Eclipse Phase (Private)

[TrashRabbit]

Vidar took a step back when the thing finally broke through the door. Honestly he thought it would be bigger- less people looking. He still didn't like it. He took aim and opened fire with steely determination. The automatic fire blew what was left of it's good arm off- it was messy x-risk pinata time. Bits of pulpy flesh and chitin were everywhere.

{35/55 weapons test vs failed fray. 5d10+3= 39 damage}

 

[Graystone713]

Mach Infinity​

The fuck was the point?

Mach told himself it was a waste. He wouldn't even need to fire. But of course the Exsurgent horror was too tough to be brought down like that. Of fucking course. It was too goddamn tough. Leg blown off by a missile, arm blown off by a spray of gunfire, and it was still alive, its horrible extra limbs trying in vain to prop it back up and bring it to a full bipedal stance. But it was on its knee, head forward, and had no idea he was above it. He had access to a stack-shot, and he took it. Pulsers slid out, took aim, and PEWPEW, the thing was on the ground. He didn't get a perfect stack break, but he fried enough of it to finish the damn thing off. Jesus, they made that thing WAY too real. It was still twitching, a little.
"So, does anyone here think Mr. Krabs was worth killing? Because he doesn't look to be carrying anything worth potentially getting infected. And it only took a micromissile, like twenty-something bullets, and two laser shots! Good use of our limited ammo!... So who actually wants to pick fights and listen to RJ?"
He said, hovering down to the others and doing his best to look unimpressed as he essentially offered up one hell of a leadership/dominance challenge.

 

[wickedlittlecritta]

Devin hadn't thought the mission on the Kepler had rattled him much, but he realized he was wrong when the crysacid burst through the door and he froze. He froze with the desperate hope of a rabbit chased by hounds--if I'm not moving you can't see me--his right index finger curled immobile and useless just above the trigger.

I'm not moving, you can't see me, he thought, just like he had when he'd been small, when his father was in a mood. His breaths were so small and shallow he might as well have not been taking them.

He was lucky. He didn't have to move. His team fired one after the other, smooth as butter, and then it was dead. He stared at the lump of mutated limbs and took a breath, and hated how loud and shaky it sounded.

"Would you rather have had it following us around?" he demanded of Mach. "Fuck. Fuck."

 

[TrashRabbit]

"I'm not following anybodies lead who sounds hlaf as terrified as you are," Vidar told Marcus, "Think up some good ideas and then maybe I'll forget you threatened to shoot me."
He eyed Devin, not ideal. Abbey seemed to be holding up alright. RJ still had on his post "I shot a mini missile!" smile.
"In other news, who wants to help an old man use a nanofabricator- it's still in there."

 

[ValtheStarGal]

Rushing Jaws​

Rushing Jaws takes a deep breath through human lungs at the sight of the Bruiser slumping down after an invisible pulse from Mach's laser pulsers delivers the killing blow. He trains his gun on the limbs, giving them a few seconds to confirm they are dead - and relieved further to watch them cease moving. He is given no time to savor the kill before a new argument that breaks out in the squad.

Looks like I gotta be pó on this one.

"Alright, calm down!" Rushing Jaws says, her Fury's tone hard and unimpressed by the child-sized synthmorph's attempt at a dominance display. Rushing Jaws starts pacing around the atrium in loose, curling paths now that she is free to move around, finger off the trigger of her railgun and barrel pointed away from the squad.

"I don't know what school of warfare you subscribe to, Marcus, but one of my first lessons was that you don't want an enemy behind you. Further, I don't know where you learned that charging off blind into a facility with these things running around is a good idea, but now you don't have to worry about this one-" a brief pause to nod at the crysacid carcass on the floor "-nipping at your pretty little wings while you do. Trust me when I say that the micromissle, ten bullets, and double dose of laser pulser was a small price to pay for taking this fucker out of play; if this thing had so much as tagged that shell of yours with one of those claws, you'd've been fucked."

Rushing Jaws glances at the carcass and the tangle of inert limbs surrounding it: the spurs were obliterated in the fight, and while the limbs are still dangerous, there's plenty of room to step around them and get back in to the armory.

"How's this for a plan," she starts to say: "the security armory probably has an access point into the outpost's mainframe that Abby can break into and get us access to the outpost's security cameras and surveillance systems. We can also take a look at that nanofabricator and see if there's any goodies worth cooking up - my muse can give ya a hand with that, Viddy. We might even find some extra ammo or supplies stashed away if anyone wants to do some sounding around in the armory."

"Any which way, the op's the same: rescue who we can, nab the data drives, get to Ops, get the key, bug out. I strongly advise we find out what we can ahead of time so we can pick our fights more carefully and get everyone out without ending up like John Carpenter's The Thing here. You can keep calling it a game, or take it seriously and not have to experience alien nanobots using your morph for parts to grow alien limbs with."

Spoiler: A Note on "Pó"

Those of you familiar with whales might know that they tend to congregate in pods, especially dolphins and orcas. Most pods tend to have a few elders that serve as 'leaders,' although pods tend to lack rigid social pecking orders and are much more horizontal as far as family dynamics go. What Rushing Jaws is saying here is that she now has to snap into "elder mode" and lend you her experience in order to see the pod (which funnily enough rhymes with squad) through this ordeal.

 

[wickedlittlecritta]

The Grim's soft voice filled Devin's head. [Breathe,] the Grim told him, and Devin did, roughly at first, and then steadier, until he felt more like himself and less like a terrified ten year old. Then he picked himself up and went to help Vidar and RJ, who were both fucking around with the nanofabricator with no success. Devin paused and watched them struggle a moment, because it was honestly hilarious.

"It's a good thing I have a muse who knows how to do a hack," he told them and let the Grim get to work.

[A small hack,] the Grim clarified over the TacNet to everyone, and unlocked the nanofabricator.

[Oh! They were working on projects! There's a silencer, and an imaging scope, and an expanded magazine... They're locked, but there's a monofilament sword and a smartlink too, if somebody else can do a big hack. It's gonna take a while for things to print though. The most of the stuff needs ten or fifteen minutes. The sword needs twenty, and the smartlink needs a half hour.]

[Interface roll 8/40]

 

[ValtheStarGal]

Breakout Tournament: Outpost Sigma​

Twenty minutes go by as Abby works to patch herself into the system, defeat the network firewall and automated security system, and earn the privileges she needs to get your team access to the local mesh, the rest of you standing watch for any sign of interlopers or just keeping your eyes on the inert carcass of the crysacid on the floor. Eventually, your muse directs your attention to your TacNet feed on your entoptic displays as Abby makes the final connections to sync the outpost's security feeds to your TacNet. Abby needs a moment to partition the feeds, but with her link into the network and security privileges, she is able to partition them to one active camera per feed, your muse able to cycle through the various inputs and give you eyes all over Outpost Sigma. Here is what you see...

Located just down the corridor to the left of the tram tunnel are the Hydroponics Facilities. This part of the facility is the single largest chamber within the outpost, running from the corridor down from the atrium near your location all the way to the door separating it from the Bioscience Labs.

Spoiler: Hydroponics Gardens

The first thing you see on many of the cameras within the Hydroponic Gardens is a faint haze within the air. The long rows of hydroponic gardens are filled with plants, their troughs elevated to about chest height with vertical stacks of plants that are fed light, water, and nutrients from a network of tubes. Most of the farming chamber is filled with these troughs and racks of food-bearing plants, and there are workbenches along the far walls where supplies or tools for tending to the plants manually are kept, as well as a rack for gardener drones to charge or repair as needed. There are many storage lockers along the walls - one of which looks ajar and with something dropped just outside of it. Several small fabbers are also present and seem offline. The lights seem low in the gardens, unusual given the need of the plants within for light, and you are able to further identify something off as you zero in on three strangers near the center of the garden.

Three transhumans in what look like splicer morphs are working at the center of the garden, tending to several racks of new plants. Something is very wrong with both the plants and the transhumans tending to them: instead of the natural shade of green you would expect, the plants have an odd purple coloration, and the lights around them have been dimmed and color-shifted. The transhumans around them work with slow, precise movements, and you are able to make out small growths on their skin as though they have plucked the alien flowers of these plants to adorn themselves with. Their smiles are beatific, and they carry guns.

Chemical sniffers on the cameras are picking up noxious compounds concentrated around the unknown flora but that are detected all over the garden. According to the logs attached to the feeds, the sniffers first detected them a half-hour ago, and the concentration has been steadily rising since they were first put into place, spreading from the center of the garden to fill the entire Hydroponics Garden. Chemical sniffers within cameras outside the garden have begun picking up trace amounts of the compounds outside of the gardens as well.

Beyond the right corridor, you would find the entrance to the Crew Quarters. They are a beehive of rooms that split off from several main hallways, with a central lounge and kitchen at the center of this section of the outpost. Corridors lead directly to the central plant further up the outpost, and across the main sub-corridor from the Hydroponic Gardens.

Spoiler: Crew Quarters

Camera coverage within the crew quarters is somewhat sparse given the outpost crew's desire for privacy, but there are plenty of cameras in and around the lounge area and into the corridors surrounding the crew quarters. The lounge is reasonably well-equipped for an operation of this sort with makers and entertainment consoles for traditional video games, more modern sim-games, and a holoprojector along with long, comfortable couches and sofas. The kitchen beyond is also equipped for traditional styles of cooking. It would be almost homey if not for the dead bodies.

There are several dead morphs within the room, the nature of their deaths being unclear from cursory examination. There are the tell-tale signs of a firefight: bullet holes riddle the walls and the furniture has been torn up or knocked aside as makeshift cover. Blood splatters are all over the walls near the fallen bodies, and the cameras watching the entrances to the bunkrooms show you that two of them have been torn off their hinges. The cameras can't get a good view inside, and the fate of those within is indiscernible from here.

Past the Hydroponic Gardens, along the same left side of the outpost, are the Bioscience Labs. The labs are built into sealed chambers that split off from a central chamber where data is collated and analyzed.

Spoiler: Bioscience Labs

The Bioscience Lab's central office is a ruin: the cameras show you an utter mess of computers knocked aside, workstations torn apart, and robots that have been savaged by unknown assailants - some of which have spurs growing out of their ruined chassis. Alarms are going off within the lab, and three of the four doors to the four laboratory spaces within this section of the outpost have been sealed. One of the doors has a wide hole, as if something bored its way through the door trying to escape. There are clear signs of a struggle here too: workstations are riven with bullet holes and several morphs lie dead on the floor of the primary workspace.

You can see two individuals within the room that are still alive. They are huddled together, hiding behind a makeshift barricade of desks and lab equipment. Both of them hold guns, but they are both visibly shocked by what they have seen and don't look like they could put up much of a fight against any kind of real threat. There are some scattered supplies around them, food and a maker they have rigged up to fabricate some more food for them as well as various other supplies too small to tell from this vantage point.

Past the Crew Quarters and across the main sub-corridor from the Bioscience Labs is the Central Plant, complete with power generation and nanofabrication workshops. The three main sections of the Central Plant are the workshops, the main reactor, and the recycling centers.

Spoiler: Central Plant

Security coverage here is through given the importance of the facilities here and what is inside them, giving you a detailed picture of the Central Plant. Immediately obvious are the barricades that have been put up to bar access to the Central Plant. Only the access point from the main sub-corridor across from the lab is unsecured, and the cameras show you why: four individuals sleeved in some kind of borg morphs are holed up in the center of the workshop, dangerous-looking weapons trained on the doors. They have been waiting for something to come for a long time now, although it is not clear what that might be. Two of them focus intently on the killzone they have created, and the other two are sat at consoles, staring intently at the cornucopia machines that hum on as their nanobots fabricate unknown products.

The reactor chamber looks secure enough, untampered with by any meddling hands. The cameras show now interlopers in the chamber, and readouts on the security stream show all systems nominal.

The recycling facilites seem similarly intact, with no evident signs of any tampering and churning away at their tasks of recycling waste matter into feedstock for the nanofabricators of Outpost Sigma. Contamination from the Hydroponic Gardens is showing up in trace amounts within the hydrocycling systems, but at this point the recyclers are more than able to handle it for the time being.

The Garage off to the right of the atrium on your side of the outpost is a wide, two-tiered with three vehicle sub-bays equipped with atmospheric-isolation systems and doors that open out to the Lunar surface.

Spoiler: Garage

Two of the three vehicle bays are empty, the fate of their buggies unknown: only one lunar buggy remains in the garage, its chamber pressurized and waiting for transhuman operators. The garage itself is a utilitarian space, some of its systems malfunctioning but otherwise looking no worse than anywhere else in the outpost given the situation. There are some maintinence tools and storage closets along with a cornucopia machine, but no signs of life or activity from the camera feeds.

The Tram Tunnel runs the span from the atrium on your side to the atrium at the opposite end of the 500-meter long tunnel.

Spoiler: Tram Tunnel

There are several parabolic cameras within the tunnel, each positioned every one hundred meters within the tunnel and with visual-spectrum video and audio feeds.The lights inside are powered down, likely to preserve power, rendering it too dark to see anything with no high-electromagnetic-spectral abilities enabled on the cameras.

Camera T-1, positioned 100 meters away from the Ops Center atrium, is picking up noise within the tunnel. You can hear distressed grunting and the shuffling of boots on the metallic floor of the tunnel, along with what sounds like the scuttling of crustacean legs.

There is no feed from the Ops Center: attempting to access those feeds returns an ACCESS DENIED error and a black screen where the camera feed should appear. The corridors linking each of the facilities in the habitation and work levels of the outpost each have security doors that have been sealed: a number of them have been blown or otherwise compromised, but just as many seem to be holding solid.

Rushing Jaws​

A chime from the cornucopia machine alerts Rushing Jaws to the news that the imaging scope she'd set the machine to make is finished and ready for use. Taking one last look down the atrium, she turns around and trots over to the device - and sure enough, there is an imaging scope, still warm from the nanofabrication process. Attaching the imaging scope to the railgun is a trivial enough task, and it syncs with Rushing Jaws' inserts with no trouble, allowing her to see down the sight as though it were a third eye. Finger off of the triggers, she snaps on the laser sight for the micromissle launcher, ensuring it is calibrated to match the view from the scope before shutting it back off.

"Okay," she says, flicking through the various camera feeds, "looks like none of these are gonna be easy approaches. Abby, can you find out anything more about the facility - or why we can't access the Ops Center feeds from here? I think Raja Actual or whoeverthefuck mentioned something about data drives or survivors they want us to pick up, maybe we can track them down too on our way to Ops Center. Either way, we should get moving soon, we got an op to run and I don't think time is on our side here."

 

[Sophos]

"I've got nothing on the Ops Center. It's like it isn't there. The drives, though, were easy to find. First one is in that mess in the hydroponics lab. I can't vent the gas out without spending more time here trying to get more access. I can lock the doors and up the lights to an uncomfortable sunburn level in an attempt to kill those weird flowers, then those of you with armor that has enviro seals can go in and get the drive. The other two are with the survivors we can see, so probably no issues there. I hope." Abby shrugs without looking over at the others, too invested in what she was doing with the network.
"If you want, you can go ahead and I will direct you from here, then catch up at the garage or the tram tunnel?"

 

[wickedlittlecritta]

Devin squinted at the camera displays. "The guys with the flowers look like they think they're on a mission from god," he said. "I don't particularly love the odds of walking into a room full of guys who think growing things out of their own bodies is a good idea. Fanatics are fucking scary."

 

[Graystone713]

Mach Infinity
I want to drive until the streets run out.​

Mach followed the others back into the armory. Much as he wished a stealth operation was in the cards, one silencer for a party this large wasn't near enough. However, as the security feeds came in and they learned more about the situation, Mach noticed something. There was one buggy in the garage, and one outside. Four seats wasn’t enough for this party, but if they had both buggies...
“I know y’all already hate me as much as I hate you, but I can drive like a champ, and my sleeve is easily vacuum-capable. So I can get outside, grab that stranded buggy, and bring it back so a few of you can pile in. The rest take the other buggy, I can’t be the only one here who can drive. Any objections?”
He said, clearly not expecting any...

 

[TrashRabbit]

Vidar​

"There's some someones in that locker in the hydroponics lab- Those plants are not terrestrial, and they're not any of the fun hybrids making the circuit. Maybe the game made them up, but from my limited knowledge of plant toxicity and spores and spore like contagions and as some one without a ventilator I am on team UV burning them. And if we can have one less factor we should have one less factor. We can watch from here and see how it goes. The science lab seems to be the start of the crab people invasion- And if we're taking this seriously, I'd want to figure out what the fuck is going on so I'm in favor of getting the data. We also got some time until the crab boys make it down the tunnel it seems. Getting the data is what I do though." He added this with a shrug and then looked at Marcus, "Also- Marky, that is the best first good Idea I've ever heard you say."
"Also also also," He added to Abbey, "Can you please put that sword on to print who knows what will be going on in twenty minutes and also I really want to use it. like a lot."

 

[ValtheStarGal]

Rushing Jaws​

Rushing Jaws paces around the armory, listening to the team as various options are presented before speaking. "If we've been asked to extract survivors and data, I'm good for going in and getting them out of there.

"Abby, good thinking with cooking the weird shit they got going on in there, I wanna be in position outside the doors to take 'em out before going in and nabbing what we need. Depending on how messed up all the doors are, we might have to work our way through the whole outpost on our way to Ops to get everything, but we got the firepower, the ammo, and now the intel we need to plan and execute effectively."

"Way I figure it, Marcus and Devin can go get that second buggy out there, or Devin could come with Viddy and I to help talk down some of these folks or be a third gun if we run into trouble. Abby can stay back here on systems overwatch - keep us posted in case the sitrep evolves or we can find a way to restore the link to the ops center - or you can come with Viddy and I so you're not caught out without backup. Either way, that second buggy might be good to have and there shouldn't be much out there that will cause trouble, aside from the radiation."

"In any event, we need to get to the ops center. Abby, while you're on overwatch, do what you can to get us in there - we'll do what we can to assist you from inside the outpost. We might be able to avoid whatever's in the tunnel altogether by taking the buggies or by going through the facilities."

Rushing Jaws walks to the doorway, gun trained on the carcass to be sure before checking the corners and the camera feeds. "Anyone coming with me might want to swap out for the heavy body armor, the atmo-sealing on those should defeat whatever contaminant's in the air or if we find ourselves vacuum. Sounds like we got our work cut out for us, we should get to it."

 

[wickedlittlecritta]

Normally, Devin wouldn't have liked the idea of RJ and Viddy going off without him--he was the talker, after all. But he liked the idea of Marcus going off on his own even less. As a certified hot headed idiot, Devin knew one when he saw one.

Besides, that would keep him far away from the weirdos with the purple plants.

"I'l go with Marcus. It's probably safest if nobody's alone," Devin said.

 

[Sophos]

"As much as I agree with Devin, I think I should stay here for now, and at least catch up after the garden is handled. I'll work on that sword for Viddy in the mean time, and have it ready for you when we meet up again," Abby said and started to work on Plan Hot Summer Day.

 

[TrashRabbit]

The Hydroponics Garden

Mach and Devin have just left for the garage, and Abby is back in the security armory having set the cornucopia machine to make your monofilament sword. Rushing Jaws and Vidar are geared up and ready to roll. Rushing Jaws takes point, heading through the atrium - carefully stepping around the crysacid bits - and proceeds to the left-side corridor that leads to the hydroponics garden, Vidar following like her shadow.They take the stairwell that leads further down, the facilities being well-buried beneath the Lunar regolith, and then the two of them come up to a door.

Checking the camera feeds, they reveal the three transhumans in the garden serenely tending to their charges at the center of the room, a good distance away from the shut door. Unfortunately, the rows of gardens are set that they would have a direct line of sight to the door, making an infiltration attempt without distraction a risk move.

Rushing Jaws checks her ammo count and chambers a new micromissle in the launcher before saying over TacNet: [Okay Abby, we're at the door, light 'em up.]

Abby: [Gotcha. Still want me to lock the doors?]

Rushing Jaws: [Keep our access point open, otherwise yes.]

Oh also, he says to Vidar [We're not interested in prisoners, are we?]

Vidar replies: [no, but there's two people hiding in the back locker.]

Rushing Jaws: [Oh shit, good to know. Here's the play: Abby lights up the pod people, giving us cover to sneak in and set up an ambush. We take 'em out while we got the element of surprise and then get those folks out of the locker. Sound good?]

[I've always wanted to sneak up on plant cultist in broad daylight.]

Rushing Jaws would chuckle if she didn't have the training to keep quiet. [Okay Abby, hit it.]

You all watch on the security feeds as the lights go from dim to real bright, real fast: even the cameras have to adjust to reduce glare. The splicers in the center of the room throw their hands up to cover their eyes from the brightness and then start doubling over in apparent pain. Their faces all contort like they're burning, their serenity shattered. They struggle to put their tools down and begin shouting at one another to find a console and kill the lights. Two of them proceed toward the far left side of the room, the third one going directly to their right for something.

[Here's our opening,] Rushing Jaws says, nodding to Vidar as she opens the door and proceeds inside, Vidar following close behind. Soft and quick as shadows, they enter the garden. Rushing Jaws and Vidar waste no time infiltrating, the three splicers swearing and grunting in pain as they try to find some way of turning down the lights. The two of them keep low, moving like shadows amid the racks and rows of hydroponic plant trays.

[They're splitting up, which could make this tricky] Rushing Jaws beams to Vidar. [You wanna take the one on the right then come around and help me with the two on the left?]

[Got it,] Vidar responds, moving on his target.

Rushing Jaws gets into position and holds for Vidar to sneak up on his target before making her attack, drawing a bead on the transhumans at the console and holding for the first swing of his axe.


The Ambush

There's something that doesn't sit right with Vidar with performing a murder where the plants can see him. He's kept those two things very separate in his life and he’s more glad that the plants are fake than the gardener is as he comes up hard and fast on him. He springs, bringing his Axe down hard- hits bone but doesn't crack it- he swears under his breath as his victim screams. He wrenches the weapon back out of the wound it's made- deep and terrible but he was hoping not to need a second swing. I hate axeing people questions twice.

[I guess you were a little too sharp the first time!]

guess he was just dying to keep his secrets

Swing two is when he realizes the blood is purple- watching him drop to his feet.

The scream of a sape as an axe bites into their body is the only cue Rushing Jaws needs. Her shot lined up and the others still needing seconds to react, she fires: three rounds are launched from the railgun at high velocity, sailing down-range and perforating her target before slamming into the far wall and breaking the light-emitting panel beyond him. Her eyes are on the other gardener before the first one even starts to fall, seizing the initiative to take her out before she can counter-attack.

Knowing she has to follow up quickly, Rushing Jaws takes only a split-second to aim down the scope of her railgun, the other gardener looking at her with a mixture of bewilderment, fury, and a promise of vengeance. She leaps out of the way just as Rushing Jaws pulls the trigger, her high-velocity slugs narrowly missing the gardener as she leaps out of the way and behind a cultivar. Swearing, Rushing Jaws gets back into cover, pointing her rifle around the corner and using its imaging scope like a third eye.

She watches as the furious gardener draws her gun - a heavy pistol that could do some serious damage if the shot landed. She aims, but the shot is rushed and she is distracted: the rapport of the gun fills the hydroponic garden and the bullet strikes the floor a couple of feet away from Rushing Jaws, who catches Vidar in the corner of her entoptics, axe at the ready. The scope lets Rushing Jaws see how unprepared the gardener is for what’s coming to her, and she smiles an orca grin beneath her helmet.

There is some art to the Axe and its apparent when vidar rushes up on the gardners left, pivots, swings wide and low so that momentum turns him around, the balde catched the gardener in the guts. He yanks the blade free- ending the atack to the gardeners right and watches as one of Rj’s bullet plinks into the unfortunate soul’s head.

After a tense few seconds of searching through the security cameras, they determine that the hydroponic gardens are secured.


Khadaafi and Balog

[Should we go check on the two in the locker?] Rushing Jaws beams to Vidar

[Yeah- ] Vidar saunters over to the row of lockers, if they were going to make a move, they had already missed their cue, at least in Vidar’s book. "Hey friends," He says knocking on the locker.

His answer is a real loud scream!

"Don't hurt us!!" is quickly shouted out, following the scream; whoever is inside the locker, they make no move to step out.

"We're not gonna hurt you, you can come out now. We took care of the flower guys." [These guys could be totally infected with some shit and we might have to be assholes, don't think badly of me if we do have to hurt them later (ʘ言ʘ╬) ][Yeah I know its a game.]

[You're talking to an orca, you don't have to justify your sense of empathy to me,] Rushing Jaws replies, before saying at the locker: "We're here to help, c'mon out at your own pace."

The locker slowly opens, and there are indeed two individual sleeved in transhuman morphs, both of which look really badly rattled but with only minor injuries.

[C'mon out just your local axe muderer covered in blood and a friendly whale. no worries.]

[¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

They start a bit to see the two of them, one with a high-powered railgun and the other with a still-bloody diamond axe, but after a moment of nothing happening, they start to realize the two mean them no harm

"What should we call ya?" Rushing Jaws asks

"Khadaafi," one of them says, sleeved in a morph with Somali features. "Balog," the other says with a hungarian accent to their english, her features more eastern european

"Wish we coulda met under better circumstances, but you're gonna be okay now that we're here," Rushing Jaws says to the two of them.

They only look a little more relieved by that.

[How do you want to handle this?] Rushing Jaws beams to Vidar

[I’ll ask them about the plants. We need more information before we can calculate the risks,] Vidar sends back quick. "What do you guys know about these plants? What the hell were these guys doing?"

Khadaafi and Balog look at each other, then gingerly exit the locker, trying to recover their wits. Khadaafi is the first to speak: "I think they came from the bioscience labs, I don't know where they got the plants from. All of this broke out and then Manuela, the botanist, she and her two...partners? They brought those things here from the lab and started to cultivate them."

Balog adds: "I think the plants got into their heads somehow? Made them want to cultivate more and spread their spores or seeds or whatever. They kept talking to each other about how great it was to have the plants in their bodies..."

[Oh hey, that reminds me: we should do something about those things] Rushing Jaws beams to Vidar

"Did they put them in their body or did that just you know...happen." [you wanna go thrash them while I play house?]

[Sure yeah] Rushing Jaws says, turning and heading over to the cultivars.

"Manuela talked about how beautiful the plants were, how they'd...sing to her," Khadaafi recalls

"Christopher and Josie would start talking like they understood what she meant, like they could hear the music?"

"They started wearing baggier and looser clothing until all of this happened," Balog says.

Rushing Jaws starts yanking tubes before pulling the cultivars out of their racks and spilling the plants all over the floor.

Vidar says; “Wow, whacky,” As he puts three and nine together. His hunch says that Manuela and her partners might have caught some mind-affecting infection from the plants, and then released the biolab specimens as cover. There's too many missing pieces for him to be sure but he hadn’t ben a private investigator for thirty years not to not have an idea.

[So I think this was a distraction RJ. these guys got infected long before crab people they planned it out.]

Rushing Jaws stops mid-squashing pumpkins: [Oh shit, how do you figure?]

[they brought the plants in here after shit got real- from the bioscience lab, we know what the bioscience lab looks like- “they started wearing baggier clothes before it happened,” they had those flowers growing in them beforehand. the crab boys were these guy's cover. ]

[Mother fuck...]

There aren't many cultivars of the plants to begin with, so Rushing Jaws makes quick work of them. Balog and Khadaafi start to cough.

Vidar frowns. His misgivings about the spores riding to top of his concerns. He flags RJ over when the coughing answers his question. "Will you check these guys out I think I left someone with a pulse over there."

"Oh yeah, sure thing," Rushing Jaws says. "Let's have a look at ya."

It takes Rushing Jaws about five minutes to look the two of them over for the usual symptoms of fungal infection, their coughing intensifying the entire time. "I'll bet it's the compounds those plants were giving off as a byproduct of their metabolisms, rather than any kind of infection. This place is close to saturated with those compounds by now and it'll be a minute before the scrubbers can cycle the air clean of it.”

To Vidar, Rushing Jaws beams: [We should get these two out of here, maybe send 'em up to hole up at the armory with Abby.]


The Deep Scan

Vidar slips over to the first axe victim, alive but not for long. At once he's both disappointed in himself for not having cleaner work on the other hand you need a pulse to have thoughts- and well he's about to read those thoughts. He hesitates for a moment because the simulation so far has been hit and miss and he doubts it's ability to properly simulate a deep scan. He touches the dying man and reaches out with his mind, unfurling, husking outwards- hitting the pain-hot surface of his mind.

Their name is Christopher Mudede and they have been in a relationship with Manuela Ali for the

past three months- the information rolls into him wordlessly like how he knows his own name and the name of his own spouse. This concept splinters and branches deeper into his mind, leading to more and more- if he had all the time in the world he could follow these branches down to the roots – but he follows the next branch- stays with the concept: Manuela...

They started hearing the music of the plants about a couple of weeks ago- and in his memories that music is so sweet and so kind. The greatest balm to ever touch his soul...

Manuela first told them about the plan a week ago, which he greeted with enthusiasm...

He was in the lab when the containment breach occurred, a place he was not usually posted, he narrowly avoided a creature that at through the door with acid- so unnerving is this that his memory had not properly recorded it.

How?

He's not finding what he wants- and he doesn't want to get to lost through the twist and turns he's taken down the branching syanpes. He doesn't want to go much deeper. He doesn't want to be linked when he dies- this simulation- he remembers it is a simulation then- it spot on.

He cheats, runs the memory of the lab through again- and second time, focuses on what Christopher was thinking during the events- not the events themselves. This information is the most imperfect; A memory of thinking. He had hacked the containment system to cause the breach- the details were a bit part his understanding. He pulled back hard. Came back to himself and his bad viva-pinata reality rip off morph. It still felt good to breath a little after all that. so he did.

"...why...?" Christopher manages to ask, unable to look up directly at Vidar. The word takes all his effort, and you can hear genuine confusion as if he has no idea what he has done to deserve this.

Having just been in his head, Vidar gets the sense that this isn’t Christopher speaking. Not really.

"...why...?" Christopher repeats, this time less a question and more a lamentation of his imminent death

Vidar shudders. There had been a distinct feeling of a “chris” to the texture of the man’s memories that had slowly eroded as the flowers music had entered his mind. Vidar had not thought too much of it while he was touching it- but now. He stood up quick. The infection had supplanted him with a different version of cris and- I’m so glad I’ve been replaced with a copy of myself hahah wow. I’m so glad I’m already dead. Fuck.

[That’s an intrusive thought, you know that right.]

Haha right. Right. Totally not an absulutly true fact. Got it. Love it.

[ : ((( Viddy.]

[What's the word with the gardener over there?] Rushing Jaws asks you.

[Doing that fun thing where the infection has its own personality : )] he sends back still kinda just standing there stimming with his hands, sort of bending his fingers way back one at a time in quick succession.

[Wait what? Holy shit] is all Rushing Jaws sends in response, turning her attention to the two survivors. [Abby, you there? If you're still on TacNet then I got two I need to send your way. They might still be coughing a bit from the compounds in the air around here but they should be okay. have them keep an eye out while we advance into the facilities and grab what we can]

[Yeah, no prob], Abby replies.

[Fantastic, one of them is Khadaafi and the other's Balog, they'll be coming at ya here shortly], Rushing Jaws says to her over TacNet. She returns her attention to the two of them: "get out of here and to the security armory. There's an infected on the floor but we took that one out too, just step around it and you'll be fine. Watch out for our friend while you're in there, she's our guardian angel during all this shit"


Taking Stock

Khadaafi and Balog look at Rushing Jaws nervously, but their coughing has gotten steadily worse and so rather than debate her they head up to the armory, leaving RJ and Vidar in the Hydroponics garden.

[Oh, before I forget] Rushing Jaws says over TacNet, having her muse load up the AR overlay to direct her to the data drive Abby located as she starts heading for that corner of the garden

Rushing Jaws gets down on the floor, kicks the panel loose, finds the data drive, and ejects it before storing it in a spare ammo pocket

"RJ-" Vidar says tentatively, "The crab bois have acid."

"Whaaaat the fuck? Did you get that from the gardener over there?"

He nods, "They sabotaged the lab. I don't know where they got the flowers from but they planned it for weeks. That was strangely convincing for a video game. Fuck."

"Welcome to Breakout: Crisis," Rushing Jaws says. "Holy shit, okay, well, we still have two data drives left, an unknown number of survivors, and an ops center we need to find a way in to. We should get going, eh?"

"Dear game informer, I'm writing in to give break out crisis, 1/5 stars. While the brain powers were compelling the morph designs felt like pinatas. Christ. I'm never playing this again." He says. He never gives Rj an affirmative but follows her out on heels just how he followed her in.

They come to a stop at the unresponsive door to the bioscience lab.

Over TacNet, Rushing Jaws asks: [Hey Abby, we got a door leading to Bioscience that ain't budging, can you do anything about that from here?]

[Yeah, gimme a sec], Abby replies. She finds she can’t open the door without admin rights, and so rather than try to go for the hack on the door she decides to hack the system to upgrade her account status, relaying that information to the two of them before going ahead with the hack.


The Crew Quarters

The door leading off toward the crew quarters is open, apparently having not gotten the memo to lock down. RJ takes point again, and Viddy follows her through the main corridor and into the lounge of the crew quarter.

Rushing Jaws is about to die- The complexity of the fact comes up out of his subconscious full formed and immediate, like a freight train FUCKING CHRIST

The crysacid spurs are small enough that it took the constant churning async part of his mind to see them. Vidar’s language center drops the ball and all he gets out is; “Fucking!” as he reaches out to pull her back.

"Fuck, what-" Rushing Jaws says, throwing the weight of her step back and avoiding the cyrsacid spur just in time.

"Oh fucking shitting fuck," Rushing Jaws says, realizing what she was about to do.

"Fuck fuck fuck," Rushing Jaws swears, staying well back from the spurs on the floor, the memories from the Kepler flooding back into her mind, the memories of her squad mates growing alien limbs from their morphs hours after just a single scratch from one of those fucking spurs, all of their old instances lost to the infection and falling apart into writhing masses of spider-like limbs...

"Fuck...holy shit, thanks for the save Viddy," Rushing Jaws says, catching her breath after the episode.

“Any fucking time. Hell,” He says patting her shoulder.

Much more alert to the circumstances of the room, they notice a bunch of crysacid spurs growing out from where the crysacid fell and died. The spurs can be avoided, only they have insidiously grown in the direction of the doorway as if trying to catch unwary passers-by. Other than that, it's largely the same mess of dead bodies and ruined appliances visible on the security feeds.

"Fuck, okay," Rushing Jaws says, now ahold of her faculties following the shock. "Think there's any reason to look around, or should we keep moving?"

"We should look but, fuck,- wish I had something bright to mark the doorway though-" He said making a sort o spray motion at it. He was quaint like that sometimes. Forgetting he could just mark any thing on his AR. He did load it to tacnet [This shit grows into god damn booby traps after its neutralized watch the hall with the OG crab boi.]

[Fuck, good point] Rushing Jaws says on TacNet, having her muse highlight the spurs with giant red graphics on her AR overlay. [This one's been here for a while, but yeah keep an eye on the one out by the atrium Abby]

"Okay, so, search the quarters or move on?"

"might as well look," Vidar said again, "Just please, don't step on anything- I need you."

"Okay, yeah, alert-awake-alive-enthusiastic now. What are we looking for? Any old thing, something to help us get through?"

"We want Manuela Ali personal files if we can find them," He says.

"Fuckin a', off we go," Rushing Jaws says.


Investigating Manuela Ali

having done plenty of PI work, Vidar’s able to direct Rushing Jaws in helping him dig up all the useful information you can on Manuela Ali:

Originally from Earth (Peru), Manuela studied botany and genetics before being hired on by a hypercorp outfit experimenting with transgenic plants

She was assigned to Outpost Sigma to study organisms recovered from crisis areas on Earth

one of which was delivered to the outpost a few months ago

References to the plants crop up in her personal notes with increasing frequency, first commenting on how much she loves working with them before moving on to how much she admires their beauty to the connection she has made with them and how she wants to share that connection

Not a very amorous person from her notes, it seems she rather became one not long after the references crop up, with flirtations communications between herself, Christopher and someone named Francis Chalmers

Vidar reasonably assumes Francis was the third gardener.

The three of them started talking more about the plants and about how wonderful they are, but also about how they needed to keep them hidden "until the time is right"

and they also talked about "making the perfect garden for their music to ring throughout creation"

"Well that's an installation idea," vidar says idly after reading that last bit. He actually has an idea for one- human forms half out of the ground, a labyrinth and purple flowers in every crack of rough stone work. He could almost see it and he half didn’t like it.

"Well as usual, its Hypercorp," He says with a dramatic shrug, "who would have fucked."

"Shocking," Rushing Jaws says in agreement, all too familiar with hypercorp bullshit.

"I wonder- if this is based off a real thing? It used curiosity as bait- like of course we'll fucking take it back to our house and study it. Christ. "

"Whaddya mean, like they put it in the game based on a real case?"

"Probably not? Just thinking out loud."

"Huh. I hear that they work in a lot of stuff from the real into Crisis so I wouldn't entirely put it past 'em. Anyways, if there's nothing else, we should keep moving. We might be able to get to the bioscience labs if we're lucky - if not, we'll probably have to deal with the borgs in the central plant."

 

[ValtheStarGal]

Rushing Jaws and Vidar Crosswinds
Outpost Sigma - Bioscience Labs​

Rushing Jaws comes up on the door, alert as she’s been since entering the unknown areas of the outpost, gun up and rails hot. She keeps against a wall, her muse eyeing the security feeds on her behalf while she keeps eyes forward. The door to the bioscience lab is closed, facing the door back into the hydroponics lab; the bioscience lab door is not sealed, awaiting input from a mesh user.
After sweeping the surrounding hall and seeing or hearing nothing but the life support systems, Rushing Jaws pulls the security feed up on her entoptics to get a better look at the two still holed up inside the lab. Much like Khadaafi and Balog - and Hananah along with her friend to go off of the chatter from up on the surface - they look scared out of their minds and twitchy to boot, but not beyond saving. The rest of the lab area is a warzone, and it becomes clear that they’re holed up in anticipation of something coming back to finish the job.

[This could get ugly fast] Rushing Jaws beams over TacNet [They look like they’ve been through some shit and’re gonna shoot first before asking questions.]
[Have you considered knocking?] He sent back, [that’s one thing most fall-monsters don’t do.]
[Could do, only they might shoot at the noise. I was thinking a cautious approach, only I ain’t the best at talking down traumatized sapes with guns and would rather not be shot for trying to be neighborly]
[Listen. There’s a particular knock that’s like universal to sapes and I think it’s worth a shot. I’m not gonna bang like the fuckign police.]
Rushing Jaws exhales sharply: [Okay, but you’re taking point on this one]
Vidar tried not to roll his eyes but it was the morphs natural inclination so he let it happen. He slid over and knocked on the door the tell one, one, three, two knock that gentlemen in old movies used.

A muffled “what the fuck!” is heard from the other side of the door; on the cameras, the two survivors have leapt halfway up from their makeshift barricade, guns trained on the door. Their eyes are wide, the guns visibly trembling in their hands. One of them shouts: “who the fuck is there?? Is that you Haruki?? I swear to god you better stay the fuck back!!”
“It’s the calvary- Haruki sounds like an asshole though?”
“What-stay the fuck out of here!!” One of them shouts back, their voice straining with pain and fear.
[This ain’t my forte, but, uh, I guess I can put on my best Direct Action Authority voice and try to get these folks to stand down] Rushing Jaws transmits to Vidar.
[ I was very charming once I don’t know what happened.] He knew exactly what had happened but penny was trying to tell him that wasn’t how being dead worked.
Rushing Jaws clears her Fury’s throat before speaking up to the pair in his most authoritative tone, “We’ve been sent here to help you, and we need you to lower your weapons and allow us to enter.”

For a tense moment, nothing happens after Rushing Jaws addresses the pair. She watches on the camera as the words sink in, their wild eyes glancing back and forth between each other and the door. Finally, one of them speaks: “Oh-okay, but come on in slowly, - and don’t think we won’t fucking shoot you if this is some kind of game!!”
[Oh no! Oh no they’re becoming aware!]- a moment later vidar deleted that comment from the tacnet because he was in fact supposed to be taking point on this one. He tapped the door open and then stuck both unarmed arms into the doorway and then eases his full self with his hands up.
He steps in slow.
[If I get shot doing my damnst to be nice you fucking avenge me okay,] he beams to RJ. “There’s a group of survivors in the armory if you’re interested I just need to get a data cache out from there-” He says pointing at the place he would like permission to get, “Is it okay if I get it? Does that sound alright?”
“Whoa whoa whoa back up back the fuck up,” one of them shouts at Vidar, brandishing a heavy pistol. “How do we know you’re not some kind of- that you’re one of those things?? How do we know you’re not infected or or or like that thing that escaped by eating a hole through the door??”
First of all I am sure am, second of all if I’d stepped on spur I’d have eaten a vibroblade by now, he thinks to himself ruefully. “I’m not growing any parts, first of all. I can do a spin if you want to check me?” He says to them, doing his best.
Both of them flinch when Vidar spins, but neither of them fire - although they keep their guns trained on him. The ease with which Vidar offers himself up for inspection seems to further assuage them, and as they get a good look at him, some of the tension seems to leak out of them. They look at each other, unsure of what happens now.

Māzǔpó, lend a hand here real quick? I need you to read some faces for me.
[Sure, what am I looking for?]
Anything we can use to get them to stand down, or if they’re really thinking about it or just mulling over whether they wanna murder Vidar.
[Okay, I’ll give it a whirl.]
Rushing Jaws watches on her entoptics as Māzǔpó’s kinesics software gets to work reading the faces of the two besieged transhumans behind the barricade. A tense few seconds goes by before she returns an analysis, broadcasting it to the TacNet for Vidar on behalf of Rushing Jaws.
[At the risk of being obvious, these two are severely traumatized and in urgent need of any kind of hope. From their reactions, they’ve clearly had to deal with both infected and non-infected personnel in the time this scenario has been unfolding - i would be that whoever Haruki is would be at least one case of a non-infected getting into a shootout or otherwise trying to threaten them. I recommend a cautious, sympathetic approach: no sudden movements, explain slowly and clearly to them that you’re here to help and tell them exactly how you’re going to do that. They might even be amenable to an escort.]
[Well so far so good then~] Vidar adds. Christ penny help me here he thinks desperately, not for the first time. There was a reason he always refused to take hostage negotiation cases. That was Five’s thing. Penny was good at writing things that actually sounded like things he would say- because otherwise he was a terrible actor.

“Well what happens next is totally in your court, I know today really sucks. I don’t even need to go over there, the data cache is in that panel behind you, you can just toss it to me. And then I can just go- or you can come with us to the armory, my friend Rj is pretty good with a micromisile. Your calling the shots though tell me how we’re doing this.”
The two of them look at each other again, stressed by the situation they find themselves in - wanting to trust you but having seen too much in one day to be willing to make that leap of faith just yet. Their grip on the guns starts to falter a bit, not quite letting go. “Say we go with you to the armory...what happens then? Who’s there to help us? How are we getting out of here??”
“We just sent Khadaafi and Balog there to meet up with our hacker. Her name is Aby. then you just stay safe while we crack open the ops center. Then we’re getting an extraction ASAP.”
Hearing the names of their comrades strikes a chord, but it’s the word extraction that causes something to shift in both of their minds. For a second, nothing happens: then one on Vidar’s left lowers their weapon, falling back behind the barricade - the camera view revealing them to be thanking some kind of god. The other one looks down and then back to Vidar, then lowers their weapon too.
“Thank you,” they say, hope obliterating the fear in their hoarse voice, “thank you thank you thank you - we need to go, let’s go, get us out of here please-”
“Leif!” The other one shouts from behind the barricade, before pulling them down. They have a short conversation, and from Māzǔpó’s kinesics analysis they seem to be assuaging each other. They collect their weapons and keep them holstered before gathering up some of their supplies into a bag, the one named Lief slinging it over their back before the two of them start making their way up and over the rubble of their makeshift barricade.
“Okay, yes, thank you, let’s- let’s get to the Armory,” Leif says. “My name’s Lief, and this is Lorisa, we should avoid the door out to the Central Plant and go right now right now.”

“We’re heading back to the armory first, no worries, why don’t you tell me what is going on in the central plant?”
“Those pinche pods holed up in there to hog all the nanofab to themselves and leave the rest of us to die,” Lorisa rasps, the question summoning fury where there was once fear. “Haruki, one of the pods, he wanted to get something out of here, tried to shoot us when we told him to fuck off.”
“We, we haven’t been out to check,” Lief says, “we only know what’s happened to us.”
On a hunch, Rushing Jaws checks the camera feeds into the central plant, looking over the worker borgs in the fortified workshop. She spots a borg on the barricade with an arm tucked behind cover, gripping a two-handed weapon with only one arm and bracing it against the barricade.
[Hey Viddy, ask if they managed to get a hit on one of ‘em] she transmits over TacNet.
“Did you manage to put a bullet into any of them?”
Leif and Lorisa exchange a look. “Yeah, Haruki took one to the arm and the gut,” Lorisa says. “I was the one to do it to him.
[Well how about that, we got a name to a face now] Rushing Jaws declares, cycling through cameras to get a good look at the worker borg sleeved by Haruki. [Might need that later]
[You’re so clever I could kiss you.]
[Holding you to that. Let’s get the drive out of there and be on our way - oh, let ‘em know I’m around the corner so the Fury with a big gun don’t spook ‘em]
“RJ is just around the corner, there- Fury with the big gun, can’t miss her. Don’t startle her now.” Once they were out he tiptoed across the lab to the panel hiding the data cache, popped it loose, got the drive, and tiptoed back.
[well. That was easy.] he told tacnet.
“Hey there,” Rushing Jaws calls from around the corner as she hears the footsteps, gun pointed toward the ceiling and finger well off the trigger. The two of them still start to see her, but their fear melts away as soon as they remember Vidar’s warning. “We’re walkin’ ya back as soon as my comrade catches up with us.”
[Okay, we got the drive and the survivors in tow, I say we go back to the armory and deal with the borgs as a whole squad rather than two on four] Rushing Jaws transmits over TacNet.
[that sounds dreamy, we’re making Devin do the talking next time.]

 

[wickedlittlecritta]

Devin Murphy and Mach Infinity in Lunar Buggy Surprise!​

Mach used one of the empty garages to leave. It was a simple interface with the cycling systems to seal one of them before equalizing to Lunar conditions and opening the door out to the surface.

The 250 meter stretch of the Lunar surface is silent and desolate: Mach could actually see the twinkling of light from space stations orbiting Luna and Earth - as well as Earth itself. He felt struck. He could see the west coast glow orange with fire. He had to look away.
As Mach came up on the buggy, he noticed that the lights were still on, and that the buggy was occupied. One of the armor plates on the buggy had been knocked loose, presumably to let the occupants see out onto the Lunar surface
they didn't notice him right away, but when they did their eyes went wide and they started waving at the Kite.
Meter, ever unwelcome, informed Mach that he was being pinged for radio communication by the two occupants of the car.
Everyone else was be able to see this because Mach had decided to share his feeds, although there was some interference on the A/V feeds from the radiation.
Mach flew close enough to get a good look at their faces first. He wasn’t about to get jumped by crabs again. They looked roughed up a bit but he don't see any crabs or crab-adjacent growths. He needed a thorough scan.
Mach circled around to the other windows on the buggy and give them a thorough examination: the morphs were both transhuman, probably splicers, and both of them had cuts and abrasions as well as bandaged wounds, but he didn’t noticce any spurs, growths, or crab pincers. He opened the channel.

[Hello!! Are you here to rescue us??] one of them transmitted, their Mesh ID tagging them as Hannah Lawson and listing she/her as preferred pronouns.
H: [We tried to call for rescue when everything went down but we never heard back from anyone]
H: [We just, we tried to escape but we skidded out and crashed into this crater and you have to help us, please!!!]
M: [I guess I am now. You just stuck, or did something actually break?]
H: [We can't get the car to move and the life support got hit in the crash] Hannah says. [We only have another half hour before we run out of air, please get us out of here!!]
M: [Shit, I shoulda brought the other buggy. Hit the accelerator for me.]
H: [The accelerator? Okay…].
A few seconds went by with no apparent response from the buggy. A bad sign.
H: [Noth-nothing's happening,]
H: [I think we might have broken something in the crash??]
M: [Okay, I have to pop the hood and check the engine. If you’re lucky, I can fix it here. If not, Devin can tow you back to the garage.]

Thankfully, he’d set the comms to share with Devin, and the man would hopefully get back to him soon. The buggy obviously took a fair amount of damage in the crash: the life support was definitely compromised and not able to provide anywhere near as much recycling as it should’ve, and a sharp piece of Lunar rock pierced the undercarriage and damaged the buggy's control systems, miraculously avoiding the pressurized space of the buggy itself. He couldn’t fix that without parts, and those would be at the garage. But… They had suits. Hm.

H:[What now? What do you need us to do??]

M: [If your suits aren’t compromised, you should leave the car and start walking. You have the air and time to make it back to the garage if you leave now. I can cover you, if you need it.]
H: [You...you want us to go back??]
H: [Back there?? with those things!?]
H: [Nononono we can't go back there, we can't go back!! They'll tear us to shreds!!]
H: [Or turn us into more of those things!!]
M: [The garage is clear, and Devin and I have guns. You’ll only be in the station as long as it takes for you to get through the airlock and into the backseat of the buggy that still works, okay?]
H: [No no no no no, we cannot go back there, there's...there's these things, and they just started killing people! You can't make us go back there, please!! There has to be another way!!!]
M: [The other way is that we tow the whole buggy back, and I don’t know for sure that you’ve got the air. You probably won’t die, but you’re still gonna have brain damage.]
H: [You don't understand, those things, they...even if they cut you, or just nick you, it's like...they spread whatever it is to you. The outpost is lost, please just get us out of here!!]
M:[We can’t evacuate you from here, you digibrain shit! The options are die suffocating and hope I bring your stacks home, or take a chance on the station and make it back with us. Clock’s ticking, idiots!]

Fucking hell, these AGIs were too fucking real. Did they even realize they were infomorph actors? Fuck, maybe Devin could cool them down. He transmitted a text message to him in tacnet.
{I’m bad copping, you wanna good cop?}

The link to their radio channel went dead before Devin replied.

(Good job!) Devin says over TacNet. Having found himself a vacsuit and some repair spray, he was just out of the garage and on his way with the first buggy. As he drew closer, he engages the vacsuit for hard vacuum and cycles out the atmosphere in the car, which disengages the safety locks so he could get out. The buggy beeps a warning about the surface radiation, which Devin ignores.

(I don't know if anyone's ever told you, but your people skills need work) he says to Mach
and then tries to ping Hannah.
As you look into the buggy, you see the duo look at each other and then back out to you. There's a few seconds' delay before Hannah accepts the connection.

[Are you here to help us??] Hannah asks. [Are you with that synth?]

[I apologize for Marcus here. He's good with buggies, not so great with people. And I definitely want to help you guys! We have some people back on the base we need to get too, and we need to fix this buggy before we can go anywhere. I know going back isn't ideal, but I promise you that your odds are better than they are sitting out here losing air.] Devin broadcasts for the whole team through the TacNet.

He supposes his anxiety's coming through over the line easier than anything but Hannah’s stress, and she does not look reassured by what you beam her
Although, hearing that there are still survivors at the base gets her thinking
She starts talking with the other person in the car, and while you can't hear anything, it heats up real fast
Like they look like they're shouting in there
The Grim suggests to you that making a stronger case might win them over
Okay so Devin pings the other person for a link, which causes the argument to stop after they get Hannah to calm down enough and let them accept the connection
Their Mesh ID identifies them as Wednesday Zhou, and lists Xe/Xer for preferred pronouns

[Hello did you say you could rescue us??] Wednesday asks

[I'm trying] Devin says. [You know, shouting is only going to use up your air faster. Look, we have a plan. We've made contact with Raja Actual and if we can get to the hangar, we'll be able to get an evac. So what's it gonna be? Are you going to come with us and get off this fucking rock, or are you going to sit here and wait to die on it?]

They both look at each other, both of them still unsure but actually considering your words.

[How are you going to stop those things from killing us?] Wednesday asks

[We have a missile launcher and an excellent hacker.]

You see Wednesday grab on to those facts like someone in freefall grabbing for anything to keep from flying off into space. Even Hannah looks convinced, although you can see some lingering skepticism on her face. They look at each other and have an out-loud conversation, what looks like them reassuring each other before they don their vacsuits and cycle out the air in the buggy.

[You should know that the ops center is under lockdown,] Wednesday beams to you, [and you can't get in to the hangar without lifting the lockdown. We, we tried to escape by buggy but...if you can get us back through alive and find the other authorization keys to override the lockdown, you can get into the ops center]

Devin shoots that info back to the rest of the team
Wednesday and Hannah probably pile in to the good buggy while y'all set up to free the one in

Mach has a case of Deja Vu.

Mach probably tells Devin to stand aside when Devin offer's to help and gets everything set to pull the buggy out of the crater with surprising ease.
You set everything up to tow the buggy back to the outpost and you get back about forty minutes after Mach first left.
Mach gets to work on dat buggy.
With all the stuff in the shop, repairing it looks like it's going to be a task action with a timeframe of about twenty minutes
You find that the exact parts you need to fix it aren't present and have to improvise a solution to restore the controls by basically jury-rigging a replacement control board for the one that got wrecked in the crash
It's not an ideal solution but it should hold?
And the buggy's working again
The atmospheric circulation system needed some new pipes which you were able to fabricate pretty easily and swap out with a minimum of fuss
You probably got that out of the way before tending to the real problem
Hannah and Wednesday are waiting for you to tell them what to do

Hannah is a microbiologist with medical training, and Wednesday is a habitat technician
neither of them seem to know what's going on with the purple plants, although Hannah knows that some of her colleagues were working with them
She doesn't know where they got them, but guesses they're extrasolar

 

[ValtheStarGal]

Outpost Sigma - Security Armory​

"Oh my god!" Hannah screams as she catches sight of the corpse in the middle of the atrium. Wednesday screams as well to see the fallen crysacid, glancing around every which way to make sure here aren't any more of them while Hannah stares at the corpse. They are rooted to the spot by the door, clearly recognizing danger even as the carcass or the shattered limbs make no effort to move toward them.

"That was Leonov," Hannah says through a constricted throat. "He was the head of security here - he was supposed to keep us safe..."

"Hannah! Is that you?" Balog calls from within the armory, stepping out as close as she dares to the fallen Leonov. Hannah gasps to hear Balog's voice, overwhelmed by the rush of emotions, relief and horror mixing in her expression. The other survivors - Khadaafi, Leif, and Lorisa - step out of the armory, carefully following Balog around the carcass while trying to get to their fellow survivors. They share a tearful embrace, all of them shaken badly but overjoyed to see survivors amid the horrors of outpost Sigma. They stand well away from the corpse of Leonov, unable to even look in its general direction while standing in the atrium.

After twenty minutes of focus to maneuver around the Security AI, Abigail manages to establish her presence as an administrator on the system. Readouts and controls previously locked to her become open on her interface, and the Security AI acknowledges her privileges on the system by providing her an event log that it has kept of the situation in outpost Sigma. The far side of the outpost remains on lockdown, but an option to initiate the condition-green protocol is active, implying a connection is still in place. Doors and cameras previously locked appear on your schematic of the outpost, but something is wrong: they shouldn't have been missing in the first place, suggesting active intervention to conceal them from anyone without administrator access. It looks like you might be able to use the C/G protocol to establish a connection to the ops center.

Marcus remains behind after Devin takes Hannah and Wednesday out of the garage, forced to improvise a solution to the buggy's damaged control board but still able to listen in on the discussion via TacNet feeds. Fabricating replacements for the atmospheric cycling systems is easy enough, but replacing the board will take some time yet. Mach will need an additional fifteen minutes to repair the buggy and get it operational again.

Inside the armory, the cornucopia machine chimes to announce it has completed the monofilament sword, the nanoswarms back within the machine's nanohives and the metal of the weapon reflecting the lights of the armory. With no other orders placed, the machine returns to standby mode, awaiting the input of any user on the network. The silencer, smartlink, and expanded magazine are still available to print within a reasonable span of time.

It has been forty-five minutes since the game began.

Rushing Jaws​

Rushing Jaws has remained in the atrium, following the efforts via TacNet while standing watch for any threats - especially monitoring the situation in the tram tunnel. Now that the squad and the survivors are reunited, she refocuses on taking stock of the situation.

[Okay, let's see here: we've got two of three data drives, six survivors in tow, a situation in the central plant and an ops center that we still need a way into. Mach's fixing up the buggy y'all recovered from the surface - good show on that - and the gardeners' bullshit has been neutralized. I got a bad feeling about whatever's in the tunnels, so we shouldn't spend too much more time here before they start wandering our way. Next time we strike out, our destination should be the ops center and securing both the decryption key and our ride out of here.]

Rushing Jaws is silent for a moment, thinking on the options available to the team while she watches the tearful reunion. [I don't like the idea of leaving those borgs in the central plant without knowing what they're up to, and they're standing between us and the last auxiliary data drive with the way they're dug in over there. I didn't think we could talk down L&L so maybe there's a chance we could talk these borgs down too. The alternative is finding another way in and infiltrating or one hell of a firefight that is bound to draw attention to us.]

[There's also the matter of the survivors. If any of 'em seemed like they were in half-decent shape, I'd suggest arming them and bringing them along, but a lot of 'em look too rattled to even think straight, let alone shoot straight. I don't like the idea of them tagging along while we sort out the borgs or finding our way into ops, but they're gonna be lunchmeat for anything that finds them if they get caught out without us. Maybe those buggies can help us get them out of immediate danger while we work on getting into ops.]

Rushing Jaws pauses to think of a plan. [What makes sense to me is us dealing with the borgs as a squad while Abby hacks in to the ops center or figures out another way in. By the time they're sorted, we should be good to get moving into the ops center and get out of here. We might consider getting those civvies back into the buggies and have them wait either until we figure out a way to get them in through the other side or if the SLOTV can get them aboard out in the vacuum, that way they're not sitting ducks in here or getting in our way. Either way, op's the same: we gotta get in to ops, get the key, and get our ride out of here.]

[Oh, Abby? Once you're in, you might want to seal the tram tunnel door on our side of things and lock it down on both ends. Just in case.]

 

[TrashRabbit]

Vidar Crosswind

​

Back at the armory, Vidar avoided the reuniting npcs and made a straight shot for the printer. He looked at Abbey and jumped his eyebrows up once or twice as he removed it. He took a moment to admire it, monofiliment swords were massed produced but each one was the platonic ideal of itself- that's how printing worked. He checked it, the way he might any blade, for weight, to make sure it was straight. But it was the same as any other monofiliment sword he'd ever gotten his paws on. He needed to print one for himself on Locus- but part of him didn't want to need one there. His sword when he was young had been a cheap thing his mother had picked up at an American mall- so antique in its own way, but certainly not a tool that tended to be sharp. Monofiliments were sharp beyond the meaning of the word and when he was young he wouldn't have been able to handle one without losing a hand.

He took a helpful picture of the blade from his pov with her entropics and posted it to tact net labeled [Viddy loves a pretty baby.] and then out loud, mostly to himself, "God I hate that I say that ,still."

He listened to RJ's advice or plan. Maybe he was still in a mood but he was up for what ever- There was more than one right way to skin a cat so think so as long as it didn't sound like something he wasn't capable of he wouldn't fuss. now that he had a sword in his hand he was slightly more in favor of sneaking and slicing, but they also had the fire power to overwhelm three borgs if they had to. But he'd also like to talk them down- he'd have more of an opinion about them if they were real or if he himself was more alive- if he was less tiered of being here, he corrected himself.

He looked over at abbey and asked her, “What''s your take?” So far, Abbey was the heart of the operation, even if she hadn't stepped out of the armory.

 

[wickedlittlecritta]

Devin Murphy​

[2017 called, they want their memes back,] Devin told Vidar over TacNet.

 

[TrashRabbit]

Vidar Crosswinds​

[Wait- did the McElroys make it through- you know? I've been too afriad to check]

 

[wickedlittlecritta]

Devin Murphy​

[You would never fucking believe me if I told you how, but yes, they did.]

[Also YOU'RE WELCOME IT WAS ME.]

 

[TrashRabbit]

Vidar Crosswinds​

"You," Vidar said out loud, putting a hand on his shoulder, "Are a hero. And a gentleman. A king among memes."

 

[wickedlittlecritta]

Devin Murphy​

"The bad news, for me, is that I sold it way too cheap, but the good news is that the anarchists that bought it put it up open source. You can watch every episode of My Brother, My Brother, and Me for free. Even the live shows. Do you know the shrimp heaven song? I can sing you the shrimp heaven song."

 

[ValtheStarGal]

[Please Devin, we can't keep doing this,] Rushing Jaws beams over TacNet.

[Fuckin love those boys.]