New Horizons (IC)

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte - Bridge
Current Date: December 18, 3308 AD
Mission Time: T+ 828y:5m:16d:21h:32m:45s
Ship Status: Compromised
Mission Status: Critical

It had been an eventful half hour.

Merlin (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTf_VYDqPuE) had time to reflect on this because as a Level Five AI, 'he' could run in excess of five hundred iterations of 'himself' simultaneously without losing efficiency. He was currently using two hundred and six of them to manage all of the remaining ship functions that he had access to and couldn't delegate to lesser AIs. Another one hundred and fifty-three were managing the rapidly dwindling number of people who he'd been able to prematurely rouse from stasis. Fifty were required to maintain a psionic network after the ship's had gone down. The rest were all dedicated to reviewing the events that had led him to this point and to plot out how to best escape the current situation on the strategic level.

Conventionally speaking, he'd be coordinating with the crew on this. In the current scenario, the crew was asleep or dead. There was one exception: a junior navigator who'd barely been on his radar until he'd realized that Crew Member 0519987 and the host of Object IX were the same person. Runtime 105 was dealing with him.

Technically, 2nd Lt. Graham Gore was the captain now. The king is dead. Long live the king. Once again, though, the manual wasn't going to cut it. Gore's firepower was needed elsewhere, and that man wasn't the person Merlin needed on the bridge. If he needed to justify this decision later - and he strongly doubted that legal issues were going to be a major concern for a while - he could claim that technically the colony vessel had 'touched down' and that colonial administration was in charge now, which was basically Merlin himself until the actual administrators were removed from stasis.

What he had to do now was secure the ship, a ship that had never been meant to enter atmosphere as a cohesive unit. Parts of it were never supposed to enter atmosphere at all. He hadn't had a lot of choice, though, and now... now the Nova Forte had all sorts of problems. He noted another set of pods releasing their occupants from stasis, an event that he had to keep track of just from the power fluctuations - the main computer was cut off in those areas. He'd coordinate with those people once they got somewhere where he could talk to them. Until then, they were on their own.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Stasis Bay P3
Miranda Rodriguez

You realize that you are standing upright. The pod opens without incident to a scene of devastation. The far wall of the pod bay is just gone. Of the people who were in those pods, you can see no sign. In the wall's place is a huge block of something that seems vaguely like reinforced concrete, but with an odd sheen to it. The angle of the scoring makes it seem like the block must have crashed down into the ship from above. Now that you're standing on your own, you can tell that the floor is slightly tilted with respect to gravity, though it's not clear if the ship is off kilter or just this floor. Also unclear is the rest of the room, through the hanging cloud of dust and smoke, the flickering lights, and the strobing red alert light flashing through the fog.

"We once again thank you for your patience in personnel reconstruction. We will now let your supervisor out of stasis to explain the state of the ship to you."

Nothing happens. Your superior, you recall, would have been beyond the obliterated wall.

"The Nova Forte welcomes you to your new home! Have a pleasant day. Vanna is signing off."

Behind you, the screen with your accumulated information flickers. A moment later, text scrolls by rapidly with the equipment for one Miranda Rodriguez being requisitioned for automatic deployment to your bay, before the entire pod abruptly dies. Several seconds pass in silence, and just when it seems like maybe the machinery for delivering it is broken, several things happen at once. A grinding noise comes through the walls and a belt-loader, seen at spaceports the all over the solar system back home, begins moving. A case with your name on it trundles into view. Before you can reach it, a siren goes off and red lights begin flashing. A tinny, automatic voice, too simple and pre-rendered to belong to even a Level One AI, alerts you that an unknown threat has been spotted in your sector.

Miranda knows that 'sector' isn't a very granular term, at least the way the Terra Nova program uses it. Since this portion of the colony vessel was supposed to break off and turn into the first structures of a new domed settlement, your 'sector' is actually comprised of the equivalent of several city blocks compacted together, meaning the threat could be some distance away or in the next room.

Miranda is currently equipped only with her augmentations and the white and orange knee-and-elbow length jumpsuit that everyone had going into stasis. However, this doesn't count the case supposedly full of goodies. You are free to act.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 2
Stasis Bay S2
Armitage

You are lying sideways against the pod frame. The pod opens without incident to a scene of devastation. The room is, in fact, currently on fire, with various pods flickering and dying, status indicators fading from green to yellow to red and black. Smoke is filling the room, alarms are going off, and the fire suppression system is, for some reason, not working. You can see a few charred bodies below you, against what would be the far wall if gravity wasn't sideways and is instead an inferno. It goes without saying that the room is sweltering hot and the air is barely breathable.

"We once again thank you for your patience in personnel reconstruction. We will now let your supervisor out of stasis to explain the state of the ship to you."

Nothing happens. Your superior, you recall, would have been in one of the dark pods.

"The Nova Forte welcomes you to your new home! Have a pleasant day. Pop is signing off."

The vents are clearing smoke faster than it can fill the room, at least for now, but they're making an unhealthy noise and getting worse. The heat itself is suffocating in its own way. A case with your name on the little readout is already lying beside your pod, though it's hot to the touch. The doors out of the room are, unfortunately, down into the fire and up into the smoke cloud. You can also sense that another psionic presence is awake, though not near enough to be in your sector.

You are not currently restrained and are free to act, though the room seems to be full of hazards.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 3
Stasis Bay T7
Abram

You are resting face-down against your restraints. The pod door opens to reveal a stasis bay in total disarray. Indeed, the opposite wall, 'beneath' you, is quite a ways down. The room is dark, save for dim and flickering emergency lighting, and a cloud of smoke obscures vision. A moment later, the restraints also frightfully slacken, though as they don't retract against pressure, you are still suspended from them.

"We once again thank you for your patience in personnel reconstruction. We will now let your supervisor out of stasis to explain the state of the ship to you."

The pod next to yours opens, and a withered, unrecognizable corpse tumbles out of it to thud against the wall below. "Hopefully they will answer any further questions you have. Sal is now going offline. Welcome to your new home, and goodbye!"

Moments later... nothing happens. You are still suspended, there is no computer assistance and no gear forthcoming.

Abram

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 4
Stasis Bay FC1
Deneb

You are suspended, upside-down, by nothing but your restraints. The blood begins to rush to your head almost immediately, and your hair floofs up, or maybe down, to match. The pod door opens to reveal a stasis bay in total disarray. The room is darker than it should be, with only some of the regular lighting working and the rest flickering ominously. There are scorch marks on the walls, and the dismembered bodies of a pair of security androids litter the ceiling beneath you. A moment later, the restraints also frightfully slacken, though as they don't retract against pressure, you are still suspended from them.

"We once again thank you for your patience in personnel reconstruction. We will now let your supervisor out of stasis to explain the state of the ship to you."

The pod across from yours opens, or tries to. You realize that the pod itself has been skewered by a rod of some unknown material, but the grooves on it make it clear that it was fired by a weapon, and a powerful one, that passed clear through the hull and into the ship... narrowly missing your own little nap bubble. As it is, it is pinning the other pod in place, and ominous red indicators bode poorly for the person inside.

"Hopefully they will answer any further questions you have. Julie Newman is now going offline. Welcome to your new home, and goodbye!"

A completely different voice, albeit somewhat muffled, cheerfully announces that it has, in fact, located the gear for "Deneb," and a moment later an odd but high-pitched scraping is heard. A pink case with entirely too many frills rockets out of an opening that was probably supposed to be working against gravity rather than with it, taking out one of the remaining light fixtures before bouncing to a stop on the ceiling.

Despite being upside-down, nothing is really restraining Deneb. You are free to act.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 5
Stasis Bay M6
Ellie

You are resting on your back, against the back wall of the pod. This is a bit odd, as you are fairly certain the pods are oriented in such a way that you should be standing when you emerge from stasis. A moment later, the restraints slacken, and the door opens with an anemic wheeze. Standing up reveals the pod bay on its side, but that's hardly the worst of it. Scorch marks, some lengthy from grazing strikes and others creating pocks and craters, decorate the walls, floor, ceiling, and have penetrated many of the pods around you, some of which display status lights glowing a lurid red. Anything not bolted down is laying where it fell. The lighting is sporadic and flickering, and a pall of smoke obscures the row of stasis pods above you. The wall of pods that forms your new 'floor,' however, clearly displays the bodies of fallen security personnel.

"We once again thank you for your patience in personnel reconstruction. We will now let your supervisor out of stasis to explain the state of the ship to you."

The pod across from yours and down three (putting it on the 'ceiling' relative to you) opens, and a body flops out, hanging limply from the restraints. There are clear signs of plasma burns - fatal ones - that are evident even to untrained eyes.

"Hopefully they will answer any further questions you have. Oscar is now going offline. Welcome to your new home, and goodbye!"

Above you, a door opens into what you know to be one of the ship's many sickbays. While you shudder to think of the state it must be in, your gear is likely in there.

You are free to act.

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Ji-Yun

You find yourself standing at an angle in your pod as the restraints slacken. The pod door opens slowly, before the hinge snaps and the door itself tumbles away.

Being assigned to orbital operations, you were one of a few that was placed in the stasis bays inside the ship's main cargo 'core' and not one of the attached massive 'landers' - ships that would have been considered dreadnoughts had they been military, but purposed toward expanding outward to different corners of habitable worlds. This particular pod loading bay, however, is... kaput. Red alarm lights and a warbling siren flash and blare through the area. Worse, you're pretty sure that your pod is supposed to be level with a catwalk that you'd step out onto, but it just... isn't. The floor is gone, the walks are gone, and to be honest, so are most of the pods. All of that is in a twisted tangle far below you, leaving you in one of the few pods that didn't get disconnected from the wall and hurled dozens of meters down. How many people remain and whether or not their pods protected them from the impact is impossible to determine from here.

Over the noise of the alarm, you hear the AI again. "We once again thank you for your patience in personnel reconstruction. We will now let your supervisor out of stasis to explain the state of the ship to you."

A pod on the far side of the cylindrical chamber makes an odd beeping noise before falling free from the wall, bouncing and banging down the slope to join the pile of debris below. If someone is awake in there, you don't see it. "Hopefully they will answer any further questions you have. Wuffles is now going offline. Welcome to your new home, and goodbye!"

Your gear is likely somewhere in this mess, buried in the pile beneath you. That said, the robotics lab would have been heavily secured and might have replacements, or even upgrades. Getting to it might be a trick, though.

You are not restrained, however, you are also hanging out on a wall and not terribly near anything. The door to the robotics lab is on the opposite wall where a walk should be. You are free to act.

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Auxiliary Bridge
Graham

Reality cuts back in. Red alert lights and klaxons are blaring. You're still strapped into your seat, which is good because the deck now seems to be sharply angled. Your neck is sore, probably because of the way you've been sitting for... your console clock says about twenty minutes.

Beyond that, you are aware of many things. You know that the ship has entered atmosphere and... "landed." You know that it has taken heavy damage. You know that you're not alone, either. There are millions of colonists around you, frozen in time but still alive, spared from that horrible assault by simply sleeping through it. You know that the crew that was awake then, minus yourself, is dead and gone, their nervous systems completely fried by the attack. You are aware of the fact that the reason for the crash landing is due to damage the ship took in space from weapons fire, and that machines now stalk the ship, looking for other resistance so they can kill it.

You sense a few that are fighting back, albeit largely ineffectively. Merlin seems to be trying to cordon off the attackers to slow them down even as he awakens anyone with the slightest background in combat or espionage, and tries to guide them to equipment that might help them.

You sense that there's a hunter-killer robot right outside the auxiliary bridge. That situation doesn't last long, as the bot smashes right through the weakened door with little trouble, flinging the useless scrap metal aside to land on the body of Captain Anders, who doesn't react or, for that matter, seem to be breathing.

The robot itself is a curious thing. A floating black orb with violet highlights and a variety of what you're assuming are optic sensors forms the core, with everything else seemingly being a modular attachment. The attachments themselves are a pair of underslung barrels and curious trapezoidal things up top. Merlin feeds some data through your implant, marking the lower two modules as weapons - needlers, to be precise - and pointing out the hidden compartment underneath that appears to house some sort of kinetic battering ram. One thing you immediately notice is that it seems to be touching, for lack of a better word, the same fabric you are that's giving you all of this information, despite lacking a true awareness.

Graham has no true experience with combat, but it's safe to assume that this unit is hostile.

You are in combat and therefore not narratively free. We're going to test out violent conflict in this system. This is a bad guy whose sole narrative importance is that it's the first one faced. Check the OOC.

[TheDarkDM]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Auxiliary Bridge
Graham

Held securely by his G-Harness, Graham could do little but kick impotently against the slanted deck as the door caved in. The brief, breathless seconds as the alien hunter-killer drifted into view passed at a crawl, all six of his senses narrowing to focus on the pinprick of its metal core and ready armaments. Then he felt the cold intelligence turn towards him, and everything was moving on its own. One hand shot up to the emergency release of his harness, while the other curved into a wild haymaker that cut through the air. In response, the battered door leapt to life and shot towards the drone.

Psionics + Telekinesis to attack the drone: [roll0]

[Nefarion Xid]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 4
Stasis Bay FC1
Deneb

As the restraints slackened, Deneb let out a long, shrill scream. It wasn't a tone she imagined she was capable of producing. In her head, her voice was the dusky dulcet blue of a jazz singer. In reality, it was more like animal abuse combined with failing brake calipers. And then that sound went to a public school in Queens. The incongruity might have been explained by the pain in her head, like someone had pressed a tiny cattle-prod into her Broca's.

Suddenly struck by images of her Ridley Scott movie marathon, she clapped her hands over her mouth, but continued with a muffled shriek as her luggage exploded onto the ceiling. When she'd run out of breath, her face contorted with mute horror, then annoyance, then back to a full blown freak-out as her gaze returned to the metal rod piercing the hull.

"Julie!" she hissed as loud as she dared. "You come back here and tell me what the **** this is! Julie! Did ****ing aliens harpoon this ship? I didn't sign up for this! They're gonna lay eggs in me, Julie! I'm not ready to have kids, and I have a very specific fear about chest bursting! Who's giving irrational value to their dreams now, Dr. Allen!? Think you're better than me cuz you went to Hah-vahd. I mean. You are. Obviously. Since I'm gonna die here."

Deneb continued to hang and bobble slightly while she contemplated life, the universe and the giant metal shaft sticking through the ship.

"I shoulda got my PhD," she lamented quietly. "Nobody ever tried to shove nothin' down my throat in grad school without enthusiastic verbal consent!"

At length, purple haired woman gathered up the courage to wiggle her hips free of the restraints and lower herself gently to the floor-ceiling with only minor whining. There, she scrabbled through her luggage for something to wear. If she was going to die, it wouldn't be in this tacky white and orange onesie.

"Oh my God! What if they're the kind of aliens who want me to wear a golden metal bikini? That's... that's better, right?"

[Lord Of Mantas]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Ji-Yun 'June' Seong-Ziegler


Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Ji-Yun

You find yourself standing at an angle in your pod as the restraints slacken. The pod door opens slowly, before the hinge snaps and the door itself tumbles away.

Being assigned to orbital operations, you were one of a few that was placed in the stasis bays inside the ship's main cargo 'core' and not one of the attached massive 'landers' - ships that would have been considered dreadnoughts had they been military, but purposed toward expanding outward to different corners of habitable worlds. This particular pod loading bay, however, is... kaput. Red alarm lights and a warbling siren flash and blare through the area. Worse, you're pretty sure that your pod is supposed to be level with a catwalk that you'd step out onto, but it just... isn't. The floor is gone, the walks are gone, and to be honest, so are most of the pods. All of that is in a twisted tangle far below you, leaving you in one of the few pods that didn't get disconnected from the wall and hurled dozens of meters down. How many people remain and whether or not their pods protected them from the impact is impossible to determine from here.

Over the noise of the alarm, you hear the AI again. "We once again thank you for your patience in personnel reconstruction. We will now let your supervisor out of stasis to explain the state of the ship to you."

A pod on the far side of the cylindrical chamber makes an odd beeping noise before falling free from the wall, bouncing and banging down the slope to join the pile of debris below. If someone is awake in there, you don't see it. "Hopefully they will answer any further questions you have. Wuffles is now going offline. Welcome to your new home, and goodbye!"

Your gear is likely somewhere in this mess, buried in the pile beneath you. That said, the robotics lab would have been heavily secured and might have replacements, or even upgrades. Getting to it might be a trick, though.


Ji-Yun, or 'June' as some of her closer friends knew her (or 'Dozer-Maid' as her husband had attempted to call her once before being hit with the death glare to end all death glares) was not a very happy camper.

In fact, one might say that she was, at this point, incredibly alarmed, even through the stasis sickness. Having one's pod damaged was a bitch, it turned out.

It had been easy enough to glean from the very limited information that Wuffles had given her that something had gone Terribly Wrong. But it was another thing seeing it in person. What could have happened? An asteroid collison? An attack by hostile intelligent life? Some sort of internal malfunction causing everything to explode?

So many questions, so little answers.

Clenching her stasis suit-covered prosthetic hand into a fist, June knelt down, began scanning the area, and tried to do what she did best: Think. In this case, she tried to do her thinking out loud, in the hope that it would help fight off her stasis sickness.

"Okay, so lets think. My stuff down there is probably buried beneath a mountain of debris and pods. Probably could try and use these guys," she flexed an arm, "to try and move it, but at this point I'm basically drunk, and we don't want to risk damaging the pods, and holy crap that's a long way down."

Her speech was slurred as it came out, and her mouth was still having some difficulty forming the words, her body as a whole still trying to shake of the aftereffects of being asleep for goodness knew how long. She shook her head, slapped herself on the cheek, and tried to get a good sense of how far down the debris was.

"Think, think. The robotics lab should be nearby, and it should have stuff I can use to replace my own, maybe even better. I could probably even see if I can connect to something that will tell me WHAT. THE HECK. IS GOING. ON!" She shouted this last part in frustration. "So, that requires solving two problems. One. Where was it again? And two, how do I get to it from here?"

June, as she will henceforth be referred to in the header, will try to do the following. Intelligence has been added to all rolls.
1) Look around and see if there are any handholds, stray railings, utility ladders, or anything even remotely solid that she could use to climb out of the pod to a safe spot. [roll0]
2) Try to remember where the robotics lab was located, unless her implant can tell her automatically. [roll1]
3) Try as best she can to recall how long a bout of stasis sickness should last and if there is anything that can speed the process. [roll2]

[Tychris1]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 2
Stasis Bay S2
Armitage

"This is fine."

It was not.

"Things will get better. All things shall pass." He rubbed his cryogenically mangled muscles in a vain effort to restore some of his bodies vigor. It didn't help. Sweat rolled off of his flopping white hair, his body covered in a disgusting film he wished to remove at once, and yet there were more important things to do. Memories flooded the agents mind in all times and directions. Glimpses of the present, the future, and the past. Much like the room he was in it was an utter state of disarray, flashes of dog walks, lost virginity, brief choking moments of bleak death, tax return filing, and saucy naming.

He quickly did the mental gymnastics required to lock that corner of his mind safely away in a box inside a safe inside a puzzle covered in Nietzschean nonsense that even his subconscious brain would turn from. His left eye twitched. A strand gutted its way from his throat and out the unseen ways of his body to the dark pod where his superior remained.

He sensed nothing.

Taking a deep breathe in that he nearly instantly regretted, Armitage looked down at the box labelled with his unit designation, and tried to touch it before realizing it was too hot for him to physically handle. Squatting down and crossing his legs he sat next to the container and interlocked his fingers. He drummed his fingers against his knuckles switching from his left hand to his right hand, a rhythmic exercise he was taught to help manage his stress, and he began to focus his mind upon opening the container without actually touching it. Without his gear he would be a sitting duck for whatever might have caused this incident and those who might act irrationally given the bleak and ostensibly doomed state of the ship.

In the top of his mind, running around in little circles and pirouette's, was his hope. His resolve. His desire not to survive but to rescue the other psychic presence he detected. His hands clenched in a brief spasm of psychic whiplash as he attempted to establish contact with the other psychic entity. Provide it solace and a cool wall upon which to lean against in a similar fate. He was a weapon with no wielder, a soldier with no commander, and a guardian with no ward. In the young Watcher's eyes his life had little meaning or worth compared to the initial parameters of his existence given lack of any further instruction or structure.

Maintain status quo.

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Auxiliary Bridge
Graham

Held securely by his G-Harness, Graham could do little but kick impotently against the slanted deck as the door caved in. The brief, breathless seconds as the alien hunter-killer drifted into view passed at a crawl, all six of his senses narrowing to focus on the pinprick of its metal core and ready armaments. Then he felt the cold intelligence turn towards him, and everything was moving on its own. One hand shot up to the emergency release of his harness, while the other curved into a wild haymaker that cut through the air. In response, the battered door leapt to life and shot towards the drone.

Psionics + Telekinesis to attack the drone: [roll0]

The improvised projectile whirls edge first through the air and, through a combination of luck and power, strikes the drone with one corner, driving a deep gouge into the ball and popping one of the trapezoidal modules free before careening out into the hallway, leaving a large scratch on the ruined bulkhead as it goes. Just in time, too - the drone opens up with both (apparently fully automatic) needlers, but by that point it's too late. With the orb already crashing to the ground and spinning from the force of the impact, the needles go wide of everything, passing through flickering holographic displays to lodge themselves in the wall and ceiling, tracing a dotted line of wasted destruction. Unable to regain control, the orb falls silent for a moment as the limited programming contemplates what to do. Warm orange lines fill your vision momentarily, connecting to points on the interior of the drone that you can see through the gouge, and it takes you a moment to realize that Merlin is scanning it.

Then the machine reaches a conclusion and quickly melts to slag, leaving it a steaming pile of white-hot garbage in a matter of seconds.

Merlin's image, still dressed in his vintage aviator look, materializes. "Nuts. I was hoping they wouldn't do that on destruction. Not expecting, mind you, just hoping."

The battle isn't entirely without prizes, though. The module that got separated from the drone before it was destroyed does not seem to come with its own self-destruct, or at least has no way to independently trigger it. Picking it up reveals it to be different from anything you've seen before, but parts of it are similar to what you know. More orange lines connect to points on it and labels begin to write themselves over it as the Level Five AI continues to analyze it. "See that? This model doesn't exist anywhere in the Sol system. I'd know, I was the guiding AI for the First Fleet before I had this job, and they kept me up to date on all the latest and greatest toys. Plus, none of the ships in the fleet were carrying attack drones - or at least we don't have any, and I doubt the other AIs would have hidden this from me. Still, those connectors, and some of the chips I saw on the main unit before melted down... they're almost certainly human in origin. Either that or an advanced alien species invented computers in exactly the same way with remarkably similar aesthetics."

You have obtained ??? Drone Module. The module serves an unknown purpose, but Merlin assures you that every drone he's seen of this size has exactly two of them.


Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 4
Stasis Bay FC1
Deneb

As the restraints slackened, Deneb let out a long, shrill scream. It wasn't a tone she imagined she was capable of producing. In her head, her voice was the dusky dulcet blue of a jazz singer. In reality, it was more like animal abuse combined with failing brake calipers. And then that sound went to a public school in Queens. The incongruity might have been explained by the pain in her head, like someone had pressed a tiny cattle-prod into her Broca's.

Suddenly struck by images of her Ridley Scott movie marathon, she clapped her hands over her mouth, but continued with a muffled shriek as her luggage exploded onto the ceiling. When she'd run out of breath, her face contorted with mute horror, then annoyance, then back to a full blown freak-out as her gaze returned to the metal rod piercing the hull.

"Julie!" she hissed as loud as she dared. "You come back here and tell me what the **** this is! Julie! Did ****ing aliens harpoon this ship? I didn't sign up for this! They're gonna lay eggs in me, Julie! I'm not ready to have kids, and I have a very specific fear about chest bursting! Who's giving irrational value to their dreams now, Dr. Allen!? Think you're better than me cuz you went to Hah-vahd. I mean. You are. Obviously. Since I'm gonna die here."

Deneb continued to hang and bobble slightly while she contemplated life, the universe and the giant metal shaft sticking through the ship.

"I shoulda got my PhD," she lamented quietly. "Nobody ever tried to shove nothin' down my throat in grad school without enthusiastic verbal consent!"

At length, purple haired woman gathered up the courage to wiggle her hips free of the restraints and lower herself gently to the floor-ceiling with only minor whining. There, she scrabbled through her luggage for something to wear. If she was going to die, it wouldn't be in this tacky white and orange onesie.

"Oh my God! What if they're the kind of aliens who want me to wear a golden metal bikini? That's... that's better, right?"

No one responds to your scream. On the other hand, no remarkably phallic aliens explode through the vents either, allowing you to get changed in peace. The case contains everything required to be a trophy wife! It's twenty percent sweaters by volume, plus a few of the latest earth fashions, some classy and not-so-classy accessories, and one of the best-made handbags the solar system ever saw. Toiletries, spare underwear, a few changes of shoes... all of it packed expertly in this case.

Your implant alerts you that the First Class stasis bays have their own help desk. No one is manning it, but there does seem to be a blinking terminal over there. The door, upside down as it is, is also still intact, as is the emergency exit on the other side of the room that you're fairly sure just goes to Stasis Bay FC2.


Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Ji-Yun 'June' Seong-Ziegler

Ji-Yun, or 'June' as some of her closer friends knew her (or 'Dozer-Maid' as her husband had attempted to call her once before being hit with the death glare to end all death glares) was not a very happy camper.

In fact, one might say that she was, at this point, incredibly alarmed, even through the stasis sickness. Having one's pod damaged was a bitch, it turned out.

It had been easy enough to glean from the very limited information that Wuffles had given her that something had gone Terribly Wrong. But it was another thing seeing it in person. What could have happened? An asteroid collison? An attack by hostile intelligent life? Some sort of internal malfunction causing everything to explode?

So many questions, so little answers.

Clenching her stasis suit-covered prosthetic hand into a fist, June knelt down, began scanning the area, and tried to do what she did best: Think. In this case, she tried to do her thinking out loud, in the hope that it would help fight off her stasis sickness.

"Okay, so lets think. My stuff down there is probably buried beneath a mountain of debris and pods. Probably could try and use these guys," she flexed an arm, "to try and move it, but at this point I'm basically drunk, and we don't want to risk damaging the pods, and holy crap that's a long way down."

Her speech was slurred as it came out, and her mouth was still having some difficulty forming the words, her body as a whole still trying to shake of the aftereffects of being asleep for goodness knew how long. She shook her head, slapped herself on the cheek, and tried to get a good sense of how far down the debris was.

"Think, think. The robotics lab should be nearby, and it should have stuff I can use to replace my own, maybe even better. I could probably even see if I can connect to something that will tell me WHAT. THE HECK. IS GOING. ON!" She shouted this last part in frustration. "So, that requires solving two problems. One. Where was it again? And two, how do I get to it from here?"

June, as she will henceforth be referred to in the header, will try to do the following. Intelligence has been added to all rolls.
1) Look around and see if there are any handholds, stray railings, utility ladders, or anything even remotely solid that she could use to climb out of the pod to a safe spot. [roll0]
2) Try to remember where the robotics lab was located, unless her implant can tell her automatically. [roll1]
3) Try as best she can to recall how long a bout of stasis sickness should last and if there is anything that can speed the process. [roll2]

Nothing immediate jumps out at you as a way to get down, other than just maybe riding the slope and hoping you don't get impaled on something sharp at the bottom. You do recall the location of the robotics lab - it's up the far wall. You also know that any of the medical bays on the ship should have what it takes to speed recovery from Stasis Sickness, but that was contingent on there being medical staff to run the place. Whether or not you could manage it on your own is up for debate.


Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 2
Stasis Bay S2
Armitage

"This is fine."

It was not.

"Things will get better. All things shall pass." He rubbed his cryogenically mangled muscles in a vain effort to restore some of his bodies vigor. It didn't help. Sweat rolled off of his flopping white hair, his body covered in a disgusting film he wished to remove at once, and yet there were more important things to do. Memories flooded the agents mind in all times and directions. Glimpses of the present, the future, and the past. Much like the room he was in it was an utter state of disarray, flashes of dog walks, lost virginity, brief choking moments of bleak death, tax return filing, and saucy naming.

He quickly did the mental gymnastics required to lock that corner of his mind safely away in a box inside a safe inside a puzzle covered in Nietzschean nonsense that even his subconscious brain would turn from. His left eye twitched. A strand gutted its way from his throat and out the unseen ways of his body to the dark pod where his superior remained.

He sensed nothing.

Taking a deep breathe in that he nearly instantly regretted, Armitage looked down at the box labelled with his unit designation, and tried to touch it before realizing it was too hot for him to physically handle. Squatting down and crossing his legs he sat next to the container and interlocked his fingers. He drummed his fingers against his knuckles switching from his left hand to his right hand, a rhythmic exercise he was taught to help manage his stress, and he began to focus his mind upon opening the container without actually touching it. Without his gear he would be a sitting duck for whatever might have caused this incident and those who might act irrationally given the bleak and ostensibly doomed state of the ship.

In the top of his mind, running around in little circles and pirouette's, was his hope. His resolve. His desire not to survive but to rescue the other psychic presence he detected. His hands clenched in a brief spasm of psychic whiplash as he attempted to establish contact with the other psychic entity. Provide it solace and a cool wall upon which to lean against in a similar fate. He was a weapon with no wielder, a soldier with no commander, and a guardian with no ward. In the young Watcher's eyes his life had little meaning or worth compared to the initial parameters of his existence given lack of any further instruction or structure.

Maintain status quo.

Your superior is well and truly dead. The case, however, is not, and it opens to your psychic prompting with a hiss to reveal your gear. Several nonlethal weapons, your lightly armored duty uniform, and all of your personal effects are within. The fire grows hotter, but you no longer have to face the odds unarmed.

There is another development as well - your efforts to contact the other psychic worked... you think. It's hard to tell across this distance and with someone inexperienced with their powers, but you could try sending a more specific thought or emotion to get their attention.

You have obtained Duty Uniform, Shock Tonfa, Spray-On Taffy (Hard), and Tranquilizer (Needler), in addition to any items of personal value.

This gear gives you the following advantages:

Duty Uniform (Armor Equipment I) - This outfit protects against the blows of rowdy passengers, primitive weapons, or other nonlethal gadgets. It is not rated for genuine weapons fire.
Nonlethal Suppression Gear I - You possess a variety of means to non-lethally disable someone.

[TheDarkDM]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Auxiliary Bridge
Graham

Shrugging himself free of his vac suit, Graham panted heavily as he looked between the slagged drone and his right hand. Nothing about it felt different from the days before going into cryogenic freeze, yet in his third eye it seemed a wholly alien thing. He clenched his fingers, but released them reflexively as the bulkheads of the auxiliary bridge groaned in response. Muscles twitching with a strength not entirely their own, he turned himself to the task of survival - there were many more assailants to follow the one he'd destroyed, and he had no way of knowing if their attackers had anything worse in reserve.

"Merlin, identify the closest conscious passenger group and give me your field assessment."

He moved over to Sergeant Fisher's limp body, averting his eyes from her blood-spattered helmet and whispering a small prayer as he pulled her sidearm free. His head turned towards the alien module, intent on retrieving it despite its uncertain provenance, and in reply it slid across the floor into his hand. Both items secure on his belt, he began making his way towards the nearest living mind.

[Othniel]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 5
Stasis Bay M6
Ellie

You are resting on your back, against the back wall of the pod. This is a bit odd, as you are fairly certain the pods are oriented in such a way that you should be standing when you emerge from stasis. A moment later, the restraints slacken, and the door opens with an anemic wheeze. Standing up reveals the pod bay on its side, but that's hardly the worst of it. Scorch marks, some lengthy from grazing strikes and others creating pocks and craters, decorate the walls, floor, ceiling, and have penetrated many of the pods around you, some of which display status lights glowing a lurid red. Anything not bolted down is laying where it fell. The lighting is sporadic and flickering, and a pall of smoke obscures the row of stasis pods above you. The wall of pods that forms your new 'floor,' however, clearly displays the bodies of fallen security personnel.

"We once again thank you for your patience in personnel reconstruction. We will now let your supervisor out of stasis to explain the state of the ship to you."

The pod across from yours and down three (putting it on the 'ceiling' relative to you) opens, and a body flops out, hanging limply from the restraints. There are clear signs of plasma burns - fatal ones - that are evident even to untrained eyes.

"Hopefully they will answer any further questions you have. Oscar is now going offline. Welcome to your new home, and goodbye!"

Above you, a door opens into what you know to be one of the ship's many sickbays. While you shudder to think of the state it must be in, your gear is likely in there.

You are free to act.

Ellie

"Fudgeberries!" Ellie barely kept control of her language (a habit from having young children) as she watched the supervisor's body flop out, the poor soul. Gear first. She started mentally ticking off priorities. Immediate life-threatening injuries for those nearby next. Only then could she check on her family. At least her youngest was safe for now. She had concern for her husband, but the orange status of the pod implied that it was not an immediate emergency. She fought down the rising panic she felt regarding the unknown status of her other daughter, Amelie, however. But she couldn't think about that yet. Compartmentalize, prioritize, act.

Standing in the pod, Ellie looked for a way to reach the door above her.

Unsure how far away this door is, but Ellie is going to see if there's anything she can use to climb up.

[Nefarion Xid]

Deneb tugged on something cute and casual with athletic support, gave her hair an emergency brush, and activated the hovering cam-bot she affectionately called Cecil B. DeMille. Anyone in the hell-scape of the ship who happened to follow her on any number of social media platforms would receive a notification that @DenebStardust had gone live.

"We've got an answer to the age old question. Are we alone in the universe? The answer is 'no' and also that aliens are kind of ****y!" She directed Cecil to get a shot of the mass driver slug while she neatly repacked her suitcase. Cecil pivoted back to her manic deer-in-headlights stare.

"So today we're gonna have a very special stream where I have a nihilistic crisis while escaping a spaceship in some remote corner of the universe, armed with nothing but a hair dryer. Oh. And rescue my fiance! And maybe you'll get to see an alien queen lay her eggs in me. If you're in to that. I've seen the fan art, you weirdos!"

With her worldly possessions stored once more, she started towards the first available terminal, noisily wheeling her giant pink suitcase behind her.

If she gets to a terminal unmolested, she queries the status and location of Domenic Bouchard and generally tries to find out what's happened to the ship.

[Tychris1]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 2
Stasis Bay S2
Armitage

Clapping his hands together as the container opened itself up, the waif psychic began to unleash a torrent of positive energy and joy out into the world, and said softly to himself "Good job twenty, have a cookie." The all to familiar sounds of his skin ports cracking open and hissing softly to receive his Watch gear filled the hot air around him as it quickly attached to his form and rendered him incredibly stiff looking. The articulation in his fingers was nonexistent for a second before they rapidly adjusted and began to wiggle about freely. His thigh plate opened up its compact holster for his needler, his utility belt was strapped with his usual assortment of paraphernalia (including adhesive suppression spray), and he held the softly humming tonfa in both hands like an altar boy wielding a reliquary. Turning it on then off again experimentally he judged it fit for duty and put it on his left side.

Amidst his other possessions that he feverishly stowed into his built in backpack was his sewing tools, a music player (with pre-approved songs that was quickly integrating itself into his clear helmet), several writing utensils (including a quill from a bald eagle), a small journal, and a dog tag crudely engraved with the first work he ever penned by himself away from the prying eyes of his overseers.

You are invalid
You are a tool not a boy
I am the Armitage

Tucking it away into the inner workings of his finally sealing uniform he continued to barrage the air around him with an intense feeling of passionate joy and looked up to the smoke clouds above. Taking out his hard spray he cupped his left hand over his mouth and sprayed it to create a tight seal he could peel on and off for protection. Getting as close to the smoke cloud as he could without actually entering it , Armitage turned on his small music box with his free hand (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj-v6zCnEaw), and began a concerted effort of physical and psychic power to move through the hazard. Physically he juggled covering his mouth and swatting the air with his left hand; with his right he switched between firing the hard spray at whatever surface he could see and then forcefully tugging on it to pull himself through the wonky gravity field. In the outer reality of his body he attempted to telekinetically tug, push, and thrust himself in conjunction with his physical movement for greater speed in the nearest direction of active life or emotional distress he could find.

[zabbarot]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 3
Stasis Bay T7
Abram

You are resting face-down against your restraints. The pod door opens to reveal a stasis bay in total disarray. Indeed, the opposite wall, 'beneath' you, is quite a ways down. The room is dark, save for dim and flickering emergency lighting, and a cloud of smoke obscures vision. A moment later, the restraints also frightfully slacken, though as they don't retract against pressure, you are still suspended from them.

"We once again thank you for your patience in personnel reconstruction. We will now let your supervisor out of stasis to explain the state of the ship to you."

The pod next to yours opens, and a withered, unrecognizable corpse tumbles out of it to thud against the wall below. "Hopefully they will answer any further questions you have. Sal is now going offline. Welcome to your new home, and goodbye!"

Moments later... nothing happens. You are still suspended, there is no computer assistance and no gear forthcoming.

Abram stared at the wall below him, and the crumpled body of his supervisor, for a long while as he hung from the pod safety belts. He started to chuckle soflty and it grew before suddenly becoming heaving sobs.

Everyone he'd ever known was dead on a planet he'd never see again, and his promised 'new beginning' wasn't looking much better. Part of him wanted to just release the straps and let the impact kill him, but the cowardly part was too scared he'd survive to spend long agonizing hours bleeding on the bay wall.

Eventually he managed to compose himself, and fear began creeping in. What if he was alone? He couldnt be the only survivor, even his luck couldn't be that awful. His mind was racing, panic was setting in.

Deep breaths. Deeeeep breaths. His implants kicked in and helped regulate the panic attack before it got too strong. You can breathe. Life support is working. He activated his database implant and tried to connect to the life support computer. Maybe that AI could explain what's going on.

[PepperP.]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Stasis Bay P3
Miranda Rodriguez

"Yeah **** you too, Vanna." Miranda muttered under her breath as she stepped out of her darkened pod. The metal floor was cold beneath her bare feet as she looked around her immediate surroundings very carefully for any signs of hostiles. She stretched her legs one at a time to warm the muscles that had grown stiff over the last 800 years in stasis.

"I'm too old for this ****." She bit her lip to keep the only slightly manic giggles from escaping. She shook them off and made her way to the gear in her trunk.

[Lord Of Mantas]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
'June'

Nothing immediate jumps out at you as a way to get down, other than just maybe riding the slope and hoping you don't get impaled on something sharp at the bottom. You do recall the location of the robotics lab - it's up the far wall. You also know that any of the medical bays on the ship should have what it takes to speed recovery from Stasis Sickness, but that was contingent on there being medical staff to run the place. Whether or not you could manage it on your own is up for debate.
June gulped as she considered her options - and there weren't many. As far as she could spot, there were no nubs, wires, girders, or anything that really resembled any sort of handholds that she could use to climb up or down. The shaft was sloped, but it was a steep one. On the other hand, there was nothing she could do here, aside from wait and hope someone came to help her. And based on what she saw, there was very little evidence to support the likelihood of that happening.

She clenched her fists, nervously, then took a deep breath. She then lowered herself out of the pod and began the process of sliding down, trying to use her limbs as best she could to keep from tumbling over and/or landing on something bad.

"It would really suck if I died thirty seconds after arriving... wherever we are now."

I am going to try to slide down the slope, using my arms and legs to try and a) slow my descent somewhat and b) try to land on whatever looks least sharp. I am applying Athletics to this roll. [roll0]

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
'June'

The slide is a steep one, and June's balance isn't what it could be. The acceleration continues all the way to the bottom, and she strikes the curved surface of a collapsed pod harder than is strictly safe. While the impact knocks the wind out of her, the unwelcome sound and sensation of breaking bones and grating joints remains absent, and after several painful seconds, she finds she can still move everything. The drop, it seems, did not incapacitate her.

This is a notable improvement. While there is no clear way out from the new relative 'bottom' of the shaft, there are other potential survivors down here, including pods that haven't ceased function yet despite their horrible dislocation. Unfortunately, there also seem to be some people trapped under the debris, their pained grunts and cries increasing in intensity as they sense there might be someone conscious above them. There are no notable tools down here, at least none that work, but there is an abundance of scrap metal in nearly every shape and size, plus a few sealed cases that might contain something of value, if the time is taken to prize one open.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Stasis Bay P3
Miranda Rodriguez

The trunk contains everything the Terra Nova program had thought one of their colony pilots would need. Miranda's uniform, a partial vac suit designed more for atmospheric protection than hard vacuum, all of her personal effects, and her access key for the shuttle hangars is all in evidence. As she gathers her things, the floor faintly vibrates and she hears a distant noise - it sounds like a mechanical whine, running low to high in pitch before resolving into a *shank shank shank shank* sound. After that, the whine dies off and it goes quiet again.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 3
Stasis Bay T7
Abram

The AI in the life support bay is useless, but Abram gets an unexpected response to his desperate pinging from the Terraforming labs.

Hello Dr. Moon. This is the Terraforming Lab Level 3 AI, currently designated 'Tara.' What can I do for you today?

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 2
Stasis Bay S2
Armitage

The spray was never intended to be used as a rope ladder, but Armitage makes it work. After a few minutes, he's standing on the wall of the hallway that is now relatively 'above' him, having pulled his way up through the door. He doesn't have to go far to find distress - he can sense three life forms in the next bay, which quickly becomes two, and then one. By the time he opens the door, he can see the source of the problem. The room is in similar shape to his stasis bay, but not on fire. Instead, small metal flechettes adorn the walls, pods, and ceilings, as well as having perforated two passengers that made it out of their pods. The third one is struggling to get to cover, but with that room just as sideways as the first, it isn't going well.

The attacker is obvious. A hovering mechanical ball with four modular protrusions - two trapezoidal units on top and two needlers slung underneath - is taking aim at the last survivor.

You are now in combat. Decide how you want to act and we'll hash it out.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 4
Stasis Bay FC1
Deneb

Deneb's signal indicator, splashed helpfully up in her vision by her implant, indicates a faint direction to travel in if she wants to get actual reception. Before she can get very far, though, her preview shot on her selfie cam shows activity behind her. An incredibly athletic man - she thinks she recognizes Juan Cadenza, star meteorball player - tumbles out of Stasis Bay FC2 and rolls to his feet before pressing up against the wall next to the door. This would be alarming enough on its own, but he's grasping a length of metal piping as though he's about to swing it. Sure enough, a sphere shaped drone hovers through the door after him and spins, clearly taking aim.

The sportsman swings with everything he has, and there's a crystalline crunch as he connects with something breakable. The drone loses altitude for a moment... and then recovers, firing flechettes down the hall in a cone of saturation fire that catches the ball player in it. A red spray of blood decorates the walls, floor, and ceiling as Cadenza crumples, and the drone pauses, occasionally re-orienting toward the creaks and groans of the ship as it settles. Deneb, now facing the attack robot, notices that a number of what were probably optical sensors on the front of the unit are smashed in and likely broken, but it's clearly listening for new targets.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 5
Stasis Bay M6
Ellie

Ellie's search of the bodies around her quickly reveals that some of the security personnel were armed. While none of them were really equipped for mountain climbing, and while their security suits don't fit her, she does find a wealth of nonlethal weaponry - including enough spray glue to literally build a cheap hardened goop 'staircase' up to the door in her new 'ceiling.'

This gives her access to the nearest sickbay, sort of. The bay is also on its side, and her locker is hard to reach, but she manages despite having to work around piles of broken glass, ferro-ceramics, crystalline lattices, and worse. The emergency sickbay terminal, a tool to allow doctors to access the bay's functions even if cut off from the main computer and wireless implant commands, is also awkward and difficult to reach, but Ellie might be able to manage with a bit of practice. The wonky gravity will make any real work difficult, though.

You have access to the same nonlethal gear described in Armitage's gear, though with little experience using it, its value as improvisational tools might outweigh its value as weaponry. You do not find armor that fits well enough to wear. You do gain access to your own gear, including clothing, personal effects, an emergency medi-kit, surgical kit, some emergency drugs - mostly localized anesthetics and a few anti-inflammatories, crude antibiotics and antivirals, and a couple of compounds to neutralize common allergic reactions. One of the onboard pharmacies likely has a more comprehensive list of drugs.

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Auxiliary Bridge
Graham

Merlin's voice lost some of the accent in what Graham realized was a deliberate act designed to reduce the odds of being misunderstood in an emergency. The speech is also very fast, though the navigator finds he has no trouble understanding it, likely through some trick the AI is pulling via the implant. "Assessment: The ship came under attack in high orbit, but is being assaulted in a way that only kills conscious individuals and AIs. Certainly they could have destroyed the ship several times over by now. We were attacked by an estimated one hundred and fifty starfighter-class drones after the psionic attack that killed the crew, of which this ship destroyed thirty-five with defensive fire before damage to maneuvering resulted in rapid loss of altitude, necessitating an emergency landing without dispatching the deployment units. The starfighter drones did not continue their assault once the emergency landing was locked in. Following that, two dozen hunter-killer robots boarded the ship from locations unknown and began killing any active colonists and personnel. Of these, five have been destroyed and one m-"

The room shudders violently for a moment, though no sound reaches the auxiliary bridge.

"-correction, eleven have been destroyed. One more has been damaged and is apparently relying on auditory processing to locate targets. There is also one larger war machine loose in Deployment Unit One. It is armed with, at a minimum, a powerful laser weapon, four articulated arms, and four magnetic rail cannons. The sole point of good news is that scans of the surrounding area reveal no further enemy reinforcements inbound, and there have been no further psionic attacks." There is the briefest of pauses. "Conclusion: the objective of our attackers is the passengers themselves. They have shown little regard for damage to the ship, or collateral damage in the process of subduing resistance, but have made no effort to attack stasis pods in rooms without resistance. All deaths of passengers in stasis were caused by misdirected fire, ship breakdowns, or battle damage in space."

A series of waypoint markers for Graham to follow swims into view. "Corollary: The attackers must be convinced that there is nothing of value left aboard the ship, or additional attackers will eventually be sent. For this, we will need to fake a catastrophic failure of the fusion bottle in the main reactor. There is a way to do this, but it requires technical skills that you do not possess. There are two colonists out of stasis that will aid you in this endeavor. They must be found, kept safe, and brought to the main reactor. The closest is Doctor Ji-Yun Seong-Ziegler, a heavily augmented roboticist. She is currently active in what was formerly Stasis Rack 13, aft of your position relative to the ship, or 'uphill' relative to the planet. The other is Doctor Abram Moon, a terraforming specialist. He is currently stranded outside of the main Terraforming Lab in Deployment Unit Three, but Seong-Ziegler is the higher priority due to enemy placement. Do you have any questions?"

[Nefarion Xid]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 4
Stasis Bay FC1
Deneb

Deneb continued to scream mutely, paralyzed with fear. Her conscious brain had effectively shorted out, but she wasn't altogether without resources, cognitive and otherwise. A hand shot into the pocket of her hoodie and retrieved the only item of value that wasn't stowed in her suitcase. She had suspected she might use it for a distraction, but secretly hoped to bluff about having a 'thermal detonator'. Her manicured fingers produced a shiny silver egg. Still wearing an unblinking rictus, she lobbed it to her right.

Activated and set to '10' by her neural implant mid-flight, the device whirred to life, then clattered to the deck where it continued to bounce violently at random.

[Lord Of Mantas]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
'June'

The slide is a steep one, and June's balance isn't what it could be. The acceleration continues all the way to the bottom, and she strikes the curved surface of a collapsed pod harder than is strictly safe. While the impact knocks the wind out of her, the unwelcome sound and sensation of breaking bones and grating joints remains absent, and after several painful seconds, she finds she can still move everything. The drop, it seems, did not incapacitate her.

This is a notable improvement. While there is no clear way out from the new relative 'bottom' of the shaft, there are other potential survivors down here, including pods that haven't ceased function yet despite their horrible dislocation. Unfortunately, there also seem to be some people trapped under the debris, their pained grunts and cries increasing in intensity as they sense there might be someone conscious above them. There are no notable tools down here, at least none that work, but there is an abundance of scrap metal in nearly every shape and size, plus a few sealed cases that might contain something of value, if the time is taken to pry one open.
"OOOF!"

June wheezed for several seconds after slamming into the bottom of the shaft, staggering away as she tried to take stock of herself. Thankfully, she didn't appear to have any serious injuries.

"Well, it's not perfect... but it's better than hanging uselessly in the air."

Then, she heard it. Cries ringing out from beneath the debris. Survivors. People in danger.

"If you can hear me, just stay calm! I'm going to try and get you out!"

She made a cracking motion with her prosthetic knuckles.

It's morbid as all hell... but it's times like these I'm thankful that a catwalk crushed all my limbs.

Quickly, June began examining the area, evaluating what was present that she could use.

First, Ji-Yun is going to quickly examine the cases to see if any of them are labeled as containing any immediately useful equipment, particularly if it could be used to free the survivors or escape from the shaft. If either of these conditions are met, she will attempt to pry it open. I am adding Augmentations to this role as her cybernetic arms will be handling the workload. [roll0] Belatedly, I have realized that potentially Intelligence could be added to try and identify weak points, but that might be stretching it a bit, so make of that what you will. If you think that's reasonable, it raises the roll to 12.

Secondly, once she's done with that, she will attempt to clear away the rubble and try to free the people trapped underneath. I am adding Intelligence to the roll (to try and figure out how to best lever away the debris so as not to make the pile collapse, as well as to figure out what pieces of debris could be used as improvised tools) and Augmentations (again, using my super strong cybernetic arms to do the work). [roll1]

[Othniel]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 5
Stasis Bay M6
Ellie

Ellie's search of the bodies around her quickly reveals that some of the security personnel were armed. While none of them were really equipped for mountain climbing, and while their security suits don't fit her, she does find a wealth of nonlethal weaponry - including enough spray glue to literally build a cheap hardened goop 'staircase' up to the door in her new 'ceiling.'

This gives her access to the nearest sickbay, sort of. The bay is also on its side, and her locker is hard to reach, but she manages despite having to work around piles of broken glass, ferro-ceramics, crystalline lattices, and worse. The emergency sickbay terminal, a tool to allow doctors to access the bay's functions even if cut off from the main computer and wireless implant commands, is also awkward and difficult to reach, but Ellie might be able to manage with a bit of practice. The wonky gravity will make any real work difficult, though.

You have access to the same nonlethal gear described in Armitage's gear, though with little experience using it, its value as improvisational tools might outweigh its value as weaponry. You do not find armor that fits well enough to wear. You do gain access to your own gear, including clothing, personal effects, an emergency medi-kit, surgical kit, some emergency drugs - mostly localized anesthetics and a few anti-inflammatories, crude antibiotics and antivirals, and a couple of compounds to neutralize common allergic reactions. One of the onboard pharmacies likely has a more comprehensive list of drugs.

Need to reach the terminal. Securing the equipment she'd found as best she could to her person, Ellie began an effort to reach the terminal. Perhaps she could repeat her trick with the crude staircase by spraying a sort of sling she could sit in while attempting to access the terminal? Up to this point, she'd worked as silently as possible. She did not like the look of the scorch marks she'd seen, and was hesitant to call out in case something dangerous was lurking nearby. Perhaps the ship's AIs had malfunctioned? A horrendous thought.

Let's do the same thing with the stairs and make a sling to sit in at the terminal. I'm going to postulate that I can turn my head and type sideways. Ellie is a smart girl.

[zabbarot]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 3
Stasis Bay T7
Abram

The AI in the life support bay is useless, but Abram gets an unexpected response to his desperate pinging from the Terraforming labs.

Hello Dr. Moon. This is the Terraforming Lab Level 3 AI, currently designated 'Tara.' What can I do for you today?

"Tara, my bay is severely damaged. Have any other terraforming personnel checked in? I am currently suspended by my safety harness and in need of assistance. Please pass on that I am alive, but trapped." He kept his communication with the AI subvocal out of habit. Making contact with something bolstered his spirits though.

Now that he was thinking a little straighter he took a better look at his surroundings, and tried to figure out what his module being sideways might mean for the rest of the ship.

"Tara, please give me a status report on the terraforming lab. Specifically if any equipment is damaged or missing.


Intelligence to remember how to get from here to the terraforming lab and if it's in the same ship module.
[roll0]

[TheDarkDM]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Auxiliary Bridge
Graham

Graham began to stretch as Merlin delivered his assessment. The long years in stasis had passed easily, but it had still been several years since the academy's track.

"Understood, Merlin. If you have any other advice, I'm listening."

Crouching down, Graham began running along the AI's chosen path, intent on the critically important roboticist and the survival of the ship's passengers.

[PepperP.]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Stasis Bay P3
Miranda Rodriguez

Miranda froze in the middle of changing into her her uniform as she heard the alien whirring noise, her head unconsciously tilted in the direction from which it came.

Don't die nipples to the wind, idiot.

Her inner voice shook her from her trance and she finished dressing and collected her gear, grimly noting the lack of weapons. After a quick glance towards the direction she'd heard the strange mechanical sound coming from, she began to stealthily make her way to the nearest shuttle launch bay.

[Tychris1]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 2
Stasis Bay S2
Armitage

Running past the smoke Armitage shattered the bondings on his fingers with a quick mental squeeze and held his two weapons in each clenched fist. Adrenaline pumping so soon after leaving stasis was probably bad for his health. So he started sprinting at a full pace. "Relax Passenger," He said as cleanly and succinctly as possible whilst blitzing a killer robot "Security is here." With an underslung hand he aimed his spray at the drone's two lower needlers in an effort to clog them. Raising his tonfa up he activated it and threw it at the mechanical assailant's higher protrusions. His body like a clap of thunder after the lightning swooshed through the air in a tackling motion as his mind tried to divert and direct the deadly weapons away from the two humans in the room and peel away the barriers in this creatures mind.

"Gotta get this thing under wraps. Focus. Assess. Breathe. Come on little neighbor, won't you tell me how you're doing today? What's wrong?" He thought to himself as he quickly constructed psionic walls in his mind against the emotional bleeding that permeated this scene of shock and terror and focused on the mental landscape of the construct before him.


Martial Arts Nonlethal Psionic Takedown?

[roll0]

Mind spoopery?

[roll1]

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 2
Stasis Bay S2
Armitage

The tackle is a resounding success. The spray doesn't stop the needlers outright, but it does slow their fire enough that by the time the shots break through, flinging deadly darts through a rain of impromptu plastic confetti, Armitage has already hit the drone. This is enough to spin it around the way he came, and the fire riddles the hallway outside without striking any new passengers. The shock tonfa does nothing - at first. Apparently designed to channel current through its spherical shell, the drone seems unaffected until the impact pries away enough plating that the energy runs through more delicate circuitry instead, shorting it out. The hero of the hour is barely able to catch himself on an active pod before the drone drops like a rock, twitching a few times at the 'bottom' of the room and then falling silent.

From the drone, there was no mental activity, not really. Whatever program was controlling it was simple, too unsophisticated to truly connect with the psionic network, but there was a... terminal of awareness there. In the brief moments before the drone's destruction, the word puppet forms in Armitage's mind: not an accusation, but a description. He senses, faintly, a thin stream of something like thought coming from a great distance, but the thoughts, if that's what they are, are utterly incomprehensible to him. And the puppeteer, whoever he, she, or it was, had no intention of a longer discourse.

The other passenger did, though. She was in her late twenties or early thirties, and on the edge of panic. The implant has no helpful suggestions on who she is, but that didn't necessarily mean something untoward with access to the main computer cut off. After all, it couldn't remember who Armitage was either. Besides, he has a vague memory of her as some kind of administrative aid. "Oh, thank God. What's going on? What do I need to do?!"

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 3
Stasis Bay T7
Abram

Your status has been noted. I have alerted the main computer and have been assured that assistance is on the way. You are also the first of the terraforming specialists or planetary engineers to check in. Most of the terraforming equipment was secured prior to our journey, but it was not designed to be suspended at this angle and may require maintenance before use.

There's a pause in the text stream, and then it picks up, complete with a smiling emoji. There is good news, though! Our terraforming and planet reformation efforts are already well ahead of schedule despite these setbacks. This planet's habitability index is currently 91.22, with a life diversification index of 39-50. Way to go!

Those numbers are insane. While five planets of nine in this solar system were determined to be 'habitable', that was meant in the sense that they could be made habitable. Your equipment, which was state of the art when you left Earth, could operate on any planet with a habitability index of of 40.00 or higher. When you were put in stasis, the highest index among observed planets in the Nova Veritas system was 58.56, and it wasn't this one. Your target world that you presumably landed on had an index of 44.75 - approximately as hostile as an Earth-sized Mars. By contrast, 91.22 is a particularly smoggy day in Beijing - and if that's a planetary average, then there could very well be a clean forest somewhere on this world, not to mention oceans. Similarly, the life diversification index measures the active fauna and flora variety, with 100 being the approximate number of known species on old Earth. Even with 39-50, you're looking at a planet with almost half as much eco-diversity on what should be a lifeless rock.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Stasis Bay P3
Miranda Rodriguez

A look back still reveals no attackers, though the shank shank shank shank noise sounds off again. It might be Miranda's imagination, but it seems a bit louder.

Still, the nearest shuttle bay is in the other direction. The bay itself has a multi-layered security system requiring her key, her biometrics, and a code. For a wonder, it actually works without a hitch, and Miranda is able to stride into the bay.

It's better and worse than she thought. There are no heaps of wreckage, but tools have broken free of mountings and containers and lay scattered about. Paint jobs everywhere have been dinged, and the shuttles themselves probably need maintenance after the crash they just took. The floor here is tilted, too, which will make any sort of liftoff needlessly complicated, though not impossible.

The real crown jewel, however, is the shuttle bay doors. They're displaying a green indicator for outside conditions. Indeed, the CCTV monitor in the control room, unaffected by the loss of the main computer, is displaying an incredible image of 'outside.'

http://i65.tinypic.com/x4r47.jpg

[Nefarion Xid]

Buying a moment of time with her bouncing friend, Deneb cleverly recorded all of the drone's EM chatter for a few seconds before blasting it with a bandwidth overload. Specifically, the song I'll Be There For You by the Rembrandts played start to finish three times a second at the same frequencies the drone seemed to be using to communicate with its operator and death-squad buddies.

[roll0]

[PepperP.]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Shuttle Bay
Miranda Rodriguez

Miranda made her way across the slanted shuttle bay as quickly as she could.

"Take THAT robot! That and that and that!" She picked up a wrench off the ground and brandished it in the air experimentally a couple of times though she was doubtful of its efficacy against shanking alien robots even with her metal arm. She carried it with her to the control room where she stood frozen in open-mouthed confusion at the wrecked urban landscape beyond.

"I was so busy wondering when we were, I didn't think to ask where we were." She somehow found the facial fortitude to frown harder. That didn't seem right. Hadn't Vanna said something about... something? **** she couldn't remember clearly it was all jumbled in her head. Did the CCTV monitor have any displays of inside the ship? She began to push buttons that seemed like they might control the monitor display.

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Shuttle Bay
Miranda Rodriguez

The CCTV camera seems to be stuck, unfortunately. Miranda does find the controls to switch the views to other cameras, but they all show different shots of the same apocalyptic urban hellscape.

More importantly, though, she managed to find a terminal claiming it found the problem with the area's connection to the main computer - a router offline some distance back into the ship - and recommending a replacement. While no robots present themselves for a thwacking, that shanking noise does go off again, a loud as before.

The flight plans for initial scouting runs are available as well. In fact, the little craft assigned to Miranda for phase one after landing is intact and available, though launching it entirely on her own would be a challenge.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 4
Stasis Bay FC1
Deneb

The distraction, at least, is a rousing success. The drone spins and fires nonstop at the bouncing ball until it ceases to function entirely. In that time, Deneb completes her exploration of the digital machine's network defenses before concluding that, strong similarities to human tech be damned, it's still too alien for easy hacking.

Jamming, on the other hand, is still effective. The wireless equivalent of screaming so loud that no one else can hear anything works regardless of whether or not you speak your enemy's language. Unfortunately, it also gives away your exact location. The drone whirls to target the source of the signal, aiming right at Deneb, and... both needlers click empty. Undeterred, a port springs open in the bottom and it does... something that strikes the woman in the shoulder, like an invisible hammer blow.

While the impact spins her around and takes her off her feet, it does nothing to stop Deneb's signal. The drone, out of ammunition, blind, unable to contact any other drones, and unable to aim properly with its kinetic ram, gives up. It glows white hot for a moment before melting - in midair - into a featureless puddle of slag that oozes down the slant in the ceiling, slowing as it cools and hardens.

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
'June'

Equipment is sparse, but June manages to find enough leverage to start digging people out of the wreckage. She's got a bleeding but conscious coworker (implant identifies her as Technician Second Class Brittney Lassiter) partially out when the younger woman points and shrieks. "Behind you!"

The door to the robotics lab goes flying out of its tracks and, in a bizarre twist of irony, four drones spill out into the tilted cylinder. These aren't anything that the Terra Nova expedition packed, though. They're spherical, armed, and clearly out to kill, as they take aim below them immediately.

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Multiple Locations
Graham

"Normally, I would advise you to show caution in the use of your new abilities. The Type IX implant is largely untested, after all. However, with the situation as it is, you'll just have to do whatever is necessary and we'll worry about the consequences later." Merlin's old accent is coming back, though as before it isn't enough to cloud his speech. "Also, you'll be heading into a part of the ship that I don't have communications with soon. I'll still be able to monitor you, but you'll probably want to have Dr. Seong-Ziegler activate one of the Damage Control bays as soon as possible."

A few moments pass in silence as the AI lets Graham concentrate on clearing a section of the decking where the floor has collapsed. When he's running again, Merlin resumes, "Good news. Two more drones have been destroyed, including the damaged one. The bad news is that the larger war machine is still unchecked. You're also about to reach that dead zone right about-"

The voice cuts off abruptly enough - and with perfect enough timing - that Graham suspects Merlin played it up just to be cheeky. Still, he's arrived at Stasis Rack 13... or what's left of it. The door opens into nothing, and only Grahams newfound predictive senses prevent him from continuing his rush into the cavernous space and falling to his death in a way that would have been anticlimactically humorous if it wasn't so tragic.

The navigator doesn't have time to appreciate what might have been. Four drones are taking aim at the people below, and he doesn't need foresight to know what they're about to do.

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Graham/June

You are now in combat with four hunter-killer drones that are, by all appearances, identical to the one Graham fought earlier. They are engaged as a single unit with a Magnitude advantage of I and a Coordination Advantage of III, representing the greater threat they pose as a group. Also, congratulations on being the first two PCs to unite!

[Nefarion Xid]

Deneb allowed herself a moment, vacillating between high pitched sniffling at the blow to her shoulder and cursing the robot. Pain was a novel and unwelcome experience. "What the ****, robit!? I'm starting to think there won't be any gold bikinis at all! I can serve drinks on your floating yacht thingy, ya jerks! I ain't too good to do waitressing!"

She did think she was too good to be a waitress.

Once the throbbing subsided, she checked herself over for injuries, leaks, or tears to her favorite white hoodie. Breathing a sigh of relief, she stood up from the inverted ceiling, reclaimed her luggage and went jogging in the direction of the nearest terminal.

Calling to the corpse behind her, she added, "Sorry, Juan! I'll never forget you!"

[Lord Of Mantas]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
'June'

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
'June'

Equipment is sparse, but June manages to find enough leverage to start digging people out of the wreckage. She's got a bleeding but conscious coworker (implant identifies her as Technician Second Class Brittney Lassiter) partially out when the younger woman points and shrieks. "Behind you!"

The door to the robotics lab goes flying out of its tracks and, in a bizarre twist of irony, four drones spill out into the tilted cylinder. These aren't anything that the Terra Nova expedition packed, though. They're spherical, armed, and clearly out to kill, as they take aim below them immediately.
So.

Apparently we are being invaded by aliens.

F*** me sideways.

"Get to cover!"

As quickly as she could, June grabbed Brittney and dragged her to behind the nearest pod/lump of debris that looked like it might offer decent cover from the androids. As she did so, she attempted to grab something reasonably sturdy from the main debris pile that she could throw as a weapon. The instant Brittney was in cover, she whirled around and threw the piece of debris at the nearest droid.

I would KILL for a pistol.

Let me know if I need to roll to find a suitably heavy piece of debris to throw at the droids, but given that the pile is pretty huge, my assumption is that it shouldn't be a problem.

In the meantime, I will act as described above.

Attack Roll (Adding Augmentation because cybernetic arms doing the throwing): [roll0]

[TheDarkDM]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Graham/June

Staring down from his elevated vantage point, Graham nearly collapsed as his skull exploded in white-hot agony. There were images, at least the suggestion of images, death and fear and loss all commingling in a tempest of pain. He saw the people below die again and again and again, each time stabbing a dagger into his heart that could feel every breath, suffer every hurt. He didn't know when he'd started screaming, but as the hunter-killers noticed him everything narrowed to a pinpoint of clarity.

"ENOUGH!"

The cry echoed down the cavernous fall, and it was followed by a rippling wave of pure anger, lancing out in four directions not only to where the drones floated, but to where they would inevitably dodge.

Telekinesis + Precognition = A Primitive Missile

[roll0]

[PepperP.]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Shuttle Bay
Miranda Rodriguez

Miranda tensed as she heard the mechanical whirring was no farther off than it had been. Was it only chance or was it following her?

"Damn it Shankbot." She cursed it under her breath and carefully peeked out of the control room door, before nearly smacking herself on the forehead with her metal arm. She'd done it before and it hurt. She managed to not give herself a concussion but she was too busy calling herself an idiot to congratulate herself.

"The armory..." She figured it was fight Shankbot or flee from it and who knew if the skies of this hellscape was filled with dozens more of him? She stood indecisive for a moment before she darted in the direction she knew was the armory, using the debris and shuttlecraft for cover as best as she could.

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 5
Medical Bay M6-M1
Ellie

The terminal reveals a great deal of information about the status of those in the attached Stasis Bays, but not beyond that. However, it does have a copy of the map of all the public areas in the ship, and was updated about half an hour ago with blockages and danger points, allowing for better travel in and around the vessel and all of the deployment units.

It also contains a note stating that the current orientation of the ship relative to gravity can't be good for the passengers, and recommends getting that back online as soon as possible. It helpfully highlights a route to the nearest Damage Control Center.

[Tychris1]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 2
Stasis Bay S2
Armitage

"Gravity's off, the ship is being boarded by some kind of unknown hostile, and I'm almost positive we've done an impromptu crash landing in lieu of a persnickety integration process." Armitage rattled off information as it came to his mind, eyes drifting about in a fugue that suggested he wasn't entirely paying attention to the aid. He felt the very world around him shift as the tendril of thought slipped through his fingers. A child feverishly grasping at a string that no longer existed. Deactivating his tonfa he holstered it and finally focused his attention on the woman in question.

"Listen."

"I need you to relax, tell me who you are, and if you've seen any other survivors. Do you know how to shoot a gun?"

[zabbarot]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 3
Stasis Bay T7
Abram


Your status has been noted. I have alerted the main computer and have been assured that assistance is on the way. You are also the first of the terraforming specialists or planetary engineers to check in. Most of the terraforming equipment was secured prior to our journey, but it was not designed to be suspended at this angle and may require maintenance before use.

There's a pause in the text stream, and then it picks up, complete with a smiling emoji. There is good news, though! Our terraforming and planet reformation efforts are already well ahead of schedule despite these setbacks. This planet's habitability index is currently 91.22, with a life diversification index of 39-50. Way to go!

Those numbers are insane. While five planets of nine in this solar system were determined to be 'habitable', that was meant in the sense that they could be made habitable. Your equipment, which was state of the art when you left Earth, could operate on any planet with a habitability index of of 40.00 or higher. When you were put in stasis, the highest index among observed planets in the Nova Veritas system was 58.56, and it wasn't this one. Your target world that you presumably landed on had an index of 44.75 - approximately as hostile as an Earth-sized Mars. By contrast, 91.22 is a particularly smoggy day in Beijing - and if that's a planetary average, then there could very well be a clean forest somewhere on this world, not to mention oceans. Similarly, the life diversification index measures the active fauna and flora variety, with 100 being the approximate number of known species on old Earth. Even with 39-50, you're looking at a planet with almost half as much eco-diversity on what should be a lifeless rock.


Abram hung there too shocked to respond in any intelligent way for a moment, before sending a reply. "Tara... I need you to run that by me one more time... Send me all data collected since we landed. What planet is this?"

The numbers were insane. If there had been anything this earth-like in the galaxy they would have made it their destination from the start... Had they been redirected in route? It was plausible that something new could have been discovered and caused mission control to redirect them. Four hundred years was a long time. Still, their tech should have been able to find something like this before they left.

Abram was lost in his own head, his personal predicament quite forgotten with this new information.

[Othniel]

Ellie

Damage Control Center, right, Ellie told herself. Can't be that easy. Spending a few more precious minutes at the terminal, Ellie attempted to gather what other useful information she could before setting off for her new target.

Ellie would like to check the pods in the immediate area for anyone with skills in the medical, security, or tech (computers and such) knowledge areas that could help her help people or get to the Damage Control Center. She'd also like to download the map to whatever passes for this time period's tablet (which I hope she has from her personal effects). Then she's gonna make her way to the Damage Control Center.

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Graham/June

The telekinetic wave was sloppy, misdirected. It shouldn't have worked... but sometimes, despite all the many advancements of science and education and computation and tool use, dumb luck and chance liked to show up and remind everyone that they still ruled most of the universe.

For instance, the drones were programmed with danger avoidance behavior, and while they couldn't necessarily detect psionic attacks, Graham's invisible assault, untrained as it was, caused distortions in the air that they could sense and try to steer clear of. The problem was that June picked that exact moment to hurl a heavy piece of debris at them - the dislocated door of a trashed pod, as it turned out. The shape was terrible for throwing, and that ultimately saved the day. The door wobbled through the air like a heavy, inelegant leaf, and the flight path it took carried it unpredictably right into the side of the bay, crimping a pipe under pressure and stressing it the wrong way. The outpouring of coolant rocketed the door across the empty space sideways and into the first drone, too fast to avoid.

This restricted the flight paths of the other drones, and between the coolant spray and the door, their guidance misjudged the incoming psychic attack and they maneuvered right into it, instead of in between the distortion waves as they intended. Splintering and shattering, the ruined robots fell into the mountain of debris, glowing white until they were gone. A few seconds later, the hiss of coolant died as the pressure slacked off, leaving only a dribble of luminescent blue fluid.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 3
Stasis Bay T7
Abram

Tara is quick to respond, and does so with the same numbers. This is the ninth planet of the Nova Veritas system, orbiting the outer of two stars, which itself orbits the central, primary sun. There is evidence of considerable terraforming conducted in the past - artificial gravatic stresses and stabilization on the tectonic plates, along with animal and plant population patterns that suggest deliberate seeding. There is also lingering evidence of numerous heavy weapon detonations and chemical warfare. This and significant erosion and decay are what brought the planet's habitability index down from an estimated 99.99%. Since we have landed, we have detected radio broadcasts from specific locations on planet and psionic network activity as well, though the latter is mostly restricted to orbit. This system lacks the ability to intercept or parse the content of these transmissions.

...

The system has noted that assistance from the ship's crew has not yet arrived. In these circumstances, this system is authorized to grant registered users access to the terraforming lab's remote interface.

I'm going to let you have creative freedom over what the terraforming lab might have that could be remotely activated to help you out. The setting's scifi is not that hard, so don't feel too afraid to introduce something unless it's really out there. If you're concerned, run it by me in Skype.

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 2
Stasis Bay S2
Armitage

The woman does calm down, at least a little bit. "A-Allison. And I did meet some survivors, but they're not... y'know... survivors anymore godthatsoundsdumb." She shook her head to clear it. "And I mean... I guess I can shoot? How hard can it be?"

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Shuttle Armory Attachment
Miranda Rodriguez

The armory, at least, is basically as Miranda remembers it. With everything very well secured, the disarray that's overtaken the rest of the ship isn't so notable here. Opening the big blast door to the heavier stuff is too much for the tools she has on hand, but that's all scaled for use in the shuttles and scout craft anyway. The personnel weapons lockers take longer to open than one would think, but eventually Miranda has discovered where some of the heavier guns are kept.

Opening these things is a pain, but Miranda has gained the following item advantages.

Plasmic Carbine I (Limited x10) - Shooting a surprisingly accurate wad of superheated matter, the plasmic carbine is a weapon so powerful that it counts as its own advantage in any conflict with something that can be shot. It has ten uses normally, but can expend five of its ten uses to count as a +2. As it requires two hands, using it with another item advantage requires some justification.

Mongoose Missile System (Limited x1) IV - The Mongoose was created in limited numbers even back in the Sol system, but the Terra Nova initiative purchased a few of them on the off chance that they would encounter wild alien life forms that were resistant to smaller weapons yet troublesome to shoot from a ship. The weapon can be set to lock on to heat, motion, distinctive psionic signatures, a beacon set up in advance, or it can be directed with the attached targeting laser. Proper use is left up to the wielder. Do not use indoors, underwater, or for recreational purposes. Some restrictions may apply to the warranty.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 5
Medical Bay M6-M1
Ellie

The bay does have other medical personnel - quite a few of them - but warns against ending stasis under these conditions. It makes sense, in a way. If one was released from the ceiling, they would be left dangling from their emergency straps over a dangerous drop, and hopefully no one on the ship would have to experience that. Even for the ones in safer places, though, the low-grade AI cautions against awakening until food and supplies are tallied. Once awakened, they'll all have to eat and drink, after all, not to mention other needs.

Ellie elected to conditionally awaken the biggest name on the list that she could see - Dr. Katya Novoski. Licensed to practice multiple kinds of medicine, she was nonetheless a truly gifted and hardworking expert in the field of stasis research and application, and knew it. Ego aside, she would likely prove valuable in making judgment calls on who else to awaken and when. True to the AI's advice, though, Ellie programs the computer not to wake her up until gravity is oriented within a few degrees of down relative to the ship and +/- .1Gs of normal earth gravity, reducing the odds of Novoski tumbling headfirst out of her pod and dying by literally falling out of bed. While ironic, such an event would not be good for the survivors.

The route to the DCC is short and unobstructed, but there she runs into a terminal that she does not have the authorization to use. She is starting to pick up fragments of a broadcast pumped out by someone calling herself Deneb Stardust, though.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 4
In Transit
Deneb

Bouncing along at a brisk trot, Deneb turns a corner and runs into - and through - the man standing there. The image quality is incredible, which Deneb recognizes is because he's technically an AR overlay rather than a hallway projection. "Whoa there, lass," he waves to get her attention, completely unnecessarily. "Glad you could make it." His voice has a notable Irish accent, but did nothing to muddle the clarity of his speech. "Deneb, right? I am Merlin, the ship's AI. We are, as you can see, in a crisis. I'd like your help in resolving it."

"Merlin" appears to Deneb as a man of indeterminate age, wearing a vintage flight jacket, shirt, trousers, and ship boots. Her implant accepts the credentials of a Level 5 AI, more or less confirming him as the real deal.

[Nefarion Xid]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 4
In Transit
Deneb

"Nya!" Even as Merlin spoke calmly, Deneb spent a few seconds attempting to garrote the AR image with the cord of her hairdryer. She quickly gave up and blushed.

"Oh hey! It's Mista Wizad. I'm a little stressed right now. I got a buzzing in my brain and I'm starting to think something's wrong with my voice. I'm hearin' it now and I'm a little concerned cuz I ain't nevah been to Queens. Plus I just saw a guy die."

She blinked. "Oh. You need my help? Boy, we are ****ed."

[Othniel]

Ellie

Eleanor stood still and stared at the terminal, her brow furrowed. The first words out of her mouth since awakening were those of frustration. "Oh, come on! It's an emergency! Dratted piece of machinery." She gave the base of the console a light kick. Just then she thought she caught a voice broadcasting from...somewhere. "Ah, hello? This is Doctor Eleanor Stewart. Can anyone hear me?"

[PepperP.]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Shuttle Armory Attachment
Miranda Rodriguez

"Ooooooo" Miranda cooed over the Mongoose for a moment before hoisting up the more practical Carbine.

"If this can't do it I'm probably ****ed anyway." She carried it with her out of the armory and headed in the direction of the faulty modem, and the Shankbot last she'd heard him. She moved as quickly and stealthily as she could given the large plasmic weapon she was holding, hoping to get a drop on the Shankbot if she happened to encounter him on the way to the modem.

[TheDarkDM]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Graham/June

Leaning out over the abyss, Graham watched the drones detonate with a swell of disbelief. He hadn't known what would happen, not really, and the evidence of his unwanted power still surprised him. However, he was a military man with a mission, and if he was confused he couldn't imagine what was going through the minds of the women below.

"Doctor Seong-Ziegler, hold on. I'm going to try and make my way down to you."

Eyeing the cascade of wreckage between them, Graham squared his shoulders with a sigh. Edging out onto the incline of a shard of bulkhead, he willed it down, hoping to control his descent with far more than his unexceptional frame.

Let's try sledding, that's a good trick.

[roll0]

Much to his delight, the sled of metal and polymer reacted to his impulses, dodging the numerous protrusions and pitfalls across its uneven course. Though it was invisible to Graham, it was clear to those below that he was barely touching the slope at all, held aloft instead by telekinetic eddies. Within moments, Graham landed softly on the deck, taking a moment to examine the two survivors before speaking again.

"Doctor Seong-Ziegler? Second Lieutenant Graham Gore. The ship needs you."

[Lord Of Mantas]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Graham/June

June staggered back in surprise as the droids were shredded in mid-air, along with what had to have been some kind of shout. Then, she looked up, and descending from upon high came the most welcome sight she had ever seen - another human (not counting the survivor she had just rescued).

When he had finished sliding down the shaft and greeted her, she responded.

"Lieutenant Gore, three things. One, I am immensely happy to see you. Two, just Ji-Yun, June, or Doc will suffice - whatever's going on, formality is not an issue. Third, please tell me you know what's going on, because so far I do not like the way things are looking."

[Tychris1]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 2
Stasis Bay S2
Armitage

"Not dumb. It's a perfectly normal response to the situation. You're doing great. Now take this. Squeeze it once to fire a single time and hold it down to shoot it in semi-automatic bursts of three." Armitage instructed the woman as he handed her his needler and looked at her with a serious glare "Don't shoot me in the back, okay?"

"Whatever these things are they're being operated from by something else at a distance. They're disposable but you aren't Allison so if things go sour leave me and I'll improvise something. Look for other survivors. We're going to work our way to the Bridge, okay? Great."

[zabbarot]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 3
Stasis Bay T7
Abram


Tara is quick to respond, and does so with the same numbers. This is the ninth planet of the Nova Veritas system, orbiting the outer of two stars, which itself orbits the central, primary sun. There is evidence of considerable terraforming conducted in the past - artificial gravatic stresses and stabilization on the tectonic plates, along with animal and plant population patterns that suggest deliberate seeding. There is also lingering evidence of numerous heavy weapon detonations and chemical warfare. This and significant erosion and decay are what brought the planet's habitability index down from an estimated 99.99%. Since we have landed, we have detected radio broadcasts from specific locations on planet and psionic network activity as well, though the latter is mostly restricted to orbit. This system lacks the ability to intercept or parse the content of these transmissions.

...

The system has noted that assistance from the ship's crew has not yet arrived. In these circumstances, this system is authorized to grant registered users access to the terraforming lab's remote interface.

I'm going to let you have creative freedom over what the terraforming lab might have that could be remotely activated to help you out. The setting's scifi is not that hard, so don't feel too afraid to introduce something unless it's really out there. If you're concerned, run it by me in Skype.


"This is incredible. Have we had contact with the other ships? Did they arrive on time?" It seemed like the most likely answer, but the weapons... Had they been manufactured on planet? Too many questions and no answers. "Tara, ask the main computer if they've made contact with any friendly satellites, or if they succesfully launched one of ours before... this.

He mentally pulled up the lab inventory and searched for something that could help him down. Terraforming was assigned a number of heavy duty robots. Luckily the largest were locked to the ships structure and hadn't managed to slip their bonds in the crash. If one had broken loose the lab might not be recoverable. The downside was none of those could help him, both because they couldn't be released without risking the lab, and because they were all too large to navigate to him.

There was an order to the packing though, and it worked in his favor. Their first job, assuming a proper landing scenario, was to survey the immediate area for resources, or microbial life, that they would have missed with longer range instruments. To this end they had a number of medium range 4XM-series drones.

The 4XM-Survey was a four-legged, man-sized robot designed for all terrain travel. Geckotech allowed it to climb sheer surfaces and an adjustable dual rotor system allowed for short ranged flight and hovering. 4XM had won the contract because of it's modular and compact design. Terraforming had the Survey model that was fitted equipped primarily for geological survey, and painted a high visibility green for easy recognition. Other departments had their own, but Abram hadn't paid them much mind.

He did know they could be retrofitted as personal vehicles. More importantly to Dr. Moon however, they could walk through human sized hallways without issue and had enough payload capacity to carry him down safely. It could probably manage to fly with him if he was willing to risk it.

He was not.

With a bit of work he was able to get one out of it's dock and navigate the hallways to his bay. It scaled the steeply angled floor until it stood inches beneath him. Even then he decided it would be best to bring it just a bit closer. He gave it a couple testing nudges, then a solid push to make sure it could support his weight before releasing his restraints.

It wasn't until he put his feet down on the opposite wall that he realized just how tightly he'd been holding on. His hand were shaking, and he could see indents in his fingers from where he had gripped the rotor housing. "Ha... That wasn't so bad. Right? Yeah! It was fine! I'm fine. This is... fine." He looked down at the desiccated corpse that had been his supervisor. A man who's name he could not even remember. D... Da... David? Daniel? Andrew! Poor guy. Maybe he's the lucky one. Just drifted to sleep peacefully. He had a sudden horrific vision of the man awake and pounding at this pod as he slowly died of dehydration and chased it away. "That only happens in bad movies," he said, failing even to reassure himself.

Now that he was free he wasn't entirely sure what to do next. He could check on the terraforming bay, but that was hardly useful if everyone was dead, not to mention that the work might be mostly done based on the information he was still scrolling through in the background.

"Tara, you said you alerted the main computer of my status and they responded. Are they sending human help?"

[TheDarkDM]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Graham/June

Relief flooded through Graham at the sound of the doctor's voice - here was living proof that there was still something to salvage from the mission, and that those in cryo sleep had been spared the blow that had killed the ship.

"A pleasure, doctor. I'd advise you to sit, but there isn't much time. We arrived in Veritas at plus four hundred standard years from mission schedule. On entering the system, comm chatter of unknown origin was detected, but the Forte's hails received no reply. The planet also appeared to have a number of artificial satellites in orbit, disposition unknown. Admiral Benden called general quarters, and we were on approach when the ship encountered an unregistered psychic phenomenon. I was the only survivor. After the crew was killed, the ship was engaged by starfighter-class attack drones that forced an emergency landing with all Cores still docked, but waved off before destroying us. However, a second wave of anti-personnel drones accompanied by a single anti-materiel drone were dispatched with the apparent goal of eliminating any conscious survivors."

He paused, giving the woman a moment to absorb their situation.

"So far, isolated passenger groups have managed to disable half the hunter-killers, but that doesn't solve the problem of reinforcements. We need to buy some time, which is where you come in. I was sent to find you so you could fake a catastrophic failure of the fusion bottle in the main reactor. With any luck, orbital sensors will read it as the ship's destruction and leave us some breathing room. Merlin can give you a more technical explanation, but we'll need to reconnect this Core to the communications network. I was told you have some familiarity with the Damage Control systems?"

[Lord Of Mantas]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Graham/June

June listened to Graham intently as he outlined what was going on. At his question, she nodded.

"I was assigned to orbital operations, and I have several years experience repairing and operating space station equipment." She brought up a prosthetic arm and tapped her suboccipital region, where her neural jack was implanted, then extended her right wrist, showing off her hand as it morphed into a multi-function repair tool. "I also have a network access hardline and several dedicated electronics repair tools. You need something technical done, I'm your woman."

[TheDarkDM]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Graham/June

His mouth set in a firm line, Graham glanced around the scattered remains of the racks.

"Then we need to find a Damage Control bay. Once I've re-established contact with Merlin, we can go about recovering Doctor Moon."

His roving eye finally settled on the second survivor, and Graham remembered himself.

"And you, ma'am? Are you injured?"

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 3
Stasis Bay T7
Abram

Affirmative. The main computer insists that human help is coming. The person selected is 2nd Lieutenant Graham Gore. Tara helpfully flashes a picture of him. The Main Computer estimates that casualties are steep, but still under ten percent of the total passenger population. The crew has taken much heavier losses. What other assistance might I provide?

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 2
Stasis Bay S2
Armitage

"I'll do my best!" Allison takes the weapon and holds it in a grip she clearly thinks of as professional. Some more finagling gets both her and Armitage out of the bay and back into the hallway. Dimly, in the distance, Armitage can hear an odd noise. It sounds like a revving mechanical whine, followed by a *Shank shank shank shank*. Armitage's new escort frowns, "What was that? I don't think that sounded like a loader bot..."

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Graham/June

The tech waves weakly at the pair looking down at her. "I, uh... I can't really feel my legs. That's bad, right?" Her legs, such as they are, are not currently visible, with the rest of her buried under more wreckage. The heap isn't anything approaching stable or orderly, but it might be possible to get her un-stuck... or snap her in half.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Shuttle Armory Attachment
Miranda Rodriguez

As it so happens, Miranda finds the modem before she finds Shankbot... or before Shankbot finds her. Replacing it is easier and harder than she thought - the access panel is fused shut by some kind of weapons fire, but once she pries it open, everything else is plug-and-play. After inserting the final connection, flipping it over because it was upside down, flipping it over again because she had it right the first time, and wondering how eight hundred years of electronics development weren't enough to fix this issue, the modem cycles through it's automatic startup and then the traffic indicators begin flashing very quickly.

"Well done!" The voice comes out of nowhere and, rather pointedly, waits until the pilot's finger is off the trigger of the weapon to sound out. Only after her heart rate is back under control does a man materialize out of thin air, and she realizes that he has to be an augmented reality projection of someone else - likely an AI. His voice has a notable Irish lilt to it but doesn't could his speech. "It is good to see you again..." he pauses to process, "...Miranda Rodriguez. Thanks for restoring connection to this part of the ship, lass. My name is Merlin, and I'm the ship's guiding Level Five AI. Goodness, but you've found quite the weapon. I assume you're aware that you are being stalked by an as yet unidentified anti-personnel war machine. Have you seen it in person yet?"

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 4
In Transit
Deneb/Ellie

"Affirmative." Merlin responds flatly to Deneb's assessment of their predicament. "Nonetheless, minutes ago you displayed technical skills beyond those listed in your project profile. While your personal life is not on trial, I could really use those in preventing enemy reinforcements from arriving. Would you-"

A faint voice manages to ping on the reactions to Deneb's livestream. "Ah, hello? This is Doctor Eleanor Stewart. Can anyone hear me?"

Merlin arches an illusionary eyebrow at the net idol. "Do you want to respond to that? Psychologically speaking, it would be good for Dr. Stewart to find some human contact."

[Nefarion Xid]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 4
In Transit
Deneb/Ellie

"Yeah, that's what a lot of guys say," Deneb sighed.

She rounded on Cecil the Cambot and demanded, "Why didn't you tell me I had a viewer? You gotta do the thing! You gotta play that Rockwell song! Oh, I left you on silent. That's probably smart what with the floaty alien death robits."

Opening up her stream's chat settings, she gave Dr. Eleanor Stewart full voice privileges and checked to see if anyone else was actively viewing.

"Hi Doctah Stewart! I can hear you, but your signal's kind of crap. Can you jack in to a terminal? If you do, I'll be able to locate you! Or maybe you can come to me?"

She made a gesture as if she were plugging a cable into the AR overlay of Merlin. "I'm just gonna borrow your map functions and ping her."

[PepperP.]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Shuttle Armory Attachment
Miranda Rodriguez

"Shankbot?" Miranda guessed correctly that the so-called anti-personnel machine was one and the same.

"No but I figured I'd know him when I see him. Look I've just got two questions... One, is this big enough to take it out?" She held up the Carbine.

"And two, where's it at?"

[Othniel]

Ellie

Ellie scowled at the terminal as the woman on the other end of the communication mentioned jacking in. "I am currently at the Damage Control Center. I woke up near a medical bay - I'm that kind of doctor - but couldn't do much from there. The AI there suggested trying to reorient the ship's gravity before waking more people, but I don't have access here or the technological know-how to get past the security." She paused. "I haven't seen anyone else alive outside of their pods."

[Lord Of Mantas]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
June



The tech waves weakly at the pair looking down at her. "I, uh... I can't really feel my legs. That's bad, right?" Her legs, such as they are, are not currently visible, with the rest of her buried under more wreckage. The heap isn't anything approaching stable or orderly, but it might be possible to get her un-stuck... or snap her in half.



Damn. We'll have to be careful.

Years of working in high-stress situations were starting to pay off as June managed to keep her cool. "Just stay calm, Brittney. We're going to get you out of there." She looked to the Lieutenant. "Graham, give me a hand."

Carefully, June continued to try and work Brittney free of the debris.

June will continue to try and carefully lever away the debris around the injured tech. I am adding Augmentations and Intelligence to this roll, as I did with the last one (Augmentations because my arms are handling the workload, Intelligence to try and use my head to figure out the best way to remove the debris).

[roll0]

[TheDarkDM]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Graham/June

As June moved to assist the fallen technician, Graham reached for her with his new senses. Feeling the tangle of metal intermixed with flesh and blood, he raised his hand and willed the wreckage upwards, clear of injured legs and fragile organs in concert with the doctor's efforts.

Intelligence and Telekinesis add 5 to Mantas' roll

[Tychris1]

"Did you see that onomatopoeia too? I didn't even know shanking could be an onomatopoeia," Armitage mused briefly to himself, wondering if his intense regimen of psychoactive drugs might have been affecting his synesthesia, before looking back at Allison "You stay back and cover me if I start rapidly running down the hallway towards you. Come on."

[zabbarot]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 3
Stasis Bay T7
Abram


Affirmative. The main computer insists that human help is coming. The person selected is 2nd Lieutenant Graham Gore. Tara helpfully flashes a picture of him. The Main Computer estimates that casualties are steep, but still under ten percent of the total passenger population. The crew has taken much heavier losses. What other assistance might I provide?

"I'm just going to hang tight until help arrives. Keep directing environmental data to me though. Do we have any images of outside?" Dr. Moon found a comfortable place to sit in the hall just outside of his bay so he wasn't on any of the pods and began scrolling through the data trying to make sense of what had happened.

Looking through the data for any signatures of his terraforming processes that could give him the beginnings of a timeline, presuming the other ships arrived on time.

[roll0]

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Graham/June

Though the debris obligingly moves, the end result leaves a lot to be desired. Brittney is a mess. Her legs are clearly crushed beyond any kind of first aid, bits of splintered bone poking through here and there. Her bleeding is profuse, and worse now that the immense pressure is off. Honestly, things aren't looking too good for the pelvis and lumbar region either.

Surprisingly, she doesn't shriek in pain, but she does quickly grow pale and her eyes de-focus. Your implant unhelpfully informs you that the immense trauma is likely to lead to her death if drastic measures aren't taken to stop her from bleeding out in the next minute or so.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Maintenance Corridor
Miranda Rodriguez

"The anti-personnel w... no, you know what? Shankbot is a better name. Priority Target is now designated 'Shankbot.' Shankbot is currently forward of your position, downhill relative to the planet and toward the bow of Deployment Unit One, moving to the connector for DU Two." There's a pause. "It is... doubtful that you can kill Shankbot with just the carbine. Shankbot is considerably larger and better armored than the other drones, and its movements indicate a higher-functioning AI as well. I have run 10,280 simulations of you versus the unit, and in only 285 of them do you defeat it on your own, or on your own with only my assistance."

After a longer pause to let that sink in, Merlin continues. "However... the odds of you damaging it enough to get it to retreat for self repair are higher. This will not permanently solve the problem, but it will force Shankbot to stop murdering passengers for a few minutes. The choice is yours, of course. I can come up with other plans."

[Lord Of Mantas]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
June

June was now getting distressingly close to panicking. Of all her myriad talents, emergency medical care was not one of them; all of her training had focused on repairing unliving things.

Calm yourself, Ji-Yun. You can get through this. You are not going to let the specialist just die. Not without a fight. Think, and think hard. You've known a few doctors in your time. You may not be one, but there's stuff they can do in the field to keep a patient stable until a real person can see them, right? What was it?

"Graham, as much as I hate to admit it, First Aid is not in any way shape or form my forte. If you've got any advice for this kind of situation, now's the time."

It's going to have to be pure intelligence for this one. June is going to scour her memory for any fact that she's heard of that might be relevant to stabilizing someone in the field in this kind of situation, then trying to apply it.

[roll0]

[PepperP.]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Maintenance Corridor
Miranda Rodriguez

"****." Miranda cursed and slumped a little in the face of shankbot's apparent tankyness.

"Let's hear the plan with the best odds where Shankbot dies, and I don't."

[Nefarion Xid]

Deneb, Running

"Yeah, there's a lot of pretty messed up stuff happening. There was a big metal pole sticking through my section of the ship. One of them mass drivah thingies! And I was upside down! And I don't what they told you to pack, but I didn't smuggle a gun in my carry-on bag! Which sucks because there are big ball terminator robits!"

Cecil whirred around for a close-up shot while Deneb gabbed and ran. She still wore a permanent look of wide eyed optimistic manic terror. Her suitcase came along, periodically banging over bulkheads.

"And it shot a footballer! It woulda got me too but I distracted him with... a thing. And so I tried to jam him, but it didn't go great and he turned into goo! I'VE HAD A REAL ****ING WEIRD FIFTEEN MINUTES!"

Finally honed in on Ellie's location, she skidded around the corner and doubled over, clutching a stitch in her side. "And I ain't built for runnin'. I didn't sign up for this. But I'm fine. I'm fine. We're all fine here. How are you? Seriously, how are you? Do you need a hug?"

[Othniel]

Ellie

"I am uninjured," Ellie answered, "But I am most definitely not fine." Dr. Stewart's accent pegged her as English, but the received pronunciation in which she spoke could have covered any of several regions. "What I need is for the bloody computer system to cooperate with me." She stared daggers at the terminal. "You are the first living being I have encountered outside of a pod, and by the way this day is going, I shall guess that you also do not have clearance to access the Damage Control Center terminal. I wish I knew what happened to the ship, why the gravity is wrong, why there are people dead all over, and several other things."

[Nefarion Xid]

"I said the aliens shot a big metal rod into it. That's what's wrong with it," Deneb scoffed in between huffs for air. She wiggled her spine back into shape and marched over to the computer terminal.

"Of course we've landed. Somehow. I mean, obviously, right? Since some of the ship is upside down and we got gravity. Cuz we ain't burnin' sideways." The manic woman gestured her understanding of Newtonian physics by moving her hands and making rocket noises.

"I don't think the lateral thrusters can do," she paused, hopping up and down on the stop twice (and timing her descent with her neural implant), "yeah, at least nine point four meters per second squared! So it feels like we've landed on a rocky Earth-alike. Which is good! Cuz we could still be drifting through vacuum. This is better. A little."

Computer hackin' to access the info and systems Ellie wants[roll0]

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 2
Stasis Bay S2
Armitage

Finding the source of the noise is, as it turns out, incredibly simple. He just follows the noises and eventually discovers a mechanical monster. Armitage's implant measures it to be 5.51m in diameter, and that isn't counting the legs. Like the other drones, the giant unit is roughly spherical, with modular protrusions at intervals. Unlike the other drones, this one cannot seem to fly, instead getting around on large, armored legs that seem to alternate between scooting along on magnetic balls, allowing it to cling to various surfaces while maneuvering in any direction at impressive speeds, and crawling where the ground is too rough for driving. Even as he watches from his hidden viewpoint, tucked behind a blind corner and looking into a wide corridor that had likely started as some kind of storage, the giant war machine clanks its way down from the wall onto the floor and starts wheeling away slowly, looking for something... probably survivors.

It has surprisingly few distinguishing marks, being mostly a dark grey color with what few highlights it has shining a lurid violet and meeting in an X-shape in the front and back. A single iris-like assembly at one of the two purple intersections gives the entire machine a sort of giant eyeball look as well as marking which part of the sphere is the 'front.'

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Graham/June

June recalls that the stasis pods not only have their own emergency power supply, but halt _all_ biological processes, including "dying." The suspended animation will even slow relative time, and it is this patented process that made Dr. Novoski so famous. While all of the pods down where you are have been FUBAR, Graham might be able to pull one down from above. They are plug and play, at least in here. If he can maintain careful enough control, you could release one (un)lucky passenger and stuff what's left of Brittney into their pod until a qualified trauma team is available.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Maintenance Corridor
Miranda Rodriguez

Merlin doesn't hesitate this time. "There are others awake and fighting back aboard the ship, along with a dwindling number of drones that are not Shankbot. A coordinated attack would be more likely to produce the results you want... but will also leave additional passengers at the mercy of the large unit. The best attempt at a temporary fix is for you to unite with a man named Armitage, one of the security personnel who woke up after the crash. While much of the weaponry he's found lacks the power to do significant harm to Shankbot, adding more enemies for it to deal with, combined with his ability to restrict its movement or disrupt its sensors, could easily make the difference. Ultimately, I suspect you will need still more combatants and that missile system you were fiddling with earlier to kill it." There's a brief pause, then the AI's avatar gestures down the hallway. "Armitage is this way, if you are interested. Otherwise, your best bet is to unite with Second Lieutenant Graham Gore. He will soon be making his way to Deployment Unit 3 to retrieve Dr. Abram Moon for a critical task." His tone suddenly shifts. "Never mind, Armitage is moving toward Shankbot now. I cannot reach him at his current location. Please join him as soon as you can, and activate the second router on your way. I'll point it out to you."

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 3
Stasis Bay T7
Abram

There is a wealth of raw data. Entirely too much to parse in a short time, but Abram gives it his best try anyway. Imagery taken from the descent reveals vast stretches of urbanized landscape, and a few collections of lights that could only be artificial... though not nearly enough to match the built-up infrastructure. From an environmental standpoint, the terraforming that has taken place isn't just similar - it's Abram's terraforming. What little atmospheric analysis has been conducted reveals vestigial micro machines and a few genetic mutations in the ambient bacteria that he knows very well.

The timeline is a curious one, to be sure. Approximately four hundred years ago, preliminary terraforming began, then apparently halted. Forty-ish years after that, it began in earnest and finished one hundred years after that. The world held in eco-stasis for an indeterminate time after that, after which a number of near-cataclysmic events partially undid it and apparently depopulated the planet. Since that time, smaller artificial events have prevented a full natural recovery.

There is something very strange going on in orbit, as well. It's almost as though the planet has another set of magnetic poles, but off-center. Or as if there's some kind of invisible moon in an orbit so low that it might technically be called 'upper atmosphere.' There is a tiny gravitational reading from the same location, but not nearly big enough to match the other readings. Bizarre, to say the least. Besides, what observable oceanic activity the Nova Forte saw on the way down didn't display the kind of behavior that would result from a moon that low, nor would such a natural satellite be able to stay in orbit at that angular acceleration. It would crash, and crash soon.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 4
In Transit
Deneb/Ellie

Breaking into the DCC takes longer than either woman would like, but Deneb does manage to fake the right credentials eventually. The DCC terminal welcomes John Affington, Technician First Class, or at least that's who Deneb is on the local network right now. It has a number of options available for you, rendered in plain text with no guiding AI.

- Automated Troubleshooting and Recovery
- Activate Assitant AI
- Deploy Repair Drones
- Contact Main DCC
- Choose Specific System to Diagnose

[Lord Of Mantas]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
June

Frantically searching her memory for an idea of how to save Brittney, June immediately set upon an idea.

"Graham. Use your powers to pull down one of the pods from above and bring it down here. If we can get the specialist into a pod, it will suspend her until an actual trauma team can get to her."

[Nefarion Xid]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 4
In Transit
Deneb/Ellie

After randomly tapping through menus on the console, Deneb shrugged then stepped aside for Ellie. "It's workin' for me. Looks like John Affington forgot to log off."

[Othniel]

Ellie

Ellie wasn't sure what to make of Deneb. Her outfit seemed odd given even the expected circumstances, let alone reality, and Ellie wondered if the other woman knew what she was talking about with regard to gravity. She blinked away these thoughts as the terminal started to cooperate. "Well done!" As room was made for her before the terminal, Ellie pulled up the diagnostics and selected the ship's gravity systems. "If we can get the gravity back on correctly, we can start waking up people who have the necessary skills to fix this nightmare," she said. "I hope." A pause. "Do you have anyone waiting to wake up?" she asked tentatively.

[PepperP.]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Maintenance Corridor
Miranda Rodriguez

"Right, thanks Merlin." Miranda turned from the AI and moved to hot the second router as Merlin had instructed before hopefully intercepting Armitage on his way to Shankbot.

[Tychris1]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 2
Stasis Bay S2
Armitage

Well that certainly doesn't seem very friendly.

Armitage thought to himself as he watched the entity lumber and skitter about. Perched in his hiding spot Armitage attempted to scan the local area to see if there was anything big or heavy enough that, when given a proper amount of telekinetic or man made pressure, could crush this robot. Or at the very least hinder it long enough for him and Allison to beat it down.


[roll0]

[Nefarion Xid]

Deneb & Ellie

After disappointingly looking for another chair in the room, Deneb plopped down on her suitcase and stifled a question about everyone just standing to work in the future. The buzzing and zapping feelings had ceased for now, or else they'd put aside their differences and decided to work together to conquer her brain. She has a friend now and she was kind of safe, but she still wanted to hit something with a pipe wrench while being vaguely aroused by Euler's number. 2.7182818284590oooh.

"I got a fiance," she answered without enthusiasm after a stretch of silence. "Not really feeling great about that right now since this was his idea. Not that I have a choice, ya know. I'm under contract and in space and like four hundred years in the future. Not like my cat's waiting for me to get home."

With an angry grunt, she wiped her eye on her sleeve. At least she couldn't smear her mascara; she wasn't wearing any. Her eyelashes were just engineered to be denser, thicker and longer.

"What about you?" Dreading the answer, she didn't look up to Ellie.

[TheDarkDM]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Graham/June

Stepping back from the wounded colonist, Graham nodded affirmation to the doctor's plan. Looking up, he reached out with his senses, hoping in whatever fate or luck had brought him there to make the decision for him. As soon as he felt the proper tingle at the base of his skull, he pulled as gently as he could.

Using Precognition and Intelligence to guide my Telekinesis

[roll0]

[Othniel]

Ellie

"I signed up with my husband, Joshua, and my two daughters, Amelie and Bridget." Ellie paused as she continued to work at the terminal. "I asked the AI while I was in my pod about the statuses of Joshua and my two girls. Joshua's pod is orange; Amelie is green. I don't know about Bridget - there are three children with her name on board; two of their pods are green and one yellow."

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Graham/June

The pod floats down... not exactly gently, but without damaging the power supply or the sensitive electronics. Resting it between two twisted girders for stability, the pair of ambulatory crew members waste no time in activating the emergency wake-up procedure. The pod gamely spits out a lanky, dark-skinned young man that their implants identify as Anthony "Ace" Derrick, an orbital operations engineer. He barely has enough time to get out "Wh... where am-" before he's pulled free of the pod. Lifting Britney and strapping her in, June manages to heave the pod door up and closed again while Graham hits the medical support button. A tense moment passes before the door seals with a decisive thunk and the lights around the pod turn blue and start flashing rhythmically. The junior tech's vitals all drop to perfect stasis. Britney is safe... for now. But her trauma has only been halted - the pod has no means to heal the passenger within, only to freeze them in time.

Mr. Derrick, on the other hand, has some catching up to do. "What was that? What happened to her? What's going on, man?" After a moment or two, his questions become more specific. "Ohhhhh we crashed, didn't we? How bad is it?"

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 4
Damage Control Center (DCC) 2
Deneb/Ellie

In response to Ellie's commands, a pair of cylindrical tubes in the wall open like curtains to reveal a stack of drones - friendly ones, this time. Though roughly spherical, they appear almost unfinished by comparison to the attacking robots, appearing as a pair of magnetic treads anchored to a frame supporting a reconfigurable powered multi-tool. Behind the 'team' of a half-dozen such bots rolls one larger squarish one, which the two humans in the room recall is basically a large semi-aware bucket of replacement parts. All seven of the robots wave a convenient appendage at the two passengers on their way out, and the sounds of their motors revving as they speed up in the corridor is the last the women hear of them, at least for the moment.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Collapsed Security Corridor
Armitage/Miranda

Nothing really springs out at Armitage as an obvious obstacle for the hunter-killer robot. Then, in one of those bizarre moments of reverse serendipity, several things happen at once. Miranda stumbles across Armitage and Allison, and the router she'd left in its automatic configuration mode finishes its setup routine. Merlin springs into view for all three of them. "Alert: the unit before you, dubbed "Shankbot" by order of surviving crew, has killed all opposition to it so far. It also will soon reset its sensors and perform a full sweep, at this distance you will be forced to confront it." Sure enough, there's an odd ping and a burst of static over their implants, and then Shankbot whirls to face them. The ship's AI begins talking very fast, talking over himself, really, but you still comprehend what he's saying due to it coming over the implants.

"Synchronizing to your implants/Uploading known capabilities data/Installing targeting updates/Installing battlelink communications software." A single heartbeat passes, lines of text appearing in the vision of the three passengers, along with target markers hovering over various points on the enemy. "Engaging."

D A N G E R:
SHANKBOT

- SHANKBOT IS ARMED WITH FOUR ELECTROMAGNETIC LINEAR RAIL CANNONS, AS WELL AS TWO LASER WEAPONS, MAXIMUM RANGE UNKNOWN.
- THE ARMOR IS OF AN UNKNOWN COMPOSITION BUT COVERS ALL SMOOTH SURFACES AND SOME OF THE ANGULAR ONES.
- THE LEGS ARE EVEN MORE HEAVILY ARMORED THAN THE BODY AND SHANKBOT HAS BEEN OBSERVED USING THEM TO INTERCEPT INCOMING ATTACKS.

You gain the following advantages from linking with Merlin:
Coordination I - represents Merlin facilitating your communications. These communications can be nonverbal, and mechanically can be added to an action taken to avoid Shankbot's attacks or to attack Shankbot, but not both in the same turn.
Magnitude I - represents your numerical advantage.
AI Boosted Targeting - represents Merlin's aim correction assistance, allowing for independent parts of Shankbot to be targeted.

This is a boss encounter. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWrZD05_XYw)

[Lord Of Mantas]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
June
"To answer your questions: You are still in Stasis Rack 13. We have indeed crashed, but not by natural means - we seem to have crash-landed on Veritas after the ship was attacked by starfighter-class attack drones. It seems that this world is not, in fact, uninhabited. Technician Lassiter was the only survivor that I was able to find in the debris. I apologize for the rough manner in which we ejected you from your pod, but it was the only means by which to stop the process of death until an actual trauma team can help her."

"Unfortunately, things are, as you've surmised, rather bad. We do, however, have a plan. Lieutenant Gore and I are on our way to go find a network hardline, at which point we should be able to fake the destruction of the fusion bottle in the main reactor. Hopefully, any orbital sensors our attackers have will then mistake it for the ships destruction, and buy us some time to wait for reinforcements."

She then turned back to Graham. "Speaking of which, I am ready to move out whenever you are."

Is there any regular way out of where we are? Or is it a climb back up to the nearest door?

[PepperP.]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Collapsed Security Corridor
Armitage/Miranda

"Oh **** you weren't kidding about this thing, Merlin." She spoke over the AI as he synched. Her eyes widened in alarm but her extensive training quelled any panic that might have threatened to rise.

"Armitage on me! Move out, now now now!" It wasn't difficult to fill her voice with urgency and she darted off back in the direction of the armory. She hoped but did not look back to make sure the man was following her.

[Nefarion Xid]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 4
Damage Control Center (DCC) 2
Deneb/Ellie

"Oh." Deneb pouted. Her loveless engagement wasn't nearly as bad as having kids in danger. "Well, don't worry about them. We'll figure something out. We've got Merlin. And the drones. And... hey you, hold up a second."

She put her foot in front of the last drone out the door and started mentally bossing it around with her neural interface. "I mean, I'm smaht! Boys tell me I'm smaht and interestin' all the time! I get so many nice comments on my vlogs."

Deneb attempts to remotely hack the armory and sends the drone to pick her up some weapons. [roll0]

[Tychris1]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Collapsed Security Corridor
Armitage/Miranda

"Oh you know my name already. Wonderful. Saves time on pleasantries." Armitage communicated telepathically to the woman "I'm going to restrict communication to an internal level to avoid detection, alright?" Hoping that she would cease verbal communication he began to steadily pull at a piece of discarded metal as far away from them as possible, and skipped it along the collapsed corridor's barely functioning "floor". All of the faintly working lights began to glow a bit brighter for him, his armored uniform disappearing into the surrounding air as all he saw was red, and his soul burned bright with bloody murder. A single tear rolled down his face as his internal conditioning and drugs attempted to stifle his rage and his mind rebelled in solipsistic fury that quickly ejected itself through his imaginary representation of a prefrontal cortex.

A screeching hawk eliciting a red beam.

Snapping out of his fugue he quickly turned towards Miranda and grabbed a hold of Allison's hand to tug her along praying and hoping against hope that the giant robot would be distracted by his ploy.



[roll0]

[PepperP.]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Collapsed Security Corridor
Armitage/Miranda

Miranda glanced over her shoulder at Armitage's desperate attempt to distract Shankbot. Her heart sank as he tried to pull along the woman she hadn't noticed previously.

"Welp, this is bad." She picked up on the man's cue and sent her frantic condemnation of the situation telepathically.

Evasion!
[roll0]

[TheDarkDM]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Graham and June

Take aback by the doctor's candor with the newly-awakened colonist, Graham could do little but nod in confirmation. However, as they turned away to attend to their mission, he leaned in close to whisper.

"Doctor, while I admire your forthright approach, perhaps you could refrain from being so free with information? The enemy has not yet shown much interest in captives, but it seems foolish to risk the continued survival of the ship on that trend continuing."

Reaching the cliff of rubble, Graham took a moment to locate a sufficiently stable piece before hefting it flat.

"Shall we?"

Graham is going to attempt a makeshift elevator.

Telekinesis: [roll0]

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Stasis Rack 13
Graham and June

Graham's untested fine control holds up, at least for this trial, and his psionic elevator managed to lift all three of the survivors to the far door. The ship's sole remaining crew officer even manages to wedge the platform in the doorway to prevent it from crashing down on any potential survivors below.

The robotics bay is... well, it's a mess. The central core was not designed for re-entry and landing, unlike the deployment units, and it clearly took the hit harder than any of the six external vessels - or at least the ones that didn't hit the ground first. Still, there are things here that they can use. The rapid transit tubes for the repair drones are a lost cause, but the drones themselves are more durable. Between Graham's power and June's augmentations, they quickly manage to clear enough wreckage to allow the drones to self-deploy from their current location. Ace claims to be qualified to program them, and admits that he'd be more comfortable doing that than sabotaging the reactor... if they want to give him a wish list of systems to repair and then go off to carry out Merlin's plan.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Collapsed Security Corridor
Armitage/Miranda

Battle is always chaotic and confusing. It's rarely obvious what efforts have exactly what effects. What becomes clear after a moment is that Shankbot was not fooled by their efforts to distract it, rolling swiftly about and re-aligning its legs to level it down the corridor. Merlin paints glowing red lines along its projected firing paths, and then all hell breaks loose.

Distance had muffled the sound of the shots considerably before. There is no distant clang this time. Instead, with a roaring, hiss more appropriate to a legendary beast than a machine, the linear rail cannons spin up, and lightning crackles between the modular weapons and the surrounding metal surfaces like an evil Van de Graaff generator. There's a split second of silence, and then it fires.

FSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHANK SHANK SHANK SHANK

The noise is deafening, and the heat is surprisingly intense - so much so that it leaves the clothes and hair of the survivors smoldering, and the air feels like it's on fire. Miraculously, none of them have been hit directly, via some combination of Merlin's advice, twitch reflexes, and psychic foresight. Less miraculously, the shots have still devastated the corridor before them, which folds in on itself and crashes down into the next deck. Shankbot wastes no time with evaluating itself, either, and an ominous electric whine indicates that it may be preparing to use that laser weaponry that Merlin was talking about.

You are still in combat. The path forward is collapsed, but you are not 'trapped,' per se, if you want to continue running. Your options boil down to, basically:

- Fight Shankbot
- Try to escape through the not-yet-completely-wrecked side rooms somehow.
- Dive down the hole in the corridor to the next deck, and to hell with the debris.
- Try to maneuver around Shankbot somehow and run the other way.
- Something clever I didn't think of above.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 4
Damage Control Center (DCC) 2
Deneb/Ellie

It takes a while, but the drone eventually returns with a printed projectile weapon - the standard issue AP-10500 anti-personnel sidearm. It also brought clips and ammunition, but each piece is separate, requiring the user to put the bullets in the clips and then the clips in the weapon. Still, despite this minor inconvenience and the bland off-white color of the weapon, everything seems to be in working order.

Merlin, for his part, has put up a priority for the two ladies to either head toward the core or to retrieve a man called Abram Moon from a different deployment unit.

Deneb has obtained a sidearm! This basic weapon doesn't confer any particular advantage, but it makes attacks against lightly armored targets feasible from a narrative standpoint, negating a number of penalties for trying it.

[Nefarion Xid]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 4
Damage Control Center (DCC) 2
Deneb/Ellie

After a few minutes with the industrial fabricator, Deneb skipped over to Ellie and proudly presented her with three plush toys. One was a friendly green sauropod, another a standard teddy bear, and the last clearly a giant headed chibi version of herself in a cute winter outfit.

"I made some gender neutral toys for your kids!" she said hopefully, summoning up some optimism she didn't possess. "I know, some people would say it promotes an unrealistic standard of beauty, but it's just a diplodocus. Ha! Nah, but she's got a little coat and it snaps..."

She demonstrated that the doll's buttons indeed snapped close. Repeatedly. "I say gender neutral because a lot of the people who buy these are boys. Ironic, cuz she's adorably neotenous, yet stuffed with plastic. Sure, it's polyethylene, not sil..."

Further shtick as curtailed by the arrival of the drone with Deneb's new gun. She heaped the toys into Ellie's arms and went to retrieve it.

"Ha! Good robit!" The enthusiasm drained from her face as she examined the components and realized she didn't know how to assemble or operate the weapon. This was a problem with a solution, but she went vacant and slightly cross-eyed as she pulled up the AP manual in her head.

[Othniel]

Ellie

"Uh, thanks." Ellie wasn't sure what else to say in light of the sheer weirdness of the situation. "Is this going to help us get the gravity back to normal?" she asked instead, glancing between Deneb and Merlin and indicating the weapon with an awkward point of her finger while holding the stuffed toys.

[Nefarion Xid]

"It will help us not get shot by the terminator robits." Deneb pointed the unloaded gun at the wall and dry-fired. Click click click click. "Elbows extended and locked, focus on the ironsight, breathe out, squeeze. Got it."

Now assured of her proficiency, she loaded the weapon and turned the safety off. "I managed to jam one before. These things are semi-autonomous, but they're talking to some controller at 5.02 gigahertz, so I flooded that frequency with noise. Mixed results. This one had damaged optical sensors, so it just self destructed when it couldn't see or hear me, or phone home. I don't think that same trick is gonna work when we find one with working eyeballs, so I'm electing a brute force solution."

So the scientist wouldn't continue thinking she was crazy, Deneb snipped Cambot's recording of the incident and flashed it over.

"The drones will repair the AG. In the meantime, we can save Dr. Moon! Come on!"

[Lord Of Mantas]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Central Core, Robotics Bay
June

Graham's untested fine control holds up, at least for this trial, and his psionic elevator managed to lift all three of the survivors to the far door. The ship's sole remaining crew officer even manages to wedge the platform in the doorway to prevent it from crashing down on any potential survivors below.

The robotics bay is... well, it's a mess. The central core was not designed for re-entry and landing, unlike the deployment units, and it clearly took the hit harder than any of the six external vessels - or at least the ones that didn't hit the ground first. Still, there are things here that they can use. The rapid transit tubes for the repair drones are a lost cause, but the drones themselves are more durable. Between Graham's power and June's augmentations, they quickly manage to clear enough wreckage to allow the drones to self-deploy from their current location. Ace claims to be qualified to program them, and admits that he'd be more comfortable doing that than sabotaging the reactor... if they want to give him a wish list of systems to repair and then go off to carry out Merlin's plan.

"Our priority should be getting connected back to the ship's network. Without that, there's not much I can do about the plan. I'm also trained in working with and programming drones; we should team up on that." She looked to Graham. "Anything else you know about that needs repairs ASAP?"

Re-edited my post to reflect the fact that apparently this section is a Dark zone. June will assist with reprogramming the droids. From the OOC, I rolled a 16 (10 prior to modifiers Intelligence, Education (Engineering), and Engineering (Robotics)).

[Nefarion Xid]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 3
Stasis Bay T7

When Dr. Moon reengaged with the waking world, he was being shaken softly and hugged violently. Despite Ellie's protests that this was not a medically sound way to rouse someone, Deneb continued to jostle the man by the shoulders while cradling his head to her chest.

"Don't be dead. Don't be dead. Don't be dead!"

[Othniel]

Ellie

"Just hold on a moment!" Ellie shot an annoyed glance at Deneb before kneeling next to the new person. "Stop manhandling him and let me do my job." Gently, she checked for a pulse and nodded in satisfaction. "Can you hear me, sir?" she said loudly, trying to get his attention, "I'm Doctor Eleanor Stewart."

[PepperP.]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Collapsed Security Corridor
Armitage/Miranda

"Ahhhhhh...." Miranda was no longer sure if she was screaming out loud in in her mind.

"I'M JUMPING!" Miranda was as good as her frenzied words as she jumped into the breach caused by shankbot's shank. She didn't look back to see if Armitage and the woman had survived but she hoped they had. That had to count for something, right?

[Tychris1]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Collapsed Security Corridor
Armitage/Miranda


Nodding his head Armitage grabbed his civilian ward with one hand and with the other attempted to grab a piece of debris with which to slide down and lessen their fall with.


[roll0]

[zabbarot]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 3
Stasis Bay T7

Abram nearly jumped as he tried to refocus from the data stream in his implant to the real world around him. "You can both get off of me." He stood up and dusted himself off, unnecessarily since this section of the ship was still largely sterile. "The ship sent you then? The terraforming lab informed me that you were on your way. What's the status of the rest of the ship? Are we screwed?"

[Othniel]

Ellie

"It does rather feel that way, I admit," Ellie replied, "but where there is life, there is also hope. I shan't give up - not while my family and all the others on this ship are in danger and there's still a chance."

"Deneb, do you have an ETA on the drones being able to right the gravity? Once that happens, we should see about removing more essential personnel from their pods to seize control of the situation. Perhaps if we could reach a control room?"

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Collapsed Security Corridor
Armitage/Miranda

The warped plate does its job, or at least prevents anyone from being skewered by anything sharp. The fall is still a bruising one, though, and after climbing painfully to their feet and running a bit further, the looming presence of Shankbot filled the hole above them. The X-pattern markings on the cylindrical body flashed and fired...

...but the trio were already around cover. The laser weaponry scythes through at least two walls and part of the floor, but the survivors keep ahead of it, and after a moment of digital introspection, Shankbot apparently decides that it can't follow them down the same hole and can no longer aim accurately. After a minute of additional running, there is no further pursuit.

Though of course, the machine is still out there.

Merlin ends battle synchronization and materializes in everyone's AR view. "Well, that could have gone worse. Could have gone better too, I suppose, but everyone here is still alive! And I think it's high time some of you got in touch with Lt. Gore. You'll want to be making your way to the primary fusion reactor in the central core... though you might also want to take a minute to catch your breath."

Allison, for her part, seems to be in favor of catching her breath, leaning against a tilted bulkhead for support. "What the hell was that thing? Who would make something like that just to attack us?"

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 3
Stasis Bay T7

Deneb is spared the need to answer by an automated announcement, delivered by a low-grade AI. "Warning... artificial gravity will re-engage in sixty seconds from mark. Warning... artificial gravity will re-engage in sixty seconds from mark..." After a few more repetitions, the bland female voice tonelessly delivers, "Mark. Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight..." The trio follow the emergency procedure - lay against the corner, since this ship is relative sideways - and brace themselves. At the end of the countdown there is one incredibly disorienting lurch and flop, plus crashing, banging, and clanging all through the ship from everything that wasn't secured finding a new home, and then they all stand up, this time on the actual floor.

The two robots, clinging to the wall with their magnetic treads, watch the proceedings calmly. They have no expressions, but still give off amused body language.

[Nefarion Xid]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 3
Stasis Bay T7

"Oof." Deneb protested gaining back 7 pounds in the restored Earth-like gravity and immediately began doing her stretches. Despite some snarky social media comments, she had no problem touching her toes.

"Hey Mistah Wizahd, do we wanna go to the bridge now or what? Central computing?" she asked, attempting to hail the AI.

[Othniel]

Ellie

"Ah, excellent!" Ellie clapped her hands together. "With gravity restored to normal (I hope), Dr. Katya Novoski should be awakened shortly. We'll need her expertise with who to awaken. Merlin, can you contact her once she's out of her pod?"

[TheDarkDM]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Central Core, Robotics Bay
Graham

Examining the dire state of the robotics bay, Graham sucked his breath through his teeth. At the doctor's question, he shook his head tersely.

"Re-establishing communication with Merlin is our primary objective here. Once he's able to connect to this area, we'll get a better sense of the status of the rest of the ship."

Reaching down to his belt, Graham pulled his salvaged pistol free and offered it towards the doctor grip-first.

"You should arm yourself, Doctor."

[Lord Of Mantas]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Central Core, Robotics Bay
June

Ji-Yun gratefully took the offered pistol.

"Thank you, Graham. Fix up the communication lines to Merlin first, then, got it."

She turned back to Ace. "Looks like we have a plan. Let's get working."

Now that Graham's had a chance to throw in his two cents, Ji-Yun, using the roll in the previous post, will assist in programming the droids to get started on those items.

[PepperP.]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Collapsed Security Corridor
Armitage/Miranda

"That was Shankbot, and we do not have time to be sitting around with him on the loose. We escaped, but others may not be so lucky. We need to find this Lt. Gore and get back to the Mongoose and take that shanky basterd out. Let's get moving!" Used to bossing her squad around, Miranda naturally assumed control of the situation and encouraged the others to dig in and keep moving, leading them in the direction Merlin indicated was the best way to get to the Central Core. She purposely evaded half of the woman's question, she had no idea who had set shankbot on the ship, much less why and she didn't have time to think about it at the moment.

[Tychris1]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Collapsed Security Corridor
Armitage/Miranda

"My bones....." Armitage groaned as he slowly stood himself up and shook the dirt and dust loose from his debris ridden body. Stretching his ligaments he helped make sure Allison was in one piece before nodding along with Miranda's assessment. "Good moniker," He noted"Very apt and to the point. I assume you named it." Taking out his tonfa once more he gripped it tightly in his left hand as he quickly but carefully advanced.

"This... "Shankbot" is some kind of a menial servant or slave to a farther away entity of some kind. But in truth it doesn't matter Allison. Whoever or whatever made that thing is irrelevant to us for the time being so lets just focus on reconvening with whomever constitutes as central command at this point in time."

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 3
Stasis Bay T7
Abram/Deneb/Ellie

Merlin is quick to reply. "The Reactor Core in the central hub, if you please. There is a task there that I will need all of you to work on, in order to prevent enemy reinforcements from arriving." He drops vocal chatter after that, instead sending you reactor schematics, code segments, and various authorization referrals - all with the express purpose of causing, or at least faking, a catastrophic fusion bottle failure.

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Collapsed Security Corridor
Armitage/Miranda

The pair find their path back to the mongoose only occasionally impeded by battle damage, and the sounds of Shankbot grow dimmer as they move aft. Allison is the first to pose the question, "...w...what is Lt. Gore going to do? What kind of attack could even hurt that thing? It was a monster."

The pair are spared the need to answer by Merlin. "There's a plan, Miss Allison. In fact, you in particular need to get to a radiation shelter immediately. I've sent the path to your implant. The other two of you are still needed to put the enemy mechanical threat down."

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Central Core, Robotics Bay
Graham/June

The drones work swiftly, as they are meant to, while Ace ponders the plan in question while waiting on some of his diagnostic software to boot up. "You know, a lot of thought gets put into shielding electronics from radiation, especially out in space with no natural planetary protection in place. You can make electronics that are just inherently resilient, but they're always a couple generations behind... if the enemy drones are relying on some kind of material shielding, then if you could crack that before the fusion bottle goes..."

"Just so." Merlin's voice flickers back into existence. "Well done getting communications back up here, by the way. Lt. Gore, Dr. Seong-Ziegler, there have been additional developments. Two other passengers have retrieved Dr. Moon, so the most efficient thing for you now is to head directly to the reactor core."

[Lord Of Mantas]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Central Core, Robotics Bay
June

June double checked the ammunition count on the pistol Graham had given her, then reholstered it before speaking aloud.

"We're on our way, Merlin. I just want to take a look around for a second, first..."

June then looked to see if there were any drones that had not been committed to the repair effort.

Having one on hand could prove useful for any additional work.

Not sure if this is worth a skill challenge. June wants to see if there are any spare droids that she could take along with her. If there are, she will quickly instruct it to follow her (and I will roll in the OOC if needed). Whether there are or there aren't, her next stop will be to head towards the reactor along with Graham.

[PepperP.]

Miranda

"I don't know, I haven't met him yet." The anxious crease in her forehead belied Miranda's nonchalant tone and she seemed relieved when Merlin suggested another path for the civilian woman.

"Merlin will steer you to safety. Good luck." She spared a moment to bid the woman her well wishes and then jerked her head in a let's-go motion to Armitage.

"Show us the best route to Lt. Gore, Merlin, please. It's time to meet my superior officer."

[Nefarion Xid]

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 3
Stasis Bay T7
Abram/Deneb/Ellie

Deneb briefly went cross-eyed downloading the info dump from Merlin, then hurried down the path to the reactor core.

"Hey, Doctah Moon, you got any kids? I mean, I saw your TED Talk, but it's not like you mentioned you had a family or nothin'. Not that I'm offerin'. I like smaht guys, but I'm engaged!"

[Othniel]

Ellie

"Reinforcements sounds bad," Eleanor muttered. "Especially if they aren't our reinforcements. Oh dear, I do hope Dr. Novoski will be all right."

[zabbarot]

The momentary distraction of the dara load nearly made Abram forget his question. Thankfully Deneb brought him back with a question he really didn't want to think about.

" I'm sorry, what does it mean by reinforcements? What's attacking us? And why will faking a fusion bottle failure get rid of them? Do they just want to make sure we're all dead?"

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Main Reactor

http://i63.tinypic.com/2crriw6.jpg

The reactor was cavernous, utilitarian, and even ugly - moreso even than the rest of the central orbital unit. The control room, high up on one wall and, despite leaning at an odd angle, remarkably intact, seemed tiny by comparison. The seven active passengers gathering within quickly found that it was still large enough to comfortably seat all of them. Merlin wasted little time jumping to business, having made sure that everyone was on the same proverbial page on the way over. Merlin also wasted no processing power on fancy augmented-reality avatars, instead choosing to stick to information link and let the humans talk among themselves. Still, the opening thoughts were his.

You've been made aware that the situation, while improved, is still grim. Our opponents still possess sufficient firepower to wipe us out at any time. However, I have finished my analysis of the attacks so far and have determined that, much like all of our foes up to this point, they are all artificial. Our enemies are reacting, strategically, with the kind of intelligence I would expect of a level two or three AI - capable of adapting to gross changes in stimulus but making highly suboptimal choices in doggedly logical but inflexible pursuit of their goal, which I continue to believe is the preservation and capture of the lives aboard this vessel.

This is why I believe this plan, of which I have provided a general outline, has a chance of success. Faking a catastrophic reactor breach, however convenient and unlikely, will deny them their goal and likely send any reinforcements we may have to fight into a standby state. They will not think to confirm the destruction visually if their sensors dictate that the ship could not have survived, at least until a superior intelligence suspects otherwise - if one even exists that would guide them.

To that end, you have two tasks. The first is faking the reactor breach itself. I can guide you in this, but there are still four drones unaccounted for and I believe they will converge here, where the largest number of active life forms are, once the breach is beginning. Additionally, the large enemy mechanized opponent known as Shankbot is still at large. All of these foes must be destroyed, or else the enemy will have contradictory evidence to our demise. The drones can be dispatched with conventional weaponry, but Shankbot is a swift, dangerous, and well armored opponent. Fortunately, you do not need to obliterate it entirely - cracking the outer casing will allow the radiation burst emitted when we fake our reactor explosion to ruin more the delicate electronics within.

Even so, the timing is such that you will need to divide into two groups. My personal recommendation is that Lt. Gore, Mr. Armitage, and Cpt. Rodriguez make the assault on Shankbot while Mrs. Deneb, Dr. Moon, Dr. Seong-Ziegler, and Dr. Stewart remain here to stage the fusion bottle failure.

As an Artificial Intelligence, I can offer all the expertise and information I have, but I cannot give orders for you to attack at a specific moment and I certainly can't do something like override the ship's safety governors on a system like the main reactor. The exact method by which you will accomplish these tasks - things like the ambush locations, where you plan to seek shelter from the radiation burst, how you will handle the localized AIs that will try to stop you, etc... these tasks must be left to you. Time is of the essence, as it has been since you awakened, but you will only have one chance at this - Shankbot is unlikely to be swayed from pursuing a group that launched an all-out assault, and the fusion bottle failure, even staged, will disable the main reactor until a full team can be awakened to work on it, so be sure of your plan before you launch it.

[Othniel]

Ellie

Three scientists and a social media star against killer drones didn't sound like such a great idea to Ellie, but she preferred that to whatever "Shankbot" was. "What will happen to those currently inside pods while the main reactor is disabled?" she asked instead.

[Lord Of Mantas]

June

June began rubbing her chin once again, trying to think things through.

"You mentioned that you can't make the choice for us, Merlin, but can you outline some areas of the ship that have shielding good enough to protect us from the radiation?"

While awaiting the answer from the AI, she began trying to recall what she knew about nuclear fusion reactors in general. Even with Merlin's guidance, this would go smoother if she had an idea of what to expect beforehand.

Ji-Yun will roll on Intelligence, STEM, and Engineering to try and recall what she knows about fusion bottles, and how (theoretically) one would go about faking an explosion versus actually causing one.

[roll0]

[TheDarkDM]

Graham

Entering alongside Doctor Seong-Ziegler was a young man a tattered naval uniform, the insignia of a second lieutenant on his lapel. Grey eyes looked out from shadowed sockets at Merlin's ragtag group of survivors, as a pale hand rose to rub the dust out of a military crew-cut. His hair might have been brown, if not for the electrical burns.

"Second-Lieutenant Graham Gore - I'll be leading the strike force. I need to know your capabilities and any whether any of you have already encountered this...Shankbot."

[PepperP.]

Miranda

"Captain Miranda Rodrigues, Sir." The magenta-haired woman stepped forward as she relinquished her own perceived command of her squad, even if it was only Armitage. Previously experienced in battle, she knew better than to salute her better on the battlefield. Besides, her arms were full with the Carbine. Though she could have held it with her bionic arm alone, it and a small but deep scar across her temple belied her toughness despite her small stature, or perhaps because of it.

"Armitage and I have encountered the Shankbot." She flicked her head towards the other man.

"It was before we procured the Mongoose and we thought it prudent to engage in evasive maneuvers at the time, with Merlin's intel reinforcing that decision." Faced with a superior officer, she was suddenly embarrassed about running from the motorized killing machine.

"What I do know is that the Shankbot is armed with four electromagnetic linear rail cannons, as well as two lazer weapons, maximum range unknown. The armor is of an unknown composition but covers all smooth surfaces and some of the angular ones. The legs are even more heavily armored than the body and Shankbot has been observed using them to intercept incoming attacks. I would suggest we set up an ambush using the Mongoose." Finished with her report, Miranda shrugged and waited for the lieutenant to take it all in and make his decision.

[Nefarion Xid]

Deneb pulled up her hood and tightened the pull cords so it scrunched around her face. Unlike the others, she'd found the time to change clothes and wore a mostly zipped up white hoodie, a pink crew-neck tee, black tights and white sneakers. The shoes looked new. She spent far less time on the treadmill than she claimed. She sat down on her wheeled pink luggage and tried to make herself invisible. Not for the last time, she felt uneducated and unskilled. The new girl even had purple hair. Magenta. Magenta was way cuter than just purple.

Pouting, she held her newly printed sidearm over barrel-first for someone more competent to take it. Someone who'd fired a gun outside of a video game.

[Jade_Tarem]

Rather than responding directly, Merlin patched in someone new to the conversation via implant communication, and a swaggering female voice with a thick Russian accent floated through their heads in response to Ellie's question. It didn't take much additional context to figure out that it had to be Dr. Novoski. "Please, Doctor Stewart. These pods are my creation! They keep occupants safe from anything as long as they function. The stasis is a temporal dilation. They are - almost - frozen in time while the pod remains. The only biological process is on entry and exit. Harmful radiation will be trapped in the boundary field and disposed of during the pod's cycle-down process."

[zabbarot]

Dr. Moon

"I... huh. Fusion isn't really my area of expertise. I'm not sure I've worked a fusion problem since I got my PhD. Merlin, can you send me the operations manual and the safety procedures? Hopefully what we're not supposed to do will jog my memory."

[Othniel]

Ellie

"Ah! Dr. Novoski. It is a pleasure to hear you alive and hopefully well," Ellie responded. "Your expertise will be needed. How are things where you are?"

[TheDarkDM]

Graham

Nodding along to Miranda's report, Graham endeavored to hide his discomfort at his sudden command. Rescuing errant survivors had been one thing, but he hadn't led a tactical outside of simulations.

"Thank you Captain. I agree with your tactical assessment - given the drones' simple pattern so far it shouldn't be too difficult to set an ambush. Especially if Merlin's plan draws their attention towards the reactor."

He turned towards Armitage.

"And what are your capabilities, soldier? If the Captain mans the Mongoose, you and I will have to distract the drone and disable its leg shields."

[Jade_Tarem]

Abram and June quickly work out between them (and the materials provided by the ever-helpful AI) that it's actually really hard to get a fusion bottle to fail in a way that endangers the ship or the surrounding environment even superficially - one of the reasons the designers of this class of colony vessel chose it as the main power source. The end goal is to to keep the fusion reaction running for a short time while also opening the access shielding between the reaction point and everything else. There are several fail-safes that have to be disabled, certain settings that have to be in place, a few hardware bypasses that need to be completed, and even a guardian Level 3 AI hard-coded to prevent exactly this scenario that will need to be defeated or bypassed somehow. To make matters slightly trickier, the final steps would need to be somehow automated, because when the final breach-into-shutdown sequence occurred, everyone not in a pod would want to be in one of the ship's radiation shelters. There was one here in the reactor control area, of course, but if there were other survivors aboard...

On her end, Dr. Novoski just snorts. "How do you think? Terrible. I have kept myself busy by troubleshooting failing pods, but would welcome a more productive task. You have something in mind?"

[Tychris1]

The Pale Man nodded his head along with Miranda's report, his paler hair flopping on the side of his head in the process, and though he bore a stoic face of understanding he was not entirely present. No he was elsewhere. Perhaps not in a physical but a metaphysical way he had felt as if he couldn't ever truly stay in the same place. It was like standing on pins and needles. Or being forced to walk a road one had driven down a hundred times.

Unconscionably long.

No rather he felt himself in that place over places, the teflon wrap that hovered an inch over reality, and was painted with the hearts and intentions of every living being to be graced with higher thinking. He tasted the unreal air around him, felt the electricity pulsing through the room, and buckled at the living psychic rod that turned directly before him. He felt his skin peel, his skull unravel, and a hundred photographs of lives once given flash in a burning display before his eyes. In a second it was over, reality was just as it was to the majority of the people standing in the room, and Armitage felt blood pool in the front of his face and trickle unhealthily down his nose. Eye twitching, he reached up to clean it off with rote precision, and effectively began to keep his head still after a brief sojourn into wobbling feet and spinning hair.

"That's unnerving." He stated plainly "Very unnerving. I'm Special Watch Operator PRN Alpha XX. I'm more fit for interpersonal combat and espionage, sir, and have little experience with machinery beyond what has been integrated."

[Nefarion Xid]

Still sitting on her wheeled suitcase, the woman in athletic apparel scooted loudly so she was behind Dr. Moon as he talked things over with June.

"I can maaaybe deal with a Level 3 AI. And I can probably shove some kinda macro into the reactor terminal. We'll probably need some physical storage? But, I know a little bit about that." She added quietly through the small hole of her hoodie. "I got a, uh, mastah's degree."

[Lord Of Mantas]

June

Turning around and taking a look at Deneb, June blinked as she professed to have the ability to deal with the AI. Looking her up and down, a brief look of skepticism crossed her face - which was then replaced with a look of acceptance.

This is a life-and-death situation, Ji-Yun. It is neither the time or place to judge people by their looks.

"If you can pull your own weight, you're more than welcome to come along. This is not going to be an easy task, and the more hands working on it the better. For my part, I mostly program drones nowadays, but I'm sure I can whip something up to help batter the AI into submission with your help."

[Othniel]

Ellie

"We need a way to protect any other living crew or passengers not currently in pods from radiation," Ellie explained to Dr. Novoski. "Without alerting the...robots."

[Jade_Tarem]

"I believe there are radiation shelters throughout the ship, no?" Dr. Novoski replies. "What would it take to activate a ship-wide hazard alarm?"

"Access to the bridge." Merlin cuts in smoothly. "And Dr. Novoski is correct. Even if the network is down in large sections of the vessel - and it is - the audible alert should get anyone conscious and mobile to take cover, as was discussed during orientation. If not... the casualties will still be preferable to allowing the drones free reign in the ship."

[Nefarion Xid]

"Hey, Mistah Wizahd, sidebar aright?" Deneb waved for the voice in her head to follow her away from the group to talk in private, despite the fact she could obviously communicate non-verbally with her neural interface.

"I'll be honest. My hacking experience is, ya know, like, limited? These Russian guys gave me a game to practice on, but it's all in Russian and I kind of super exaggerated my proficiency with Russian. I said I was a two. I'm like a zero-point-five. Tops. Eto pechal'no. Um, so, I can maybe, maybe outsmart a Level 3 AI? But if you could give me a little... you know what? Just access port 80085135. Nah that's a joke. I joke when I think I'm gonna die. It's... I'll ping you. It's fine. Just take a look around. See what you can do for me, champ. There. My firewall is down."

[Lord Of Mantas]

June

June steadied her breath, then made a cracking motion with her robotic limbs.

"If nobody has any more questions, then I suggest we all move out." She gave a nod of finality, a resigned smile on her face. "Best of luck, everyone."

And with that, motioning those who were assigned to help fake the reactor failure to come with her, she set out.

Ji-Yun, unless anyone has anything else they wish to do, will accompany Team Hackerz to go and try a find a terminal/access point that will allow them the ability to break into the reactor's controls and begin the process of simulating the reactor fake shutdown.

[TheDarkDM]

Graham

Overcome by a sudden pressure in his skull, Graham clutched at his forehead even as he turned to face Armitage. Seething through clenched teeth, he barely noticed the other man's own consternation, instead desperately trying to drown out the sudden scream that threatened to tear him in two. He staggered back when the noise abruptly ceased, reaching out to the nearest bulkhead for support as he slowly processed Armitage's reply.

"That could still prove useful, Operator. The psychic connection connecting these drones is a weakness that could give us the edge we need. If you can distract the...Shankbot, it could give Captain Rodriguez and I a clear shot to eliminate it."

[PepperP.]

Miranda

Miranda stood back as the men grappled psychically, the carbine slung insouciantly over her shoulder.

"Yeah.... so maybe we could set up an ambush in the hangar? There's lots of room to set up the Shankbot to trigger the Mongoose. What do you think, Sir?" She cocked an eyebrow at her superior as he braced himself against the bulkhead and gathered himself.

[Tychris1]

"Makes sense to me. Though, to be entirely clear, if you have a definitive shot against this "Shankbot" whilst I'm distracting it, and I'm potential collateral; Take the shot." Armitage stated to Miranda in a low yet serious voice. His eyes filled with a defeated resolve yet his mouth betrayed a smile. "Merlin, do any of the comms in the hangar still work?" He inquired as he reloaded his nonlethal weaponry and moved towards the hangar.

[Jade_Tarem]

Merlin first considered Miranda's and Armitage's questions. "If I'm being pedantic, there are a number of hangars positioned at calculated points around the central core and each landing unit. However, I'm going to assume that you meant the hangar you visited previously." There was a fraction of a second's pause. "Communications do seem to be enabled to that area, thanks to your earlier reset of the damaged routers. Under normal circumstances, firing a weapon such as the Mongoose in that space would be extremely ill-advised, but virtually any collateral there is acceptable if it can sufficiently damage Shankbot."

More privately, lines of text began to appear in Deneb's vision. Do not be afraid. Pair programming is permissible, and you are more capable than you realize. You will also be using the most advanced IDE in human history. We will begin with the latest update of uncommon exploits found in the security packages of Level 3 AI...

[TheDarkDM]

Graham

The officer nodded, once more attempting to put on a confident face.

"Then we have a plan. The two of you know the way - lead on."

At the threshold to the hall, he turned.

"Doctors. If all goes well, we'll be back presently. However, if we haven't made contact before you've finished your preparations, you are to trigger the burst. Even if we're outside a shielded zone."

[Lord Of Mantas]

June

June fired off a rather sloppy salute.

"Let's hope it doesn't come down to that. Best of luck."

[PepperP.]

Miranda

Miranda shot June a scandalized look.

"Never salute on the battlefield, doc." And never like that. Miranda kept her judgement of the woman's salute style to herself. One lesson at a time, she figured. As she led the two men back to the hangar, the Captain turned to glance at Armitage over her shoulder with a raised brow.

"You're cool with being the bait.... right?"

[Jade_Tarem]

The seven colonists in the core parted ways, and put their partial plan into action (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bivdxuY2dAQ). Like every space explorer since the beginning, they were going to have to wing it a bit.

Nove Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Isolated Security Zone
Armitage

Cool or not, Armitage was indeed the bait. Shankbot was exactly as he remembered it, save that it seemed to have entered a wait state in lieu of new targets. This time, though, his approach was undetected, likely courtesy of the alarms and psionic interference Merlin piped into the area.

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Central Reactor Security Zone
Abram, Deneb, Ellie, June

The proud quartet of Team Nerd, despite their combined technical expertise, still needed direct physical access to a number of the core unit's systems. This was on purpose - potential saboteurs could not remotely access the core unit's controls and do... exactly what they were planning to do, really. This, however, brought with it other problems.

A new AI, the promised Level Three, materialized its avatar in front of them. Appearing as a latter-day Royal Guard from the Advanced European Union, 'he' took a look around at the assembled intruders and snorted. "Right, well. What's all this, then?"

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Primary Hangar
Graham, Miranda

The remainder of the anti-Shankbot team arrived to find a Hangar mostly as Miranda had left it. The pilot's previous exploration, however, had mostly focused on the control room. Taking a look around now, the floor was still mostly even but slightly tilted. The massive doors were shut but receiving power, and according to the earlier reports from Dr. Moon, only the crash debris made the air outside less than ideal for human consumption. Various flight craft either sat where they had been anchored, where safety mechanisms had held, or had smashed into a heap of scrap metal and leaking fluids against the bow bulkhead. Even the craft that had stayed put bore some serious damage from where others had ricocheted off.

Still, Miranda was a licensed pilot for the Terra Nova Endeavor and could access some of them. The fire suppression systems clearly worked, as the foam from its use had crusted in places across the large space. Tools lay scattered everywhere, again where they had broken free of secure storage. Massive cranes and other assorted robotics still clung to the walls, floors, and ceilings, unused.

[Nefarion Xid]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Central Reactor Security Zone
Abram, Deneb, Ellie, June

Aside, "It's okay! I speak English!"

Stepping forward, Deneb stuck out her chest. "'Alo 'alo 'alo... matey?" she puffed, imitating some long forgotten British sitcom, but retaining most of her shrill Queens accent. "Lead Fusion Engineer, Liam Bolt!"

A query for Liam Bolt would now reveal Deneb's photo ID, Gender=F, and a lengthy note about gender confirmation surgery. Several social media posts affirmed that Liam was a lovely unisex name, that she was loved and supported, and that they looked very natural for their size.

[roll0]

[Lord Of Mantas]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Central Reactor Security Zone
Abram, Deneb, Ellie, June

June also chimed in, running her own strategy. Rather than changing her identity entirely, she had opted for a (nominally) simpler approach.

"Entrance requested, please. I have authorization."

Or at least, if the spoofing she'd done was working, the AI would think that she had clearance/permission to access the reactor and work the controls.

Ji-Yun will try to spoof that she has authorization for the relevant permissions to access the reactor. I am adding Intelligence (+2) and STEM (+1) to the roll.

[roll0]

[Tychris1]

”Yeah. It’s okay. I’ve come to terms with it since I woke up upside down in a tube surrounded by fire, death, and smog. I can’t procreate, so given the circumstances I’m the most expendable, and the best suited to maybe not getting disembowled. Either way. Life goes on.” Armitage never once turned to face either of them, instead spending their time gazing upon his own helmet, and meekly smiling at the murky reflection of himself.

“Good luck and godspeed.”

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Isolated Security Zone
Armitage

Helmet: activated. Tonfa: charged. Mental Exercises: routine. Ass: firmly clenched.

Armitage took a deep breath in before changing the audio-feed of the blaring alarms to match the music box in his suit (https://youtu.be/gaQfVjQe8e0), rolling sideways, and to try shove the shankbot over with his mind.

”Olli Olli Oxenfreed!” He cried as he scampered away.


[roll0]

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte - Core Unit
Central Reactor Security Zone
Abram, Deneb, Ellie, June

The security AI squinted at Deneb, reviewed all of the procedures, checked the records, squinted at Deneb again, and finally spoke. While the AI did not actually grunt, there was still a very grunt-like quality to the whole sentiment. "Ah hrm. Hrm. Hrm. Were you aware that there were updates to several secure files immediately before your request? Mighty suspicious that is, Liam. I'm going to flag it on your file. If you get up to any funny business it'll be your hide, it will."

The tone almost reset with how fast it shifted, the speed of it unnatural in a way no Level 4+ AI would tolerate. "Now, what am I doing for you this fine day? Which parts of the Reactor do ye need to work on?"

Control boards across the room lit up, as did several AR markers in everyone's vision, helpfully pointed out by their implants. There were intensity controls, shielding controls, emergency venting options, all-points communication bulletin options, AI interaction points, secure panel locks, and more. The puzzle box open, it was now up to them to sabotage the Nova Forte for real...

Nova Forte - Deployment Unit 1
Isolated Security Zone
Armitage, then Armitage, Graham, and Miranda

If the psychic attack had any deleterious effect on Shankbot whatsoever, the giant war machine didn't show it. It did, however, notice, and chose to express what was no doubt several dozen tons of mechanical joy by whirling around and opening fire on Armitage with everything. The ensuing chase might have been comical, or even heroic, had it not been absolutely terrifying. The rail cannons hadn't grown any quieter or less intimidating since the last encounter, nor did Shankbot seem to care about anything as pedestrian as "ammunition." Tearing through bulkheads, decks, utilities, and more, it screeched after him, clinging to walls and ceilings even when the floor gave way. The pair raced out of the security cordon, through the decks - sometimes literally - and toward the hangar. Right when they arrived, Shankbot switched tactics. The violet lines on its chassis shone brilliantly again and lanced out in sweeping laser beams, scything through cranes, shuttles, flooring, walls... nothing seemed to stop them.

This time, there was nowhere to go. The attack was too wide, too all-encompassing. A premonition told Armitage to leap into the beam, leaning into like a boxer leans into a punch that can't be blocked. It cut straight through his armor and he knew he was bleeding, but surprisingly the hangar did not feature two short-lived Armitages. It did, however, now sport a Shankbot, in the killzone that Graham and Miranda had lovingly set up.

D A N G E R:
SHANKBOT

- SHANKBOT IS ARMED WITH FOUR ELECTROMAGNETIC LINEAR RAIL CANNONS, AS WELL AS TWO LASER WEAPONS, MAXIMUM RANGE UNKNOWN.
- THE ARMOR IS OF AN UNKNOWN COMPOSITION BUT COVERS ALL SMOOTH SURFACES AND SOME OF THE ANGULAR ONES.
- THE LEGS ARE EVEN MORE HEAVILY ARMORED THAN THE BODY AND SHANKBOT HAS BEEN OBSERVED USING THEM TO INTERCEPT INCOMING ATTACKS.

You gain the following advantages from linking with Merlin:
Coordination I - represents Merlin facilitating your communications. These communications can be nonverbal, and mechanically can be added to an action taken to avoid Shankbot's attacks or to attack Shankbot, but not both in the same turn.
Magnitude I - represents your numerical advantage.
AI Boosted Targeting - represents Merlin's aim correction assistance, allowing for independent parts of Shankbot to be targeted.

This is a boss encounter. (https://youtu.be/zxLjezFtHZQ?t=31)

Merlin's presence reached them all again. Alright, round two. Linking everyone aaaaand we're good to go!

[Nefarion Xid]

"Ha! Roit! Jolly good! Wot wot!" Not at all panicking, Deneb jammed a finger into her temple and blurted, "Important email! Bee are bee!" while attempting to buy some time by bogging the AI down with repeating requests from lower level systems and faking resource intensive, but noncritical malfunctions within his preview. For her own protection, the requests were relayed to Cambot Cecil who had been left at a distant terminal.

Someone had clearly tripped over a power cable somewhere and then plugged it into the wrong thing while running a microwave on high power. They were cooking fish. Meanwhile Dave in Accounting accidentally downloaded a virus that just duplicated AV files of Lawrence of Arabia that autoplayed on every device on the network.


[roll0] + help from Mistah Wizahd!

1. You need to fake a reactor failure. You want to release a big fat burst of reactor-failureish radiation that will simulate a fusion bottle explosion because that will - maybe - convince whatever ******* sent all the robits that there's nothing of value left and they should wait for the radiation to die down before they come back. That will buy time for Team Good Guys to get their act together.
2. But... you also need to alert any other survivors to find shelter. They know where the shelters are, but getting the message out is the tricky part. It's also a part where the players have quite a bit of leeway. If you come up with a plan and it isn't total bull****, I'll probably just take it and tell you to roll for it.
3. To get the reactor to go boom, you needed to:
- Get the AI to not lock everything down immediately and accept your presence (done).
- Convince the AI not to stop what you're doing as you do it (ongoing).
- Disable the controls that keep the core from going critical without losing total control of it.
- Disable the shielding that would keep the radiation from escaping and penetrating all the decks.
- Set up a means by which these things will go back to normal operations if you can, or just shut down entirely and switch to backups if you're not good enough for that.
- Time it all so that this happens just as, or right after, Shankbot dies. You are in communication with the kill team, so it isn't impossible, just hard.

[PepperP.]

Miranda

The magenta-haired squad Captain sat in the shuttle she had pointed at where they awaited Shankbot's appearance unless things went terribly wrong with Armitage. She realized she was holding her breath when her lungs began to burn. She exhaled and forced herself to breathe. After what seemed like an eternity, the man returned. She could tell he was hurt by the lurch in his step but she narrowed her focus down to her enemy and began to blast the bot as the first hint of silver appeared in her sights.

Blast the Shankbot!
[roll0]

[Lord Of Mantas]

June

Ji-Yun blinked dumbly at Deneb's... well, words failed her at what she was attempting.

But, by all appearances, it was working, and it had gotten them in, so there really wasn't any time or reason to complain.

Cracking her artificial knuckles, the scientist began her own work as Deneb attempted to distract the AI. One of the biggest things that needed taking care of was sending a shipwide message to whoever was out of their pods to take shelter. A timed instant message that could be activated at a later time would work, but she would need to get into the shipwide comms.

June will try to access the communications network in order to program an artificial alert that can be activated at will - say, right as we're in the process of shutting down the reactor but with time enough to leg it to a shelter.

I am adding Intelligence, Multitool, and STEM. [roll0]

[TheDarkDM]

Graham

Leaning out the side door of the dropship, Graham's knuckles were white as he fought down the nausea. He'd always felt at home on proper spacecraft, but atmospheric flight was a constant battle against his rebelling intestines. As the sounds of the oncoming kill-drone began to echo with alarming volume towards them, he hefted the ship's mounted carbine, fighting the urge to hold it too tightly for fear of being unable to pull the trigger. His heart pounded in his ears, almost loud enough to drown out Shankbot, until suddenly Armitage was hurtling through the air with laser burns erupting from his back. Time slowed as Graham's heart seemed to stop, all focus suddenly on the drone and it's armored legs. Reaching out with power he still didn't fully understand, he grabbed the armored shields and wrenched them aside, intent on giving Captain Rodriguez the opening she needed. At the back of his mind, he marveled as his fingers moved on their own, laying down suppressing fire as best they could.

4 Telekinesis + 1 Magnitude (and maybe some more)

[roll0]

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte, Various

The massive anti-personnel machine, sometime known as "Shankbot," skated and hopped its way into the hangar and was met with all available force. The Mongoose dutifully and cheerfully fired on command, Miranda shooting a split second later and preceded only by Graham's improvised psionic attack.

Nothing else about any fight with Shankbot had been clean, and this was no exception. The machine twirled to open fire but was fouled by the psychic power. It fired anyway, cacophonous rail cannons ripping up huge furrows of superheated plating from the hangar deck and shredding the small craft beyond. While drained of fuel and unable to explode or burn, the craft still disintegrated and threw radiant, burning shrapnel behind it in a burst that would have killed any living thing standing in the way, had that part of the room not been empty.

Then the rocket arrived. Even for all of its punch, it only put a solid dent in the outer casing of Shankbot's main sphere, and the robot immediately began warming up its laser weaponry. Before that could fire, Miranda's shuttle attack caught up to it - the kick had rocked even the large shuttle in place, hanging precariously as it was from its mounting rack, but the cyborg pilot's correction scythed fire up and through the machine's damaged plating. At long last, a passenger of the Nova Forte hit something vital on the murderous robot, twisting it in place opposite the rotation placed on it by Graham, wrenching two legs off and dropping it 'sideways.' The violet beams sputtered and died out.

Having seen several other examples of their attackers, the primary surprise - indeed, the only thing that caught the two psychics off guard - was that Shankbot did not immediately melt. Instead, it stuttered and twitched in place, with Merlin displaying the unsettling fact that it was somehow healing.

But it would have no time.

"Attention all points. Attention all passengers. Class 3 Radiation threat is imminent. Seek shelter immediately. Class 3 Radiation threat is imminent. Seek shelter immediately." The message repeated, loudly over the PA and implant alike, and Merlin assured the trio that, its armor breached, Shankbot would be unable to survive this. Their task disconcertingly complete, the trio hurried to the bunker at the far side of the hangar.

***

In the reactor core, things were somehow even noisier. Deneb's skills were sufficient to get the sabotage perpetuated by the others through undetected, but not to shut off the numerous alarms, alerts, or nastygrams, nor the ranting of the incensed guardian AI, who was swearing revenge upon those assembled unto the seventh generation, though it was unclear if he was referring to children or operating systems. Regardless, there was - not coincidentally - a radiation shelter very close to the core that was one of the most durable on the entire vessel, and it was time for them to hide, however briefly.

And then there was silence.

***

The radiation was not a spectacular threat, not a visible one, especially not inside the windowless safe rooms. After what seemed like an eternity, but which their implants assured them was only five minutes, Merlin gave the go-ahead for them to emerge.

Disappointingly little had changed in the reactor room, save that the guardian AI was quiet, as were the alarms, as was the reactor. The ship had switched to backups, which was an issue for later. For now, Merlin directed them to the ops center...

***

The hangar where Shankbot had made its last stand was also largely the same. Scarred - almost ruined, really - but at least it hadn't died alone. Shankbot was no longer healing. In fact, the interior looked thoroughly burned out. With its armor ruined, the war machine had gotten the delicate-electronics-in-a-microwave treatment when the core had gone off, and it had apparently barbecued even the mechanism that informed the enemy robotics that it was time to self destruct. The Nova Forte's scientists would no doubt like a look at the thing... if any remained. They were urged to join the other survivors in the ops center without delay.

Nova Forte, Central Ops
Everyone

It was a motley crew that had assembled, deep within the core of the vessel, and no one seemed predisposed to talking. There was no more gunfire, no more distant explosions, only a tired sort of gloomy triumph that had settled across them. Apart from the seven involved in the final push, Dr. Novinski had arrived, as had a small band of others - a young, apparently married couple, an old man who looked like he'd stepped out of a wine commercial, classy suit and all, a pair of wide-eyed children, and Ace. Merlin, notably, was absent.

Ace was the first to break the silence. "Well... now what?"

[Nefarion Xid]

"Okay, so I'm obvy super psyched that we saved everyone, but, like, I'm starting to think this throbbing pain my Broca's Area is kind of a big deal. Swearsies, I might need brain surgery. Like... sooner is gonna be better for me thanks." Deneb's left eye wasn't cooperating with the rest of her and she'd been rubbing the heel of her hand into her temple for several minutes now. Rubbing gave way to percussive maintenance, but before anyone could restrain her from self harm, her eye corrected itself and she seemed to perk up.

"Oh no, there it goes. You guys, I fixed it!"

[Lord Of Mantas]

June

June frowned with concern as Deneb's voice warbled and changed.

"Are you okay? I'm no medical expert but I didn't think post-traumatic accent changing was a thing..."

She then addressed Ace's question to the room at large.

"Now that our attackers think we're all dead, we have a lot more breathing room. Off the top of my head, waking up the rest of any surviving crew, as well as seeing if we can get eyes on the outside and possibly do some scouting, would both be high up on the priority list."

[Jade_Tarem]

"A lot of us are dead." Novinski's flat interjection sailed through the air like a thrown dagger. "Four hundred thousand passengers aboard; twenty-six thousand, nine hundred and eighty-six dead. Fourteen thousand, five hundred and fifty-one injured or experiencing stasis complications due to battle damage. One thousand, two hundred and eleven stage-one crew... one survivor." She gave Graham a look. "Two thousand and fifty-eight stage-two crew members, about half surviving. This is the largest single loss of life since the Jovian Flu hit Europa... unless this is the only surviving vessel of the Terra Nova expedition, in which case it is only the fifth largest."

She glanced at the main projector, which sprang up with the unsettling message: MERLIN IS RELOADING FROM BACKUPS. PLEASE WAIT...

Without further ado, reams of log messages shot past, too fast to track, even for Miranda, though no red error messages flashed by. Novinski shrugged, "At any rate, waking up everyone would be a horrid mistake. Even before this crash, the awakening was to happen in stages - we need arcologies, gardens, water sythesizers, shelters... all sorts of things have to be set up to support four hundred thousand people. We will need to be careful about who and how many we wake up, and at what times."

[PepperP.]

Miranda

Still tingling with the excitement of the successful battle, the magenta-haired pilot stepped forward purposefully as she interrupted the two doctors in their conversation.

"I've seen what's outside and I still don't believe it. The planet we've found ourselves on has already been developed... and seemingly destroyed or abandoned." She ran a hand through her mussed hair and mussed it further.

"Maybe our people beat us there while we were delayed in stasis. Maybe it's a whole lotta Shankbots down there. Who knows?" She shrugged.

"I happen to be a pilot and a scout." She turned her head in Graham's direction, her eyes bright with eager anticipation of a mission.

"Permission to go scouting, Sir?"

[Othniel]

Ellie

"If it's all right," Ellie's voice sounded small, hesitant. "I would like to see if my family is still alive."

[zabbarot]

Dr. Moon

"I've already reviewed the atmospheric data. I am very confident one of the other ships beat us here. There are clear indicators that my terraforming process was used, so the only question is what did these idiots do to each other while we were lost in space?" The doctor spoke matter of factly, but his tone also conveyed a bit of his own detachment from the situation.

[Tychris1]

Operative A-3 didn’t have anything to say on the matter. He sat recalcitrantly against a slab of metal while routinely examining his needler and disassembling it. He never took his helmet off. This wasn’t beyond his paygrade but it was certainly beyond all previous experience he held. Nothing in the simulations quite matches this scale. Or this apocalyptic severity. His entire chain if command was decimated. The sole link he had to his previous department a man accidentally stumbling through his field whilst shouldering the weight of meat space command.

What a **** fiesta.

Tightening his boots he looked at each other person in the room with personal gravitas, attempting to see who would need his help the most, and who he would need to camp on in the coming trials.


[roll0]

[Nefarion Xid]

Deneb rolled her eyes in full view of Novinsk. This was a bad situation, but a lot of brave people had made it less bad. It wasn't her fault some alien had harpooned the ship.

Her thoughts dwelled on her shifting accent of all things. Mentally playing back some audio of what she'd just said, she was made aware of her new lilting Californian inflection. Deneb attempted to cross her arms once (a force of habit), then grunted and shoved her hands into the safety of her hoodie's pockets. "Like, foreign accent syndrome is totally a thing," she did her thinking aloud next to June. "But that's not what this is. They put like, a lot of hardware in my head and something is either defective or the stress is not playing nice with all my implants. Totes could be radiation damage. I'm probs getting some crosstalk between my amygdala and nucleus accumbens and it's like... tweaking my Broca's. Like, honestly, I spent a lot of time alone growing up and I kind of watched, like, every movie and TV show ever and I'd practice all the accents and dialects. I'm seriously just glad I'm not speaking broken Russian right now, although Professor Petrov would be so proud of me, you guys."

[TheDarkDM]

Graham

Stepping forward at Miranda's prompting, Graham coughed to draw the room's attention. His mind was spinning with the implications of what the Captain and the Doctor had uncovered, but some new part of his mind helped push that aside. Though he was far from his comfort zone, he wasn't about to abandon his duty.

"Thank you doctor. I agree that awakening the crew would be premature at the present time. Even disregarding the mysteries uncovered by Captain Rodriguez and Doctor Moon, we still don't have a clear picture of what the reactor scram did to the ship's power systems. Or what it did to Merlin. We need an inventory of functional systems, along with an accurate census of crew status."

His eyes flicked to Ellie.

"Including your family. Following that, I believe our first objective should be the restoration of communications and basic medical capabilities. Anyone capable of damage control or ship engineering has a great deal of work ahead of them."

He paused, audibly exhaling.

"Then, once communications have been restored, I will lead a reconnaissance force to scout the surrounding area and get a clearer picture of our situation."

[Lord Of Mantas]

June

"Engineering and robotics are my wheelhouses. Point me at the damage and I can get things running again, easy."

[Othniel]

Ellie

Ellie nodded gratefully to Graham. "I can help with the medical capabilities. I'm a surgeon by training, though I also know something about robotics as well," she added with a glance at June. "Whatever is necessary."

[Jade_Tarem]

Nova Forte, Ops Center

The log messages whizzing by seemed to have entered their final phase. Ace was the first to speak, and joined June's assertion. "Ah, yeah, I'm with ya there, but we need more guys if we're going to make any real headway - at least a few dozen even if we do everything with teams of robots. It's just that big, and most of this was supposed to be done in micrograv..."

"And with undamaged equipment."

"Perhaps introductions are in order." The older man finally spoke up, his voice hard to place. Something from the northern parts of Mars, maybe? Either way, it managed to catch the attention of at least those who'd been in the room when the kill team and the reactor group had arrived. "It would help to get a good sense of who is already awake and what we are best equipped to deal with. I am Orin Einsheld, of the Martian Einsheld protectorate, formerly of the AEU. I was awakened by an AI misfire when my pod was damaged. My skills are mostly administrative, though I have undergone the most recent rounds of counter-espionage training available from the Marineris Conference, as well as possessing several systems engineering certifications."

"I, uh, I'm Monaj Rai and this is Viveki." The younger couple gave a nervous bow to the room. "We're AgriCorp specialists, spent most of our careers so far working on ways to make higher yields out of crops grown in Uttar Pradesh." Monaj's wife picked up his train of thought, "We were working on... I think the English translation was 'supersoil,' but we were both very devoted to the job, learned a great deal about growing food in harsh conditions - all those recent droughts in northern India, you know. It's why we were picked for the expedition."

"We were citizens of the IAA, naturally, but we gave that up like everyone else."

Novinski folded her arms and leaned back against a workstation. "I don't believe I need an introduction. You all know who I am."

"We do?" The older of the two children - a tow-headed girl - blurted out. "Was that on the intro video?"

"..." The doctor sighed. "Alright, maybe not all of you. I am Dr. Natalya Novinski, the expedition's chief stasis expert. It's my system that everyone has been held in for the last eight hundred years. Not counting the added stress and battle damage, it's held up well. I have several other credentials, mostly medical, but my specialty was always anagathics and suspended animation."

The kids looked completely lost until finally Orin leaned down to speak to them. "She invented the sleep pods, and she's older than she looks."

"Ooooohhhh!" They said in unison. The girl added. "I'm Jane. This is John. Mom... other grown ups call her Dr. Doe... she joined the police an' crime-fighting group."

"She works on dead people," the boy - John - added.

"Yeah. That. We haven't seen her since we woke up. There was just Mr. Merlin telling us to come here. Have you seen her?"

The others all shared a glance, but no one had. Novinski shrugged. "Even with the casualties, odds are good that she's still in stasis. What does your father do?"

"Dad... dad was killed a year ago. That was kinda when she decided to join this trip. We had a family meeting and decided to start over in a new system."

"I... see. I am sorry for your loss." Novinski rubbed at the bridge of her nose. "Where did you live before this?"

"Fidelity, on Io. It's part of the ULN! We just finished learning about all that in school." John stated, proudly.

"I'm Anthony Derrick, but my friends all call me Ace. People who have recently gotten shot at with me get counted as friends." Ace cut in smoothly. "I was picked to be part of the orbital ops group, stage 2 crew and all, but I've got other skills. I grew up here and there... New York, Canada, even Florida until the flooding got real bad."

Early in the 22nd Century, political tensions among nations over a combination of territory, diminishing oil, and a series of assassinations nearly led to World War 3 in an event now known as the Great Scare. Endless study has since been conducted on the events of the time, and numerous film adapations have been made - A Darker Sky being the most famous, having won seven Oscars - and historians still argue about its causes, influences, and implications. While Nuclear War was narrowly averted, it had a decisive impact on the world's political structure.

As did mankind's forays into space.

In the wake of a series of hectic redrawings of alliances and treaties, the world was roughly split into what were, at the time the expedition was launched, four major Power Blocs. The first to solidify was the United League of Nations composed of the United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico, the Greater South American Assembly (GSAA) and associated territories. It was followed by the Indo-African Alliance, Composed of Most of the nations of Southern Asia, including China, Korea, Vietnam, India, and nearly all of south and central Africa. They were finally joined by the Advanced Eurasian Union, composed of what was left of the old EU, a begrudging Russia, a large portion of the middle east and, somewhat unintuitively, several North African and eastern South American states.

Everyone in the developed world received a citizenship - or not - in accordance with their home nation, but also received Bloc Citizenship in relation to which one they'd been born into. More importantly, when humanity took to the rest of the solar system, each territory was included in one of the blocs for the purposes of policy, taxation, and so forth. Another minor scuffle - including limited armed conflict - between Bloc loyalists and several Outer Planet colonies resulted a fourth Bloc - the Celestial Grant.

All Bloc and national citizenships had to be renounced prior to the Terra Nova expedition, though. No one, least of all the expedition leaders, figured that every bit of national pride and every political grudge would stay behind in the Sol system, but they took what steps they could to limit the effect that old Earth politics would have on the expedition's fresh start. Every member of the Terra Nova expedition was given a citizenship to be applied system-wide upon arrival, with rights and responsibilities as listed in the Terra Nova Charter. The human and civil rights afforded to citizens all followed the same basic pattern across all blocs and carried over to the Charter, with all of the curve balls mostly residing in business and governance.

[Tychris1]

"I'm Armitage. I work security." The tall waif of a man stood up finally. He was bedecked in a simple jet black sleek uniform. Short rounded shoulder pads of a dark blue material made of a strangely reflective ceramic material rested on his thin but hawk like frame and was the only distinguishing marker aside from the badge on his chest which read a simple XX. His enclosing helmet was pitch black with small silver lines coursing through it and integrating into the neck of his suit running throughout the rest of his body like invisible veins.

He still smelt vaguely of burnt flesh and melted fused rubber.

The air around him was stained with the moving fluxing blood of emotion seeping from each mind laid bare. Save the Captain that is. A dark and desolate void. A rock. An island. Adrift in the sea. This palette of the human spectrum was tangible to the Operative, his eyes trained minds eye witnessing it as one would an aurora borealis swirling amidst them in the cosmos, and focused solely on the discordant and troubled notes of a comely woman.

"That's about it." He added finally and dully, giving a nod to Graham, and moving to pack the rest of his gear for external reconnaissance.

"Hello," He began to telepathically ease into the woman's brain "I don't know exactly what your situation is or what's happened to you in the past few hours but you're not alone in feeling overwhelmed. Or terrified. I'm an agent of peace and accountability not an apocalypse scavenger. This whole situation is so breathtakingly and surrealy ****ed so many ways sideways I'm not arrogant enough to assume I can do anything significant to stop it. But I'm going to try anyway. It's the only move forward. Even if you don't want to, or you're too afraid to, and feel like you can't that's okay. Just relax and help yourself. I'm Armitage, who are you?"

[Nefarion Xid]

"Not again!" Deneb whimpered (too herself as she was altogether being ignored as an unimportant and misplaced liability), bonking herself in the head to make the voices stop. Around the third thwack, she settled her eyes on the tall boy who seemed to want to calm her.

"I am calm! That's a lie." She thought loudly. "Oh **** I don't have any control over my thoughts. This isn't fair. **** ****s. Elephant ****ing **** nuggets! Don't think that, you freak! The **** is wrong with you? Oh. Oh no. He thinks you're weird. Don't think about... anything! Focus! Two point seven one eight two eight one eight two eight four five nine... ****. Three? Yeah **** it. It's three. That's enough ****ing precision."

She stared petrified at Armitage in wide-eyed horror at her inability to control her inner voice.

[Lord Of Mantas]

June

"Ji-Yun Seong-Ziegler. I also answer to June or Doctor. A pleasure to meet all of you, although I wish it were under better circumstances." June inclined her head in greeting. "I grew up in Korea, as you can probably guess. I have a doctorate in robotics, and specialize in working with drones and cybernetics." June flexed one of her cybernetic arms, then retracted her right hand to show off her implanted multitool before returning it to its normal state. "My husband and I were selected as part of orbital operations and repairs, with the understanding that I could also assist with hazardous material handing and exploration if needed. I also have basic small arms training."

[PepperP.]

Miranda

Miranda looked impressed at the doctor's display of cybernetics and leaned in for a closer look.

"Niiice. Your own design?" She pulled open her uniform flight suit to reveal a standard issue white tank top beneath and a metal arm of her own. She pulled her arm out of her sleeve and flexed it for the doctor.

"I got this after BBII" She wiggled her fingers.

"I wouldn't mind an upgrade though..." She realized with a start.she hadn't introduced herself to half of the room yet.

"I'm Rodrigues." She smiled ruefully at herself as she tied the arms of the jumpsuit around her waist, leaving her shoulders bare.

"Captain Miranda Rodrigues, formerly of the ULN, currently of the Terra Nova air forces. My main talents lie in scouting and piloting but I fixed some modems earlier with Merlin's help. I'm sure I could help with getting Communications up and running again."

[Lord Of Mantas]

June

June smiled briefly at Miranda's question. "It was a joint venture between my husband and I, actually." She frowned, a look of worry on her face. "Hopefully, he is still fine... The AI that woke me up said his light was green at the last check-in, but who knows with everything that's happened."

"As for upgrades, talk to me when things have calmed down a bit, and I'll see if I can't help you squeeze some more capacity out of that little number."

[Tychris1]

”Wow. Okay. None of that is true,” He sat down beside the nervous woman “Most of all me calling anyone weird. We’re thinking at each other. Doesn’t get odder.” He placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder and gave her a light squeeze “And just from the manner of how you handle stress you seem... wicked smart I think the term is.” The psychic agent nodded his head “You don’t have to do show and tell if you aren’t interested.”


[roll0]

[Nefarion Xid]

Despite being arguably world famous, Deneb had little experience in getting hugged by strangers. Training, sure, but not much in the way of field experience. Still, the psychic soothing had its intended effect and she seemed to melt, into a woman shaped turtle in a shell of spandex and polyester. Most of her face sunk into the safety of her hoodie. Her thoughts turned to Gen CXXVII Pokemon.

"Cylocanth. Puppercorn. Squashlord. Pumpking. Canilism. Hey, so, I got a lot on my mind. Like, not in a metaphorical way." Subdued, her inner voice was closer to her authentic one, or at least the way she imagined she spoke. Not eloquent, but at least... cultured wasn't the right word for it. She a non-accent like you'd get from a lifetime on a space station. Posh was a better word. Expensive would be accurate.

"I've got three implants in my head that I know of. I don't think they're playing nice right now. How's your neuropsych?" She waited for an answer. "Eh, don't worry about it. I probably need them removed, but that's gonna be a low priority for this ragtag crew that's just trying to survive and keep everyone else on the ship alive. So, I just feel kind of ****y. I didn't lose anyone. I mean, I got a fiance and I should probably see if he's alive... but. I stand by what I thought. I don't belong here. I'm not stupid. People think I'm stupid. Probably because of the way I look. I'm smart, I just don't have any skills that are useful on a ****ing broken spaceship! I got a master's degree in electrical engineering, but only because I was really bored in my early twenties! Who doesn't have a ****ing master's degree? We're sitting in a room with like fifteen PhDs!"

She paused a tick to allow herself to calm down once more. "You want a hug? You look pretty beat up. I don't know anything about medicine, but you look like you need a squish and a nap."

[Othniel]

Ellie

"Oh, if we are introducing ourselves properly, then I am Doctor Eleanor Stewart. Please call me Ellie. I have backgrounds in medicine and engineering, and I specialize in surgery, prosthetics, and theoretical transhumanism. I'm on board with my husband, Joshua, who is a geologist and my two daughters, Amelie and Brigitte, who are..." She paused and glanced around the area as if searching for them. She took a deep breath and nodded. "Well, they are all here somewhere, I hope."

[Tychris1]

Armitage wasn't entirely certain if the busty woman beside him was having a stroke or not when she began to list a streak of gibberish. After her mental capacity continued unabated he figured it to be a simple calming exercise and continued flicking brainwaves sideways in relative harmony. "I'm strictly forbidden from trying to perform telekinesis in other peoples brains. Accords you know," he shrugged as if he had personally witnessed the deep morally disturbing and intense drawing of lines for moral psychic use from planetary governments "And if there's one thing my job has taught me it's that having an underestimation on you is more a benefit then a hindrance. There's apparently a whole wrecked civilization outside our doorstep and a smart person who knows electronics seems like the perfect candidate to mine useful junk from it. It'd be an amazing world shaking development in any other instance."

He lightly touched his horribly burnt back and felt his mind twinge and threaten to sever its tether before he grit his teeth and held fast. "I don't know how great physical contact on a relatively fresh laser wound is, but I wouldn't reject a sign of good faith. We'll be needing plenty."

He stood up and gave Ellie a once over before vocally stating "I think I'm suffering from light shock, stasis paralysis, and second or maybe even third degree burns. I would appreciate a check up at your earliest convenience, Doctor." He stiffly sat down again.

[Othniel]

Ellie

"My goodness; of course!" Ellie started, realizing the man next to her was wounded. Quickly she unslung her medical kit and started to examine Armitage for life-threatening injuries.

[Nefarion Xid]

Deneb paused in the middle of her come-to-mama gesture, waving Armitage into her embrace. "Oh, yeah that's probably a good idea. Kay. You get patched up. We'll cuddle later, baby."

Having been occupied by telepathic chatter, she assumed it was her turn to introduce herself to the group. She stood, tugging on her hoodie as it rode up.

"Heey. I'm Deneb. I don't have a last name, but my username on most platforms is @DenebStardust or @MissStardust." She turned suddenly to the hovering Cambot to throw up a lighting fast peace sign and made an automatic kissy face. A second passed and everyone behind her received a notification from one media service or another that they had been tagged in a photo. Automated editing corrected everyone who was caught mid blink. Deneb managed to look effortlessly flirty, but casual.

"Oh jeez. I'm sorry everyone. He just does that when I mention my username. That's a reflex on my part too. I'll turn Cecil off." Deneb grabbed for the orb, then powered him down.

"Um. I'm a model. And a voice actor. I don't know if anybody played Paizuri no Tenshi 3, but I'm Fumiko! I don't speak Japanese so just learned all my lines phonetically. I could never get past the start menu, so I don't really know what the game is about. I'm gonna say 'horror adventure', because they asked me to scream a lot. Oh. And I got a master's in Double E, so I technically know my way around a circuit diagram. And I got a master's in clinical psychology if you want some unlicensed talk therapy. And uh... oh yeah I'm engaged to Domenic Bouchard."

Deneb's presence suddenly made sense to anyone familiar with anagathics, or just a long list of the richest men in Sol. Bouchard's family held the patent on several anti-aging therapies. Since the fabrication of such medicines was still a closely held trade secret, he'd be rich in the new world as well.

"Engaged. Not married." She wiggled her hips, glancing in Dr. Moon's direction.

[Lord Of Mantas]

June

At Deneb's mention of Paizuri no Tenshi 3, Ji-Yun most certainly did not whistle innocently while looking to the side. It certainly wasn't like she'd tried looking into the series in an effort to try and spice up her own love life or anything. Or any other he - err, visual novels, for that matter. That would just be shameful.

And she most certainly was not jealous of Fumiko's massive - on second thought, best to stop that train of thought right there, psychics in the room.

As Ellie attended to Armitage, she spoke up. "Off the top of my head, I don't think there's anything that can be done without a proper clinic, but if I'm wrong and you have anything in your supplies that can take the edge off stasis sickness I'd appreciate it once you're done patching him up."

[TheDarkDM]

Graham

Nodding along to the introductions, it took Graham a moment to realize that in his nervousness he'd managed to omit his own name and rank. As the medical professionals began attending to Armitage's lingering injuries, he turned to Novinski.

"Doctor, given your credentials I think you're best qualified to oversee our check of the stasis systems. Agent Armitage will serve as your escort once his wounds have been tended to. Mr. Derrick, I'd like you to accompany them as well. Follow the Doctor's instructions, but your priority is a survey of the ship's superstructure. We may not have active sensors across the ship even once damage control is operational, and I want to know if we're in danger of snapping in half."

He rounded on Ellie, his speech coming faster and more naturally as self-consciousness melted into trained crisis response.

"Doctor, your priority is the establishment of the triage center. Once Merlin is online he will no doubt have recommendations but I leave the operational details to your discretion. Captain Rodrigues, I'd like you to accompany the doctor and act as security. Ms...Deneb, I'd like you to accompany them as well. Follow Captain Rodrigues's orders, and once we've reestablished medical capabilities run a complete diagnostic on your cerebral implants."

His nod was an attempt at being reassuring, but there was a distance to his concern. If they could diagnose the damage to Deneb, then perhaps...

"I will lead an expedition to the bridge to try and restore the ship's control systems and activate our damage control drones en masse. Doctor Moon, Doctor Seong-Ziegler, Mister Einsheld, you are the most qualified to interface with ship systems, so you'll be accompanying me. Mister and Missus Rai, please remain in the shelter with the children."

Graham drew himself up to his full height, trying to project an aura of authority.

"We'll keep comms channels open at all times. My name is Graham Gore, Acting Captain as of twenty-one-hundred hours. As of this moment, Captain Rodrigues is acting XO. Stay safe and alert out there."

[Nefarion Xid]

Whispering loudly to Miranda, "What's an 'eckso'?"

[PepperP.]

Miranda

"Sir." Miranda nodded sharply in recognition of her orders and his command. Her eyes fell to the other rosy haired woman, Deneb?, as she "whispered" her query.

"Executive Officer. It means I'm his second-in-command." She tried to keep the pleasure at her new rank from her voice and didn't quite succeed, even if it was likely to be a temporary promotion. She took in the civilian woman all slouched and shrunken beneath her hoodie and did a double-take as she noticed the gun.

"Do you know how to use that?" She kept her voice neutral, knowing that often the quickest way to alarm a person with a firearm was to threaten to take it away from them.

"I can give you some pointers, if you'd like."

[Nefarion Xid]

"I downloaded and read the operations manual." She gestured with the gun pointed at the floor. Her finger was off the trigger and the safety was actually on. "I found a fabricator and printed it off cuz, you know, I saw alien robots shred a world famous soccer player and I didn't have anything useful in my suitcase except a camera and a vibrator. And the vibrator only worked as a distraction once cuz one of the robots was blind." For once, the animation and drama was gone out of her. She was totally serious.

Turning to the crowd, she asked, "Hey, does anyone who's not just held guns in video games want this?"

[Lord Of Mantas]

June

June analyzed the pistol she'd been given earlier, then shook her head. "I'm good." She then turned to Graham. "I'm ready to head out when you are, captain."

[PepperP.]

Miranda

Miranda opened her mouth to tell Deneb she should keep the gun, but the words died on her lips. What had Graham said? Her cerebral implants needed diagnostics?

"Sure. I can use it." Miranda gently took the proffered firearm and tucked it safely away.

"Dr. Ellie, please lead us to the triage center. Deneb, stay close."

[Othniel]

Ellie

"I can bring you to where I believe our best option lies," the doctor answered. She spoke as she checked over her own supplies she'd recovered thus far. A fully-stocked, fully-staffed hospital would be lovely just now, she mused. She was the more hands-on type, and detested administrative work. She hoped she wouldn't get stuck with that job, especially with her family's conditions still unknown. "If memory serves, there are multiple locations on board that make suitable triage centers, with smaller medical units scattered about. One of the larger locations would work best, I believe. Then, once we awaken more medical personnel, the smaller units can be staffed and patients with more life-threatening conditions can be funneled to us at the primary."

I'm assuming there are multiple med centers on a ship this big, perhaps smaller ones more interspersed and larger ones a bit further apart meant for treating worse injuries?

[Nefarion Xid]

En route to the med bay...

"Hey, I gotta tell you guys, I don't really like medical doctors. I mean, the last time I saw one I blacked out and gained 8 kilos. Ha! That's... that's a plastic surgery joke..." Caught in perpetual existential rictus, Deneb actually shot finger-guns at Ellie and Miranda.

"... yeah I don't have a lot of friends." The lilting Valley girl accent made the pouty revelation sound less depressing. "I grew up in a space station and got raised by computers and media catalogs. My grad advisor was an AI. He didn't think I was funny either. Um... but what about you guys? Anybody got a less depressing backstory?"

[PepperP.]

Miranda

The Squad-Captain turned to look at the chattering woman dubiously as she shot off her finger guns.

"Mmmm... huh." She commented noncommittally though she had occasionally wondered if a plastic surgeon couldn't rid her of her facial scars. She rubbed the scar above her eyebrow inadvertently as the woman kept up the nervous chit-chat.

"My family's from São Paulo." She paused as she wondered momentarily if São Paulo still existed.

"I had one sister, one brother. Dad was also a pilot..." A famous, well-known war-hero pilot but that wasn't important anymore. She sighed audibly.

"He died before I left. That's pretty much it." She winced as she relayed the very limited scope of her life experience.

"****, now I'm depressed too." She stopped abruptly as they reached the med bay and readied her weapon just in case.

"Let me go in first and make sure it's all clear."

[Nefarion Xid]

"Yeah, I guess people don't exactly become colonists because they got a lot back in Sol." Deneb continued to chatter despite Miranda doing an all important security sweep. "But you could meet someone nice here! Ya know, in this busted up ship that is the last fragile remnant of our civilization.......... hey what about Captain Graham Cracker? He's kinda cute."

[PepperP.]

Miranda

"Graham Cracker?" She smirked despite herself. It was a damn cute nickname.

"I'm gonna worry about survival before I worry about survival of the species..." She shot over her shoulder even as she thoroughly checked the med bay for possible threats.

[Nefarion Xid]

Deneb squeaked! "Oh no! What if they sent all the girls off so they could discuss a breeding program!? Like in Doctor Strangelove? I'm nobody's baby factory! That is for naughty role-play only!"

[PepperP.]

Miranda

Miranda turned a horrified face to Deneb.

"No I do NOT think that's why they sent us off! B-besides, there were other women in the group!" She paused, forehead crinkled in thought.

"They were probably not too old to have kids. I think." She shrugged.

"Nobody is forcing me to be any kind of factory, baby or otherwise." Her forehead re-crinkled with a mixture of vague curiosity and aversion.

"Role Play huh? Military sex is much more perfunctory than that, in my experience..."

[Othniel]

Ellie

"I already have children," Ellie said quietly. "At least, assuming they survive this."

[Nefarion Xid]

Deneb pouted, clearly capable of sympathy even though she was often clueless and irreverent. "I know hon. They're a big priority! I'm not really good at a lot of stuff, but I'm gonna do what I can. We're gonna save people!"

[Tychris1]

If the psychic weapon felt any displeasure as Ellie worked on his horrid wounds he didn't verbally express it. His visor covered gaze was fixed on their newest point of command and he regarded the captain respectfully and courteously. He stood at attention as the first expedition left, placing a fist hard against his chest, and he quickly moved to intercept Doctor Novinski and Derrick.

"Are there any tools or supplies you will need for your duties? Everything I need is with me already. We should see about acquisitioning a form of transport for effective swift surveillance." He looked down at the supply of ultra powerful silly string in his disposal "And I imagine we could use some more of this in the line of temporarily keeping our ship from... Snapping in half as the captain put it."

[Jade_Tarem]

The medical center was... well, it was intact. It was a mess, but nothing important looked too broken to function. One good cleanup would probably get it into working order, though staffing it would be a challenge. For his part, Ace wandered off to one of the DCCs to start a preliminary integrity check of the main docking ring, once he was sure he was just an extra wheel for the doctor team.

The Rais were happy to take the children and camp out for a bit, and Einsheld followed instructions without complaint... but upon sending him down the next access corridor of the first deployment unit, everyone got a priority text from older man. [All Points Warning: Allison Hastings, Administrative Assistant, found dead in the security cordon of DU1. Body shows signs of plasma weapon trauma.]

[PepperP.]

Miranda

"Save people..." Miranda parroted blankly back at Deneb. Miranda had seen beyond the bay window the ruined city wastes that awaited them outside the ship. What future were they saving people for, exactly? She choked back her doubt in the face of Ellie's tremulous hope.

"Right so let's get this place cleaned up, yeah?"

[Lord Of Mantas]

June
Elsewhere, En Route to the Bridge

As June accompanied Graham, Dr. Moon, and Orin, she resisted the urge to twirl her pistol in nervousness - that would be poor trigger discipline, after all. But the atmosphere was crushing, especially now that the rush of battle had worn off. Now, there was time to think - far too much of it.

Nervously clearing her throat, June turned to Graham. "So... anyone waiting in the pods for you? Family or otherwise?"

Good gravy I am terrible at small talk.

Then, when she got the message from Orin, her face turned back to business, and she pushed a reply.

[How recent does it look?]

[Jade_Tarem]

The message comes back immediately, and the sardonicism is almost audible. [I am not a forensic analyst. However, there is still smoke coming from the wound.]

[Nefarion Xid]

Deneb takes 30 minutes to use her development suite to whip up an AI using available protocols and documents that can "live" in the med bay and instruct meatspace people on what needs to be done.

[roll0] Deneb is good at the cybers

[Tychris1]

Accompanying Doctor Novinski, Armitage lurked behind her quietly and stoically. He made no discussion with her beyond asking if she needed assistance moving through particularly rough terrain and the psychic habitually scanned the area around him for nascent thoughts or stray minds that would betray the presence of more robotic invaders. Yet most shocking for the Psionic Personell was the news he recieved over the comms. He placed a hand firmly on his tonfa and quickly folded his mental landscape in half in order to efficiently divide it and shoot it out to two different minds. To Ace he telepathically projected "Stay with Novinski and ensure she's safe. I'm trusting deeply in your combat skills and quick decision making, sir." While to Novinski he implanted "Continue your route but do so with utmost care and as slowly and methodically as possible. I will return post haste."

Sweeping through their surface level mindscapes for confirmation Agent XX left his designated route and moved to security cordon DU1.

[Lord Of Mantas]

June

June's eyes widened.

Well, that's alarming.

She immediately turned to Graham. "Should we go back him up, sir?"

[Othniel]

Ellie

"Cleaning the area is one of our first goals, yes," Dr. Stewart confirmed. She quickly strode over to the nearest console, hoping to find the system in good working condition. "We need to put together a team for this center as well. I can oversee if I must, but I am not really much of an administrator." As she spoke, she tried pulling up a database of all the occupants of the vessel's cryo units.

Ellie's gonna see if she can get a status on her family from here, and then move on to finding suitable staff to wake up and run the place.

[Jade_Tarem]

After half an hour, a triage center was, well, clean enough for some operation, though there was still no one to run it. Deneb's attempt to create an AI capable of doing so on its own only produced a level 0.5 intelligence, and this seemed to believe that everything, including photons, was evidence of Athlete's Foot. Decompiling it was seen as a mercy.

The status of Ellie's family was largely unchanged, and an exasperated Novinski assured her that she was keeping a watchdog program online specifically to monitor them.

Allison's body was as Orin Einsheld described it - facedown in DU1, with a pair of plasmic burn holes in the torso, entering through the back. Einsheld noted, perhaps redundantly, that none of their attackers had used plasmic weaponry and that the nature of the wounds fairly well ruled out a suicide.

Armitage's sweep of the ship revealed little unknown guilt and only one pang of fear unaccounted for - far to the aft - and then it was gone before he could get a fix on it. Very, very faintly, he could almost swear he heard a noise at the same time, but then it too disappeared.

Ruminations and side projects were cut off an hour later when they all finally got the message they were hoping for.

Merlin back online. Please report to central Ops.

[Lord Of Mantas]

June

June had been hoping against hope that they would be able to pick up the trail of whoever Allison, but such dreams were quashed as Armitage only got a brief fix for the signal dropped out entirely. So it was that, after uttering a brief prayer over the body, she accompanied Graham and the others to the bridge, and soon found herself elbow deep in wires as she attempted to help repair the ship's primary control systems.

Then Merlin's voice came back online, and the weight of the new world seemed to get a little lighter.

"Well, I'd not keep him waiting. Unless there's anything else, Captain?"

Unless Graham stopped her, June then began making a beeline for Central Ops.

[Tychris1]

Agent Armitage looked over the corpse with utmost detail, being careful not to disturb anything in the scene with his physical handiwork, and surgically moved himself and necessarily elements with telekinetic grace when necessary. This was the most directly brutal and malicious thing he had encountered today but it was also the closest thing to a normal job as he had gotten since he had woken up upside down and bleeding. He needed a proper autopsy, to track down those nascent emotional threads, and perhaps most mundanely eat. His stomach made clear its disatisfaction at his lack of proper nutritional awareness despite the severity of recent conditions.

"Great, tube paste." He thought to himself as he took one last picture of the scene before stowing his needler, locking the room down, and heading to rejoin Merlin.