215-1107 – Hilfer
At the end of the last session, the Travellers had just entered the drifting hulk of the Vagabond Soul, with eight weak life-signs visible to the So Much For Subtlety’s powerful Neural Activity Scanner, and had found themselves confronting a horrific, half-man, half-machine being which moved incredibly quickly and sported terrifying, hypodermic fingernails, sensors where eyes should be and armour apparently fashioned by nanobots from the very walls of the ship.
The part fled for the airlock a few metres behind them, but with Cauldron unable to reach the Airlock before the horrifying being, Lars chose to cover his retreat with laser fire. In their ears, a horrifying, high-frequency screeching burst through their radio sets, reminiscent of the hunting calls of the Chamax but with an eery, almost human quality.
The party just managed to close the airlock in time, but before they could cycle the outer door, the Cursed being simply entered the airlock code and opened the inner door again. Then, with laser fire largely inneffective against its polished carapace, it rammed three fingers through Lars’ vacc suit and into his throat. Lars felt something expand from the ends of the horrifying, hypodermic nails. and started to choke. Parsifal extended his embedded, arc-field claws, ruining the gloves of his suit but counting on the self-sealing effect to keep him safe from the worst of the impending vacuum, and slashed at the jagged nails that protruded from Lar’s throat. The technology of the nails was too high for the arc-field weapon to simply slice through them, but two were ripped out while the third broke off, still embedded in Lars’ throat. Lars, his carotid artery torn, saw the inside of his spacesuit visor suddenly covered with jets of his own blood.
At this point, Anastasia called Krrsh and told him to detach the breaching tube while the party tried to override the airlock systems and decompress the Vagabond Soul, simultaneously fighting off the horrifying abomination that shared the airlock with them. Krrsh refused to abandon them and said he was coming, but Anastasia ordered him to detach the tube, then teleported naked into the So Much For Subtlety, leaving behind the vaccsuit that she could not carry with her. Two more of the Cursed appeared around the corner of the corridor.
As the airlock opened, the breaching tube was drifing back to the Travellers’ own ship. Most of them allowed themselves to be vented into space, but Cauldron instinctively switched on his magboots, finding himself suddenly bent backwards at 90 degrees by the force of the venting atmosphere on him and on the Cursed which now clung to his shoulder. He fired his gauss rifle back over his shoulder on full auto, placing the muzzle against the head of the Cursed, which exploded instantly, blood boiling off into the vacuum.
Krrsh then piloted the So Much For Subtlety to pick up the floating crew (and Anastasia’s spacesuit). Lars, his throat pumping his blood out into his suit, was rushed to the TL15 autodoc, only just reaching it before dying. Lemuel, who had been studying the nanobots as part of his work with Dr Astor, took a sample from the spreading population in Lar’s throat then sealed him into the highly advanced autodoc, which was capable of generating its own nanobots to fight back the infection, although Lemuel expressed pessimism as to the likely effectiveness. Parsifal, not to be discouraged, was tremendously successful in his treatment, and was able to seal the wounds and remove the infection in time.
The crew of the SMFS then decided that, tempting as salvage rights to a MCr40 trader undoubtedly were, the clause disclaiming responsibility for any “slight nanobot infection” hidden in the small print would make the sale likely to incur something of a discount, and they worried that stashing the ship in the pirate-infested system of Hilfer might lead to another crew discovering it and suffering the same fate. Therefore, they used their particle accelerator barbette to rapidly disassemble the ship.
At a loss as to where to go next, and requiring fuel, the Travellers landed at Hilfer Lowport, where the captain’s attendance was demanded by the security department of the local government for that region. After almost two years of travelling in the Shinkiro the Travellers realised that, as an anarcho-libertarian collective ruling through participative votes requiring a quorum of two thirds of the ship-share-owning crew in order to pass binding resolutions on matters of policy, they had neglected to nominate a captain and, in a panic, chose Krrsh.
Krrsh grew by over an inch, donned his cape and a never-before-seen but suspiciously-appropriate uniform, smiled paternally at his new crew, and headed for Downport security. Returning about half an hour later, he brought the happy news that the ship was allowed to buy fuel despite suspicions regarding a starship explosion shortly before a detested, Drinaxian, innocently-trading commerce raider had landed. He did, however, mutter something about having perhaps granted letters patent for a knighthood to the shift leader of the starport security force. Sure enough, the party received a visit, later, from someone calling himself “Captain Sir Eddy Khidir”.
Having refuelled, the party departed on 217-1107 and jumped to the inner of Pourne’s two gas giants, which tended to be the busier of the pair, eschewing both the outer Jovian and the highport at which they had an intelligence source.
During the journey, Parsifal interrogated the passengers, particularly Lemuel. The bumbling grad student was questioned in detail about his religion, and accused of being his own god, which Lemuel found highly amusing, but which he was not apparently terribly offended by. He gave the history of the religion and its head, the Immortal Protector, and his role in saving Neumann from the nanoswarms and of fighting them back for hundreds of years. He also confirmed that he had seen the Immortal Protector himself and that he had, indeed been blond and muscular, but seemed to have grown somewhat shorter than the eight feet which the stories told of him.
Parsifal also questioned Dr Nafir, who claimed not have any augmentations, nor to have ever sported such. This appeared (using the ship’s sensors) to be true, despite the opposite having been the case before. Nafir’s bodyguard, Olafson, watched carefully, inseparable from his principal.
215-1107 – Pourne System, Calverin gas giant orbit
Arriving in orbit around Calverin, the innermost of Pourne’s two gas giants, the party used the So Much For Subtlety’s immensely-powerful, TL15 active sensors to search for any sign of Jali Astor and her ship or, more likely, another abandoned hulk occupied by nanoware-infected undead. They were surprised to find the Spark of Life herself, occupying a gradually-decaying orbit only two thirds of a million kilometres away. The So Much For Subtlety turned and accelerated towards her at 6G.
Leave a Reply