Run #3 - The Smoking Gunwale

[John]

Mick huffs in amusement as they light up a cigarette. "Always, omae. Always."

[Molly]

Eyes wide, Mouse rises up on to her tip-toes to try and sneak a peek at Axel's find. "I BELIEVE THE TRADITIONAL PHRASE FOR SUCH OCCASIONS IS 'OOOOH, WHAT DOES THIS BUTTON DO?'"

[Drew Buddy]

Axel glances back at the switch, and possibly from the prodding of his teammates to spread the blame around, and before he can give himself a chance to second-guess the decision, he reaches in and throws it.

He looks sheepishly back at Mick and Mouse. "I think on a Soviet freighter, that can be shortened to 'блять'."

[GM Nick]

A few sparks scatter from the positive side of the switch as Axel throws it. The lights flicker briefly. Axel waits with bated breath, glancing around the infirmary. Achak looks up from cleaning duty.

The floor shudders and vibrates, accompanied by the rattling of bolts in their holes. Two floor panels near the center of the room separate, revealing a compartment jampacked with power conduit. Being fed by the power cables is some kind of device: a rapidly spinning silver cylinder that tapers to a point in the middle. It's moving so fast in fact, that it appears to be perfectly still. The runners only intuint the movement by the vibrations and a sort of kinetic energy that undulates into the air.

As the team looks on the device's rotation-- much like a propeller-- becomes visible in the form of afterimages. The sound it produces, which at first was too high frequency to detect, is now audible. It's a sort of nauseating drone that becomes lower and lower in pitch. The spinning becomes slower and slower, the sound lower and lower. Eventually the rotations can easily be seen and the droning has become a bass thump with each full revolution. Javad climbs under the cot and hides.

Achak tries to shout something but his voice is lost in the din.

The mysterious machine continues to slow, resembling a seized engine. The final revolutions are heavy and lethargic, marked with a clunking sound at the end of each. And then, the last. The cylinder rotates a final time, rolling backwards just a little as the final spurt of momentum withers. A cloud of something (smoke? steam?) roils from the machine's innards. The room is silent again, save for the tinkling of the overhead lights which seem a bit brighter than they were before.

[GM Nick]

The hairs on Mouse's neck stand upright as she's gripped by a sudden, inexplicable sensation. The closest approximation her brain can conjure is that of being surrounded in a dark theater. She can see the room and see her team and she knows that they're alone, but the overwhelming sense of presence might as well by physical limbs jostling the decker. And, it's only for a millisecond, but her AR feed scrambles, filling with artifacts before snapping back to full clarity.

In response to the resulting flood of neuro-transmitters, her agent takes initiative and shows her a diagnostic. The deck is fine. The logs are clean. The noise level is-- well, not great, but still within working parameters. Nothing that she can measure shows that their environment has changed, but her primal id is gnashing its teeth.

[John]

Mick looks about the chamber, their countenance drained of all humor. "Cool. Time to go home now, yeah?"

[Molly]

She's doing that thing again. Without even realizing it, she's threaded a hand through her greasy hair, fingertips pressing against her scalp. She can feel her pulse rippling in heavy thrums through her body, feel a sickly crawling through the ancient scar tissue welded to the back of her neck. She's barely even registered the bizarre device they've unearthed, which has been demoted to a mere footnote in the psychodrama unfolding before her.

Wide eyes snap toward Axel, desperate, almost pleading, even as she forces herself to take deeper breaths, to release her grip, lest she look like the headcase she is. "DID YOU GET ANY ODD READINGS ON YOUR WIRELESS JUST NOW?"

Even knowing better than to expect anything, she finds herself skimming through the diagnostics yet again, before she catches a glimpse of her agent peeking out from behind the window, not unlike a child eavesdropping on a parent. [Agent, look again for icons running silent.]

The agent seems almost offended by this command, folding its arms in mock indignation. [What do you think I've BEEN doing? There's nothin' out there. I would've said something if there was.

Mouse ignores this whining, her attention turning back to her feeds, desperate to find any recorded data capturing the artifacts she just witnessed. Finding itself ignored, the agent goes uncharacteristically quiet, and takes a seat alongside the myriad windows populating the decker’s AR.

Most disconcerting of all, it has traded its resting drek-eating grin for a look of… concern? Or at least as much seriousness as one can muster with glorified kaomoji. [Look, meatsweats, based on your self-reports and activity logs, I've found one explanation that could explain these anomalies… but you're not gonna like it.] It presses its stumpy arms together in a crude approximation of one tenting their fingers as it delivers its verdict: [Artificially-Induced Psy-]

It doesn’t get to finish before Mouse swipes the agent away with a hand, answering with a simple, spoken "No." as its form dissolves into the space around it.

Undeterred, it pops back into existence almost immediately. [-chotropic schizo-]

Again, she swings her fingers in dismissal. "I'm not crazy." The words come out in a low growl now. Thing is, she knows what it's suggesting. She's seen the targeted ads featuring gently smiling therapists or trauma support groups, invitations to studies, or promising free treatments. All say the same thing: 'There are millions of others, just like you, who saw what you saw, who came out different, like you. You don't have to suffer alone. You don't have to stay broken.'

[A.I.P.S.!] The word is shouted across her cerebral cortex, emblazoned across her line of sight, punctuated by a mocking burst of digital confetti.

Mouse lets out a long, ragged sigh and shakes her head hard to clear her view. She fixes her sight on the newly unveiled machine, as though seeing it for the first time, determined not to let her personal shit get in the way of another mission. "...SO DO WE WANT TO GO PLAY WITH THIS OVERSIZED SILVER BULLET?"

[GM Nick]

Just after Mouse has finished addressing Axel, there's a crash from the rear of the room. From a glance, it's simple to deduce the cause: Wind has bumped up against a table, knocking a surgical tray full of implements over on to the floor. The drone rotates to scan what could be a perceived threat, almost like it is unaware that it catalyzed said incident.

Whirlwind, meanwhile, spins in place for a brief second before resuming a regular patrol formation. Axel blinks at his children, then immediately reviews his encrypted link to them. Nothing in the logs. No missing data packets. Kids are fine.

The caustic smell of of burning... something tickles the runners' sinuses. It's not a health concern in lieu of the powerful air filtration system, but it isn't pleasant either. Javad peeks out from underneath the cot, obviously spooked by Mouse's alarm. He wriggles away from Achak and scampers over to Yung, on to whom he latches his arms.

[Drew Buddy]

Axel's heart drops down somewhere into his pelvis as he watches his collective pride and joy glitch out. As if in answer to Mouse's questioning, he points at the pair of drones. "...The frag?" He asks, before his eyes go wide for a moment, and he follows it up with, "kids, safety weapons." A glitch in navigation like that takes more than a simple glitch from the trigger signal to a weapon. If the former has happened, then the latter is possibly even more likely to happen.

War. It's just a kiss away.

Axel glances at the switch that he just willingly flipped, as if it has somehow betrayed him. "Yeah, something screwy just happened," he says to Mouse, still pointing at the pair of drones and completely unaware of the turmoil in her head, "it wasn't just you."

[Molly]

At the sight of the drones' drunken maneuvering, Mouse's panicked expression eases into pitying observation and a particular empathy for the little machines. "IT'S LIKE THE SIGNAL HERE WAS SUDDENLY CORRUPTED, BUT I CAN’T GET A BEAD ON HOW OR WHAT'S DOING IT." She says with a nod, even as she finds herself falling into a familiar wordsmithing, trying to sift all the crazy from her observations into something more objective, rational.

Here, she casts a glance back toward her agent, intending for an 'I told you so,' only to be met with its resting expression of smug judgment. She has, after all, omitted the bit from her testimony in which she felt the presence of something, or a thousand somethings slipping through the wireless space around her. She huddles her arms in toward her, biting at the inside of her cheek, struggling to put words to the sensation. "KIMOCHI WARUI."

[GM Nick]

Mouse's eerie Nipponese proclamation is met with silence. All heads turn towards the mysterious, motionless device-- the mcguffin in a twisted and ominous plot-- one that they have yet to unravel. The cylinder gleams in the fluroscent light, looking somehow even more sinister in its dormant state. The creeping dread which had receded with the restoration of the power now returns, slithering with invisible tendrils to squeeze chests and cramp stomaches. Even Javad seems more agitated, picking unconsciously at a loose thread on Yung's coat.

Achak steps forward. The conflict on his face is obvious to any observer: here's a man torn between duty to his master and self-preservation. He gestures half-heartedly at the stationary device. "Can someone scan this? I'm sure Preacher has people who can discover its purpose." A bead of perspiration swells from his forehead and rolls down the side of his face. "In the meantime, what if--"

Something slams against the infirmary wall, rattling the panels and the door (which is mercifully closed.) Achak doesn't flinch, but his hand flies to his axe. He tilts his head slowly. The sudden sound is enough to unsettle, but the knowledge that follows chills the blood of each member of the team: the impact came from the cargo hold side.

[Drew Buddy]

Axel doesn't remember moving, but he suddenly finds his Alta gripped tightly with both hands. Daring to breathe after what feels like an eternity, but was only a couple of seconds, he glances warily at Wind and Whirlwind. After another second of comparing relative threats, he murmurs, "kids, weapons hot."

He glances around at his teammates in shock, hoping against hope that someone else will be the adult in the room. He starts looking for vents or other openings to the cargo hold large enough for Echo to pass through.

[Molly]

A neon latticework lights up the team’s AR space, sweeping across the surrounding laboratory as it maps out the local geometry, outlining the cargo-side door and radius before it in a brilliant red hue that all but screams ‘danger.’ The firewall response is akin to decker squid-ink: a startle reaction of pure self-preservation, pulsing from her amygdala to her deck and bypassing any conscious, rational thought.

Her breath turns shallow, her attention frantic, tuned to every acute angle of the nearby medical furnishings, conscious bandwidth dedicated to roiling calculations of what could provide cover, what’s wired to the wall, what might move. Every visible fixture of the room: the machinery, the hanging suits, the cot under which Javad had only just sought refuge, all feed into swirling theories of what might boost their chances of survival. Her more feral thoughts conjure memories of old flatvids, desperate survivors holed up in a bar, while an infinite swarm of zombies pound against the doors and windows.

<< Can we block the door??? >> Even her ideas, a silent missive beamed to any teammate capable of reading them, come out as a desperate and uncertain bid rather than the cool command of a leader. That’s because they are desperate. She’s not the fragging adult here. If anything, she could practically be Javad’s sister in their mutual terror, with no clue how long they may have until whatever’s on the other side smashes through. But short of some brilliant tactician issuing a split-second battle plan, what they need more than anything is time.

(( Mouse’ll start firewalling, which probably doesn’t need a roll until it actually becomes relevant.
Affected targets: Mouse, Axel, Mick, Yung (if he puts his mask on) and Javad) ))

[GM Nick]

Achak slaps his hands down on either side of a cabinet and begins pushing it across the room. The cabinet's legs squeal as they scrape across the floor. He hesitates as he draws near to the door. "That's the only way out that we know of. If we barricade the door, we'll be creating a choke-point, but also sealing oursevles in."

The banging grows louder and more violent. It's difficult to tell whether it's one large impact spread across a large surface, or lots of smaller impacts. Achak glances over his shoulder for direction.

[John]

Mick rushes forward and slams their shoulder into the wall of the cabinet beside Achak. "If it's the wrong move, we'll deal with that shit later!" The ork heaves forward, accelerating the object's slide across the floor and raising its squeal to a piercing shriek. As the piece of furniture lands in place against the doorway with a heavy thud, Mick takes several large steps back from it, unslinging their AK-98 from their back and butting its stock up against the meat of their anterior deltoid. "Axel, you got a drone that can fuck off down the hall and check the right fork where we went left? Maybe there's another way outta this box."

[Molly]

"NOT LIKE WE WERE GOING OUT THAT DOOR ANY TIME SOON." Mouse’s eyes narrow hypocritically at Achak’s hesitation, which ironically makes her more resolute in her call, and in turn, grateful for Mick’s action. "WE STILL DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT’S ON THE OTHER SIDE." Uncertainty one again twists at her expression, particularly as she finds herself glancing back in Reiya’s directlion, only to be reminded that her typical reassuring demeanor has been replaced by its inscrutable corvid equivalent.

Thankfully, Mick’s air of direction is all the backing she needs, as she finds herself unconsciously setting her jaw, steeling herself in a pale imitation of their more assertive approach. She cranes her head back toward the hall they’d come from, when at once, her narrow eyes widen with sudden inspiration. "…BUT IF THIS THING WANTS IN SO BAD, WE CAN SET UP A WELCOME PARTY."

<< This place is like an airlock: one way in, one way out, ne? So we'll just stuff it with maximum fun on our way out. >> She shoves her hand into a side-pocket of her pants to rifle around momentarily, before pausing, as if interrupted by thought, glancing up toward Axel and the others. << ...We do still have that big fraggin’ landmine, right? >>

She resumes her search, only to withdraw her hand in success, one fingertip now bearing a tiny dark lens, barely the size of a contact: a microcamera. She paces toward the closer, unblocked door, and peels a thin film from the back of the camera, before sticking it as high up as she can reach. << When our new friend busts through, we can see what it is and how it fares against our gauntlet. >> So, ‘gauntlet’ might be stretching what they can accomplish before the cabinet gives way, but it makes for a better mental image than 'whatever haphazard booby traps we throw down'.

<< If we’re lucky, we can circle back to finish the job. But if it charges through undeterred… at least we know what not to try. >> It sounds overly simplistic, uncharacteristically optimistic and an especially terrible idea when she puts it into words. That’s because it is. But it’s what she's got, and all she can suggest beyond running for their lives.

We've got this. We'll just go out the back hall, have a nice cold pint, and wait for this all to blow over.

[GM Nick]

Mick and Achak slam the cabinet into the door before backing away. The slamming continues, increasing in frequency and ferocity. A bolt flies free from the wall and caroms off the floor and past Mick. The door holds, but it's evident that it won't for long. The barricade has bought the team maybe half a minute. Javad hides behind Yung and covers his ears.

[Molly]

There's a beat, a recalculation. "SCRATCH THAT. NEW PLAN: WE GTFO."

[Drew Buddy]

Axel retrieves the landmine from his pack, turning it over in his hands. He reaches behind it, and pulls a switch. An LED lights up green, turns red, flashes a few times and goes dark. He breathes in and out, hyperventilating like a swimmer, and dashes toward the door, placing the landmine at its base, and dashing back to the dubious safety of the team. His eyes are wide.

"Sounds good to me," he says breathlessly.

[MattL]

Yung turns to face Javad, making his best attempt at a calm collected demeanor. Meanwhile his mind is mired in panic, racing through the multitude of times in the past few minutes where he should have spoken up. His heart is pounding, bordering on cardiac arrest. Secretly this is the kind of moment he cherishes.

He cracks a half smile, enough to suppress the involuntary quiver of his lips before shouting.

"WHICH ONE OF YOU FRAGSTICKS SHIT IN MY PANTS?"

He grabs Javad by the arm and strides toward the rear exit of the lab. As the pair make their way into the adjoining passageway he stops, spins the youth around and leans down to look him square in the eye.

"Listen. We need to know how you got in here, you need to show us now and we’ll get out of here! Which way?"

[GM Nick]

Javad's eyes are as wide as dinnerplates, his face stricken with terror. Yet, it seems his mind has adapted to it over the last few weeks as there's a hard sort of clarity within. In response to Yung's question he raises his arm and points behind Yung, towards the door that is currently being assaulted.

Axel casts about after setting the landmine. He directs Echo into the nearest vent and glances at a feed of a maze-like ventilation system.

[GM Nick]

The door shakes in its frame, flakes of metal dusting off with each savage reverberation. It bulges in places, evidence of the mindless fury of whatever is attempting to breach it. Wham. Wham. Wham.

Achak rips a sheet from one of the cots and unfurls it, letting the fabric drift and settle over the landmine. The explosive now clumsily disguised, the Amerind backpeddles towards the exit. He extends an arm toward the door and opens his palm. Thin tendrils of smoke begin to roil off of the skin. "If we're retreating, best do it now. I'll cover you should our guest bypass the surprise."

[Drew Buddy]

Axel is all out of what little bravery he's shown so far.

"Frag it, let's head further back. If the landmine doesn't finish it, at least we'll get some warning."

And more time to contemplate our life choices.

He waves at the drones, and turns toward the hallway. As he turns, he locks eyes with Javad. "Is this something you've seen or heard before?" He asks the one person in the room who seems more terrified than him.

[GM Nick]

Javad shakes his head, shaggy hair whipping back and forth. The runners funnel through the door and pour into the corridor, some of them with weapons trained on the shaking door. The retreat continues to the junction in the corridor. Achak, who has taken up a rear position, shouts over his shoulder: "Which way?"

[Molly]

With each sickening crack of force against the door, another wave of dread washes fresh over Mouse’s roiling thoughts, another lurch takes hold of her stomach, gripped by a sense that something is very wrong. It’s not merely the instinctive fear of being hunted, or the ticking clock as the cabinet gives way to force. It's the slamming itself, and her inability to reconcile her nightmare imagery of the thing at her back, with whatever it was that left the bodies of the nav-room crew in its wake.

Whatever had killed the people upstairs had managed to catch them off-guard... WHAM. ...wove complex spells to cover its tracks... WHAM. ...murdered them all without breaking a bone... WHAM. ...all entirely within a locked room. WHAM.

While this living sledgehammer tears its way through their barricade, the more devious threat may already be inside their walls.

Achak’s question is a psychological break statement, forcing the task at hand to the forefront of her consciousness. "LEFT!" The volume of her synths serve to mask her own breathlessness as she points toward the curved hall leading to the bilge and engine room. Between footfalls, she manages to raise a palm, loading up the feed of the microcamera she'd left behind- the lone witness to whatever horrors that are about to break through.

[GM Nick]

The retreating party jags left, stomping down the corridor. At the junction, the path splifts off towards the pump room on one side and an unmarked room on the other. Achak backs towards the team, his eyes fixed on the infirmary and hands raised. "And now?"

The pounding can be heard even from this distance as it seems to shake the ship itself.

[John]

Mick's thoughts race madly as they break toward the unmarked door. The pump room is a known quantity, but sounds like a dead end in their limited estimation. That leaves the unmarked room, who knows what the frag it is, but it might offer a way out.

[Drew Buddy]

Axel sets a AR marker on the pump room as he follows Mick to the unknown door, and sends the command to Echo's dog-brain: << Find your way here through the vents. Position yourself just inside the vent when you arrive. Do not enter the room itself. >>

If we have enough time, we might be able to catch a glimpse of this thing as it tries to break down the door to this next room.

[GM Nick]

The unmarked door is non-descript but thick, made of a heavy gauge steel. Axel quickly examines the door. Reinforced hinges mean battering the door down would prove difficult. He spies a maglock-- which appears to be active-- just below the handle.

Achak stands guard, peering around the corner of the curving corridor. "It's almost through," he says, listening to the frenzied pounding.

[Molly]

Not one to let a little reinforced door deter her, Mouse swings her bag off her shoulder and tilts her head toward the maglock case. "YOU CRACK IT, I'LL TAP IT."

[GM Nick]

Mouse fumbles while extracting the DNI cable from her bag. The frenzied slamming seems to match the bass thump of her heartbeat thundering in her ears. While her mind can conjure suitably horrific scenarios about what might be trying to enter the infirmary, simply not knowing is the worst.

[Drew Buddy]

Axel nods wordlessly, and pulls his hardware tool roll from its loop on his belt. Heart pounding, he sets to the face plate with a shim and a screwdriver, working to expose a fiber port on the maglock.

[GM Nick]

Dice

Axel - Hardware - 2, 5, 5, 5, 6, 2, 6, 4 - 5 hits on 8 dice

Axel jams the shiv in the maglock's faceplate and starts prying. Despite the adrenaline coursing through his veins, muscle memory takes over and his hands run through the motions with adeptness. It takes less than a minute for him to remove the cover and expose the internals, including the prize: a DNI port.

At that same moment, the feed from Echo changes. The tiny drone has finished navigating the labyrinth of ventilation ducts and is now peeking through slats at the cargo hold. Axel does a double take at the grainy image looming in his AR feed. A group of at least a dozen-- maybe two dozen?-- people are throwing themselves against the infirmary wall and door. At a single mental command Echo's vision zooms in. There's something wrong with the bodies frantically bashing the door-- discolored skin, strange proportions... and then it dawns on Axel: their pursuers aren't some strikeforce newly arrived to the freighter, but rather the very same "cargo" that they stepped over less than ten minutes ago. They are being hunted by the dead. The implications of which... well, Axel doesn't have time to dwell on the implications.

Mouse nudges Axel aside, seeking access to the DNI port.

[Molly]

Right now, the only thing standing between the team and relative safety is a big fragging door, and it’s on Mouse to sweet talk it. "ALRIGHT DOOR, AS YOU CAN SEE, I’VE HAD A VERY LONG DAY. I AM VERY SMALL, AND I HAVE NO MONEY, AND SOMETHING OUT THERE WANTS TO EAT ME, SO YOU CAN IMAGINE THE KIND OF STRESS I’M UNDER." Her hands tremble as she finesses the end of the Universal Connector cord into the port, her nerves too frayed to crack the usual joke about sliding it in. "SO HOW ABOUT YOU OPEN UP, WE’LL ALL COME INSIDE AND NOBODY IS GOING TO EAT ANYONE’S BRAINS. DEAL?" For all their sakes, she just hopes the system password's still set to ‘АДМИН’.

(( HotF- I wanna say opening a maglock is a free action/1 mark, but honestly, just throw however many at it makes sense and I’ll edge to try again if needed. ))

Loadout

(( Overclocker: Sleaze
Attack: 4
Data Processing: 5/4
Sleaze: 6/4
Firewall: 3/2
Programs: Agent, Baby Monitor, Encryption, Exploit, Fork, Linguasoft: Russian, Sneak, Stealth, Toolbox ))[/loadout]

[GM Nick]

Dice

Mouse - HotF - 4, 1, 1, 4, 4, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 1, 6, 3 - 4 hits on 14 dice

There's a loud crash as the door finally gives way and topples forward, followed the clamorous orchestra of toppling furniture, footsteps and bodies collding. The infirmary has been breached.

Mouse struggles to rein in her terror, teeth clenched so tight she fear they might crack. She skips over her most commonly used exploits and goes straight for the big guns. No time to risk a flub. The firewall buckles under her barrage of malware, all the while the sound of their pursuers grows louder.

A mark appears as she gains override access. Mouse immediately orders the lock to yield, which it does with a beep and a click.