Unconquerable, Part I

Now that the entire crew was inside the massive, derelict, Zhodani vessel, they started to look around their immediate environs. There were no lights, and no gravity. There was atmosphere; Buck tested it, and determined it was breathable—some of the Crew removed their helmet, revealing it to also be very cold. There was minimal power, enough to provide minimal life-support. They went straight for the nearest terminal to try to get a layout of the place. To no ones’ surprise, it used the Zhodani language, so it would be up to Haank, the only one among the Crew who could speak or read it, to find what they needed. And find it he did—a basic overview, at least—though it took a while for him to acclimate to the foreign operating system. In order to find out what the ship’s mission was here, they were looking for the bridge or auxiliary; they identified the bridge, and the directions they would need to take. Haank snapped a photo of the map, in case they couldn’t pull it up later.

They navigated to the elevator cluster they intended to use, which wasn’t terribly far away. Suddenly, the lights and gravity turned on. A disembodied female voice demanded, multiple times, in Zhodani, that they identify and authenticate themselves—Haank translated—but they had no proper answer; Haank answered “Rescue” to no apparent avail. They reached the elevator cluster, and as the elevator doors opened, to their surprise, they were met by an android-type security robot; the robot repeated the voice’s demands. As the Crew was unable to come up with a satisfactory reply, the robot then demanded the intruders surrender themselves; predictably, the Crew refused. It then produced a gauss pistol from a leg-holster and attacked with an unworldly speed and grace that made it difficult for anyone to hit it, as the Crew immediately opened fire, having no remaining alternative. Haank drew his pistol, but in his haste, it slipped out of his hands; he transitioned to the gauss rifle instead. Abe circled to the side of the cluster, for cover, having naught but a stunner to his defense; he kept an eye to ensure they weren’t flanked by another. Smith was hit, but not badly wounded. The robot was hit numerous times, but gauss weapons, as most of the Crew were armed with, aren’t the best suited for destroying machines. Haank circled to the other side of the cluster, and managed to get outside the robot’s field-of-vision; he was able to damage it enough to slow it down, such that the rest could finish the job.

The Crew were convinced this would not be the last of it, so they got moving immediately, into the elevator. It ascended through many decks to the top of the ship; as it passed through the main hangar deck, they could see through the viewports many formations of what appeared to be heavily-armed robotic combat-troops, along with space-fighters in their launch tubes. The elevator eventually stopped at its limit of the sub-bridge deck, and the Crew would have to board another elevator to get to the actual bridge. They left the elevator, and found a control station nearby, so Haank went back to work trying to find details about the ship, with Buck providing some guidance through his knowledge of computer security (the origin of which, he cared not to explain); again, the foreign operating system proved tricky to master. The others took up defensive positions around the area.

Without warning, a holographic image of a human(oid) female appeared in the hallway near the Crew, and again, in Zhodani, demanded the intruders identify and authenticate themselves. Haank tried “Emergency”; ineffective again, but nobody else could think of anything. The image declared that security was being dispatched to their location. Buck quickly left the control station and put an ear to the elevator doors—something was coming up—so he grabbed his tools and set about hastily disabling the doors before anything could emerge; he succeeded, mere seconds before the elevator and its occupants reached the sub-level. Buck continued to disable the other elevators in the cluster, as they were also activating. The image then declared that they had five minutes to identify and authenticate before anti-piracy measures would be implemented—Haank still translating; in a moment of clarity, Haank asked the “ship” to use Galanglic instead, and it did so, allowing everyone else to converse with it directly. Abe asked if there was someone they could contact to recover their “forgotten” authentication codes, and the image indicated they should contact the “civilian captain”; asked who that was, the image responded with the name of the captain of the Proud Mary—a clue. The Crew started frantically firing off any potential password they could think of relating to their ship’s former owners, and scanning the data they had copied from the smuggled OSD for clues, still to no avail. They asked the image to identify the ship in the hangar, hoping it would recognize the Proud Mary (having momentarily forgotten the transponder had been updated after the official change of ownership); the image identified not only the CV Spinward Star in the hangar, but another 200-ton vessel—the competition had arrived. Haank halted his fruitless attempts to bypass the computer’s security (despite Buck’s assistance) to try to find some more detailed deck plans, to identify a core terminal that might provide a better platform for intrusion, but every bit of useful information was (understandably) locked down, requiring authorized-access.

As the remaining minutes waned, the Crew abandoned their position and fanned out to find some sort of access to the actual bridge level above; they located the other set of elevators. As the last seconds before anti-piracy protocols ticked away, the Crew scrambled into the elevator, barely getting through the doors in time. As expected, the elevator went completely dead in an instant; the lights cut out, as did the artificial gravity. The sudden dropout of gravity hit Abe the wrong way, and with help, he barely got his helmet off in time to keep from vomiting inside his suit. Using Buck’s toolset, the Crew pried off a service panel in the roof of the elevator, and ascended to the level above.

Notes

• For those that don’t already know, the ship is courtesy of Future Armada. We all highly recommend supporting this outfit, so they can continue to make more
• Sam’s player was out this week, but since the GM expected him back next time, we did not leave him behind on the ship, so we wouldn’t have to run a split-party or jump through hoops to get him back to the rest
• It was fortunate that Haank speaks Zhodani (at Accented, anyways), otherwise this whole thing would have been far more complicated
• The dice were not being very cooperative this time; lots of failures, and Critical Failures in some spots (like Haank’s Fast-Draw attempt)
• This party is feeling the pinch of not having a dedicated computer-genius/hacker in the group; Buck can do it, but he’s not all that great at it, exacerbated, in this case, by having to work through a translator on a completely foreign system
• Immediately took to calling the hologram-woman “Cortana,” for obvious reasons
• Second time this campaign somebody’s hurled after entering Free-Fall