The Starport is quiet – barely any activity, really. We settle down in Bay 93. While it’s nice and quiet here, there’s no time to dawdle so we get to work repairing the ship. There are tools in the bay, but barely. They’re pretty crap tools.
Silas and Kavita in the meantime decide to talk to some locals. They’re apparently stuck in the starport – the mayor of Halcyon has apparently lost his shit and has completely locked down the city, claiming they’re (to be) under attack from some mysterious space invaders. The starport runs on though – it’s run by an Apollyon subsidiary. Even though there’s no real traffic, they’re still concerned with maximum uptime.
iZac and I are on ship repair duties – I help him remove some inner panels and then head off to look for more detailed schematics, which isn’t that hard.
*Chris offers me an intrusion, I accept and pass 1XP to iZac*
But wait … that’s weird. There’s large chunk of the memory core missing (storage/disks). It really looks like it should be bigger than it is – as it appears, there’s not even enough storage to run the ship. And yet, we flew here and everything is exactly where it supposed to be. There’s just not enough storage…
It appears that the encryption on the drive shifts. At first glance everything looks normal, but this shifting moves very quickly, and it’s most of the memory core that’s in this constant state of movement. Polymorphic encryption? It’ll be hard to tell what’s going on here – it’s like I’m looking at Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle Encryption.
I’ll have plenty of time later to investigate further, right now I need to concentrate on helping iZac with repairs. Right when I exit the ship, he apparently removes some sort of Jeebus Screw and a bunch of stuff just falls out of the ship. He luckily dodges the debris and has the quite smart idea to get a forklift to support the free-hanging upper half of the cargo bay door. With our work effectively halted (we really oughta have some pros work on this), I ask iZac to take a look at this memory core wonkiness. After a moment or few he confirms what I’m seeing, but also doesn’t grok what’s happening.
After a while and the return of the rest of our crew, an alhuri woman and a handful of coverall-clad gobbans hop out of truck – repair crew! She heads over to Lieutenant Solraker (Silas is a lieutenant? I bet he tried to pass himself off as Captain). Their rate is 100cr/hr, they’re estimating 7 hours of work for the cargo bay door, and we have 2,170cr in bank. Deal.
I go back to my terminal and poke around a bit to see if I can suss out what’s wrong with the other major broken thing on this ship – the hyperdrive. According to /var/log/hyperdrive the hyperspace bypass core is fused – perhaps as the result of some sort of Vogon error. And damn – a new one is 10k credits. That’s … steep. Doubting but hoping, I bet Silas a beer that there’s an extra on board. He’s going to scour ship. Of course, no extra.
So, Silas and Kav go to the local bar, and radio back to me that there’s a heavily armored synth and a human who’re looking for me. Well, crap. What’d I do this time? Or last time? Or perhaps a few last times ago? So, I hop into a few VPNs (the TOR network (hehe)), to SpaceGoogle myself. Nothing initially found: no bulletins, no notices. I switch to the darkmatternet, nothing there either. So, to sum up: who the hell knows why I’m wanted this time.
Well, I guess I’m staying put on the ship so I decide to look for hiding places. Checking the schematics, I see there may be something around the life support machines that will mask my heat signature. Warrants further research, at least.
Kavita and Silas ask me to find some sort of way in to the town, which is in lockdown. After finding some schematics, I’m able to hack into the city control center. Checking statuses, I see that EVERYTHING is predictably locked. Some items are even double locked.
After a few minutes of reinforcing the futility of breaking INTO the city, I disconnect from the system – I doubt anyone had yet realized that I gotten access to their systems, but someone will be looking for unauthorized access. Someone’s always looking.
Kavita decides to help the repair crew, and helps she does! She cuts the remaining repair time by about 4 hours! Since there’s still about an hour of work left, we decide to check out one more unknown on this ship – the cryotube which probably houses a ki’tik leader of some sort. We decide to open it, and sure enough, a 2.5m tall ki’tik slowly gets out. He looks down at us and asks “Have we arrived?” iZac takes lead on this and we learn that he was en route to Mars, and seems irritated to learn that he’s not at his desired destination.
His name is Ki’kist’ac, the Hive Sovereign of Hive Fleet 206. He has a contract with the ship, and is getting increasingly irritated. For a sovereign, he doesn’t seem to understand that ships don’t have contracts, people do.
*roll initiative*
He’s had enough of our jibber-jabber. His 4 limbs spread out into blades and despite his eagerness to fight, Silas thankfully manages to calm him down. He managed to convince him that no matter what, there’s nothing we can do about getting him quickly to Mars since there’s no hyperdrive.
With that situation dealt with delayed, we find out that the work crew is done. Thanks to Kavita, we’re only on the hook for 500cr. But still, we’re in desperate need of a very expensive hyperspace bypass core. Kav and Si remember that there was another crew at the bar, so decide to go back (I really think they may just be burgeoning alcoholics) to talk to them, see if they have a core for sale/barter. Once there though, they find only the bartender, but are able to bribe him to learn what hangar they’re parked at.
Next thing they know, Kav and Sil are headed to Hangar 19 (who knows what’s hiding in Hangar 18) to see what they might be amenable to. One of the plans (maybe plan B? Or C?) is to see if they’re the ones looking for me – to use me as bait and get them to our cargo bay. From there, we can subdue and interrogate them. Or kill them if need be and steal their hyperdrive. Not a great plan, but whatcha gonna do? We have a very upset ki’tik and I very much would like to not be killed by a walking slap cop, thankyouverymuch.
So, Kav and Sil arrive at Hangar 19, and it’s predictably lock. While they’re debating how to break in, I go to our bay panel to hack into 19. While they’re still coming up with very stupid and loud/explodey ideas, I get through the device security and *click* open the access door for Hangar 19. Silas asks to change access code to provide a little more protection, and after noting the original code, I set it to 69420 while chuckling like a teenager.
Once inside the hangar, they enter the ship.
Session Date: 12/05/16
Title Source: Iron Maiden – Invaders
GM Recap: S4-A04 | Halcyon Starport Misadventures
