Terrorists, Aliens, Megacorps, Politicians - A New Campaign Of An Old Classic

[LordEntrails]

Hopefully it's obvious I love this game, that's why I keep these "diary" entries. So much so that this game plays for me in the middle of the night and I do not regret the lack of sleep.

If you've read the stories I've written, then apparently you enjoy them. So come join us, get in on the game. You''l have a blast!

[LordEntrails]

Good gear is expensive. Yea, we got paid a boatload, and a bonus too. Well, at least a boatload for a bunch of kids with just an inkling of skills and a few weeks of training. Of course, that’s what we were when we left on the Serena Dawn, it’s not what we were when we got off of Volturnus. But good gear is expensive, no way we could get everything we wanted though. But enough, we got what we need for most any job that might come our way.

And then the turmoil. You know, heroes are supposed to be welcomed as, you know, heroes. And I guess we were, but then the debriefs, the inquisitions, the questions. How many times you do you have to answer the same questions? I mean two or three times during the debrief makes sense you know? Make sure your story is consistent, that nothing new comes to mind all that. But then each idiot, each politician, each interrogator thinks they have to ask the questions themselves. Like the other beings who asked the question must have done it wrong, or the somehow hearing the answer live is going to tell you something the last ten vids of the same question and answer didn’t. And then we had to pay for our own publicity agents and advisers. You know, mercenaries are not just para-military personnel.

Then came the job offers. One of them seemed promising, but too easy. Even then it sounded too good you know? But it would get us out of the system, away from the circus and somewhere else where we could look for something better you know? All we had to do was play passengers on a refitted luxury liner. A passenger liner that doesn’t need a crew. Run by a robot brain so good it didn’t need a crew, except for service and security bots. And it is, or was. Kat and I don’t have the skills to really get what the ship’s computer is really capable of, but things just didn’t seem to add up you know?

We were still uneasy though. We checked the ship, but until something would go wrong, we were just passengers you know? We ate the food, enjoyed the lounge, poked around. And waited. But for what? Sure, as I write this now it’s easy to say, but at the time, how do you know what’s coming? I mean the unease we felt had no reason. We couldn’t put a claw on it. Nothing was wrong you know? But things weren’t right either.

Just after we jumped in the transit system it happened. No alarms, no warnings. Nothing for the super smart ship’s computer Andi to react to. But fortunately I was on the bridge, trying to figure out how to pilot. You know, all this time with nothing to do, might as well learn something. A red light. A warning light.

“Hey Andi, what’s that red light?”

“Security breach of the outer airlock Cereeze.”

Fracking Hell! Why didn’t the ship do something you know? Not as smart as it’s supposed to be. I sounded the alarm and headed for the weapons locker.

So how do you board a ship that has just come out of jump? Only one way, you had to know when it was coming out, where it would be, and pretty darn close to the velocity and vector it would have at that time.

The Star Devil or his peons would be a good guess as to who had boarded. But you’d be wrong. Fracking Worms! How the frack does a Worm ship get into an inner system and know when, where, and our vector? I mean sure, why are they there is pretty important, but to even have a chance they could pull off any such intercept is a problem the UPF and Star Law should be panicked about. But us? Yea, I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Sathar die you know. And we know how to kill them. Grenades help. But they weren’t here to take the ship. They didn’t go for the bridge, they didn’t take engineering, they didn’t go for auxiliary control. They kept moving about, they were searching for something. They wanted something, and it wasn’t the ship.

They died, their boarding shuttle was gone, but their vac suits remained. But they were booby trapped. I didn’t think of that till I started to look at them. I got out in time, but they destroyed themselves. Damned worms.

[LordEntrails]

We found what the worms were looking for. In a bio-hazard cabinet that Alex claimed didn’t exist. Meaning his sub-routines had been tampered with. So Kat dove into the computers, and found planted evidence. Videos that seemed to show us putting the biological into the cabinet, and then like we had tried to erase it. We were setup, by our employers. Maybe it was just someone performing CYA and planting the video in case something went amiss.

Yea, I’m not going to put into writing what the worms were looking for, and I’m also not going to say what that video was about. Cover Your *** you know? So we started doing the same. Scrubbed the computer best we could, dumped the physical evidence into a star. If the deep cold of space and then nuclear fire doesn’t destroy it, well, then nothing will.

We finished out the trip, we turned in our reports about how the trip went smooth and perfect, no hiccups what so ever. And we refused any follow up work. Yea, we lied through our teeth and we vowed to never work for any company related to Streel. No, we didn’t send a letter to Streel declaring them our enemies, we put on a nice face, one or more execs there don’t like us, and we’ll kill them if we ever find out which ones and we get the chance. But until then, we are just dumb and ignorant budget mercenaries that they can pay cheap to take a fall for them, but some how are never available for their jobs.

[LordEntrails]

Now we are onto something else. Not a job technically, a partnership. Maybe this will be more suited to our tastes?

Some vrusk spacer named Max was on a ship that mis-jumped and landed in system with an intelligent species. After they found their way back to Frontier space, he left his ship, bought one of his own, hired a crew and needed some partners to help explore it. That’s where we come in, you know, since we are one of the few who have ever explored a new planet with intelligent life on it. But this is a commercial venture, not some anthropologic science mission. Nope, were’ looking to make money. See, our new partner and captain found a metal artifact, one created with atomic technology, something the local Heliopes who live in grass huts and fish in crude dugout boats could have made.

We also picked up a couple of new partners and lost Scorch. He didn’t show up when it was time to leave. He had been mumbling to himself a lot, I think he was wanting to go home. His time as a prisoner to the Star Devil was pretty harsh on him. Not surprising he might have been looking for some peace, guess we reminded him too much of what he went through.

A bonofide doctor joined us, I can never remember his name, humans all look alike you know? Will be good to have someone who is more than a combat medic. Though despite all the frack we throw at Jazz for his medical skills, he kept all of us alive more than once back on Volturnus. When it got deep, he pulled us through, just like a fellow corporate worker from the same house. We picked up an engineer too, a squishy one like Baboo. Talks a lot, but not about perfume baths like Baboo. Seems to know his stuff, but time will tell. And another bland faced human, a biologist. He got ideas, strange ones. Time will tell.

A strange thought just occurred to me, I wonder if Jazz, Kat and Baboo are now my House? C’lk, I wouldn’t mind that. Maybe…

Now here we are on the planet named Starmist, inhabited by a species called the Heliopes. Most of them are nomadic, but one bunch has settled in a village on a river and seems to be driven by religion and ruled by a bunch of priests. That’s who Max has led us too. Their legends say that they come from the stars, brought here by their gods, that don’t look like us. Maybe the worms, or maybe the Ancients?

And they collect artifacts. technology that they do not have the means to produce, or usually even maintain, and that is not ergonomic for their species. And they have a temple built over something that when someone makes an acceptable sacrifice the priests allow them to “commune” via something suspiciously like an electrical current. Or to put it simply, some advanced race species brought them here generations ago and left behind various items that they collect and protect. You know, alien technology that we can make money with.

Fanatical in their faith while stubbornly and arrogantly ignorant of anything outside their sphere of knowledge, the priests we’re anything but curious or open to talk of pretty much anything. The felt like they were appeasing ignorant children when talking with us. It was tempting to just level the village and pull the answers out of the ashes of what remained. But, instead we chose to figure out another way, to keep trying peaceful means until nothing remained.

In that spirit, we talked with some of the nomads, who attacked us on our way in, but who we appeased with a domesticated animal gift. They were just about what we expected, savage nomads with little knowledge, but they too believe in their gods from the stars. And they had nothing good to share with us either. Just typical tensions between nomads and villagers, between the outsiders and the appointed holies of a religion.

It was during our return to the village that something happened, in the village. We heard it, and saw the smoke, but were much too far away to do anything but hurry back. On our returned we gathered some clues as to what had happened, from evidence and the villager’s stories. Two alien creatures had emerged from the trees to the west, when confronted, the used high energy weapons. Setting one of the village huts on fire and injuring some villagers. It’s doubtful the villager’s spears really threatened them, but they did turn and retreat.

Description were poor. But I was able to find some tracks. Tread tracks, less than a meter apart. Like what a pair of tracked robots would leave. Maybe I’m drawing too much from the descriptions, the tracks and from experience, but no ship landed after us. And they didn’t show up before we landed. Max landed here with his crew, and then again with us. Maybe they came between those two trips. Or, maybe they have been here a long time, maybe their were left by the Heliope’s gods. Or, maybe, just maybe, and almost certainly if you ask me, they were a pair of sathar cyborgs scouts from a fracking worm listening outpost left here to alert the slimy worms if the Heliopes ever became space faring. Just like on Volturnus.

Not being able to track the two intruders, instead we became intruders. The first time we broke into the villager’s temple. Yea, we found an alien artifact. A friggin massive alien hover tank. Bigger than any UPF thing I’ve heard tell of. Four turrets! And protected by a defensive gauss screen. One that knocked our new engineer on his butt, if he had a one. An effective way to keep infantry off, and us out.

It seems that the artifact rod used by the head priest during their rituals is probably the key to the tank. We’re going to need it, and now. I was advocating for patience, knowing we had weeks or months until a UPF mission showed up. But with the sathar scouts having been activated and knowing where the village is. Well, they will be back, in force. And a hover tank is certainly likely to give us a big advantage in a fight. Especially if something like a cybo-dragon shows up.

We really were not left with much choice, we had to raid the priest’s compound out on the river. Not just for the rod, but because Max was out there. The villagers said he had gone to serve the gods, but it sounded more like he got caught trying to sneak in. Not sure why, he didn’t let us in on any plans. But, we want Max back, and we want that rod. So, we’re going in.

[donpaulo]

Indeed, we had been recruited by Max to assist with the "removal" of interesting articles from the native Heliopes. Yet despite some of us preferring a more "direct" approach, we chose the path of lessor resistance. However we were unable to procure enough data from our recon visit with the nomads and so returned right after the aforementioned attack on the village. Knowing the clock was ticking it was decided a personal visit into the temple was in order which yielded the information about the tank which was of alien construction and worth a pretty penny on the open market. The possible payout from the discovery hastened the decision to look for the "key" with the possible benefit of discovering our patron's fate as well.

The party sneaked err snuck? out on to the platform built over the river and started our investigation. What did we discover ?

Violence is an effective tool if used correctly and for the proper reason.

Having said that the doctor is a devoted Quaker and will not harm another individual if possible, however that wasn't an issue as there were a few moments of danger and battle from a native creature who put up quite a good fight. All calls for "medic" were answered and Jazz continued in his medic capacity now enhanced by the good doctor's presence. The poor creature was put down, sadly there really wasn't another option as it was not only dangerous but attacked us first.

1 minor surgery later and the party is about to embark on the 2nd part of this excursion.

What will we find there ? Will we discover the fate of Max ? Will we find the "key" to the tank ? this and more to be determined in our next adventure.

[LordEntrails]

I wanted to go in via two routes, I didn’t like the thought of only one way in and one way out, a kilometer long wooden walkway a meter above the water we know to be filled with some carnivorous predator. But the barrels of purple predator repellent weren’t on the dugouts, and we didn’t have time to look for them. That left us with just the narrow walkway.

The walkway took us to the gate house, or the entry building. The door was barred, but that yielded easily to a vibroknife. The priestly guard on the other side didn’t wait for an explanation and just attacked. Not that I can blame it, but not very friendly you know? We put it down without killing it. After all, they aren’t really our enemies. The single room building held a bunch of decrepit alien tech, maybe a generator or holo receiver or such. Nothing functional, nothing immediately usable. Except for the priest’s weapon, which we confiscated.

Two doors out, both to a pair of symmetric flame towers. The group wanted to stay together, so we did and I stayed nervous with such an idea. You know, putting all your eggs in one clutch and all. Jazz or Baboo, don’t know which one, got curious when we got to the tower and opened some door with some little critter on the other side. Easily dealt with, but I don’t know what they were looking for.

The main building wasn’t so easy to deal with. Three levels, with a ladder and ceiling-floor hatch between them. We kept to non-lethal weapons as long as we could. Our new engineer Voak even tried a tangler for a sniper in one of those hatches, but him and Kat didn’t coordinate too well and she got tangled instead of the priest. And the damned priest shot Kat while she was vulnerable. We resorted to lethal force with that. We had to in order to keep Kat alive.

The head priest, out in his lone hut was tough. Sniping from cover, hidden amongst all sorts of relics and using some sort of gamma ray gun was too deadly for non-lethal weapons. We tried. But in the end we chose to kill him rather than risk our own lives more than needed. That gamma ray is viscous, a couple hits will kill the toughest of us, and it seems to bypass our defenses too. Whoever we sell that tech to we need to make sure we get a couple of the field prototypes in return!

We’ve scrounged the best of the relics, including all the weapons and gathered the hover tank’s key. Now we have to head back to shore, and convince the villagers not to attack us. It seems we should claim to be emissaries from the gods, come to find only that they were not ready as they should be and the head priests refusing to listen to us and therefore those that would not listen were punished by the gods. That the gods left the relics here for all heliopes; priests, villagers and nomads, to learn from. So that the Heliopes could learn to protect themselves from the Devil’s that come from the Stars and one day join the gods amongst the stars.

Yea, that seems like that should work.

[LordEntrails]

We headed back to land. If felt good to get soil beneath my boots. My boots made of sand shark skin, from Volturnus. They are one thing that has served me well from that place. It only took a few minutes to get us all into the pyramid. Voak and I were able to cautiously turn off the defensive system, the rod proved to be a simple on-off key.

Once we were confident the defenses were deactivated, we all began to examine the tank. Pretty sweet thing and we took until almost dawn figuring out its systems. The four turrets can all be operated from inside the tank from their own consoles, or you can crawl inside each turret and operate it from there. A nice variety of rockets, lasers and a gamma gun. Each turret is also on an extensible arm, so it can extend from the surface of the tank and fire in any direction. Not sure I would design a tank that way, but don’t know how vulnerable such a system might be.

The tank’s systems also identified an electro-magnetic signal emanating from the east. I’m guessing the Sathar Artifact. The hover tank also has a missile, looks like a short-range surface to surface affair. Voak says it’s got an EMP warhead. Thing has a dial in the launch compartment, with 5 positions. I thought it might be for range at first, but that doesn’t make sense. I’m guessing its got to be warhead yield. Don’t know if the tank’s systems are hardened against EMP itself. That could really suck if we disabled ourselves!

We were trying to figure out what to do next, just break out with the tank and head east to the signal, or somehow approach the heliopes when Chaos happened. Four sathar cyborgs attacked the village. Once more emerging from the east. I guess I have to admit they may not have been sathar cyborgs, I was busy driving and we didn’t get a chance to examine them. It was a short fight, and the tank took a little damage from a grenade. But the villagers didn’t see us as heroes. Nope, Baboo tried to be political with them, but they didn’t want to listen. When they started throwing rocks at us it was time to leave. So we did. I took us out over the river and headed east. Towards the artifact.

[LordEntrails]

I forgot to tell you about our illustrious leader and captain Maximillian. Back in the village when the fighting started with the robots he didn’t do so well. I mean I understand vrusk sensibilities and all, but what sense does it make to lose all logic when the greater stars roll a grenade under your chair? Theirs’s no money to be made if you can’t keep your antennae focused on the situation in front of you.

Doc Perro had to put him down before he hurt himself or one of us. Don’t know how such a soul thinks he’s going to captain a scamp freighter. I mean he would probably do just fine on some corporate passenger liner where he biggest challenges are navigating bureaucracy or wealthy dralasite poof complaining about the complementary perfumes in the steam bath. I’m sure he would just let ship security deal with any drunk yazarians and not even let himself be caught in the same compartment.

Anyway, we were out over the water, heading to the north of the artifact to approach with what we hoped is cover from heavy vegetation, when we took a hit, a big hit. Laser, like from an installation. I guess maybe it could have been vehicle mounted, but instinct tells me it’s from the installation. Caused spaulding on the inside, some of the guys in back took damage from it.

The answer to incoming fire is to move, and when there is no cover, like in the middle of a lake, move fast and evade. So that was the first thing I did. I wound up the engines and got this thing moving over 8 meters per second and started randomizing my course.

Babs and Bim and Kat and Jazz all tried locating the source of incoming fire, but it was hidden. It seemed to be coming from the east edge of the lake near where the signal had been coming from, but we couldn’t see anything. After the fire kept coming in, but missing us fortunately, we figured it had to be hidden behind an installation sized holo screen.

Hoping to be able to find cover behind an isthmus of trees, we kept going north east along the lake edge while Voak worked out firing the EMP missile and the tried to find the source of the fire. We took a few more light hits, nothing serious while on this course but couldn’t move out of the firing arc like we hoped. So with Voak confident we could fire the EMP at our target to take out the holo shield, I turned towards where the fire was coming from. Continuing to evade as we closed the distance, we thought we had to get under 4 kiloms before firing, the incoming fire kept poking at us and now starting including explosions from a large recoilless rifle.

I don’t remember if it was before or after we fired the missile, but I had forgotten to polarize the driving screen and the glare coming off the water hid some rocks sticking out of the surf. Yea, we hit them. It slowed us down some and I could hear the damage to the lift fans, but this thing was built like a tank and kept on going.

It was a holo screen and the missile took it down, revealing three bunkers. Two where the heavy lasers where firing from, and a third massive one with the protected BFG and what Jazz figured was a massive sonic devastator. He figured we would be safe from it past 500 meters, but I wasn’t so sure. But it was his call.

All the while Babs was trading shots with the emplacements. But with the range still past a couple klicks and me keeping us from being a stable platform he wasn’t hitting anything. When we closed to 2 klicks Bim Bam joined in with the heavy laser, while Kat and Voak had to still wait, the rocket turrets on this thing only had an effective range of a 1000 meters.

It wasn’t until we closed to less than 1,500 meters that Baboo landed a hit. That gamma gun is vicious. Tore right through the screen and armor of the BFG’s turret. Drilled a head-sized hole through the whole thing, including the BFG. Secondary explosions told us all we needed to know, the recoilless rifle was now scrap. We were still taking some hits, but with the BFG out it reduced my pucker factor a great deal!

The exchange of mostly misses kept going as we closed. And then Bim landed a hit with the laser, lots of damage, but didn’t take out the laser turret like the gamma gun did. Then we were in range with the rockets. And Baboo landed another gamma gun destroyer and the fight was almost a foregone conclusion at that point. Maybe it was one of the rockets that took out the sonic devastator before we ever came in range, but I know Babs pinned another one of those gamma shots on the board and took out another emplacement.

As we swung around towards the south side of the emplacements and were looking for more threats, I noticed a warning light. Pucker factor was back. We had found some sort of read out or counter after first powering up the tank. We didn’t know what it was, and still don’t. But a few of us wondered if it was counting down, or counting up to something. And now I could see that whatever the read out was, it was much shorter than it had been. I took the opportunity to bring our nice ancient alien war machine to a halt.

Voak and Kat didn’t waste any time and immediately headed for the exit tunnel. Pretty sure they were convinced it was a self-destruct timer. Not convinced of that myself, Jazz and I tried to figure out how much longer until it might end, or disaapear. When we estimated it was something less than an hour, and maybe only a few more minutes, we figured discretion was the better part of valor and shut down and called to evacuate the tank.

Seemed like everyone had already done that before we bothered to to announce it. Except Doc Peroro. The quiet guy had been going around patching us up as we had taken hits from the laser turrets or otherwise overloaded panels and he hadn’t forgotten about Max. Our Captain was still lying unconscious on the floor. Doc dragged him out and Jazz and I followed. With the machine powered down, Voak activated the security screen again and we headed northeast towards the back side of the encampment.

It was a bunch of buildings, all commercial Frontier pre-fab units. Something you might find on just about any chartered planet. Like stuff you might find at a scientific dig, or an outland farm, or a corporate outpost. It sure as hell wasn’t a Sathar Artifact. Not that the turrets hadn’t told us that. And it was quiet. Too damned quiet. We had just blow **** up and no one was running around. No patrols out to meet us, no survivors looking to flee an alien war tank.

That didn’t last. A human, a damned little soft shelled, two legs, two arms and bulbous head human made a dash for an armed jetcopter sitting outside when we were just under 200 meters from it. I wanted that copter, but obviously he wasn’t going to let us have it. So I wasn’t going to let him keep it. Using my mounted grenade launcher I drop a frag in his direction, but it was too far to get a clean shot in.

Most of the team dove for cover and started to return fire. Bim Bam tossed some rocks into the intake. It ate them up, but you could hear the whine of heartburn the rocks caused. It wasn’t going to last long and would keep the guy from getting to far, but he wasn’t trying to escape. Nope, he spun the nose right at us and tried to mow us down with the inline mounted laser. Flipping on my screen, it didn’t worry me and I kept dropping gyro rounds into the copter.

Baboo kept rushing at it, his force axe out. Brave little blob, but what the hell? Axe versus copter. Who knows what thoughts go through the nervous system of a blob? It was Kat I think who brought it down with a couple bursts from her auto rifle. Unfortunately, it was low and headed right at us. It came apart and left a furrow as it came apart. The debris cut a few of us up pretty good. But not more than a skeinsuit and good ‘ol Doc Perro could deal with.

Unchartered system in Frontier space. Sathar cybots. Corp pre-fab buildings. Humans. Not an artifact, a fracking snake pit is what this place is. Maybe their aren’t any snakes here at the moment, but these are certainly snake lovers. Were going to burn out this hole. If any of the traitors surrender we’ll turn them over to the Federation. If they don’t, we’ll kill them here. And if they happen to be connected to the Star Devil, I’ll burn them twice!

[LordEntrails]

Abandoned, mostly. The chopper pilot proved it and the sathar combat bot that fired at us from between two buildings reassured us this place was going to be a snake pit. The bot was armed with a pair of auto-pistols and rocket launcher. Combine that with a pair of melee tentacles and a defensive shock screen the thing was pretty tough. Throw in our poor tactics and they are dangerous!

After that bot, we proceeded to clear out the other pre-fab buildings. Including a snake-loving Yaz that was still lying in wait for us and a second bot. I was able to get behind that one and disable it and the snake-lover surrendered. Not sure what all the building were, but we could tell they had all had equipment pulled out of them. A bunkroom, an office, maybe a gymnasium.

And a nuclear powerplant, set to destruct. We couldn’t figure out how to shut it down, but our resident egg did figure that it would contaminate the entire rift, given time. Meaning the Heliopes would have to be convinced to evacuate, or they would all die in a few months or perhaps a couple years at most. Well, that was a problem for another time, right now we had 3 hours until the reactor was set to blow and we had found an elevator down in one of the buildings and we all pretty much needed the services of good ol’ Doc Perro.

The elevator dropped down just enough before heading west towards the bunkers. It then rose into the bunker complex that was half buried in the ridge. And opened into hallway protected by another one of those sathar combat bots. Our tactics got better, but still we got to figure out something. Not that we had a lot of options and we did spread out, but we still left ourselves with the possibility of cross-fire. And with the shock field it put Babs and anyone who engaged in melee guaranteed to get hurt in the process.

We found a fourth combat bot in an air defense missile control room. Maybe if another one or two of us knew how to deactivate bots that would allow for better tactics. Maybe. But anyway we destroyed this one too. And then Kat dove into the computer and found it had ten anti-ship missiles and was set to automatically target anything above 30 meters. That meant we probably would have died if we had tried lifting off-planet! Not sure why they let Max’s first ship leave, but they were not going to let us leave. Kat shut it down so now we could leave, with or without the Heliopes.

Just south of the missile control, across the elevator hall we came in, was the command center. Sitting happy as clams were three worm-lovers, and a fracking worm! Jazz and Babs took some shots through the doorway and tossed a grendae, and then Voak dropped three rounds center of mass on the traitorous dralasite. But they didn’t leave a mark. The scum were protected by full inertia screens. Auto-rounds were not going to even scratch them, no wonder why they were content to stay put.

Not able to get in any shots ourselves, Kat and I saw a door on the far side and looked to flank the worms and come in the other side. We moved covering each other around the halls, until as half expected we stumbled onto another one of those damn sathar combat bots. Kat drew it into melee so I could flank it and go for it’s access panel. Those things are vicious, and Kat felt the blunt of the bots attacks as it laid into her, it’s accuracy with auto-pistols and tentacles almost deadly. By the time I got it’s panel off and powered it down, she was barely standing. I think I could have blown on her to knock her over.

A knife’s edge, just getting the job done is balancing on the edge, and one of these days its not going to fall our way. Then again, it didn’t always fall our way on Volturnus did it?

Kat wasn’t in any shape to continue the flanking, but I kept going, and it was too late by the time I got there. Bab’s and Jazz had moved into the room. Bab trying his force ax and turning to pulling the scum out of their chairs while Jazz’s laser was unaffected by the screens. The human poisoned itself after Bab’s had pulled it out of it’s chair and was ready to return to his force ax. And as Jazz moved in on the lone surviving sathar, it blew itself up and started another self-destruct sequence.

Worms are damned poor losers you know? Never forget that. They will happily destroy something before they let you have it. Someday, may just have to return the favor.

The rest of the bunker was empty. The emplacements we had taken out with the hover tank and a sensor control room. But there was nothing here. Nothing of any use. Kat pulled a little bit out of the computers and Voak made visual recordings of what he could, but there just wasn’t much here. But with 2 nuclear reactors set to blow, it was time for us to go. Exiting the bunker we saw the smoke from the tank, it had destroyed itself. The expedition was pretty much a bust. It was time to go, so we did.

Waking up Max, we got him to drive the hover car while Voak and I took the cycles. And we fled west across the lake and set down safe on the other side. Jazz, Voak and I were pretty much set on trying to recover the explorer, but that, and the gear we had left in it, was a bust too. Scoping the Heliopes from out of sight, we could see they had toppled it and were playing with our gear. Dumb sods, one of them was going activate one of those grenades they were playing catch with.

But I guess it didn’t much matter. We couldn’t get more than a handful of them onboard our ship, which would doom them to death in time. And we didn’t have the resources to migrate them to another rift. Even if they had been willing to listen to us. Their only hope was that the Federation had a team inbound and could move or evacuate them. Radiation is a sad way to die, and a tragedy when it wipes out an entire species. Nothing we could do about it. And no way to even give their deaths meaning.

We got back to Max’s ship and waited a few days for a sathar cruiser and it’s escort to leave the system. Gave me time to think. Whoever left the Heliopes here picked this rift. The Sathar picked this rift for their training camp. Max’s first crew stumbled upon the system and picked this rift to land. And as soon as those three things happened, the ignorant savages that had no idea were doomed to death.

There was nothing we could have done. Had we convinced the priests we knew more than them. Had we convinced the villagers of the Sathar threat. It would not have mattered. Had we kept the tank’s self-destruct from activating, the Sathar would have still activated their self-destruct. Had we figured out a way to prevent two reactors from detonating, the heavy cruiser would have probably finished the job, and us along with it.

By a mother’s legs, it didn’t matter. Once the first Frontier ship landed here, the Heliopes were doomed. The bad luck of one crew, which Max thought was fortune, had doomed a race of primitive peoples and nothing in that crew’s power or our own could have stopped it. Once the system was known, the Sathar had only one path; they were going to evacuate, and when they did so they would leave nothing behind. They were going to nuke the rift one way or another. The UPF would have never gotten here in time. Even if we hadn’t come seeking fortune. It didn’t matter, we just got caught up in a storm of events we could only shelter ourselves from.

The Budget crew was lucky, compared to everyone else involved. The Heliopes died. Max got burned, scorned and ridiculed in the media. We got left out. Max never brought us into it. The UPF didn’t leak our involvement. After the genocide of the Heliopes, no one wanted the artifacts, and we didn’t have many anyways. We lost money and gear, but not all of it. We learned a hard lesson, but we came out better than anyone else.

[LordEntrails]

Maybe our reputation wasn’t as fouled as I thought it was. Or maybe it’s just the mutual animosity with Streel that colors my views on all the mega-corps. GTF, our original employers, set us up with a job interview at CDC. What are they, like the number three mega-corp? Bab’s would probably know, but regardless, they are a big player. And getting onto their payroll would be a nice steady job. I figured we would probably end up at some staffing flunky’s desk getting assigned to rotate in at some field base in the middle a drokking desert.

Nope, wrong again. Some executive assistant escorted us from the headquarters’ lobby into a private elevator, with no console or readout. And we went up, way up. Then she left us in a conference room, a nice one. Like top echelon nice. The we met the man himself, the Chairman of the fracking mega-corp. Karl something or another. And it was a private meeting, just him and us. Not in person, no, who knows where he was, but just his full-sized hologram and us. A job offer direct from the Chair himself, and 10 minutes of his time while presenting it to us himself. Can you say opportunity?
A secret mining operation had gone dark on an unreported planet. A relatively new operation on a planet no one else was supposed to know about. One that was full of valuable heavy metals and minerals and one that the CDC wasn’t going to give up without a fight.

OK, the CDC has a leak somewhere, but that’s not surprising, and probably not aimed at us. Just someone with info to sell and willing to make a few creds doing it. Even if it meant the dozen CDC employees onsite were now dead. Double standard GTF rates for us, plus a reasonable load out of equipment. Good guaranteed pay, plus the promise of bonuses if we did well. Looked like we might have just left ‘the Budget Crew’ times behind!
The mission was straight forward. Determine the status of the outpost and the twelve staff. If the outpost has been compromised, learn who did it, and if it was a rival mega-corp, report to CDC and terminate the rivals. Yea, I know, nothing goes as planned. But the simpler the mission, the easier to adapt plans as the situation develops.

Sure, the paranoid side of me might allow that it wasn’t really the Chairman, or that we were being setup. But a little voice inside my heart wants it to be true. You know, finally getting in. Not to a soft and easy life of luxury, no. But to where we can make our stake, make something of ourselves, that with blood and sweet we can build something real, and get recognized for it. Don’t know what that is yet, but something we control, where we call the shots, not like Volturnus where we struggled to survive and every decision was made for us. Not like Starmist where the fates had already decried the sad results. But something, anything that we were the ones making the decisions and our decisions would be the driving factors for the Fates. I have great hopes for Alcazzar.