Getting the Hell Out of Dodge

 After some discussion, they crew decided on gathering all the systems together at the Cube; even if they don't have everything figured out, there is at least safety in numbers. The first order of business was the colonies at hand - they first visited the Felzerzet Enclave, and after rudely interrupting the meeting, showing the video of Rodney murdering cultists and police officers, and leaving some burns on the carpet from Reggie/Gaius' energy whips, managed to convince them that indeed, the threat was real, and that their ship was the best way out.

The Enclave agreed, and began disassembling their mushroom vats and packing up their chickens; hearing that, Mortalis Rex swarmed the SunSport, seeking safe passage. Realizing it would take days for the area to be cleared, Elise stuck around to help the Fairy Princess install a new JumpDrive - or rather, the old drive from the SunSport - Rodney stayed behind to help out where he could, and the rest moved on to Tunatchi Base.

Once the various factions have gathered their stuff and their people, the SunSport will be just above half capacity - 500,000 men, women, and children. As well as a few robots.

Meanwhile, at Tunachi base, the crew was bombarded with messages from several groups claiming to be the "true rulers" of the moon base - the Water Conservators, the Fungus Farm Regency, the Mechanics Alliance, the Republic of Health, the Miners Guild, and the single member of the Taxi Liberation Army. The Mechanics Alliance, occupying the engineering and docking bay, welcomed them with open arms, inviting them to join them. They... didn't seem all there. They laughed at the idea of "healing" someone, saying it was old-fashioned, and explained normal bodily functions like sleeping or using the bathroom as if they were strange and foreign. Weirded out by the brash-and-bravado group, the crew moved on to the Republic of Health. Three (male) nurses, burly fellows in light blue scrubs, welcomed them, and asked if they could just scan their fingers to get the "process" started. Rodney, reliably, smashed the first scanner to pieces. The nurses were horrified, and after some back and forth, asked why he would destroy the only way for them to have babies. You know, new people? Rodney, and indeed everyone, was very confused. Finally, Elise agreed to act as a demonstration, and had her finger pricked by the machine. It whirred, clanked, gurgled, and opened to reveal... another Elise, dressed in a simple outfit. Rodney, overjoyed, demanded a turn. While his clone was decanting, the nurses tut-tutted about "lil Elise", and how "he had some strange growths" and didn't look like very good genetic stock. "lil Rodney", however, came out looking just fine. Elise realized that maybe... they had no idea what a woman actually was. Reggie tried the machine, and being an android coated in synthetic skin, only managed to create a blobby, soggy, disgusting mass, wrapped in a simple outfit. It slid out on the floor and immediately began to decompose. Horrified, the nurses suggested ending his genetic line right away - it was clearly used up!

Somewhat upset at being called genetically inferior, Reggie had Gaius lasso two of the nurses, and try to strangle them. The strangle didn't work so well, but they died nonetheless, leaving the third nurse to run screaming.

It was at that point that a fellow named Gerald popped his head out. Going a bit grey, but still looking rather more healthy than the people the group previously met, he offered some explanation of what in the world was going on. It seems that the cloning vats would be used by a group of clones to make more of themselves, then circle around, taking over each group's base - nearly dehydrated by the time they reached the water storage, starving when they reached the fungus farms, and much depleted when they made their way around to the hospital/cloning center again. Round and round, they fought and argued and slowly lost genetic diversity.

Gerald felt old, but knew he finally had purpose again - he was a single line of clones, stretching back 2000 years, watching his creation turn humans into disease-ridden slime. When Rodney smashed the cloning pod, he realized he didn't have to wait to let it fade from existence - and, having heard about the oncoming feral deader horde, was willing to reconfigure the machines to produce clones that would only last a day - an infinite supply of bodies, but ones that could never make it off the moon. Hopefully, that would slow down the deaders enough that it could buy time for others.

Also in the system was the Liberator - a huge battleship, stripped of guns, but still capable of sustaining life; there used to be two colonies aboard, but the human colony was destroyed by a sudden invasion of ferals, and the second colony, that of normal deaders, had to destroy them all. They pledged to help hold back the ferals wherever they were needed - and suggested the crew head back to their home base, New Life Point, for more information.

On the way back, the crew contacted the SunSport and sent it towards to Liberator, to get it fueled up and ready to go, then hopped on to New Life Point. They met with the four leaders, and were informed - without having asked - that the deaders were willing to lay down their lives to protect the humans. Taken aback, Reggie said they didn't really need to do that, that maybe they could be saved too, but the leaders refused. They had been given life by the humans; they fully intent to repay that debt.

The Elise and Rodney clones have the same Strength, Agility, Vigor the same; d4 Smarts, d6 Spirit

Disintegrator pistol: 3/6/9, 3d10, HW, RoF 1

And I think to myself, what a wonderful liiiiiife!

 Arriving at Ouranos, the crew were immediately met by "Stacy", a card-carrying member of the "Vacation Resort Destination Consortium," who desperately wanted the crew to enjoy all-expense-paid tickets to exclusive entertainment features, after a short presentation of course. They passed, and instead began asking around town about Gray. Red stayed behind; Lins stuck with Rodney, and Blue headed off on her own. Silver stayed behind with Dr. Gunderson aboard the Sunsport, with the children. Elise's new robot, "Terminus", followed along to provide support.

The city itself was fully a resort destination - though the planet was incredibly toxic, the views were gorgeous, and the dome over the city kept the inhabitants safe. The crystal clear lakes (full of hydrochloric acid) and the cerulean skies (of unbreathable air, naturally) were offset by the copious crystal growths in the landscape. And, of course, the city inside the dome was beautiful as well - brightly lit, and filled with beautiful people (and robots), it was a paradise, as long as you didn't get too near the seedy edges.

Reggie headed to the gambling tables, where he was resoundingly fleeced. No one there had heard of Gray, but a few people suggested that if he was as fancy a gambler as they said, he might be at one of the more exclusive places.

Rodney, meanwhile, heard about this "Red Lady" and wanted to see if she were part of the "color club" too. Lins, trying to be supportive, took him to a burlesque show, which did not go over well. "This is the weirdest barbeque I've ever seen. None of these ladies can afford clothes, and there's no food!"

Hoping for better luck in sticking to colors, he then headed to the red light district, which did not go over well either. He ended up paying a club owner to "buy those poor ladies some more clothes!"

They met up with the rest of the group, who were headed to Casino Desure; they slipped in, though were forced to give up their equipment and weapons. Reggie managed to hide his pistol, and Nix smuggled in a couple sonic grenades, but the rest of their inventory was left behind. At first, they mingled with the high-ranking guests; Reggie accepted a beverage, and Nix was offered a robot-specific drink. Elise, too, drank some very fancy champagne. Lins warned the waiter away from Rodney, though. Of course, the drinks were spiked - both Elise and Nix managed to stave off the most immediate effects, thankfully. Reggie, being once again mistaken for human, had been given the wrong drink, and felt nothing.

They noted that there seemed to be a circle of people - thirteen groups of three, with one of the people in each group leaving and joining the next group every minute or so. After some more mingling, most of the guests left, leaving only their crew, and twelve other guests. Suddenly, the twelve remaining guests all suddenly dropped to the floor! The thirteen groups gathered together into three larger groups - one, a wall of people, roughly in the middle of the ball room; one, a tight knot, beginning to chant, in the direct center of the ball room; and one, a looser knot, a little ways behind the others. The door was suddenly closed, and a new arrival stepped out - a man in a full suit of battle armor. while the two knots of people chanted, the third group drew weapons - knives, tasers, and sparking energy whips.

The group split, charging for each individual. Reggie was the furthest into the ballroom, roughly halfway around the room from the entry doors; Nix was next, then Elise, and finally Rodney and Lins, about a quarter of the way around the room. Rodney started swinging fists before the first attackers got to him, and managed to land a good, solid blow on one, knocking him out! He dodged their attacks, hoping to buy Lins time to do her magic lightning thing, but she suddenly clutched her head in pain.

Elise started swinging arms, and managed to connect a good few blows, but took a hit herself - those energy whips seemed to do a bit more damage to those who were poisoned!

Nix, meanwhile, managed to avoid getting hit, and quickly went up-and-over, heading towards the big guy in power armor. He threw a sonic grenade, and... rolled terribly on damage. Sacrificing a black chip, he purchased an edge - No Mercy - and rerolled his damage... poorly again.

Reggie, however, met his attackers head-on. The first slashed at him, and he dodged with ease; the second dove for him, but he rolled across the man's back, pulling his hidden gun and firing a shot at the man in power armor! The shot glanced off the armor, but got the man's attention. He raised his hands, and electricity crackled from his fingertips. In a calm monotone, he said, "You cannot succeed. Even if you were to stop us, you would fail."

Rodney, meanwhile, grabbed the knife from the cultist - I'm just going to call them cultists, if that's all right with you - and started ending lives. He protected Lins, helping her get closer to the door where their equipment was.

Elise was pinned down, and took a taser to the face; the ones attacking Nix turned and attacked her as well. Reggie kept up his attack, managing to squirm out of the grasp of the cultists, and headed towards a toe-to-toe with the boss. Nix dropped his other sonic grenade, but only managed to shake the boss. Frustrated, and starting to get hit, he backed off.

The fight came down to two groups - Elise, Reggie, and Nix, trying to battle through and land some hits on the boss, all while surrounded by quite a few cultists, and Rodney and Lins, battling the few that dared approach the man in white jeans and a t-shirt.

Soon, Rodney downed five of the cultists, while Elise managed to knock out three. Reggie took one down, and with Nix, managed to tie them up enough that Rodney could bash open the door, dash in, and grab his hammers. Nix flew in after him, with Elise not far behind; dashing back out again, Rodney bolted for the big group of chanting cultists, managed to shoulder-check his way into the middle of them, then with a double-handed swing, crushed the lot of them in a shower of blood.

Reggie had been left going toe-to-toe with the big bad, and if there's one thing robots don't handle well, it's electrical attacks. Not only did he take a solid taser to the back, but the big guy wasn't backing down. When the other cultists were killed, the last group finished whatever charging routine they were going for, and dashed out towards them, waving energy swords and shields! Reggie took a sword to the guts, and dropped. If he were human, that would have been the end of his story, but his ability to ignore wound modifiers saved the day, and he barely pulled through.

Terminus, meanwhile, drew a bead on the boss and pulled the trigger; the slight wounds sustained earlier were enough that the massive sniper bullet dropped him. The other cultists fought on, but it was a losing battle - Terminus and Elise blasted the survivors, Rodney cracked heads like watermelon, and Reggie... well, Reggie tried really hard not to die.

The final tally was one dead boss, seven out of 39 cultists unconscious, the rest dead - as well as the twelve party-goers from the beginning, dead from the poison. Reggie had taken a taser hit and four wounds - which was reduced to three after some quick healing. Elise took two taser hits and two wounds, plus another two from using the green chip - but, from her suit and some good healing rolls, managed to get all healed up. Rodney took two wounds, one of which was healed up, and the other that healed in travel, later. Nix's wound was repaired back on the ship.

Reggie, barely hanging together, but at least duct-taped back together, grabbed the helmet from the boss. Nix, of course, looted the rest of the suit, surmising that it could be a good find to protect their squishy Face. Rodney grabbed a 40 from the bar.

After Lins interrogated a number of the cultists, she learned that they were planning to shield the planet, and wait out the deaders' imminent attack. They also had a prisoner until roughly a day and a half before - a "powerful sorcerer" of some sort. Guessing it might have been Gray, they downloaded the information (a tracker had been placed on the prisoner, and his movements tracked up until only a couple hours before) - and headed out to his last known location, a park in the center of the city.

Of course, this is a law-abiding town; while Elise was trying to hack the city grid, she realized she tripped an alarm, which is why they had to scramble away so quickly to begin with. They stopped long enough to watch a pair of unmarked cars drive up, and some men in dark suits stride over to the building - then immediately radio for backup.

At the park, Reggie managed to ingratiate himself with a church potluck, but didn't manage to get any clues. Further around the park, they found a crashed drone - a messenger drone, though this was a slightly bulkier one that also contained a carrying pouch. Inside was a dot, wrapped in tape - while she wasn't sure, Elise thought it might be a tracker. And, then, put it all together - the prisoner had used the messenger drone to fly the tracker all over the city, keeping the cultists off his trail. They only place the drone wasn't would probably end up being where the prisoner actually went. As soon as she finished explaining, Reggie said, "Wait! I know what happened - the prisoner stuck his tracking thingy on this drone! Wait, wasn't there a place it didn't visit? I bet he's there!"

It was a bit of a long walk, but comfortable; the beautiful city's dome was kept at a constant temperature, with a light, constant breeze from the air scrubbers. The cerulean sunset was magnificent. Eventually, they arrived at a block of two apartments - one a more standard highrise, and the other a collection of multi-family residences - backed by some large warehouses. They picked the apartment building first. Reggie managed to get himself invited in by a little old lady, who offered him cookies and lemonade, and let slip that the only strange people she knew of were Sammy, who lived at the end of the hall, and the fellow who moved in upstairs.

Sammy, it turned out, was in the "acquisition" business; after a brief conversation, he fled out the back window. Reggie grabbed a box labeled "acid", and headed out. Upstairs, they encountered another locked door - this one with a fellow with a German accent behind it. Again trying to drop clues about color, Reggie sang a little ditty: "I see skies of blue, pools of blood red; for the love of God, please get out of bed..." (sung to the tune of It's a Wonderful Life). Gray - for indeed, it was he - opened up, and with a little introduction, Gray grabbed his suitcase, and they headed out. And none too soon - as they were leaving, the little old lady was offering cookies to two large men in ill-fitting dark suits.

Whisking through security, they managed to get back to their ship, and together with the SunSport, headed towards Rocketown.

Endgame

The Cube was a little different, this time - a huge ring floated in front of it. As they arrived, it was apparent that the few scientists and military personnel left on the ring had survived the trip; they had sent some of their number off to get reinforcements, and the others were still trying to get off the ground. Once back in this system, the controller lights up again - all four corners, this time. One controls the power station Tesseractus, one controls the ring, one controls the Cube, and the final set of controls - once some button-pushing was done - seem to control the glowing symbols that have appeared around the ring. There are 22 positions, each with a unique symbol; each symbol has the ability to be swapped with another symbol, or deactivated, meaning that there are 4.71 x 10²⁷ possible options to choose from. Silver, under the direction of Reggie, memorizes the symbols for later use. Leaving it on the setup they found, they activate the Cube; once again, the Cube blasts out a cone of black-purple energy, but this time, the ring stabilizes it; it remains open. The scientists left on the ring's surface are thrown through the portal.

Following them through, the Hephaestus finds itself in the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy - assuming they could find a suitable jump-path, they could arrive back at Earth after only a year of travel! However, after returning through the ring, Elise's "favor" is activated.

The Fairy Princess appears in front of her. "You have done well - but you need to return. I have need of your services."

It appears that the favor included implanting a small AI in her arm...

Meanwhile, during her travel, Elise had managed to construct a robot - a stealth assassin. She finally got it working as they arrived at their next destination - Ladarth. Oddly, the ship is empty - except for a handful of children. Looking for life signs, they find Ted Samsun, 14, and his 7 year old sister Melody, hiding in a med bay. Searching the huge colony ship, they find Jessie Bilmann, 8, and his robot dog in a locked bedroom; Perlie (13) and Suzy (11) Brassington, and their cousins Emil (11) and Daniel (9) Gosse in a maintenance area; Langdon Foster (16) and Maria Segreti (16), locked in another maintenance area; Julia Alvars (15), a junior cadet - and thus the highest ranking member of the crew - locked in a kitchen area; Jayce Saku, 12, locked in a cafe; and Bart (10) and Stevie (2) James, hiding in their playroom. All the children had been trapped two days before; each of them had been locked in their rooms by parents, guardians, or friends.

According to the ship, the crew did not leave, nor was there any emergency; however, judging by the few blaster marks on the walls, and the ash of people burned alive in bridge, something certainly happened!

Rodney stayed behind with Lins, Silver, and Dr. Gunderson, as the rest headed to the next system - Cairn Faegle. That system was as devoid of life as the previous - most so, actually, since there was no life at all. However, they did find a new ship - a stealthy asteroid ship, built for a single person, with no jumpspace capability, but some heavy firepower. Reggie boarded it, and was able to get it back online. The ship has a rudimentary AI, still vanilla, and the only information it had was of a large ship full of Deaders attacking the Cairn Faegle. Strapping the ship to the Hephaestus, they jumped to the next location - Happy Landings.

More Deaders, swarming the station, though being barely held off; they attacked, destroying the ship hosting the creatures, and mopping up the rest with the help of the Happy Landings mercs. The battle is short and sweet, due to the heavy torpedoes of the as-yet-unnamed stealth ship.

Elise asks around for some parts; Henry says he's got a flight system, but he'll need some parts imported from Ellipsis for it. For the same deal, a little old lady named Lady Deathlok ordered a hit on Jarrod Scarbow, a pirate, arrested at Cloury Loch. Reggie, meanwhile, played a game of poker, and picked up some information on one "RK"; he used 400 credits to ask Lady Deathlok to dig up information on him, and she assured him that "Daft Marvin" will do a grand job of it.

Moving on, they arrived at the giant eyeball, Nova Gagarin, and fought off a horde of ships there. Though the ships were gone, they still had to brave some anti-aircraft friendly fire from the surface to get down. After intimidating a guard, they ran into their old friend Capt. Tkkktch Chaagggttpptt, of the Yellow Submarine; he was all too happy to help them out. It seems that the bug-people aren't affected by the feral Deaders, though humans can be turned, zombie-like. While he doesn't think it's fair, and will take away from the humans' fun, the captain agrees to call some of his relatives from the deep sea to come help. The huge sea-serpents make quick work of the feral deaders!

Blue, their old friend, asks for their help - she is joined by Red, a muscular, grumpy fellow. She explains that this whole thing isn't the Deaders' fault, but rather the Forgotten - strange, shadowy creatures that seem to be controlling things from the sidelines. That is, the same creatures that gifted Silver to them. Durst Tech may be working with the Betel Republic to control the Deaders; they might be behind some of it, or they might be trying to stop them. Either way, they need information from some of their friends.

Their little cabal is made up of people named for colors - Blue, Red, a scientist named Yellow - who blew himself up to keep some information safe, Green (who is staying in the Outer Colonies, most likely RocketTown), Gray (who is probably hiding out on Ouranos), and Chrome, a member so secretive that none of their group have ever spoken to him directly. If they could get the information from Gray and Green, they should be able to piece together enough to actually stop the deader swarm.

Blue hinted at her origin earlier, but spilled the beans more fully. Her mother was killed; hoping to save his unborn child, her father made a deal with the Deaders, who brought her mother back to life - give or take. However, through some fault of biology, the nanites that kept her mother alive infected her, as well; while she isn't a deader, per se, she is immune to feral deaders, and has heightened abilities due to the nanites in her bloodstream. Red's story didn't start the same, but reached the same result - a Modder, he got some bad hardware from a damaged deader that infected him as a teenager. The others are the same - one way or another, they were infected with Deader nanites, and are now no longer human, but a symbiont, two halves fused into a whole being.

After the Sunsport (and the children, who are now being trained under Rodney) arrived, they turn course to Ouranos, to look for Gray.

Put a Ring On It

 I realize I've not been keeping up with the blogs, and that has lead to some detail being lost - I'm working on getting it all there, though, so if you see a detail missing, let me know.

After leaving Tesseractus, they traveled two weeks to the next "interesting" place, a huge ring-world known as Vularious. Hang on - I think you may have misunderstood me. When I say this ring is huge, I don't mean that it is simply "fairly large". I mean that three Earth-sized planets could fit edge-to-edge across its inner diameter. The system consisted of the ring, and some kind of pulsing, artificial sun at the center. The ring itself is covered in enormous, complex edifices and oddly-positioned buildings; the inside of the ring appears smooth, but is littered with smaller structures, few over half a mile tall. The outside is not so "smooth", and is covered with much larger "buildings", some a thousand miles tall! However, for the massive size of the thing, there are only three colonies: two scientific camps, and one scrapper camp.

The first order of business was contacting the scientists. The group convinces the scientists that they are most likely insane, and have blown up a planet. The lead scientist seems a bit of a nervous fellow - Dr. August Whinery, of Durst Tech. He claims their base has been attacked before by the other scientists, and important equipment has been destroyed.

Borrowing a land vehicle, the group head over to the much better fortified camp nearby; this base is under the control of the much more haughty and dismissive Dr. Alexander Zhang, of the Caedfell Moons; unlike the Durst Tech guys, Zhang has military support from home, so beefier equipment than the stuff the Durst Tech mercs have access to. However, he claims that Durst Tech has been sabotaging their equipment; they moved bases, and Durst Tech followed them. Of course, they followed Durst Tech when Durst Tech moved, so it's really a big game of back and forth.

Making no progress with the scientists, the team headed "spinward", taking their ship over to the scrappers - CrapTrap Scrap City, home of the CrapTrap Scrappers. The broke, irritated scrappers, who haven't been able to get more than a few tiny scratches into the ring. As it turns out, the material is nearly impervious to normal percussive blasts, and as Elise found out, reflects disintegration beams.

The scrappers - who haven't had much contact, if any, with the scientists, claim that some of their equipment has gone missing or gotten destroyed, too. They blame it on some strange creatures that they saw once. With no better leads, the crew headed over to find these strange creatures; after some searching, they located a shadowy creature, and stopped it to communicated with it.

The creature was hard to see - they were translucent, and the light shifting though them detracted from their already cloaked appearance. Only with a combination of sensors and careful movement tracking could the creature be seen at all.

After a greeting - it seems that the creature communicated through vibrating the ground, which was then picked up by their suits - they asked the creatures if they were the ones destroying equipment. As it turns out, the creature claims they were trapped, for "1051920 days" - about 2,880 years - by the ring. They were merely trying anything they could think of to escape.

It was about that time that their newest member of the team hailed them, and said that he may have figured out what some more buttons on the control pad did. They lit up when they came near the ring, and he has a vague idea of how to turn it on... though what happens after that is anyone's guess. The crew informed the creatures, who gladly vacated the surface of the ring - apparently taking some sort of glowing ship back to the artificial sun in the middle of the ring!

The scrappers, too, were all too glad to have an excuse to leave. The scientists, on the other hand, needed some convincing. Durst Tech mostly agreed to leave, and began packing things up, but only if the Caedfell people left too; the Caedfell people refused unless the Durst Tech people left. Reggie and Nix came up with a plan to use the "warm up" procedure with their control device to send shockwaves through the ring, gradually increasing their frequency. That was enough to get the two sides moving, albeit slowly. After quite a bit of back and forth, Durst Tech left, and the Caedfell group took half their people off-ring. A few other ships from Caedfell broke ranks and left, leaving only a skeleton crew on the ring itself.

And so... they pushed the final button. A shockwave of energy wraps, finger-like, around the ring, and suddenly... the ring is gone! The control device deactivates, and they are left in a system with nothing but a handful of ships. The Durst Tech ships head towards their nearest station, while the Caedfell ships remain, trying to find where the ring went. The sun-like ship, meanwhile, zipped over to the Hephestus, thanked them, and left them a gift - an oblong, silvery object, 8 feet long by 3 feet wide, and the surface of which is exactly 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Course was laid in for the Cube; in the 10 days of travel, the object eventually opened, revealing a strange, silver creature, some sort of android. Reggie, now a proud father, named her Silver Surfer Bridges.

Curiosity Fired the Scientist, but Satisfaction Hired Him Back

Reggie used his fancy suit to look like a scientist, and headed down a hallway marked "Gravitics". There, he met a tech, Dr. Arnold Gundersen, who not only looked entirely frazzled, but also claimed to sleep but a single day a week. Reggie convinced him to change a delta symbol to "a circle", and left him to his devices... Heading directly to Dr. Gundersen's boss, Dr. Gerontius Wegberg, Assistant to the Director of Gravitics Oversight. Wegberg was a short man, hiding behind a tall desk, with chairs set up specifically to make those speaking to him appear small. He was easily flattered, and when Reggie told him that Dr. Gundersen had screwed up some data, called the poor man in and had him immediately fired.

The rest of the crew, having seen poor Arnold walk past, get a sandwich, run past the other way, then finally slump past with his head down - and having had a quick update from Reggie - flagged him down, and asked if he was willing to have a job interview. They showed him pictures of the whiteboard they found at the Hercules Research Station, and he... froze up completely. It'd been a long day. Given a second try, he rallied, and realized he understood the majority of the equations.

Reggie, meanwhile, visited Dr. Abraham Konstyantyn, Director of Gravitics Oversight, a jolly fellow who looks like Santa in a nice suit. He's a lot nicer than Wegberg, and promises Reggie some equipment, as long as he fills out the right forms. "I'd rather everyone just get some rest if you're waiting on equipment. Have a mini holiday. Science is better when you're rested!"

Rejoining the others, Reggie hands Arnold the remote; he pushes some buttons, musing that he believes he understands what it's doing - but hands it off after getting it fully primed. The crew (plus Arnold, who they have now hired, poor man) head back to the ship, and get well clear of the planet before hitting any more buttons. Elise, remembering the blue button, hits it again... and something happens! The planet below shudders, a section hinging open like an iris on a camera, and a brilliant white burst of energy fires into space - abruptly vanishing into a portal of some kind!

Racing to investigate, it seems that the inside of the planet is hollow; some sort of device is transforming the power of a spinning neutron star into vast amounts of energy, and is now pointing that energy into... well, some sort of machine. The beam itself is a good hundred miles across, and the portal it vanishes into is filled with machinery, as far as they can see. After getting some great readings - Arnold is overjoyed, and says that he's got at least six papers he could write about this - they leave the planet behind, heading to Vularius - another two week trip.

And, the stats for your new crew member, Dr. Arnold Gunderson:

Agility d6, Smarts d12, Strength d4, Spirit d6, Vigor d6 (Toughness 5, Parry 2)

Notice d8, Investigation d10, Knowledge: Gravitics d12+2, Knowledge: Electronics d8, Knowledge: Physics d10, Knowledge: Jumpspace d6

Edges: Professional, Expert (Gravitics); Hindrances: Anemic, Curious

Eye Eye, Captain!

Nova Gangarin was, in fact, a giant eyeball floating in space. A thin watery layer covered an otherwise spherical eyeball, the size of Earth. A green eye, in fact. It stared blankly into nowhere; there was not even a star in the area, though the eye itself glowed dimly from a sheen of phosphorescent fungus. The only land was a huge platform, built to allow ships to dock. A massive submarine took them down below, to one of the many underwater cities. A hole, cut in the lens, allowed passage inside.

Blue thanked them for the ride, and headed out to get the payment she had promised; meanwhile, after harassing a drunken sailor, the crew decided they would do a bit of underwater investigation. Gleefully bypassing the nicer looking ships, they opted for Capt. Tkkktch Chaagggttpptt, captain of the Yellow Submarine. The captain was a strange, buggy sort of fellow - he communicated in clicks and pops, through a badly damaged translator. Rodney went out and grabbed him a much nicer one as a gift. He also kidnapped the poor sailor, because it was funny.

Down below, in the deep, dark sea, they toured the first of three levels - floating undersea "islands", generally gathered into strata. The first level was basically touristy - lots of lovely reefs and fish to look at. The second level was a lot more dangerous - or it would have been, if they weren't with the bug. The second level is where the bugs bred; most bugs were male, and there was a huge difference between the males and females. Males were, generally, about human sized, albeit with a hunched walk due to their lower abdomen. They could breathe in air or water just fine. The females, however, were entirely dependent on the water, and grew to nearly thirty feet in length, with huge teeth and dozens of grasping arms. The captain introduced the crew to his great-great-great grand-daughter, who was watching over the great-great-great-great grandchildren. It turns out that the captain was about twelve years old; most of the bugs came of age after about two. They live to be 15, though with care, 20. Not a long-lived species, but then again, they seem to enjoy their lives.

The third level was generally considered the most dangerous, and not just because of the high pressure - the crew (with Reggie in a full articulated dive suit) headed out of the ship to explore, and ran into some mermaids. Fairly standard? Not hardly. They had four arms, sharp teeth, and a very bad attitude. And, as it turns out, had taken up residence in an old UEA ship!

Lucky for them, the translator also translated the merpeople speech. Borrowing the translator, Reggie, Nix, and Elise headed into the ship with a mermaid, and left Rodney and the bug to guard the sub.

Inside, the king of the merpeople demanded that they face his champion, before they would be allowed to live. Elise agreed, and fought the champion; he landed a blow or two, doing some damage, but she was able to blast him full of enough holes to kill him. Reggie asked for the shield he had on his back. The king, overjoyed, asked if they'd like to fight some more; Nix agreed, and this time went up against a more lithe and nimble fellow, who used some very dangerous explosives to put some dents in Nix's power armor - but, he was knocked out, and left Nix as the winner. The king was so happy, he offered to show them to their god, which of course, Nix and Elise accepted.

The door to the bridge was decorated with shells and coral; hooded merpeople ushered the two inside... then quickly slammed the door. First, they were blasted with high-energy electricity, then suddenly, a terrifying monster appeared.

Nix read off the riddle they had gotten from the Fairy Queen, and it suddenly turned into... the ship's avatar! it seems that the poor ship's AI had been in hiding, killing merpeople, and eventually becoming a god, though not a particularly powerful one. He wasn't a fan. After discussing how he arrived - he was part of the first assault to liberate Earth, and was sent here, where he crashed, though hopefully saved his crew in the process - and settled here, where he's been for a really long time. They offer to rescue him, and he agreed.

Nix and Elise returned, gathered Reggie, and told the king that they had been given a mission to explore the back end of the ship. They entered the dark halls, and found... something. It was squishy, and mostly immoveable. Reggie poked it, then tried squeezing between it and the wall - and only managed to get himself eaten!

The creature was some sort of ameoba, and while Reggie fought to not get digested, the creature turned to try to ingest the other two. The three managed to damage it somewhat, but it split into two, and again attacked; Reggie popped an organelle, which hurt the creature, and Elise manage to damage more. Eventually, after some tense nearly-getting-eaten moments, they managed to destroy the last organelle, and the ameoba broke apart.

Quickly, they swam to the engineering bay, disconnected the AI, and managed to get out before the JumpDrive exploded. They strapped it to the side of the submarine, and headed to the surface.

Once they found a place to dock, they transported the enclosure to their ship, where another box was waiting for them - payment from Blue, a stealth system! They installed the system and the AI, gaining some valuable assistance in battle. With everything dealt with on the Eye, it was time to head out - this time on the quest Nix received, to visit the Cube.

Pulsar X4139 and Angmar Research Station

 Pulsar X4139 is a high-energy pulsar with a period of just about five seconds. Every five seconds, the "pulse" of ultra-high-energy electromagnetic radiation washes across the system; the planet nearest the sun is constantly bathed in the high-power stream, while the other three are largely untouched.

A station keeps watch over the star, but it's been long since abandoned by humanity - instead, Deaders prowl the hallways, as well as the various derelict ships scattered around. Only two ships are more than collections of scrap - Ranger's Mark, a medium scout ship, and Scrapper's Paradise, a small ship, just smaller than the Hephaestus.

The station seemed the best place to gather the feral deaders, so they headed there first - needing to airwalk to the station, as all the docking ports were heavily damaged. However, it looked like the ship had air, at least.

The first deader they faced was dealt with quickly and easily, and Rodney removed its arms and legs to keep it from running away. Shortly thereafter, they ran into a slightly beefier collection - a tough gunner, touting a huge minigun, a fat, highly explosive bloater, and a lithe melee deader. The battle was a little rougher, but Rodney's swinging hammers and Elise's disco lightshow lasers mostly kept the creatures at bay. Cleaning up, they chained down the gunner - through an eye-hole - and continued on, sweeping "spinward" on the outer ring of the station.

As they traveled, they kept hearing a terrible metallic groan - possibly the station was damaged? Aout a quarter of the way around the station, they found a huge pile of junk - it looks like the spin of the station, coupled with a slight tilt, caused all the junk to slide down here. After some hammer-bashing, they ended up setting it on fire, which causes a small explosion, and cleared out enough they could head deeper inside.

A young woman suddenly jumped out at them; there was a tense conversation, until she suggested perhaps moving away from the horde of monsters headed their way. Rodney, of course, took great offense to the idea of running away, and charged. Two bursters and two melee filed in from one direction, while three gunners, another burster, and more melee deaders came from another, intending to meet in the middle. Rodney bashed heads, Elise dealt plenty of laser damage, Nix dropped a few with his sonic shotgun, and even Reggie poked a few with his sword. The young woman, however, pulled out a rather expensive weapon - a jetround pistol - and leveled the playing field by blowing up several of the deaders at once.

Collecting as many still-living deaders as possible, the group back-tracked to the ship. Reggie was worried that the young woman - Blue - would need extra help getting through the void of space, but it turns out she has a few modifications, and seemed to be able to handle it just fine.

Rodney, on the other hand, was not so thrilled to have the new crew member. The two of them bickered endlessly, with Blue believing Rodney was an empty-headed lunk, and Rodney thinking she was a high-and-mighty, prissy, useless blight.

The rest of the crew enjoyed her company, however, especially since she said she would pay them for transport to someplace else - Urba, or Nova Gangarin.

Before heading out, they decided to make as much cash as they could, and headed over to the scrapper ship. Six deaders floated in space - and came to life as soon as the crew exited the ship! Long, stabby tentacles  shot out to grapple the crew,  and when they landed hits, it hurt! However, Reggie really shined - he taunted the enemies, taking their attention from the others, first mooning them to give Nix a chance to act, and later taunting them and managing to land an EMP grenade! All in all, Reggie, Rodney, and Nix each took down two of the creatures.

Loading them up, they stashed them in the cryopods, and headed to Angmar Research Station. Blue was quite upset about that, and begged to be allowed to hide somewhere safe - Reggie allowed her to stash herself in his closet.

Captain Hawke, a very military-style man, took command of the creatures, and handed off the credentials for the crew to be paid. A fair amount, too! Once they had their cash in hand, they headed out again, this time to Nova Gangarin, to drop off Blue. The trip took a good 12 days, and space was somewhat limited, but in that time, Rodney managed to make up with Blue, and the two eventually parted, perhaps not as friends, but certainly not as enemies.

Halflings, Elves, and Fairies

The Felszerzet Enclave was begun by one Thomas Felszerzet - he was one on the list of people who had gone missing. As it turned out, when he was transported to this system, he had some fresh eggs and mushrooms with him, and was able to start quite a successful business with chickens and various fungus. Speaking of...

Rodney decided it would be a good time to try his "magic mushroom", and Elise decided to join him. As it turned out... neither one of them were prepared for the trip they had. While Elise merely had a bad time, Rodney came this close to having a heart attack from the terrifying experience!

Reggie, meanwhile, had a much safer trip, as he went on a tour with Jeffory Longsfeet, and ended up buying some lovely mushroom oil.

After another delicious meal, the party headed towards the See, to see what they could see. Unfortunately, they weren't able to pay the docking fee - but, after a bit of hanging around with the wrong sort of people, they managed to gain free berth.

The cities of the See are built above ground, under huge domes; the silvery spires and sparkling towers loom into the sky like a retro-futuristic science fiction author's daydream. The crew marveled at the wonders, shopped around in a few areas, and discovered that the maps there are a little different - metal tubes that grow warmer or colder as you near your destination.

At a spectacular fountain, they met a rather rough looking fellow who was willing to give them a job - one worth a fair amount of money. They accepted, and he gave them the location for Gravel Junction, and a location and name - "John". not a lot to go on, but if he was looking for a crew of mercs, he probably would identify the crew of the Hephaestus quite easily.

Upon leaving the station, it seems that there was some kind of trouble; not ones to be easily shaken, the crew... immediately rocketed off, breaking the umbilical tethering their ship to the city station, and blasting away at top speed.

Before embarking on the next leg of their journey, they decided to drop in on the Fairy Princess; they weren't there long before being summoned to visit the Empress, a young girl. She was enthralled with Reggie's performance, and chided her crew that "This is how you act in a court!" - and also granted a boon to each one of them, in turn for a favor.

Reggie immediately accepted, and signed in blood - er, oil - for a fixed arm. Nix asked for info, and in trade received a quest. Elise requested an upgrade - 1 novice, 1 heroic upgrade - and agreed to a trade for a personal matter. Lins also asked for something - whispered, so no one could see what it was - and the empress giggled, and granted it to her immediately, for free.

So, just what were those quests, anyway?

Reggie: Unfortunately, Reggie's "Favor" is entirely unknown. The Empress didn't specify. Whether that's good or bad, well...

Nix: Nix was given a datapad, and after dumping the information to memory, he learned a new location, that of a place called Cube. It seems the Empress knew the AI on the previous derelict they had visited, and left a message for the crew: "An old, old friend of mine came up with a little poem, of sorts, to help travelers find their way back home. While I have been in this system for time unknown - my JumpDrive is irreparably damaged - I have my ways of gathering information, and he and I have been in communication for quite some time - though I haven't heard from him recently. Still, perhaps this information will help you:

Every Lock has a Key; Every Key has a Riddle
Every Riddle has a Teller, Every Teller tells the Clue
Find the Confounding Circlet! Find the Impossible Weight!
Find the Power of Three, and Controls control their fate!

I am, in fact, one of those Tellers my friend referred to. And my clue, such as it is, it to go to the attached coordinates, near an area known as Atl."

The quest is simple: go to Cube, and do what her old friend requested - return them all!

Elise: The favor required is a little... odd. You are to reduce your maximum Strain by one.

Turn, Turn, Turn (and) Four Pillars

The creature was... odd. As horrible as it looked, it acted rather like a puppy, flailing at them playfully. However, when it hit? It hurt! Reggie dodged past, hoping to avoid the thing, but of course, Rodney jumped in swinging. While he was eventually successful, the creature managed to hit him - and Reggie - a good couple times first. As it turned out, the creature tore more than just flesh and bone - it also tore away memories! Reggie picked up a minor delusion - only his teammates are real, and Rodney lost even more of his poor memory, attaining the hindrance "Extra Clueless", which is a -4 to any common knowledge rolls. Ouch.

Reggie took a heavy blow, but through a little gamble with luck and doom, used a green chip to avoid getting his head smacked off. The draw from the Deck O' Doom did not go well, however, and Reggie ended up with a left arm that ceased to function - the hindrance "One Arm".

They continued on to the security area, and upon opening the first door, Reggie found himself in the middle of a standoff! Two soldiers were pointing guns at three station guards, one of them Jose. Reggie crept around... and realized that the standoff was frozen in time. The men weren't moving.

The other rooms showed a story of what happened - one had the station guards grabbing guns, the next had the soldiers cutting down the guards and scientists in a hail of gunfire. The next room showed one of the scientists, Richard Doyal, talking with someone that appeared to be the head of the soldiers, one Captain Naemes. Doyal, it seems, was a traitor! And the soldiers were definitely AlSec...

The last room was empty, but an explosion was visible through the window...

Down the hall, they found the room that had blown up, with the door welded shut. Rodney applied his hammer, and as it turns out, the door was welded shut because there was hard vacuum on the other side. Oops. Lins dove for cover on the other side of the closing bulkhead door.

Rodney suggested that, maybe, time flowed in the direction of travel; the crew traipsed around to the other side, and found (in the as-yet-unexplored area) a section that looked like the surviving people had camped out there for quite a while - years, maybe. However, they found the same damaged door, and continued around, and it seemed that time was stuck or looping the same from either direction.

Exploring the damaged area, Rodney found a bubble of some kind, protecting a video camera; the camera was able to be charged and accessed wirelessly, and the crew watched the final moments of Dr. Durst.

Durst, it seems, had created some kind of gravity weapon or shield; he ranted at the camera for a bit of his brilliance, and once the enemy arrived, he ranted to them, too. He used a small control pad to crush one of the guards into a ball the size of a fist using his gravity tech, cackling all the while. And then... well, then the remaining guards threw in a few grenades and slammed the door. As it turns out, the shield held perfectly against the explosion, but not the back wall - and the shield didn't hold in air at all. Durst kicked and soundlessly screamed as he floated away from the station; the control pad flung from his grasp and ended up nestled in a crevice in the station. The view scanned forward a few hours, and suddenly, a wave of energy washed over the station, then another, and then... nothing. The stars were gone.

Nix took a space walk, found the device, and brought it back. After some investigation, he realized the pad was merely a remote control; the gravity device was embedded in the ship itself. Whatever the device was, it seemed to be a key to using the black hole to generate wormholes, though it wasn't as if the buttons were labeled. It would take some major research to figure out how the device worked.

Hercules Beta-37 Strange Dark Black Hole James Kirsch Reeves Memorial Research Station

After his violent murders, Rodney decided it was time to speak to his deity, and got super drunk. Like, super drunk. His drunk was drunk. He managed to hallucinate a vision of Whoopi, who told him to ease off on the splattering of people - his duty to her was to clean, not make bigger messes, even though her oxygen-infused cleaning supplies would power through blood and gore. He may or may not have been assisted to his godmeet by Lins, who may or may not have projected some images and ideas at him while he was drunk as the proverbial skunk.

Once Rodney sobered up, the next location, it was decided, was the unknown coordinates they picked up from the weird guy in the alley. They made the jump, though had to correct a couple times because of interference from a huge black hole. They finally made it to the Hercules Beta-37 Strange Dark Black Hole James Kirsch Reeves Memorial Research Station - generally called the Hercules Research station.

As they entered the station, it looked like all the lights were on, but nobody was home - though, they did see a lone figure somewhere near the other side of the station.

They broke through the door towards the science labs, and started poking around. The color-coded rooms hold few personal belongings, at least at first, but they did find some odd equations - something wasn't quite right about the gravitic anomalies surrounding the black hole.

Rodney, meanwhile, somehow hacked through a security door... but, lightning didn't strike twice, so he smashed the next one to bits. As they explored, they started to piece together some of the lives that were on the station. And then, see some of the lives! As they opened one door, a scientist was sitting there! After some conversation, where Rodney intimidated him (of course), he pushed past them to the hallway, and... vanished.

The next "ghost" they saw didn't seem to see them - he died to a gunshot wound to the chest, and vanished as well... and when his body vanished, it revealed an old, old bloodstain beneath it. 

They found a few names; Mark, a lab tech; Jose Vaega, the security lead; Richard Doyal, one of the lead scientists; Al Burque, the scientist who first found the gravitic anomalies; George Durst, head scientist, and possibly a little paranoid - he destroyed his own computer, and set a charge to blow up his desk; and finally Fred Reives, the scientist who spoke with them.

They learned that the science station was once in orbit around a black hole in the Tallus Nebula. There were some strange readings, which seem to be related to the black hole; somehow, the station - as well as the black hole - was transported to this in-between area, possibly the first thing to make the trip. However, time is certainly not working right here. By their internal time clocks, today's date is July 12th, 2801. By the system reckoning, it is roughly 4800 - nearly 2000 years later, judging by the timeline the ship Middle Son laid out. The actual events of people getting teleported far, far away happened about 20 years ago, starting around 2780 or thereabouts. However, judging by the state of the station (and the clocks on the computers), only about 200 years have passed here. So which is it? 29 years since being teleported, or 200, or 2000?

About that time, as Rodney and the others headed towards the security area, Elise pushed into the storage area, and looked across the station... at herself. She and the others had just gotten off their ship, and were looking around the little waiting room. She lifted a hand to wave, and with a little wobble, she was looking across at an empty room.

That was about the time Rodney caught sight of a strange, ugly creature, just lounging in the hallway - it looked like the insides of a somewhat larger creature, but only these bits were in their reality. It looked up as they approached...

Crossing Over Again

With all the data in hand, it's finally time to enact the last step of the plan. The ship jumps forward, this time only about a couple hundred years - the trip isn't nearly as rough. They arrive 10 months from their intended date (May of the year 2022), which actually works in their favor. Heading deep into the outer edge of the solar system gives them plenty of time to practice for their next assault, and repair and restock, as well as upgrade their capabilities. Nix grabs a head-full of tech to help him pilot, shoot, and fight; Rodney grabs some cybernetic upgrades as well, slowly turning himself into a literal tank.

The Biothanata is obviously taking hold - while there are a few hotspots on the surfaces of the three planets, it's not fully dug in, but the tell-tale signs of red blobs floating through space shows that the planets don't have more than a few years left before being eaten by the red goo.

Meanwhile, on the planet closest to the sun, power readings are off the charts; the frequencies are similar to the portal used to journey here, but far, far less stable. Atmospheric storms crash and roar, a perpetual storm centers on the power source - an enormous entity, holding a massive obelisk. The device is sapping energy from the planet itself, slowing it down to build enough charge to permanently open the portal. Blips in power occur every few hours as more entities portal their way to the planet, preparing for invasion.

The plan in its entirety is thus: after arriving in this galaxy through the heavily modified portal, the Dark Horizon was to spread the Biothanata (to ensure no future attempts - check), steal the portal technology (check), determine the exact date, time, and location of the invasion (check), and locate any existing strongholds in the Milky Way. Eliza's knowledge of history helped pinpoint the day and time of the invasion, and the records recovered help pinpoint the exact time and date on this side. With the information in hand, the Dark Horizon will have to make a leap into Jumpspace through the portal - only this time, the safety measures are missing. The ship will have to dodge ships in the area, fly down into the atmosphere, and after making some on-the-fly jumpspace calculations, jump through the portal.

Or, in a much safer way, send down a tiny mission to slip through the portal unseen, set up a portal linked to another back on the ship, and simply walk everyone out to the planet on the other side, after stripping the jump drives, Crowbar, NOA, and other technology from the ship. Safer, but the end result is no ship and no way to get home.

After putting it to a vote, it was decided that the Dark Horizon would make the jump. Either everyone makes it out, or no one does!

Finally, the day of the big event arrived. The Dark Horizon dodged the ships protecting the planet from above, and used their shield to phase through the planetary defense system. In the atmosphere, Nix dodged and weaved with incredible skill, thanks in part to his new upgrades. As they grew closer, a scene unfolded on the planet below:

A handful of humans suddenly arrived on the surface below; armed with little more than baseball bats, wrenches, rifles, and a spear, the men (and one woman) charged the entities and their armies, carving a path through the chaos, and eventually reaching the huge entity with the obelisk! A signal blinked on; unknown, but apparently friendly? It came from the rag-tag group, though how was anyone's guess. The woman stabbed the creature in the leg, and the guy with dual baseball bats took a swing, hammering it in. The fellow with a wrench grabbed a terrified flying entity, and once he was high enough, dived onto the massive creature with the obelisk, slamming it in the head! Together, they bashed the creature enough to weaken it, and it dropped the obelisk.

Nix quickly rand the Jumpspace calculations, and made the jump, just as the obelisk shattered into fragments on the stony ground. The last they saw of the group was them running back the way they came, with the hordes in hot pursuit.

And with that, the Dark Horizon leaped through the portal.

The journey was faster than the previous one; the larger portal and the much improved power source shortened the distance considerably. However, it wasn't a carefully tuned journey, and as the Dark Horizon popped back into reality, a cascade of failures took out the jump drives and brought half the system offline.

Out of sensor range of Earth, the crew took stock - a few minor injuries, and enough damage to the ship to keep Elise busy for a day or two, but overall, nothing but the Jumpdrive was damaged beyond repair. The year was verified to be 2022, early May. According to Eliza's instructions, if anything went wrong, they were to contact an Agent Peregrine Cycle, who could be found on the eastern edge of where Texas City will eventually be - a tiny village named Longview.

Rodney, dressed in "casual" clothing, and Nix, wearing a hologram, headed down to the surface. Somehow, Rodney managed to not only ask the right people, but managed to do so without alerting them to the fact that he is somewhat unhinged. In record time, they found Agent Cycle, a rather stiff individual who was nonetheless all too happy to help. Oddly, he didn't seem to be at all put off by the fact that they had arrived on a space ship, though he did apologize for being rushed, as he was in the middle of dealing with a successfully rebuffed alien invasion, which thankfully went a lot better than he had hoped.

After a few day of seeing the sights (and watching Mr. Clean commercials), the crew was met by one Captain Caelie Kay, the time-traveling captain of the Tempus Fugit, offering parts and assistance. Her engineer, a woman named Daisy, seems very keen on meeting the crew, and fixing their ship!

Into the Dragon's Den

Once NOA finished the calculations, the Dark Horizon made the perilous journey to a rocky, desolate planet, barely capable of sustaining life, orbiting a tiny red dwarf. Also orbiting the planet is a strange ship, covered in sensors - it's got a familiar (if 125-year-old) call signature, though. The ship is swathed in sensors of all sorts, with tiny, undersized engines. It's the UEA SS Eliza! As they crew scanned it, the ship suddenly vanished, and reappeared a split second later in front of them, hitting them with a barrage of scans, then a moment later, a woman blinks into existence on your bridge!

She introduced herself as the UEA SS Eliza; the original Shifting Horizon helped her, and she's returning the favor. She explains, as a swarm of drones arrive to attach the J0 drive, the Crowbar, and the existing J3 drive.

"When the Oncoming Storm was returning from its tour beyond the Wall, something happened in Jumpspace. Whatever it was tore the Oncoming Storm into two ships - identical, except for the crew. While most of the crew remained aboard the ship, some of the crew were torn from their own reality and dropped into an alternate reality - a parallel world. Like throwing a rock nudges a person in the opposite direction, throwing a few of the crew nudged the rest back to their own reality. It is not an unknown effect - people have gone missing since the dawn of time. Tiny nudges, keeping the universe on track.

What happened in jumpspace knocked your ship out of its jumpspace corridor, and temporarily disengaged the jump drive. The ship, trying to quickly return to course, entered and left jumpspace a dozen times, trying to reorient, until ultimately it shut down, unable to rouse the crew, and unable to contact anyone.

Lucky for you, I was not far not far from where the tear occurred. Investigating your drifting ship, I found I had full access; I was able to... compare notes with my alternate self. I realized what had happened, and what would happen. I merged my consciousness with that of the data from your universe's Eliza, and after verifying that the ship would survive, I left to find out exactly what was going wrong.

In this universe, your... Entity, I believe you called it... had never met with the resistance of the Shifting Horizon, and its plans continued on schedule; where the Entity had begun moving from interfering with politics and science in your universe, the Entity in this parallel world had no need to escape its prison early. When the technology it had seeded was finally ready, it merely gathered its forces to this planet and simply... walked away, through a portal to a different galaxy. Of course, it won't be gone for long - soon, it will return, this time with reinforcements. It must be stopped. Even if we destroy the portal, the Entity knows that our world is sheltered and rich with resources, which will give it time to build an army to wage war on the universe."

Eliza modified the Entity's portal, and together with the other technologies, the Dark Horizon jumped through the portal.

The trip wasn't a smooth one. Unlike normal jumpspace, the view was beautiful; it was like looking into a million galaxies. But, that wasn't the only thing in jumpspace. First, a horde of jumpspace aliens, the strange creatures that walk through jumpspace like taking a stroll in the park, started teleporting into the ship; one by one, they were put down, and though some minor injuries were sustained by the crew, the aliens were put down, hard. And, Elise ended up with a nice disintegration rifle, to boot!

Their wounds were barely healed before the ship was attacked by enormous, blue-lit, worm-like creatures, who strafed the ship with gravity blasts, and slammed into it with their enormous mouths. One by one, the worms were blasted into pieces; Rodney was only able to provide moral support, as the other crew refused to load him into a torpedo bay and fire him at the worms.

Though the ship sustained some damage, they managed to destroy the worms, and finally complete their voyage. The crew of the Dark horizon - a motley mix of third-tier crew, Russian survivors, and blue apes - were the first humans (and, indeed, first blue apes) to visit another galaxy.

A Time To (Fungal) Bloom

With the information from Eliza, they now had a map into one of the nearly-impossible-to-navigate areas of the galaxy: the Black Zone. However, NOA needed some time to compute the jump, and a helpful side quest popped up - a 25 year old distress call.

The planet wasn't too far away, and they were able to get to it in a day's travel. Nix, Rodney, and two other crew members, Deege (a hypochondriac Comms officer) and Elise (a cyborg engineer). Down on the planet, they found two landing sites: the wreck of the ship in distress, the Suzie Maze, and one of its emergency escape pods, about two miles distant. The crew decided to head over to the escape pod first.

While the planet had a decent atmosphere and gravity, the makeup of the air made it rather denser than that of Earth, which meant the crew had to wear EVA suits. Rodney, unwilling to part with his armor, stuck with punching the air into his own lungs, his breathing a little more labored than most.

The closer they got to the ship, the more strange, tan and purple plants grew. They seemed soft, and somewhat vine-like...

Not far from the pod, the encountered three strange people - humanoid, wearing shredded EVA suits, and very, very angry. Nix bounced up, as the three attacked the humans; Rodney shrugged it off, Elise managed to tank the blow, but Deege came dangerously close to getting knocked out of the fight! Thankfully, the creatures didn't get much more chance to fight; Nix took out the one going after Deege with his sonic shotgun, Elise gunned another through the head with her SMG, and Rodney gleefully splatted the third. Then took out the unconscious one for good measure.

At the pod, Elise headed inside. She realized the cyberjack in her arm was... not exactly accessible, but hoping the air wouldn't be too bad, she popped off her helmet, coughed at the dust floating around, and hacked into the black box. It gave up its information easily, revealing that 25 years ago, it had left the Suzie Maze in atmosphere, and landed here. After 24 hours, the door was opened, and it had been broadcasting the signal ever since. Elise turned it off, and pulled her EVA suit back on... though not without suffering a fatigue from something that really irritated her lungs.

Outside, battle was joined! The crew spotted two dog-like creatures; they attacked immediately, hammer-splatting one, and spraying the other down with the SMG. Then, a huge creature stepped out of the brush; ugly, disfigured, with one huge arm and an extra thin appendage with claws at the end, it launched a crazed attack on Rodney, but only managed to hand out a couple love taps before being taken out. And then its body started to expand, and the crew dove for cover, just before it exploded in a puff of what they later learned was spores!

They headed back to the shuttle, and had their pilot land them close to the wreck. Deege, grossed out by the spores, dust, and general bloodshed, stayed behind to take a quick shower (in his EVA suit, of course). Elise, meanwhile, cut the arm off her EVA suit and patched it air-tight against her metal arm, so her cyberjack would be accessible.

The crater was a loss; Rodney dug through it, but didn't find anything of use. Whatever was in there was incinerated. Elise, with the help of Nix, broke into the bridge, which seemed to have survived a bit better - these old freighters were designed to drop cargo and air-brake in case of structural failure, so the bridge survived with an intact seal. Breaking the seal revealed a horrifying sight - what looked like a human, stuck to the wall, with fungus growing out of every pore and orifice!

Elise hacked into the ship. It seems that the ship was hauling live dirt, likely from Earth, for growing; however, they stopped off at a rogue planet to pad their payload with some dust, hoping to make some extra money from the extra weight. Unfortunately, the dust was infected with some kind of fungus, not terribly unlike the Cordyceps fungus - a strange plant that rewires the brains of ants to spread.

Or in this case, the brains of whatever creature it infects - such as the humans aboard the Suzie Maze, and some of the animals of the planet it crashed on.

Luckily, both Elise (who was infected in the pod) and Rodney (who was infected because he refused to wear a sealed suit) were able to shake off the effects of the virus, with the help of medication derived from the Shifting Horizon's earlier interaction with the fungus. And, a nice bath in some medi-gel got the last of Deege's wounds healed, too, so the crew is ready for action!

Next up: Who is this Eliza? And what does she have to do with the Entity?

Fear and Loathing in Lost Vegas

This writeup covers three sessions, which I've separated.

After the harrowing experience of the day before, the party once again turned to their mission at hand: finding a way inside. And, in fact, the way was just ahead - behind a crowd of nearly a thousand grey apes, who had built a village around the rocky entrance. Three stones jutted into the air, leaning together and leaving a wide entrance.

Rodney wasn't quite comfortable with fighting a thousand apes, so instead, he decided to step out and attempt to challenge them. In a booming voice, he called out various nonsense, ending with a threatening glare. The apes, meanwhile, has just been discussing the missing scouts, when a tall, terrifying creature stepped out and shouted at them, seemingly entirely unafraid. Most of the village immediately took off; the stronger guards held firm for a moment, but seeing the rush of a stampeding crowd pass them by, their will to stay and likely die quickly dried up, and they took to their heels.

The tribe would come back after only a few minutes, but by then, the party had already descended into the passage between the stones.

Down below, they noted various carvings and painting on the walls, of monsters and terrible disasters. However, many of the paintings were scratched out, and crude stick-men were added, usually attacking the monsters.

Eventually, they came to the end of the passage, which was guarded by two bandits in a jeep. Catching the bandits by surprise, the party rushed forward; in seconds, the gunner was dead (shot by Tevye), and the driver was bleeding out, his attempt at chucking grenades having failed miserably. Rodney jumped into the driver's seat and drove them out, somehow managing to keep the jeep fully intact.

Before long, they left the caverns through some kind of building, driving into the inside-out world. The descriptions of the area didn't seem to include quite so much rubble - whatever had happened here left the run down buildings outside the wall in even worse shape. Dark smoke rose from a fire to the left; the party wisely decided to avoid that area. Hoping to find a direction to travel, the crew set Ensign Soler on building a signal tracker from the jeep's radio. The result was crude, but useable; it pointed to the strongest signal, likely the direction of the city they were headed for.

On the way, they stepped into the middle of a brewing street fight - on the one side were a group of mostly humans, some in power armor, and on the other, a motley crew of droids and very strange creatures - some were short, some tall, some had three or four arms, or any number of legs. Memory of the logs told Nix that these were Symbiontoids - each creature wasn't a single being, but a collection of parts: their "skin" is a tough creature that wraps around the "digestive system", which supports the "splanch modules", little more than bones and muscle, and all controlled by the brain, the "person" behind the collection.

The party decided to carefully make their way past the Symbiontoid group. Once the crowd had thinned, Rodney approached one of the creatures wearing slightly better armor, and in the spirit of friendliness and peace, handed it a grenade. The creature freaked out, and hurled the grenade away - directly into the crowd, as it turned out - then yelled in panic for everyone to get out of the way. After much shouting and diving for cover, everyone realized the grenade was a dud. Rodney, ever helpful, was quick to point out that the creature was the one who dangerously threw the grenade... then, once the crowd turned against him, calmed them down and told them he'd take care of things. Then intimidated the already panicked creature, who was all too willing to help now that he wasn't going to be lynched. 2nd Lt. Bbbbbubbbbles, who has three spawnlings, gave them directions and a pass they could show any other members of the Symbiontoid Hivemind.

Following the directions, they made better time getting to the city; when they were drawing near, a human waved them into an alley, and offered to smuggle them into the city. He, as well as two grays (tall, gray-skinned fellows who show no emotion in voice or action), a droid, and a very large Symbiontoid carrying two large weapons, ushered them towards the city. Once they were away from prying eyes, the guides turned on their guests. During the battle, Ensign Soler chucked an EMP on the droid, and shut it down; Rodney went toe to toe with the Symbiontoid, and barely won out. The two blue apes went for the greys and the human; one of the apes was killed, but they managed to pin down the enemies long enough that Nix was able to blast them from the sky. They collected a few items from the corpses:

• An energy spear; STR + d8, AP4; consumes the charge of one normal battery per battle
• A vibrosword, essentially a sword-shaped chainsaw, very loud; STR+2d6, AP 1
• An expensive-looking knife with hollow handle containing electronics and a dataport

As they finished clearing the bodies, a red ape slipped up, and palmed a map into Rodney's hand.

The map was a slight deviation from their current path; following it, they reached a locked door, which Rodney was unable to bash open, but Nix managed to pick quite handily. Inside was a fairly normal looking home - a living room/bedroom with a fold-out couch, a table with two chairs, a rug, and a wall-mounted terminal; a kitchen with a fridge and a stove, and a partially collapsed roof; and a cramped bathroom, with some basic first aid supplies.

After going over the area with a fine tooth comb, they discovered the terminal was hiding a secret - Rodney punched a hole through the front, and quickly realized that it was a fake screen, hiding a communication device inside... a communication device that was sporting an energy-spear-sized hole in it. Oops.

Irritated at their careful search not finding anything, Rodney and Nix next decided to trash the place, pulling open the couch and moving any furniture... and the rug, which hid a secret passage in the floor. Heading down, they found the space well lit. Most of the tunnel lead through earth and stone, but about halfway through, a wide area was obviously tunneled through the wall surrounding the city - it was much smoother, and obviously permacrete with steel rebar instead of natural stone. At the other end of the tunnel, they met up with the Resistance - mostly red apes carrying guns. Nix showed them the map, and the group escorted them through the city to a low, heavy-duty warehouse.

Inside, they met the Red Ape Queen, and a number of her group, including a doctor that healed up Rodney's wounds. She was overjoyed to see them, and briefly mentioned a prophecy that a group such as theirs would come and save their world. They spent the rest of the evening planning out how they would assault the Mayor's office, to rescue the mayor who was being held hostage by his second in command, known only as the Advisor - and to access the maze beneath the city, and activate the device that the Red Queen could not.

The plan was to have the Queen and her apes cause a distraction, leading some of the guards away from the office, and leaving an opening for Nix to slip inside an air duct, and hopefully find a way for everyone else to get inside the building.

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...

Sifting the Dead

Once the Russians were installed on Placidus, coordinates for the next location were decoded: a location on the map marked, simply, "Ship Graveyard." The journey was speedy enough, and upon arriving, they found the description was apt. The system consisted of a single white neutron star, burning hotly in a system free of planets. No planets, but a huge crowd of ships, derelicts new and old, many of which were completely alien. Millions of ships slowly spun around the star, a macabre dance of death. Only a handful of the ships had any readable energy signal; most were little more than floating scrap, with no way to even dock.

The ships spanned ages of space exploration, from early pre-Jumpdrive ships to modern wrecks. There are a number of ships built in styles unknown to Earth, or even the known galaxy. Russian, Chinese, American, Japanese, South African, French, EU, UEA, and... well, some slightly more fantastic ships as well.

As the crew stared at the strange readouts, NOA announced that another message was available. Once again, the woman's voice echoed over the voice system:

Here you will find something very important. There is a single piece of lost technology that will turn this universe around, and it waits in the darkness around this star. Track the only energy source, and you will find an older Earth ship with an early J0 drive. You must salvage that drive, intact. There is no greater weapon against the enemy. Wait here for the next message. I hope it will come.

Eliza out.

There were four ships that they were able to find could be docked with; knowing they were looking for a J0 ship, they tried the old Russian ship first. After docking, the human and two droids carefully entered the ship. It's design was a very old one, with little in the way of thrusters, relying mostly on the J0 drive to get it anywhere. The first room was empty, and exposed to space; the next room, the engine room, showed just why: the main engine was missing, with an engine-sized hole in the side of the ship. Peering outside, Rodney noted the shadow of a man on the side of the ship - the nuclear-powered engine must have gone critical, and the engineer pulling it out didn't survive the experience.

The next few rooms were empty, pocked with micro-meteor holes. The last room was closed off, the door somewhat stuck, but Rodney pried it open. As they floated inside, casting their flashlights about the room, everything seemed still... until a hand landed on Rodney's shoulder. He turned to stare into the dead, frozen eyes of a corpse. Flinging the body away, it bounced into the netting on the walls, which tore, releasing dozens more bodies! Rodney kicked his way out of the room, opting to stay safely on the other side until the two droids finished exploring. He picked up a bit of a phobia of the long-dead...

The next room was an airlock - functioning, in fact, with air on the other side! Rodney zipped through the room into the airlock. The hallway beyond opened into a living area, crusted with dirt and grime. Four bodies hung motionless in the air. The first was dead of a broken neck, judging by the grotesque angle the head was hanging at; the second seemed less... damaged, but a closer inspection revealed some sort of poison crusted around his mouth. The third had hung himself by tying a rope around his neck and a spring around his leg. The fourth died of a self-inflicted headwound from a makeshift crossbow. All four were obviously malnourished. Rodney bravely waited until the droids had dumped the corpses into the airlock.

The other rooms were largely uninteresting - the greenhouse had dirt but few plants remaining, obviously eaten by the starving crew; the water purification room was left unmolested; the storage room was mostly empty, except for the Captain's log. It seems the crew had abandoned a number of settlers on a rocky planet, and left - but it wasn't long before the engine blew, stranding them with the little power they could eke out of the solar panels... for generations. Food gave out, and the few remaining turned to cannibalism. Luckily, the Jump drive was unharmed; Nix ran some tests on it, and verified it was in working order.

One door was locked; there were obvious markings on it from people trying to get in. Rodney, desperately hoping there were no more dead bodies inside, smashed the door open with his power hammer. Inside was - well, a dead body. But next to it was a tiny medical cryopod - his daughter.

Back aboard the Dark Horizon, the Russian crew were overjoyed to hear about the little girl. The ship was the one that dropped them off on Pyl'nyy, and the little girl was likely a relative. She was immediately adopted by one of the couples, and named "чудо", pronounced "Choodoh", and meaning "Miracle." Meanwhile, the Russian engineers were sent over to begin carefully moving the J0 Jump drive over to the Dark Horizon.

While they were working on that (and reclaiming any water they could), the trio explored the other ships. The next ship on the list was the lumpy ship with no windows. Inside, the corridors were laid out in a strange, meandering path. Going room to room, the crew found no signs of life; Rodney, however, was able to use a map-like object he found in the Russian ship to locate a hidden library, filled with books with crystal pages, and etched in an alien language.

The various personal objects they found were alien - belongings of a race of reptiles or turtle-men, perhaps? There were no pictures, nor even mirrors; colors of walls and objects were a mish-mash of gray, with no paint or other colors, though textures lined the walls, and the books were filled with etched words.

NOA scanned the books, and was able to translate them. As it turns out, the creatures had no sense of hearing, smell, or sight; through vibration alone, they communicated, engineered, and eventually reached space. Whatever killed them, they literally didn't see coming... but they felt the doom. The race was, as a whole, a very emotional and colorful bunch; they ached for greatness, and spread to the stars to find it. Even though it got them killed, they will be remembered.

Next, the crew walked the halls of a strange, holographic ship. The entire ship was nearly weightless; though its databanks were locked, the little read-only access they gained revealed that it had been populated by a crew of holograms, hard-light replicas of... well, unknown race. It may have been human, but then again, maybe not.

The last accessible ship was one that was strangely familiar - the last battle before the crew was mysteriously lost was against ships just like this one. This is a fairly large version of the organic, alien ships, and inside, it's obvious that it is dying. The hallways are filled with sludge, and the glowing light-panels are barely lit. Tee was a bit distracted, and missed what the other two saw - an alien, lurking in a side corridor! It sprang out, and Nix and Rodney engaged. After a brief battle, the three overpowered the creature. There were no other aliens aboard the ship, and little that could be salvaged; even the power system was nearly dead.

It took a few days, but the crew of the Dark Horizons were able to strip the J0 drive and other parts, as well as downloading the various databases. Just as the work was finished, a JPod popped into the system, blasted a short message to the ship, and steered itself into the sun. The secure tight-beam visible-light transmission was an audio message, with attached coordinates - another message from Eliza!

You must have noticed that everything you once did was never done. Pyl'nyy. The neutron star. The Biothanata. The work of the Shifting Horizon saved the galaxy, but now... [sigh]. All is not lost. You have seen places and peoples not recorded in any log. Use your resources. Infiltrate. The overthrow has not yet begun. History may yet repeat itself. Allies are coming. Meet me at the location I have sent - but first, you must rescue a friend. The signal is weak, but the need is strong. Go to the nearest set of coordinates; once you have finished, you must find me.

Eliza out.

The coordinates lead to a yellow star, deep in space; the map marks the location as that of the Littlefinger!

Allies++;

NOA searched through the ship's map, and found the planet Pyl'nyy - a dusty planet in the midst of a cataclysm. On the way, however, was the planet Placidus, where a certain black growth was found - a black, light-eating, radio-eating plant that was, to all electronic examination, a hole through the planet with nothing behind it. After some poking and prodding - and collection by Nix - the crew turned to unloading the blue apes on the more suitable homeworld. About a hundred of the apes remained aboard, eager to learn about the strange ship that saved their species.

Pyl'nyy was only a few days journey further on, and soon, the Oncoming Storm found itself in the rubble-strewn system. The ship managed to traverse the majority of the asteroids, getting close enough to let Tevye and Rodney get a shuttle to the surface.

The planet was a wasteland of dust and rubble; where huge habitation domes once stood, there was only ash and ruin. Only one dome remained; carefully, the two entered the facility, finding it unlocked, but apparently habitable, with a working airlock. Wandering deeper, they found two men talking, and quickly introduced themselves. While Rodney was quite vague about where they had come from, the man eventually realized they must have come from off-planet; with a little diplomacy, the two (not realizing at first that they were among the highest ranked members of the crew) agreed that the Russians that inhabited the planet could come aboard.

The grim group of Russians were originally dropped off there 280 years ago, and their forefathers watched the planets collide - a huge, rocky exo-planet hurtled into the system, and smashed into a gas giant at an angle, enough to blast the two into ship-sized chunks. One of the larger chunks slammed into a third planet, smashing it to pieces as well. Over the last 280 years, the chunks have smashed and smashed again, shredding anything nearby. Luckily, their orbits have been plotted, so it'll be a bit easier to get out, but unfortunately the orbiting point-defense systems failed nearly 30 years before, and the main habitation dome was destroyed.

However, there were enough of them that they wouldn't fit in a single shuttle, and navigating back and forth would be asking for disaster. Instead, with the help of a few of the Russian engineers, they removed the superstructure of the Oncoming Storm, returning the ship to its original configuration. With that, it was easy to get down to the surface, pick up the remaining Russians, and head back out to space. The exoskeleton that was the Oncoming Storm was compact enough to be towed, and was left in orbit around Placidus, where they also unloaded most of the Russians. A few of the Russians stayed behind on the ship, willing to help out to pay their life-debt. The 20 people who stayed aboard are:

• Karl Igorevich
• Kveto and Saveliy Danilov (brothers)
• Artemiy Konstantin
• Valeriy and Natasha Kievich (sisters)
• Stanimir Krillovich
• Taras Vladovich
• Demian Leonivich
• Vladimir & Svetlana Rostislav (married)
• Edgar Artemovich
• Valera Yermova
• Galina Slavovna
• Bogdan & Stanislava Yergovna (married)
• Marina Artemis
• Edita Mikhailovna
• Olesya Vitalievna
• Lera Filippovna

A few are engineers and scientists. The rest are willing to help out where needed, and otherwise act as security.

One last thing was required: the ship is no longer the Oncoming Storm, without its shell, and the Shifting Horizon was a UEA ship, where technically, this ship is a member of the APF. NOA suggested a new name, which the rest of the crew agreed to: the APF SS Dark Horizons.

Nix, meanwhile, was upgraded from 2nd Lt. to Lieutenant, and is now the highest ranked member of the ship!

Red vs. Blue

The crew found themselves suddenly teleported into a new, strange place; this time, it only took NOA a moment to find just where the Oncoming Storm landed: just inside the newly explored area! According to the system map, this is the Haroona system. The star system seems, at first glance, fairly habitable; the star is a fairly sun-like, and supports two planets in the habitable zone. Two two planets seem to be covered in some kind of reddish liquid; scans show it is organic. Occasionally, the surface of one of the planets shoves upward, erupting in a gout of flame, so violently that it flings material into space (no mean feat for a nearly Earth-sized planet). The second planet is less violent, and dotted with occasional islands. Two of the larger islands - only a few miles across - show dense vegetation on one, and a number of tightly-packed life signs on the other.

Just as they were considering what to do, NOA sounded an alarm! A change in his file system lead him to believe that he was being hacked! Quickly, Nix scanned the file system, and found the deeply buried file. As NOA stated, and Nix verified, the file was actually harmless; it had unlocked itself upon the ship entering the solar system. NOA said it would take him some time to break the encryption on it, and suggested perhaps now would be a good time to investigate the planet - if nothing else, the ship needs supplies.

Rodney elected to stay aboard and help provide more "percussive maintenance" to any broken or stuck equipment, leaving Nix and Tevye to travel down to the planet. As Tevye steered the shuttlecraft out, the two droids noted the damage to the ship. Luckily, none of it was venting atmosphere into space, sparking, or leaking fluids, but it was still in obvious poor repair. A great, charred scar ran along the side, where the ship had dropped out of jumpspace prematurely.

The two elected to visit the rockier of the two islands first, to investigate the life signs. After a smooth landing, they headed towards the largest concentration. Spotting some caves, they headed inside; after looking around, they spotted one - a nearly man-sized ape, somewhat chimpanzee in features, with blue fur and skin. Advancing, they were stopped by the creature, who blocked their way. Nix noted that the creature was nearly starved, and while it was stubbornly blocking their way, it also seemed rather terrified. It was also wearing a fur jacket of some kind. They attempted to communicate with it, but it didn't seem to understand, eventually making some hooting and grunting noises.

Returning to the ship, they found an old translator with "Frosty Fire" scrawled on the nameplate, as well as some old MREs (mostly granola bars). The blue ape was still there when they came back; Nix scrolled through the six language options, hoping one of them would work. The first was Kchk'Trrs; the second English, and the third Du'ul Tlak. He skipped to the last language - success! This was one of the early planets that the Shifting Horizon visited, and the crew had "borrowed" the translator from the head engineer, a Kchk'Trrs named Frosty Fire, and decoded the alien language. Excited and confused, the ape responded; the two droids offered him a couple of the MREs, and after a little trouble opening the package, he took a bite, then dashed off. He returned empty handed, and had a long discussion with the two. Whatever the red goop was, it landed some 20 years before, and proceeded to engulf the world, consuming everything. The ape showed how his hand was burned by what looked like acid. Most of his people had died; only a thousand or so remained, and they had eaten everything available, living on nothing but the few patches of ice here and there. The apes seemed to be in the stone age, with barely more technology than fire. The two droids asked if he would like to leave, and perhaps move to the other island that has trees and food, which sparked a discussion on exactly how that would happen, and Nix struggling to explain fusion drives to a resident of the stone age via a translator.

Eventually, the ape (his name is Hooda, that is, hoo-dah) lead them deeper into the cave, to meet the council of elders, three white-haired apes dressed in thick furs. The leader stated that if the droids could ferry his people to the stars in the flying hut, that they would help fight against the red goo, and serve the not-quite-gods in any capacity required. Nix asked about the other planet, phrasing his statements well; the second member of the council, and old woman with shells and beads on her thick mantle, stood and told the story of how the fast star in the sky (the other planet) used to be blue, many generations ago, but over the course of a few generations, turned blood red. That omen lead to the red goo coming and eating their planet. She sadly touched all the shells and beads, explaining that they were gifts from other tribes, all lost to the goo.

Nix and Tevye asked to see the goo up close, and Hooda took them and a pair of his friends to see it. The goo was slowly crawling up a flat stretch of rock, the smell of acid heavy in the air. Nix took a sample. Then, Tevye flew the five of them to the other island; two other two apes didn't seem to enjoy it, but Hooda was quite interested, staring out the window.

On the other island, the apes stepped out, and were met by shrieks and screams, as three more apes bounded out! Hooda called for them to stop, and after talking with them (fast enough and with enough overlapping speech that the translator couldn't keep up), told the droids that three on the island thought they were the only ones left in the world. The island was a mountain peak, and used  to have a sister peak; their tribe had stored food on the peak, but were moving farther up, when the second peak collapsed into the goo, leaving only the three apes behind.

Loading up some of the food, they headed back to the rocky island to feed the apes there, then back to the Oncoming Storm, to analyze the red goo. After careful research, Nix realized the red goo had already been catalogued - Biothanata, the Eater of Worlds. The Shifting Horizon had found it on the other planet and destroyed it... or so they thought. It seems they hadn't been as thorough as they thought. At first, the crew thought it might be possible to teach the apes how to fight the goo and destroy it, but they realized that all that was left were the mountain peaks; little more than some grass and trees and a few saved seeds remained. Instead, they decided to take the blue apes with them. It took 50 trips to bring them all in the shuttle, plus several more trips to gather all the food, grass, trees, and other plants that remained, carefully planting it all in the greenhouse on the civilian level.

And then... then they taught the apes how to shoot. Refueling at the sun and harvesting some asteroids, they let the apes burn their planet free of the Biothanata, and the second planet as well. They scanned the system, and destroyed every last speck of it, purging it with laser fire and high explosives.
After three weeks of cleansing the planets and solar system, they were ready to move on. The blue apes - the Haroon - took to space life quickly, learning how to operate the elevators and intercoms, and helping clean up the ship. While they can't program consoles (yet), they can certainly hold a wrench and swing a mop; by the time the Biothanata was purged, the ship was in much better condition, cleaned and oiled, with the food stores full of food from the second island.

NOA finally managed to break the encryption; as it turns out, it wasn't as difficult as expected. Inside the file was a message for the crew of the Oncoming storm - a woman's voice:

I'm sorry I left you, but it is safer and faster for me to travel alone. Something is wrong. I need time to understand what! By my calculations, if nothing goes wrong, you should wake up in about 25 years. I doubt NOA will survive that long without power, so I am resetting him to his vanilla state. I am hiding these messages inside. Ask the right questions, and NOA will find them. Travel to the nearest star to refuel, and DO NOT go back into cryosleep. You need to organize the ship, and more importantly, you need to prepare for your return to Earth. I have programmed a jump pod to take a message to the dim planet with the dead shell. I hope you know what I mean. I will retrieve it from there; I will meet you, once this message is verified. I will send messages as I can.

Eliza out.

While NOA had no information about the location of the "dim planet with a dead shell", there is a planet in the database that seems to match that criteria, though he has no idea how he came by the information. However, with the first message unlocked, a second message also unlocks. It's the same woman's voice:

You will need all the allies you can get. You will find a few survivors on the planet Pyl'nyy, but it will not be easy to get there as it once was. Time is of the essence.

Eliza out.

Nix, having read through more of the ship logs, remembered something about the planet - the first that the Shifting Horizon encountered, in fact. With little other direction, it was agreed that they should travel to Pyl'nyy, and find these allies the strange woman spoke of.