Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Jungle Fever

 The location of the Littlefinger had no ship, just a single planet orbiting a yellow star. The planet had a number of burned areas - not a placid place, for certain. Finding a good landing site, they set the ship down and set off with a couple of blue apes, as well as Medical officer Marianne Falk and Engineer Ensign Josep Soler.

The first day of travel was fairly relaxed; they wandered around the trails as Falk read off some of the information in the ship's logs. It seems that only the core group of officers had experienced the Littlefinger as a planet - most of the rest remembered it only as a ship. It was here that the ship's original captain had died, though details on that were fuzzy as well.

They found the old remains of what must have been the village of the Colorful People, but no trace of them remained. Following a creek bed, they studied the undergrowth, and quickly learned that the black plants and flowers were very, very dangerous. Rodney collected a fair amount of the plants - or rather, Falk collected them, at Rodney's insistence, using up most of her sample kits.

After some amount of travel, they began setting up camp - and discovered the kitten, Pixel, had stowed away in Falk's bag. Not long after they had fallen asleep, noises outside of the camp alerted Nix, who in turn woke the others; Rodney, Nix, and Tee carefully moved ahead, leaving the blue apes guarding the others. Rodney chucked a grenade towards the sounds, but didn't seem to do any more than anger the attackers - which turned out to be a horde of grey apes! They apes descended on them, jabbing them with spears. Nix took some heavy damage, and when he fled to the sky, Tee was next. Rodney, meanwhile, tanked through every blow, slowly splatting the apes around him with his power hammer, as they poked at his well-armored body. Tee managed to drop a few as well, and once Nix took to the air, it was all over for the apes. Soon, none remained alive. Rodney heard more noises behind him, and threw another grenade! Only this time... he heard the explosion and scream over his comms. He rushed through the thick underbrush and found Ensign Soler having dived under a rock, the two blue apes staring around in confusion, and Marianna Falk bleeding out on the ground. Oops.

Nix administered medical aid and stabilized her wounds, then together he and Tee flew her up over the treetops and back to the ship. Both were quite speedy, and being able to fly in a straight line made the trip back take only a couple of hours. They quickly placed Falk in medical cryo, where she stabilized enough that she would likely survive - though she would be recovering for some time as her burned limbs regrew. Friendly fire isn't all that friendly!

After the two droids got some patch-ups, they headed back to the others. Unfortunately, they were spotted by a large bat-like creature... they dodged ahead, but it managed to keep up with them, landing a good couple of blows on each of them. Finally, having worn it down, they dived into camp, where Rodney was ready and waiting with his power hammer. Tee and Nix zipped past, and as the bat came through, Rodney crushed it into paste!

Shaken but otherwise unharmed, the crew gathered themselves together and headed towards the possible entrance that Nix and Tee spotted from the air...

No comments:

Post a Comment