Present:
- Anastasia "Stasi" Tepes. Zhodani Soldier from Querion – Shane
- Emerse Gee. Daryen Scientist from Torment – Darryl
- "Riley" O'Reilly. Sword-Worlder Pilot from Winston - Richard
- Anton Tositova. Solomani Gunner from Entrope - Ian
- Sang "Spanner" Hoang. Sword-Worlder Mechanic from Winston – Jeff
- MARMALADING: Hoff Ende. Sword-Worlder Scientist from Winston - Kevin
- Gnostic Hands. Solomani Scientist from Entrope – Jamie
- Belle Ende. Sword-Worlder Medic from Winston - Steven
- Split "Penny" Ende. Sword-Worlder Minstrel from Winston - Jason
- NPC: Scurry. Drone Gunner from Winston
- NPC: Finn Cyborg from Querion
by Jeff
The crew were all abord the Lost Crown and were on their way back to Entrope, through sub-space, with the recovered Mochila cantinas (the X-boat mail storage is called a "mochila" which has eight compartments called "cantinas").
Everyone settled into their various staterooms for the six-day journey and contemplated the twisted reality observable through the ports. Emerse had moved into the spare bunk in Riley's room and had erected a privacy curtain across the front of the bunk so he could keep the others away from his personal business.
Anton was munching on prunes and garlic, belching and farting unashamedly.
Emerse was wondering if Anton and Riley were always so disgusting, or if they were making a special effort.
Stasi was feeling very hungry and quite run down. [The vampiric Zhodani are required to feed on human blood at least twice a week or their body functions begin to degrade. When "hungry" (haven't fed for more than three days) all their rolls are made at a penalty (two dice, take the worst). This is of course intolerable to the Zhodani]
"Could one of you men feed me?" Stasi requested over the intercom, "Finn's a little past it currently"
"No"
"No"
"No"
"No"
"No"
"No"
The replies were initially not encouraging, but eventually Anton, Gnostic, and Riley agreed to provide blood services on a daily rotation so that Stasi could keep up her ability to function, and Finn wouldn't "crash". [Feeding a Zhodani drains one hit-point of health (which is easily recovered with a night of peaceful rest), state the Zhodani]
Finn had been keeping Stasi going for a good few weeks and was looking very pale and anaemic!
Jump-space Night One
Stasi woke with a start and jerked up into a sitting position. She was feeling a lot better after Anton's gift of blood services, but she just realised that Finn hadn't been recovered from his involuntary space walk back at the X-boat crash site. [Finn had failed his Zero Gee roll on the EVA excursion to the X-boat, lost his direction, and accidentally launched himself off towards the depths of uninhabited space]
 |
| Finn had been left floating in space |
Reaching for the intercom, Stasi shouted out for Riley, "Quick Riley, turn the ship back, we left Finn behind"
"No" replied Riley, "The jump is pre-programmed and can't be modified in-flight. It'll be two weeks before we could be back to the X-boat crash site"
"ARRRGGGHHHH" screamed Stasi hysterically and then woke with a start and jerked up into a sitting position.
Finn was resting comfortably in his bunk beside her.
"WTF?" Stasi wondered, "Was that just a dream?"
Jump-space Night Two
A quiet clanking noise awakened Gnostic from his pleasant dream of being awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry after his masterful research into the spider-like creatures discovered around the Ancient sites on Winston, Dollar, and Formaline. Looking around, he noticed that the stateroom door wasn't secured and was slightly open and rattling in its frame. The vibrations induced by sub-space travel would definitely account for the rattling he figured, but how could the door become unlatched?
Sliding out from under his covers, Gnostic strode over towards the door. A strange slurping noise was coming from out in the corridor, so he quietly opened the door a crack and peered out.
Stasi was crouched down in the corridor over the crumpled body of Riley, her back towards him, and was sucking at Riley's stomach. Riley had been ripped open, guts and entrails ripped out and sprawling across the deck, and blood was splattered across the corridor floor and walls. Stasi turned from her feeding and looked straight back at Gnostic, and grinned.
"ARRRGGGHHHH" screamed Gnostic, slamming the stateroom door closed and falling backwards to the deck.
Gnostic woke with a start, still tucked cosily beneath his bedsheets in his bunk.
"Phew, just a bloody bream" he sighed.
Jump-space Night Three
Before Riley retiring for the night, perchance to dream, he ran his normal evening systems checks on the ship's control systems. One of the system integrity warning lights was flashing red so Riley ran a diagnostic protocol. Strange, apparently a Tamagotchi borne virus had wormed into system and had latched onto the life-support routines. "Bloody Emerse" Riley muttered, "Must have believed our taunting that we would flush the hold to space and connected his damn Tamagotchi to the system and hijacked the controls"
Riley strode down to their shared stateroom to give Emerse a piece of his mind, but he wasn't there. Anton was there though, rubbing some form of lubricant gel over the end of the Staff of the Enema. "Where's that bloody Emerse?" growled Riley, "He's been fiddling with the ship's systems"
"Dunno" replied Anton, "He run off when I threated to jamb this here greasy staff up where the sun doesn't shine!"
"Ha, nice one" chuckled Riley, "But I better go get the systems cleaned up in case that dolt does something nasty"
Grabbing Spanner on the way back to the bridge, the two of them clustered around the ship's interface screen and began the cleanup. First task was to launch the automatic virus-sweeper which would isolate the infected code and lock it down in the flush-cache.
"Is this going to work then?" asked Riley
"Of course" responded Spanner confidently, hitting the Activate button.
"WARNING" blared the ships speakers, "LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS SHUTDOWN"
"What?" shouted Riley, "Fix the damn thing"
"WARNING. TWO MINUTES UNTIL ATMOSPHERE EVACUATION"
A loud hissing developed as the air in the bridge was sucked out the ventilation grills"
"That's not good" stammered Spanner, "Vac suits - now!"
Riley spun and ran for his vac. suit, which was stored in the bridge's emergency cupboard.
But the cupboard wouldn't open.
Riley hammered on the cupboard as his vision started to speckle with black dots, which grew larger and larger.
"ARRRGggh h ..." spluttered Riley as he toppled to the ground, unconscious.
Riley woke with a start, in his bed in the stateroom. Anton farted in the next bunk.
"Oh, thank god, everything is actually normal" he sighed
Jump-space Night Four
Strict environmental controls were of course maintained, with the samples only accessed within the glove-box to ensure no contamination of the ship's environment.
While running a chemical comparison that afternoon, Belle noticed that the corner of her stateroom (the lab was setup in the stateroom) had what looked like a spray of white mould-like material anchored across the corner. Taking a closer look, she realised that this was the actual web material, somehow out of its containment and in the room. Calling to Penny, Belle peered at the web, spotting some small spheres embedded in the web.
"Shit" Belle yelled, "Containment Breach", and Penny immediately activated the negative pressure seal for the room.
As the extractors began pumping a portion of the room's atmosphere out through the ship's hull, to create a negative pressure within the room, Penny also hit the ship's alarm.
The rest of the crew rushed down to the doors to Belle's stateroom and peered in through the windows.
Well, except for Emerse, he ran straight to his vac suit and immediately put it on.
Penny was prodding the small spheres with her probe.
"Hey" she called, "These are all wriggling and squirming"
"BURN THEM" yelled Riley from the corridor.
Belle grabbed her ethanol jar, whipped off the cap, stuffed in a rag, and past it to Penny.
Penny lit the rag and threw the jar towards the corner.
"BOOM" and the stateroom was engulfed with fire!
Belle woke with a start, in her bed, in the stateroom. The corner of the room looked fine.
"What a nightmare" she thought.
"What a nightmare" she thought.
Jump-space Night Five
Scurry hovered up in front of Spanner and started talking.
"Why did you give me these anti-grav attachments and their heavy batteries?"
"You know my range is super limited now, right?"
"You know my range is super limited now, right?"
"Can you give me back my wings please?"
"And what are these other attachments you have given me?"
"I have two arms with extra things that I can spin up to use. Why do I need these?"
"This one's a stupid drill bit, what am I going to do with this?"
Scurry spun up her drill attachment and drove the bit into Spanners eye.
"ARRRGGGHHHH" screamed Spanner, blood and gore erupting from her eye socket.
"ARRRGGGHHHH" screamed Spanner, blood and gore erupting from her eye socket.
Spanner woke with a start, still in her bed, with Scurry inactive in her own pod.
"Bloody hell" Spanner muttered, "No pleasing some AIs"
"Bloody hell" Spanner muttered, "No pleasing some AIs"
Jump-space Night Six
Emerse found his pet Tamagotchi in two pieces on his workshop bench. A large two-handed sword had been smashed down onto it, cracking it into two and splintering the bench.
"Ferkin Stasi" Emerse fumed, grabbing his gun and storming off towards Stasi's room.
"BONG BONG" rang out through the corridor as Emerse ponded on Stasi's stateroom door with his handgun.
"Piss off, I'm busy" called Stasi.
"BONG BONG" pounded Emerse.
Stasi jerked open her door and yelled, "Stop that bloody noise!"
"BOOM" went Emerse's gun, the bullet sailing past Stasi's ear and ricocheting around inside the room.
Stasi grabbed Emerse by the hair, pulled him into her room and threw him to the floor.
"Stop, stop" screamed Emerse, "Not the hair"
"Stop, stop" screamed Emerse, "Not the hair"
Stasi drew back her lips, extended her fangs, and sunk them straight into Emerse's neck.
"ARRRGGGHHHH" screamed Emerse, waving his gun futilely towards Stasi as his blood gushed out like a broken dam and washed over Stasi's chin.
Emerse woke with a start, his Tamagotchi beeping contentedly on the pillow beside him.
He brushed his hair smooth to calm down and made an entry in his logbook "Don't try to shoot Stasi"
Entrope
Right on schedule the Lost Crown ejected into normal space, safely in the Entrope system and on a perfect approach to Entrope. Riley grinned smugly, took a drink, and guided the ship sweetly into the space station dock.
Taking the web samples in their hardy containment chamber, and leaving the recovered cantinas locked in the hold, the crew took the orbital elevator down to the planet surface and grabbed the next shuttle out to Kingston.
It was a short bus ride to Sydney Walsh's residence where the crew made their report.
- Six cantinas recovered.
- Pilot and one cantina lost inside an asteroid.
- Suspected live avian spinosa sample in the second partially destroyed cantina.
- Spider carcass destroyed, but web samples recovered.
"So, who sent those cantinas?" demanded Emerse, "And, who is meant to be receiving them?"
Sydney was able to divulge the delivery addresses of all the cantinas but noted that to find out the sender information would take a court order and could take some time.
"Also" he concluded, "Some packages have arrived form Winston for you"
The packages proved to be a handy distraction, and Emerse cooled down somewhat as the two boxes from Contessa were opened and examined by Belle and Penny.
A Hallpass and a Psycrest Bracelet, our Zhodani payment for services rendered.
- Hallpass - an anti-hall-effect technology field generator, 5 minutes per day capacity, 3m radius field sphere
- Psycrest Bracelet - A Psyche regenerator, swops D4 HP for 1 Psyche point recovered
Anton claimed the Hallpass, while Riley claimed the Psycrest Bracelet.
Once the items had been examined, discussed, and allocated, further discussion with Sydney continued.
It turned out that the two suspect Mochila cantinas were destined for local planet delivery, number seven here to Kingston, while the eighth was bound for Fullers Earth, a relatively nearby settlement.
The local Kingston delivery was to the "Smith" family, Apartment 17/12 Rupy Lane, Kingston, so Gnostic, Penny, and Anton donned x-boat service uniforms, purchased some condolence chocolates, and set off to deliver the news regarding the cantina in the x-boat van.
The others retired to the closest pub, Belle compiled a full report and sent if off, by x-boat, to Contessa, and Sydney got the paperwork under way to find out the various cantina sender details.
When Gnostic, Penny, and Anton arrived at the Smith residence they found a rundown family apartment with a scrappy messy yard. One Gloria Smith, an aging grandmother type, answered the door and seemed totally distraught after hearing about the x-boat accident. Anton was totally unsympathetic, but Penny artfully calmed her down, offered the chocolates, confirmed that the x-boat leadership would indeed drink their own urine (as claimed in all the x-boat promotional advertisements, and even slapped Anton on the cheek after a particularly rude comment.
"This may help" Penny suggested, just before delivering the powerful blow to Anton's head.
After offering appropriate comfort and assorted platitudes, Gnostic and Anton retired to the van while Penny slipped into the shadows and crept around the side of the house and listened in through the lounge window while Gloria made a distraught call to her relations who had shipped the cantina. A bunch of unreplaceable family records and heirlooms. Penny figured they sounded totally legit.
Emerse did some Smith family research via his Tamagotchi and also concluded the shipment was legitimate, definitely no spiders in cantina seven!
"So", declared Belle after hearing the news, "Cantina eight must be the culprit"
 |
| The orbital elevator |
Sydney Walsh needed the remaining six cantinas, which were awaiting collection from the Lost Crown up at the space station, so Riley and four burley and heavily armed x-boat guards headed off for the orbital elevator.
Initially the four guards gave Riley the cold-shoulder treatment, but after shouting a few drinks in the elevator bar, a friendly push-and-shove brawl (where Riley received a number of heavy blows and suffered ten points of damage), and a few old-soldier exploit stories, they were all getting along like long-lost friends.
The six cantinas were retrieved and taken down to the x-boat depot in Kingston.
Sydney revealed that the destinations for those six cantinas were:
- Tonsil family - Jilarky protectorate
- H.G.Tomaine - Cape Verde on Verde Island.
- Dr Harrington - Anselport in the United States of Rodriguez
- Olga Shpak* - Port Royale in Hoganton
- M.Dubiensk* - Rogue Is lighthouse in Tungsten
- Anya Monoslava* - Olha Penitentiary in the Olha Island chain.
"Half of them are Zhodani names [ones with *]" noted Stasi, "Could that be relevant?"
That night, no one had any disturbing dreams, about which the crew were very happy.
The next day everyone assembled for breakfast prior to their planned trip to Fullers Earth, where the Jorgensen family of Twilight Lane were the recorded recipients of cantina eight. Emerse hadn't been able to find out any details of the family [failed his Admin roll], so once again Gnostic, Penny, and Anton donned their x-boat employee garb and paid a visit to the residence. This time it was a large mansion on an extensive gated estate.
Penny stood in front of the gate camera, smiled, and pushed the buzzer.
"Yes" squeaked the speaker
"This is Penny from x-boat" replied Penny, "Here with an important message regarding your delivery"
"Bzzzz" went the gate lock, and the gate swung slowly open.
"Bzzzz" went the gate lock, and the gate swung slowly open.
"Please come on up to the house" squeaked the speaker.
Gnostic, Penny, and Anton made their way up the long winding drive, past immaculately laid out and maintained gardens and lawns, while the gate swung slowly shut behind them.
"Clunk" went the gate lock.
 |
| Clarice the maid |
After quite some time the door eventually swung open, and a young maid peered out.
"Hello" she said, "This is Mrs Jorgenson, the owner" and a more elegantly dressed middle-aged women appeared.
"Where is the cantina?" she asked in a gruff and raspy male voice, quite at odds with her appearance.
"Can we first please verify your identity?" asked Penny.
"I am Maria Jorgenson" the women replied, displaying an official photo ID credential.
"I'm afraid we have some bad news ..." started Penny
Penny gave the rehearsed spiel regarding the mis-jump, the very low (but non-zero likelihood), the company's most sincere condolences, insurance, yadda, yadda.
"But ..." stammered Mrs Jorgenson, "This never happens. Or you will drink your own urine!"
"Not me madam" replied Penny, "That will be our senior planetary director. We can send you the video if you want. I'm sure you will be fully satisfied by his total commitment to the x-boat company pledge"
As Mrs Jorgenson was completing the insurance claim form (sender: Antonio Bratislava, contents: rare stuffed animal collection, value: 435,000 Imperium Credits) she asked Penny lots of questions.
"So, the cantina was totally destroyed then?
Were any portions of the contents recovered at all?
Even the smallest portion would do."
Eventually all the paperwork was complete, all the good research information collected, and Mrs Jorgenson retired back into the house, grumbling about "this transport disaster"
"What's with her?" Gnostic asked the maid, giving her a saucy wink.
"She", replied Clarice the maid, "is he. He is part way through his current rejuvenation treatments, including gender switch, and can be terribly grumpy. You noticed the voice of course. Vocal cord rejuvenation is the final treatment, it's most disconcerting though"
She was very chatty, having liked the look of Gnostic, but eventually waved Gnostic goodbye and closed the door.
"Isn't Jorgenson a Zhodani surname?" asked Anton.
The crew re-assembled at the local x-boat office and Penny filled the others in on the Jorgenson visit.
"Totally suspicious" declared Emerse, ""the smallest portion will do" indeed"
"And a Zhodani sender" noted Riley, "Those bastards are probably looking to conquer the universe"
"No offence Stasi" he added.
"And a Zhodani sender" noted Riley, "Those bastards are probably looking to conquer the universe"
"No offence Stasi" he added.
"None taken," replied Stasi, "Ve are looking to conquer der universe!"
"Are they trying to activate more of those Ancient sites?" wondered Spanner.
"But why transport spiders?" asked Emerse.
"There are no Ancient sites in the Entrope system" noted Anton (who is from Entrope).
"But there is just one jump away in Torment" declared Emerse, "And just two jumps away in Zeta 2"
"But there is just one jump away in Torment" declared Emerse, "And just two jumps away in Zeta 2"
"Well, I can confirm that the avian spinosa (the spiders) are the juvenile form of the volatile canker (the grey humanoid creatures we encountered on the destroyed ship)" stated Belle. "Although I haven't yet found any evolutionary link to the actual power source creature. But, given the way that creature absorbed the canker, it's a strong possibility that all three of those things are genetically related."
"But where did the spider come from?" asked Riley.
"Maybe it came from Mars" suggested Spanner.
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