take a peek inside. Well the dead guy will peek first and then he will go.

Ledo looks at the sign and then heads towards the zero entrance but is stopped by Silver.

"You think it's that easy? A simple fucking math test? Look again..."

Ledo paused, considered the sign and then shrugged. Silver rolled her eyes.

"What number is to the left when nothing remains."

She points towards the left entrance and motions for Fritz Jr. and Ledo to follow her.

Tepha had already done her due diligence in saving the day already.

"Alright Fritz, let me know if they need anything..."

And with that barest of efforts she went back to soaking.

In reply to Gary 'Rig' Rigan (msg # 49):

The hatch opens easily.

The room beyond is large.  The ceilings rise upwards out of immediate view.  And the walls are at least seventy meters away from each other.  If the room were empty, it would be cavernous.

The arty grav is also off inside the room.  Rig notices the grav pumps that line the rim of the doorway, setting the border between the grav'd hallway and the free fall interior beyond the hatch.

There wasn't atmo at first.  When Rig popped the hatch, there had been the telltale whoosh of air flooding into the chamber.  His suit's exterior atmo gauge dropped a couple of percentages as well.  The inside of the room is getting it's first breath of air in a while.

Though that's probably not a good thing.  Had there been atmo in there, all that meat would have probably spoiled by now.

What they're storing in LONG TERM STOR GE are the dead.

Laid out in neat rows along the floor are thick metal pipes about a handspan off the ground.  Chains have been threaded between pipe and floor, and at either end of each chain a person was bound.  Ever person has their hands clasped behind their back, the chains linked to shackles binding their wrists together.  The lack of grav means they are all floating in the air, bouncing against each other at the end of their tethers as the sudden pressurization disturbs their long slumber.

From the nearest bodies, Rig would guess they all died when the chamber lost atmo.  They have that bruised skin look of exploded arteries and the signs of blisters from where the saliva had boiled in their mouths.

The pipe/chain system keeps them in semi organized rows.  Rig's analytical mind estimates there are 96 corpses inside the room.  Four rows on each side of the door. Six pairs of prisoners bound to each pipe.

They all seem to be dressed in usual crew clothes.  Slacks.  Jumpsuits.  The odd leather pants.  Men and woman.  Tattooed and uninked.  The only similar thing about all of them is how they died.

The pipes are on each side of the door.  So there is a path free...well, mostly free.  Some toes or hair sort of drift into the zone...of the dead from the hatch to the back of the far wall.  Set straight across the room is a desk with a computer system on top of it.  As Rig watches, the computer screen winks on.  It starts to power up and after a moment, something flashes across the screen.  Some kind of text, though he can't read what it's saying from here.

---

Taking the 1 leads down a short hallway.  There's no point sending Fritz Jr.  They can all see what's at the end of it.

The hall opens into a small circular room.  Opposite the arch leading into it is a thick security hatch.  Above the hatch is a sign reading

Welcome to Paradise!  Come on inside!  Get drunk and laid!

The hatch is locked of course.  Isn't that always the way with the gates of paradise.  The only thing of note on the hatch itself is a keyboard.  It's sunk into the door and live.  But it doesn't seem to feed into any kind of screen.

Around the walls of the rest of the room are plaques.  Each plaque simply lists a name.


Anton Willoughby
Selena Oscars
Ezik Worsters
Camen Gull
Lottie Duncan
Paola Sobriza
Shasta Hawthorne
Tomas Odocar
Preston Njornjack III
Woolie
Sam Sangra

Rig paused and slumped down to his knees in shock.

"You mother fuckers..."

He figured this was where they kept their prisoners, crew they jumped and hijacked waiting to be ransomed or sold off as slaves. It didn't matter anymore now though. He took a few minutes to get over his shock before heading into the room to the computer. Everything was a clue and he guessed he didn't need his decoy buddy in here.

Ledo and Silver stared at each other and shrugged. They didn't have a lot to go on. Ledo tried the name of the station's owner: Clesing Dremond

Silver would then try something stupid and simple: Watz and then if that didn't work Woolie Watz.

In reply to Ledo Typhin (msg # 54):

Ledo begins to tap in C-L-E-

Fritz Jr slams into his side.  The impact is so sudden and unexpected, Ledo staggers a little to his right.

Just not far enough.

A section of the roof descends, smashing into Ledo's shoulder. It sends him sideways while continuing down to crush Fritz Jr to a package of less than a fifty centimeters in thickness.

Ledo can feel how incorrectly his arm is hanging from it's shoulder joint.  His suit helpfully lets him know he's suffered an injury and his suit is leaking atmo.  Thankfully, there's enough atmo in the area so he's not going to depressurize.

Ledo takes 5 pts damage.  You can roll an Athletics/Dex to mitigate the damage to his shoulder.  Or just let the autodoc fix it up.  Your call.

I'm guessing Silver isn't going to type in Woolie.  Though you never know.  Maybe it'll work.

Or she could just haul Ledo back to the ship and autodoc.

The section of the ceiling slowly starts to retract and reset itself.

---

Rig heads into the room.  A woman's long hair wafts it's way towards him, like fingers of smoke dancing at the edge of his vision.  His passage seems to disturb another body.  A man's leg swings and the toes of his right foot gently bounce against his helmet's face plate, like a kick to the teeth in very slow motion.

Finally, he can see the desk.

There's a keyboard set before the screen.  It's an old style manual and seems fairly ordinary.  There are no additional plugs or bombs.  It's just for data entry.

There's a screen saver in effect on screen.  A woman with thick brown hair tied in a knot and wearing a gauzy red dress is dancing across the screen.  It's not an animation.  The woman is, or was, real and quite lovely.  Even to Rig's untrained eye it is apparent she is a gifted dancer.  She moves gracefully along her routine, like a leaf floating along in a cool breeze.

Under her on the screen saver is a phrase.  FILL IN THE BLANK

That's it.  There's no blank on the screen.

Rig didn't have time to deal with it, unfortunately. He needed to move on and especially he needed to alert the others as to what kind of place this was. This wasn't a simple smuggler's den. This was a charnal house.

He grabbed his bosom buddy and headed towards the stairs leading up. It was the wrong direction but what other way could they go?
This message was last edited by the player at 11:39, Wed 20 May 2020.

Ledo and Silver stare at the trap and then back at one another and both turn around to leave.

"We need to have a strategy session and get proper equipment. I was expecting to need maybe a fusion cutter but this...this is something else. I need to get my shoulder fixed too."

Silver paused and stared at the Woolie plaque. She was a decent puzzler from all the stupid games she played to kill the time and the plaque was different. Maybe this was the button they were looking for? Or maybe it was just a metal plaque on the wall...

In reply to Gary 'Rig' Rigan (msg # 56):

He's getting closer.

Peeking up over the lip of the stairwell, Rig can tell where he is:  a large room dedicated to hydraulics.  And from the looks of it, he's close to the hangar.

There are crane arms, a couple of movable cargo elevators, and some other goodies useful in busy hangar bays.  They would be stored close to a hangar.  Ergo, Rig is now close.

His hypothesis is confirmed once he climbs up and moves away from the stairwell.

...ig?  Engin...r Ri...me in...It's Fritz...not lock on you...tion...Pleas...ounce back...ignal...Do Y...ead m...

The signal is weak as all out.  But the closer Rig gets towards the northwest corner of the room, the stronger it gets.  It looks like there is a large installed elevator lift in that corner.  He should be able to take it down to the hangar.  Provided it's got power.  And it hasn't been tampered with.

...Rig?  You...me?  I can hear...u breathing...You al...t?

---

Shoulder dislocated.  Commencing anasthetic.

Ledo lays in the autodoc, a robotic arm injecting Numal into his arm prior to the autodoc popping his shoulder back into joint.

Tepha and Silver stand beside, watching the operation.

Fritz squawks up.  Getting a signal from Rig.  It's getting stronger but can't quite get a bead on it.

"Yeah? Fritz? I can hear you. I think I'm above the hangar. I'll try and find a way down."

This was where his bosom buddy could finally pay off. If the elevator has been tampered with he's got a test dummy to send on down.

Rig will inspect the elevator first to make sure there aren't obvious signs of sabotage and then send down the body.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:18, Thu 21 May 2020.

Ledo gives a sigh of relief both as he gets his shoulder fixed and hearing that Rig is on his way.

"Great. Okay so this play is booby trapped all to shit. Silver let's put our heads together and figure out how we're going to handle this. I'm thinking if we can find some long poles or something we can poke it into places first so we don't encounter any of these stupid traps.

Fritz, I'm going to need you hooked up to a Bugee. It doesn't have to be a lot, just enough so you can climb up and push buttons. I'm sure there are a couple left around, I saw Silver grabbing a few here and there. Maybe some fell off the cargo hold? Next we're going to get some poles. Finally lets bring the cutter. Fuck playing games when we can just carve our way through the walls."

Silver was leaning up against a wall.

"I think we should try Watz. Seems like whoever built this liked to give clues."

Ledo shook his head.

"No we're not 'trying' anything. We don't have many Bugees to play with. I say we trigger and disable the traps one by one. Trigger the wall piston and then we can smash the hell out of it so it can't reset properly. Then we can try all the commands we like without worrying about being pulverized."

In reply to Ledo Typhin (msg # 63):

Begging your pardon Captain Ledo, but remember the dead body holding the thermite charge?  If we had blasted through there, it wouldn't have gone well.  I just have a hard time thinking that whoever set up that barricade at the end of the corridor didn't consider someone might just take a torch or cutter to it.

Silver is correct: they've left clues.  And they seem to be willing to abide by the rules of their game.  Not saying I don't like your idea of short circuiting the whole mess.  I'm just not sure the straightforward approach is the best one.

Silver, did you...uh...'borrow' any Bugees?  Oh, and when you said 'Watz' are you referring to that WATZ MISSING MUTHAFUCKERS?  If so, the answer may be LOT E.  I did an analysis of the images I received from Fritz Jr.  The names of the storage spaces were alphabetical, but the E bay or LOT E was missing.

Don't know if that means anything or not.

The ship rattles and shakes while outside there is a loud BOOOOOOOOM

On the plus side, I know where Rig is.

---

Of course the lift was trapped.

Rig throws his good friend on the platform and switches on the lever. The lift shuddered and then began to descend slowly.  Then not at all slowly.  Someone cut the safety struts.  After the lift descended a meter, the platform just fell the full distance of 75 meters. It lands with a loud BOOOOOOM. Rig's buddy gets even more gooey inside his suit.

Rig can see through the hole in the floor where the lift had been.  The hangar is below.  Off to his three o'clock he can see Tia. Including the large hole in her side.  Why is there a large hole in the hull?

His suit squawks.  Hi Rig! I can completely see you now!  How'd you get up there?  Let me patch you through to Ledo and the others.  There's a hole in the ship and the fuel tank by the way.

Rig and the others can now talk to each other.  You can assume Rig gets down from the hole in the ceiling fine.  No sense taking time on how he descends.

Not saying Ledo is wrong.  Fritz is just playing devil's advocate.  Proceed as Ledo thinks best.

Let me know if there are questions.  Thanks

Rig descends using the sabotaged cables. When he gets to the ship the comms are filled with cursing.

"What the fuck happened to my ship?"

"Glad to have you back Rig. Turns out this place is trapped."

"Yeah I gathered that..."

As Rig heads towards the ship he fills in the rest of the crew about what he saw. When he finished the comms are silent.

"We should go..."

Tepha's voice was low with a tremor in it. She could handle a fork lift defense laser but so many bodies just left here to die, this wasn't a claim jumper, this was a serial killer.

Ledo punched a wall plate with his bad-now-good arm. He winced at the pain.

"No. This fucker doesn't get to win. Not like that. After we get control of this station and clean it out I'll send word to the Navy to check this place out. They'll make sure everything is processed and this fucker goes out an airlock.

Rig I need you to come with us. I know <i>Tia<i> is hurt bad but we need to get deeper into this station and I think your insight is going to be critical. We need to jury rig up some trap springers. Something we can use to poke and prod at a distance."

"...if you say so..."

"I do. Tepha, work with Fritz and find a way to boost our signal. When we come up to the next puzzle or riddle we need to stay in communication. I know you had experience working with a shitty transmitter...anything you can do to help boost the ship's signal so we don't get cut off deeper in the station."

"Alright, there's some things we can try..."

"And Silver. I need your scavenger mind. Where are the traps going to come out at, what doesn't look right."

Silver didn't respond but in her case no response was about the same as an agreement.

OOC: Assuming this is an average difficulty rally that should be 4 boons to hand out, one to each:


20:07, Today: Ledo Typhin rolled 12 using 2d6+03.  leadership!

Tepha gets to work rigging up a few simple relay devices. Basically little more than just signal repeaters scavanged from the ship hooked up to small portable batteries, when their signal starts getting weak they can drop one off to maintain connection to the ship.


20:10, Today: Tepha Pezal rolled 10 using 3d6+01, keeping the 2 highest rolls with rolls of 5,4,4.  Boon, +1 sensors.

Rig gets to work pounding out rods salvaged from the derelict ship into a series of crude manipulators.

The key is a tripod like rig that they can set up to stabilize a 10' pole to allow for precise movements. The poles themselves don't need much, he fashions a few crude tips for them like one with a finger sized protrusion to push buttons, one with a hook to pull levers etc.

The tripod stabilizes it and if the pole gets blasted/smashed pounded then he's got a hole backpack full of replacements.

Mechanics/EDU
20:11, Today: Gary 'Rig' Rigan rolled 12 using 3d6+03, keeping the 2 highest rolls with rolls of 6,3,1.  +2 EDU +1 Mechanics.

Silver takes the time the others are busy to drink a beer, smoke a joint and get into the skull of the base operator. She'd probably met a few just like him. Playful, malicious, narcissitic, sociopathic. The kind that wants his prey to *know* that he is smarter than them.

Hopefully this makes sense but she wants to try and gain an insight into the designers mind. Not just crack a puzzle but crack him...
20:14, Today: Silver rolled 11 using 3d6+1, keeping the 2 highest rolls with rolls of 3,6,4.  boon, streetwise/int.

When the crew was all rigged up and ready to go they suited up and headed out. Tepha remained on the ship to keep an eye on things while Rig, Ledo and Silver proceeded back towards "Paradise".

Far enough away from the keyboard they set up Rig's rig and Ledo carefully pushed the first letter with a pole: "L"
This message was last edited by the player at 01:18, Fri 22 May 2020.

In reply to Ledo Typhin (msg # 71):

Scanning...

Good Tepha.  This will definitely work.  Strap them to Fritz 3 and 4... he says, meaning the two bugees with robotic frames she could scrounge up.  We can coordinate the movements with them to maximize range.

---

As Rig pulls rods from the derelict, his experienced eye notices that ship has a lot of nice parts on it.  A lot of them are antiquated, but that's what would give them value.  There's plenty of freighters out there that are long in the tooth and, since most are run by crews with no to little money, they need these older parts to stay afloat.

The idea that Tia could end up like that...old.  Poor.  Barely keeping it's hull patched because of lousy job after lousy job...might float through his mind.  But then again, isn't that why he's there?

---

NO ONE HAS TO DIE

BUT THEY DID

Ain't you taken enough from us?  Can't you let us rest in piece?

Silver takes a hit off the toke and thinks back to the video Fritz showed her.  The one Tepha had watched when the ship was brought down here.

Then there's that holo that was played when the ship docked.  A hairy guy in a tutu, dancing, with a look on his face, now that Silver thinks about it, that shows he must have been strung out of his gourd when the holo was filmed.

And Rig mentioned a dancer on that screen saver he found.  Dancers...

Ain't you taken enough from us?.  If that guy from Tepha's vid was Cles, and it seems like a safe bet to assume it was, then someone had taken something from him and come back.  No.  Not him.  'Us'.

Since he talked to Tepha like he would to whoever it was, that vid is probably a recording.  Set to play whenever someone came down the lift.  So Cles is either gone or dead.

NO ONE HAS TO DIE

BUT THEY DID

Yeah.  Cles is probably dead then.

That holo of the guy in the tutu...it was like he was strung out and forced to dance around like that...One of those things your 'friends' do to you while you're stoned off your rocker.  They take pictures of it and post the pictures all over the net.  Cos they really hate your ass after all.

Yeah.  This feels like some kind of revenge.  Like someone had taken something from 'us', and 'us' staged all this in case 'someone' showed back up.  Unfortunately, 'someone' didn't.  It was Tia that showed up.

What the hell dancers have to do with anything, who knows?  But they've popped up twice now.  Might be best to keep it in mind.

---

An hour and a half later, Ledo, Rig, Silver, and Fritz 3 are standing by the tripod.  Fritz 4 is a little down the corridor, positioned to boost the signal.

Ledo uses the rod to push 'L'...

Nothing happens.  He pushes O-T-T-I-E-D-U-N-C-A-N.

After a moment the hatch swings open.

Fritz 3 nods and moves ahead, walking over the remains of Fritz Jr and under the piston in the ceiling.  Nothing happens.  He looks back, shrugs his little bugee shoulders and peeks through the hatch.  He disappears from view for a moment, then pokes his head back out, motioning an all clear.

On the other side of the hatch is a wide open area, like a plaza on an orbital station.  Best guess is that is exactly what this was.  A plaza where amenities were provided for smuggler crews.

There weren't many amenities.  On the left side of the plaza is what looks like a club.  An old sign, almost hidden by layers of dust, reads FAT PUSSY'S PARLOR...Shows Nightly.  There are windows, but they've been painted over with black paint.  There is a single entrance, but a barrier has been placed over it.  Not much of a barrier though.  It's poorly connected, and from cracks where it isn't flush with the door, winking lights of various colors can be seen. The thump of a bass causes the barrier to rattle in it's frame.
The barrier should be easy to rip off.  Assuming it's not trapped.

On the right side of the plaza is what must have been a motel or brothel. Maybe both.  Three tiers of doors, seven doors a tier, are lined up along the wall, with stairs leading up to each level.  There seems to be a kiosk of some kind at the bottom of the staircase.  It's probably where the crews would go to purchase a room key.

Directly across from the plaza is an archway leading to a tunnel.  Above the arch is signage

Control

Below that, someone's painted

IT'S BEEN LOST

Set right in front of that arch is another dead guy in vacc suit.  Or what's left of both guy and vacc suit.

They've been ripped to ribbons, pretty literally.  From below their head and shoulders down to their knees, their body and suit have been peeled away, the skin, muscle, and polyfabrics made into strings and ropes, and those bits used to tie the corpse into position, strung across the mouth of the arch like he's trying to stop anyone from coming in.

Around his neck is hung another thermite charge.  The charge is set up to a proximity alarm, also hung from around the neck.

I can ping the signal on that detonator.  It's not much of a range.  It's only about five meters, but it's broadcast in a sphere.  Coming within five meters of any direction will set it off.

It's on another fault line too.  Set it off, and not only does the roof here collapse, it would probably collapse part of the roof in the hangar. Fritz is silent a second.

There's a remote way to turn it off.  But it's asking for a one hundred thirty four digit passcode.  And I don't think it's just using Terran symbols either.

That's pretty standard actually.  Passcodes these days can use alien alphabets and pictograms to increase the difficulty.

It will take a looong time to try to crack.  I hate to say it...but...

Fritz doesn't need to finish the thought.  All four crew members get it. Whoever built this little amusement park has probably left that code laying around somewhere.  It just has to be found.

So that's a lot to throw at you.  Basically, you need to deactivate the bomb to get into the control tower.

There's Fat Pussy's.  You will need to pry off that barrier on the entrance.  Or maybe there is another way in.

There's the motel.  21 doors and a kiosk that dispenses keys.

Or you can do whatever occurs to you to try.

Rig can roll Mechanic/Int tests to sniff for traps or figure them out.

Silver can use Streetwise/Edu test to try to 'tap into Cles' mind'.  The lambs are calling Clarice

Everyone can use Streetwise/Int or Tactics/Int to try to spot traps as well.

Let me know if there are questions.  Thanks.

Ledo points towards the kiosk.

"What's been lost...maybe a key? Might as well start there..."

While he starts setting up Rig's rig for delicate button pushing Rig circles around the kiosk trying to suss out any obvious explosions.

OOC: Nope...

01:12, Today: Gary 'Rig' Rigan rolled 5 using 2d6+1.  sniff out traps - kiosk.

This message was last edited by the player at 06:13, Fri 22 May 2020.

Inside her vacc suit Silver takes a puff of her joint. Ledo would be so pissed to find out she was hot boxing during this whole situation but it was to help her get in the zone.

Alright, so I'm a maniac trying to get revenge and prove a point. She looked at the brothel and thought about the dancer. Maybe it was about a woman?

Didn't Rig find a holodeck mentioning a stripper...


01:14, Today: Silver rolled 8 using 2d6.  streetwise/edu get in the zone.

This message was last edited by the player at 06:22, Fri 22 May 2020.

Ledo considered their surroundings and the barrier they were being faced with.

"Hey Fritz...how precisely positioned does that thermite charge have to be to be a danger?

In the military there's this thing called reactive armor. Basically you set off an explosion to counteract another explosion. Where is the fault line? Say it's in the ceiling. We could rig up a shaped charge to blast downward which would counteract the explosion going upward and negate a direction of the blast. Basically blast it into a safe direction instead of us or the fault line or anywhere else. Maybe save us a bit of time..."



01:24, Today: Ledo Typhin rolled 12 using 2d6+02.  tactics military +1 HUD +1 INT.

In reply to Ledo Typhin (msg # 75):

That's an interesting idea.  I can run some simulations.  But initial estimates indicate a 67.8% chance of keeping the fault line from triggering with such a blast.

But.  That won't stop the initial charge from bringing down the tunnel behind it.  And I can not say for sure how much damage the blast would do to whatever is behind the...guy...in the section marked Control.  It would be a gamble.

But yes. We can shape a charge to prevent the seismic activity and then perhaps clear a way through the debris into 'Control'.

Models predict a 79.82% chance of success with gaining entry.  Unable to predict what may occur to the contents of 'Control'.  Sorry.

---

The kiosk is sort of standard.  The guy who wants to rent the room answers some questions, pays the cost, and the kiosk dispenses a key card.

The screen has a smiling face that asks a few questions.

Thank You for Using KeyCom!  Your First Choice in Accommodations!

Do You Have Reservations?                   Y        N
How Many In Your Party?                     Y        N
Will You Require Companionship?             Y        N
How Long Will You Need the Room?            Enter Number Here
What Floor?                                 Enter Number Here
What Room?                                  Enter Number Here


When I Slit Your Lying Throat
And Piss Inside The Hole I'll
Leave After I Dig Out Your Rotten
Heart While You're Still Breathing
Do You Think You'll Scream As Much
As She Did?                                Y         N

Please Deposit 150 credits for each hour
Enjoy Your Stay!

---

Silver recalls the holodeck message.  And of course, there's what's on the kiosk screen.

So yeah.  She's pretty confident this is about a woman.

If it's not money, it's a woman.  Though it's always about money...

Silver's Brother had said that once.  He may not be as right as he though he was.

Ledo and the others consider the message and Ledo puts up his hand.

”We don’t have enough information but if this involved a stripper maybe we should check out the brothel first. Now I am pretty sure if we rip that grate off something is going to rush out so Silver and I will cover the entrance while Rig uses his attachment to hook a rod onto it and pull. You know what...”

Ledo and the others will take a quick look around, maybe going as far back as the hangar, to find a nice piece of metal that they can set up like a barricade (or potential blast shield).

In reply to Ledo Typhin (msg # 77):

Another section of the derelict's hull makes a dandy blast shield.

With it in place, the barrier is set to come off.  The pole snakes out as Ledo, Rig, and Silver stand behind the blast shield.  The pole grabs the barrier...

...it almost falls off.  It seems it was only hanging on by a couple of rusty staples.  Nothing blows up.  The only boom is from the barrier hitting the ground.

With the barrier gone, the inside of FAT PUSSY'S is visible.

It's set up like almost every strip club any of them have ever been in.  A large common room with a stage right across from the front door.  A bar runs the length of the wall to the left.  A set of doors lines the wall to the right.

The common room is mostly full of what was left of it's original furniture.  It looks like someone took an axe to almost every single chair and table.  Old stains of dried blood and other bodily fluids are sluiced across everywhere and everything.

Whoever took that axe to the tables took a few swings at the bar as well.  The old counter has few spots that aren't marked or cut into.  Broken bottles line the shelves, their contents long since evaporated.

There does seem to be a few bottles that escaped.  But hard to tell what they are from the entrance.

The doors along the right wall are labeled as Bathrooms, Good Time Room, and Private in that order.  They are all shut and seem to have escaped damage.

On the stage, a hologram is performing.  A pretty woman is dancing.  Not the refined ballet seen up to now.  But not a striptease either.  More like a burlesque.  Rig recognizes the woman in the holo as the same one who was on the screen saver.

In front of the stage is a couch and a cryo tube.  On the couch are two men, or what remains of them.  They've both had beer bottles inserted neck first into their eye sockets.  Their skin has dried until they are mummified.  It looks like they died badly.

On the chest of one of them is painted

3

On the chest of the other one is painted

21

The cryo tube also has a man inside.  Unlike everyone else encountered thus far, he is flesh and blood and does not seem to have been tortured or murdered.  The tube is powered, and from what is discernable from here, still active.  The guy inside the tube is frozen storage.  Possibly still alive, but that would depend on how long he's been in there and how good the tube is.

Ledo considers the situation and decides to leave the cryo tube for now. Another thing the Navy can mess around with.

"Floor 3, Room 21. Sounds like we have our key code but there are more questions that need to be answered..."

After scanning the room for traps they move Rig's rig into the strip club and proceed to open up the three doors and take a peak inside, starting with the bathrooms.

In reply to Ledo Typhin (msg # 79):

The bathroom is suprisingly clean.  There is one dead body in it.  But the room smells fresher than any other room thus far.  Even the thick layer of dust is missing.

The answer is pretty evident:  the room's cleaning bot is still functioning.  It wakes up once the door opens, a small robot about a meter in length and half a meter in height.  Four robotic arms protrude from each corner.

The bot comes off it's charging pad, raises one of the arms, and squirts a fine mist in your direction.  It's floral scented sanitizer.  Your suit sensors don't think anything of it.

The body on the floor has been cleaned.  What you can tell is it was a man.  He was shot in the chest.  And that's about it.

The toilets work just fine.

---

The Good Time Room must have been for private dances and those who wanted to screw but didn't want to spring for a private room across the plaza.

No one who is in here now had a good time during their last moments.

It's hard to tell how many died in this room.  They've been hacked apart, literally into pieces.  It looks like someone was using the bondage chains installed on the walls for more BD and S than M.  They must have chained up their prisoners and then taken their time.  The walls behind the chains are gouged and chipped.  Like someone swung the axe a little too violently.

Other than piles and piles of long since rotted corpses, there's nothing here.

---

Private turns out to have been an office.  A small room with a business desk, a nice chair, a computer, and a headless body sitting in the chair behind the desk.

It was a woman.  Her arms are bound to the chair.  From the way the body is dressed...flamboyantly with a lot of gaudy, cheap jewelry...Ledo and Silver can guess she was the madam.  From the stains on the wall and chars around the neck stump, Ledo guesses someone tied her to the chair, stuck a low power concussion grenade in her mouth, and pulled the pin.

The blast shot away from the computer, which still seems viable.  The security is a joke.  Rig can get through it in twenty seconds.  Her password was actually FATPUSS

Apparently she was typing a message right before she died.

FROM                     Sylv
TO                       Arden Fiest


Ard,

They just told me Cles walked in.  What the hell?
I thought you and Dino weren't gonna bust him out?
Does he know about Lottie?  I swear, you fucked us all,
not just her.  I'm going to

That's all the message there is.

Silver knows the name Arden Fiest though.  Dino is familiar as well.

Arden Fiest.  Dino Sedgewick.  The two of them ran a crew back in her Grandpa's day.  The BurnOuts.  Stupid crew name aside, they were the shit.  Tough.  Rude.  Had a kill record the length of a solar system. Silver knows them because her brother is like a huge fan.  Really.  He's got a boy crush on certain crews and they're one of them.

From what she could recall, the stories were The Burnouts just kind of disappeared one day.  Arden apparently left the quad for Jewell and no one knows what happened to the rest of them.

Well.  Until now.

Rig stepped back, shaking his head.

"No. No! No way. This isn't a smuggler's den this is a fucking house of horros. This Cles guy is like out of a horror movie. What the fuck are we even doing here? No way. Let's just turn around and head back. There isn't anything but more death this way."

Rig started to walk out but Ledo grabbed the shoulders of his vacc suit.

"Rig, hold it together. We're in this too deep. Remember what we saw when we got here? We need access to the station to get out. We need to see if there is any fuel left. We need to figure out what is going on. Focus man. We have the numbers for a room. Let's punch it in and see where it gets us. But first I think we should check on this cryo guy."

He points to one of the Fritz Jrs and points him at the cryopod.

"Can you see if this guy is even still alive? He was left here for a reason, maybe he's a clue for how to fill in those questions on the kiosk."

OOC:
19:37, Today: Ledo Typhin rolled 14 using 2d6+3.  leadership!

This message was last edited by the player at 00:43, Mon 25 May 2020.

Under Ledo's advice Rig goes to check out the software inside the hotel terminal. He'll hook up his computer to any available port and see if he can't gain control of it and figure out if there is more running than meets the eye.



19:37, Today: Gary 'Rig' Rigan rolled 12 using 3d6+4, keeping the 2 highest rolls with rolls of 5,3,1.  +2 computers +2 edu, + leadership boon.

In reply to Gary 'Rig' Rigan (msg # 83):

Rig locks the cryo's board to Fritz and uses him to do a scan.

The cryo tube is still viable.  The guy inside is alive.  Kind of.

When someone has been too long in cryo, the term is 'freezer burn'. This guy is freezer burn.

His core autonomic systems will probably work. For a while.  But his muscles have atrophied to the point that they are probably beyond repair.  If there was access to a major hospital, it might be possible to stabilize him enough to replace enough of his systems for survival.  As it is now, if he comes to he'll be around for a few hours at most.  It will then just be a case of what gives out first: his heart or his diaphragm.

This guy's ident information is in the system.  I ran it.  He's on the ICUC boards with warrants.  They've been outstanding for seventy four years.  But they're still in force.

This is Buck Coppers.  Real name.  His parents must have hated him.

Anyway...even if he gets thawed, he's looking at a life in prison.

There's a message embedded in the system too.

Fritz plays the message.  It's audio only.  Silver recognizes it as the voice of the guy who played on that video Tepha watched on landing.

Arden.  I won't waste our time here.  Buck's the only one who didn't. So I told him I'd give him a chance.  Up to you.  Thaw him or don't.  He's like everyone else.  Their blood is on your an' Dino's head.

You shoulda never a' touched her. I'll hate you into the next life you utter fuck.

Come see me in Control.  I'll be waitin'.

Ledo considers things and gives the nod to Rig.

”Hook him up to a battery and lets get Tepha to help move him to the Tia. Waking him up for a life in prison seems unusually cruel but maybe we can get a few credits out of him in exchange for a quick death.”

Silver sucked on her teeth at that.


.’I didn’t think you to be that cruel, Captain. Squeezing a guy on his deathbed...didn’t think you had it in you.”
This message was lightly edited by the player at 14:34, Mon 25 May 2020.

Ledo’s voice is stern as he responds to a subordinate questioning is order. Still he takes the time to explain his reasoning. Silver wasn’t from a military background and some allowances had to be made.

”What other choice do we have? Leave him to die here? Wake him up for a painful couple of days where he struggles to breath? We wake him up and we can ask him if he wants a quick death or to be turned over to the authorities. If possible he should be able to beat the 3500 credit bounty on his head for us to let him go. It’s not about cruelty, it’s pragmatism. We need credits to replace the fuel and patch the hull. So far this excursion has been a complete disaster, we need to salvage what we can.”

Rig heads back to the Tia, informs Tepha that they are bringing on a passenger and grabs an emergency power unit from the low berths and rigs up a portable power system on a grav sled. Together with Tepha they load the tube up and get it integrated into the ship’s power supply

”Worst case scenario, we have an extra cryogenic tube....”

Silver, always pragmatic, starts searching pockets for credits. Maybe someone had a few credits (or drugs or smokes) on them. Couldn’t hurt, right?

While Silver is looting the dead Ledo goes back to repositioning Rig’s rig back to the motel kiosk. He also sets up the blast shield again angling it as best as possible to protect against both the remote mine and anything coming out from the motel.

He was starting to get a bit more confident that Cles had wanted this Arden to get to the end of the line at control however there was a good chance this whole thing was one giant trap. Still it seemed like the only path was forward at the moment. All they needed was to get Fritz into the mainframe and maybe they could disable the rest of these little booby traps and find something of value on this godforsaken rock.

Once the rig was in position Ledo considered the questions and tapped out his responses with one of the rods with a finger pointer on the end:


Thank You for Using KeyCom!  Your First Choice in Accommodations!

Do You Have Reservations? Y
How Many In Your Party? Y
Will You Require Companionship? N
How Long Will You Need the Room? 1
What Floor?   3
What Room? 21


When I Slit Your Lying Throat
And Piss Inside The Hole I'll
Leave After I Dig Out Your Rotten
Heart While You're Still Breathing
Do You Think You'll Scream As Much
As She Did? Y

In reply to Ledo Typhin (msg # 90):

Ledo presses the last 'Y'.  The kiosk goes blank a moment.  Then...

Please wait.  Processing your transaction...

Then there's a ding! sound.

A slot in the kiosk opens.  A key card juts out. It is for room 21 on floor 3.

Enjoy your stay!

---

Cles didn't seem to be too concerned about looting.  Then again, as Silver is finding out, these guys didn't have too much loot on them.

She manages to wrangle up 427 credits total.  One of the guys has some interesting looking targeting goggles on him.  Silver will need to patch them, but they should still be servicable.

And then...wait a minute.  Hold the blast off.  One of the guys has a necklace around what's left of his neck.  It's sort of fruity looking for a guy.  He must have taken it off some noble lady he'd banged and killed.

It's a little silver figure on a chain.  The figure is one of those...what are they called?  Silver saw one in a book once...ostrich?  No.  Ostriches have two legs.  This has four.  It could be a llama then.  Or a horse.  She's never seen an actually one of either of those.

Whatever it is, it's a mammal.  Probably.  It's got a long, solid body with four legs that end on what look like smooth lumps of metal.  There's a tail made of mop like clumps of hair, and down it's regal, thick looking neck are more lines of hair like the same.

The weird thing is that there's a horn sticking out of it's forehead.  It looks like a spike.  Not like someone drove a spike into it's forehead.  No.  The pointy end is sticking out.

It's a llama with a spike someone welded on it's forehead.  Or maybe it's a horse someone welded a spike on it's forehead.  Aren't those things called something?  Aren't those things called something?  Like unicycles or something?

On the back of the pendant is an engraved message.

To my Clemintine.

05-224-82-82

---

Tepha and Rig wheel Mr. Freezer Burn back to the Tia with no major issues.

Sorry.  COuldn't resist fun with Silver's narrative.

Let me know if there are any questions.  Thanks.

Silver pockets the credits and the charm. If nobody asked about it, she wasn't going to tell what she had found. It was literally pocket change, right?

Ledo struggled to get the blast shield up to the third floor. The plan was to lean it against the wall to the side of the door so he could swipe in from the side. If something blew through the door, that's fine, he wasn't there. If something blew through the wall well hopefully a piece of iron would stop it.

As he was swiping in he realized if it was strong enough he would be blasted to the ground and the iron would land right on top of him. He really hoped Cles wanted to Arden to get to the end of this little freak show.

In reply to Ledo Typhin (msg # 93):

Ledo enters the key card...

The door swings open.  That's about it.

The room beyond is the normal kind of bedroom for a fuck 'n luck dump like this.  An uncomfortable looking bed.  A nightstand with a clock display that's not right. A vid system on the wall where porn could be bought.  A seperate closet with a toilet and a shower one could use to try to scrub away the shame.

As Ledo looks from the doorway, something goes click.  After Ledo jumps away and comes back, he can see it's another holo projector.  A rather complicated projection this time.  And just...

There's a woman on the bed.  Five men stand around the room.  One of them...Ledo recognizes the guy in the cryotube...is on the floor.  Looks like he's been beaten up.  The other four guys are taking turns.

It's brutal.  It's like watching every woman's nightmare in real time.

The only grace provided is the fact the woman's face has been wiped.  Instead, where her face should be, is a sort of field where random letters, numbers, and symbols are popping up.

It's the code.  For the bomb, Fritz 4 says from his perch on Ledo's shoulder.  It's displaying one character every thirty nine seconds.  I think...whoever set this up wanted to make sure it would be viewed to the end.  That's why they're only flashing one character at a time and in short bursts.

We missed the first few characters.  So we'll have to wait for it to rest and watch it again.

If you want Captain Ledo, I can watch it to get the code.  You don't have to sit through it if you'd prefer not to.

---

Rig finishes the last connection.  The mystery cryo tube is now hooked up to Tia's cryo system.

Tepha studies the read outs.  Tia confirms what they already knew.  This guy is freezer burn.

As she goes to flip to the next screen, Tia suddenly rumbles and lurches.  Not violently.  But something is definitely going on.

Hold Auto-Management has initiated re-berthing procedures Mainframe dutifully informs everyone.

Unlike Tepha, Rig knows exactly what that means.  In port like this one, where ships descend downwards and there is a limited number of lifts available, a ship 'on lift' or sitting on the lift just under the entry, will be moved to one side by the dock's auto-management system if the lift needs to be used again.

Confirmed, Fritz says almost on top of Rig's inner monologue.  We are being set to the side of the derelict.  Lift is being recalled for use.

Someone landed top side.  And they've triggered the lift.  We've got company coming.

Ledo curses and then pulls his PD laser pistol and hands it to Fritz 4.

"Record the code and then shoot the holo-projector when its done. You're our ace in the hole on this one, Fritz. If whoever comes down decides to get hostile, we hold the only way past the proximity mine. After that hide somewhere. Hide all your juniors. We might need a distraction."

After arming Fritz 4 he unslings his sniper rifle and double times it back to the hangar.

"Silver, get back to the ship. Someone's coming down. I want you in the gunnery chair. Rig, I need you to patch my comms through the ship. I'm going to head up top with my sniper rifle but I don't want our guests to know I'm up here."

Ledo heads to the elevator shaft and begins the long climb up the service ladder to get to the gangway up above and set himself up a nice little sniper's perch.

Tepha considers the request and pipes in.

"Fritz 2, go with Ledo. Hide at the bottom of the elevator shaft and you can be the relay point. We already have the network hooked up for it, it's a simple patch job to make your comms go through the ship..."

She tippity tapped on the console and basically just turned the existing communication relay into a duplex system. Send and receive.

Rig was hustling down the gang plank with a special package in his hand.

"So boss. I guess now's a good time to mention I salvaged that block of thermite we found on the dead guy, right? Right."

Rig scanned around the hangar and started running calculations in his head:

1. Given that he knew exactly where the incoming ship would be located
   
   
2. Given that he knew approximately how long it would take for the Tia to move out of the way, the lift to go back up to the surface and bring the new ship down.
   
   
3. Given that the Tia would need to be able to use the lift to get back to the surface
   
   
4. Given that he didn't want to bring the whole hangar down on them.
   
   
5. Where was the best logical place to put a block of explosives cripple a hostile ship.

OOC: This might be an engineering task? This might be a tactics task? Some kind of combination of both?

Rig: EDU+Mechanics:  Dear god man!
23:12, Today: Gary 'Rig' Rigan rolled 15 using 2d6+3.  mechanics + edu

Ledo: INT+Tactics:
23:13, Today: Ledo Typhin rolled 8 using 2d6+2.  +1 INT, +1 equipment tactics roll.

Hmmm.

Whether if it's by laser cannon or bomb, I can't see anyway to not do some damage to the lift in a fight like this.  So I'm thinking that Rig's main objective would be to do the least amount of damage and/or inflict damage that is easiest to repair.

From Ledo's perspective, I am thinking he wants the attack to go off at the most advantageous point.

So what I need to know is:  when would Ledo want the bomb to go off?  When the ship is in the shaft coming down?  Or after it's landed?

Also, what effect is most desirable (to Ledo) in setting off the bomb.

Let's do it this way:  below are a list of objectives in setting off Rig's bomb.

A) Inflict maximum damage to the incoming ship
B) Strike the incoming ship as soon as possible
C) Limit the incoming ship's firepower
D) Reduce the ability of the incoming crew to leave their ship/deter boarding

Rank A, B, C, D from most to least important for me.  That will give me an idea of how to judge Rig's 15.

Thanks

OOC: Good point!

Ledo isn't planning on striking without warning, but he's going to have aces up his sleeve if the other guys turn hostile.

He wants the bomb to be remote activated and I would say:

C, D, A, B in order

Also they have the Ion Barbette but it has to be front arc. Don't know if they can control which way the ship is facing before the other ship arrives.

In reply to Ledo Typhin (msg # 99):

They can't control how the ship will be placed unfortunately.  But that is an important consideration as well.

So I'm going to leave it up to luck about the barbette.  Roll me 1d10.  Multiply the result by 10.  That's the percentage of the new ship that will be within the arc.

Since that placement could affect any plans, I'll wait until I get your results before proceeding.

Also:  just to make sure we're on the same page.

Ledo has the sniper scope and is placed in best position according to his tactics roll

Where is Rig going to be after setting the bomb?  He will have time to take another position once he's placed it.

Silver is on board Tia in the gunner's nest.

Tepha is on board Tia, manning communications and sensors.

Fritz is just looking sexy

Rigs in the Tia. Rolled a 30%