Fantasy World Creations

     You open your eyes to the cramped, dimly lit interior of an unfamiliar place.  The weightless sensation of space was in no way unfamiliar but something was off.  Your body feels...  different... like wearing a shirt that had been freshly starched even though it was clearly not recommended laundering for that particular article of clothing.  The sensation of a fresh sleeve in a new morph.  The last thing you remember: recieving activation orders from Firewall and instructions from your new proxy, someone going by the handle Jetz, to backup your ego and transmit your morph specs. Then, after packing some supplies and leaning back into the ego bridge you opened your eyes to...  whatever this is.

Donovan opens his eyes. He looks around briefly, trying to figure out where he may have ended up and rubs his temple. You never quite get used to resleeving.

Estela blinked a few times after the egocast had completed, attempting to adjust to the dim light and unfamiliar location. Joder, odio hacer eso...

      A pounding headache presses in on your craniums as you begin to notice the straps stopping you from drifting out of the ego bridge cradle.  "Oh no..."  You hear, taking note of the voice coming from across the room(?).  A neo-avian opposite you with a bleary, distressed look slowly struggles with their own restraints.  You hear a retch emit from their throat.  "Oh noooooblearghhhh"  Their gizzard spasms as fluxing blobs of vomit and bile spew from their break headed right for the two of you.

Donovan heard the sounds of retching across the room, knowing what was coming next, he groggily tried to break the restraints that held his sleeve in place on the way in.

Not wanting to catch a face full of puke right after an unpleasant resleeving, Estela struggled against her restraints.

[roll]SOM 10x3 +30 -10 (50)
[/roll]

     Donovan, able to break free of the velcro restraints, manages to escape their cradle and pulls free as intravenous lines pull free of their bioports and dribble specks of fluids before gobs of vomit splatter against the cradle.  Estela was less fortunate.  Unable to break free, a bilious green blob lands square in the middle of her chest and spatters into a large puddle in their bare skin and a small cloud of rancid spheres now floating around her head.

     "Ugh...  shit... "  Moans the avian as he grabs a nearby polymer bag to keep vomiting into.  "Not good...  not goooooohurk!"  He continues to dry heave into the bag a few more times before calling out.  "Fuck is everyone alive?  Shit fuck not good. Please tell me no one's sleeving fucked up."

Stiffling a laugh, Donovan called out to the room. "I think I count three. There's you who I will be calling Ralph, whoever the unfortunate soul you ralphed on, and myself. How many are we supposed to have?

     "Three...  okay we're good...  Wait no we're not.  We're on the Flash12 that means...  fuck we're all dead.  No wait died."  Yet still more puke makes its way into the vomit bag. "Probably..."  He coughed a few times before starting to take off the rest of his restraints and pulling out his IVs.  And it's not Ralph, it's Jetz.  I'm the Proxy.  He shudders for a second and pulls the barf bag to his beak but seems to hold it in this time.

"Chingada MADRE!" Estella swore loudly, trying not to get any of Jetz's vomit in her mouth as she made to undo her restraints more carefully this time. "What do you mean died?" she asked, making an effort not to continue raging about being covered in sick.

     "I mean something must have gone wrong because we're the backup sleeves."  Grumbles Jetz as he holds the vomit bag to his mouth with one hand while he uses his other to try and maneuver himself around what appears to be some kind of passenger berth that has had its 4 beds replaced with the improvised stasis cradles you were occupying and a vat filled with clear liquid occupying the other spot.  "Check the mesh.  Notice something?"  Asked the crow-like avian as he called up an AR clock display into the middle of the room that showed a system standard time that was off by almost 2 weeks from your expected arrival time on Luna.  "Here, get dressed and come to the common room.  Oh and uh...  sorry no shower so sponge baths only...  my bad, happens every time I sleeve."  He said apologetically as he drifted out of the room, leaving an AR trail to the common room in his wake.

     You are, of course, completely naked as is common for a fresh sleeve but find a footlocker next to your cradle with your second favorite set of clothes and your gear that would fit in it. 

"Tch." Estella clicked her tongue against her teeth, in mild annoyance and then found a damp sponge to clean off. Afterwards she fetched some of her gear and clothing from the footlocker, including the small multi-legged creepy bot, which she activated and let it hide itself in a pocket of her coat. While she changed, she told her muse to run a mesh search for anything strange that had happened during the time that they were in transit that could explain the lost time. She then proceeded into the common room.

     As you clean up and get dressed your muse returns several queries after a short lag.  According to solar positioning systems, you are not on Luna or in its orbit.  In fact you are actually on the Earth side of the Lagrange point, almost a week's travel out from your original rendezvous point.  The nearest habitat is called Cote d'Infini, some kind of resort station judging by the advertising.  Your muse seems to have spun out on further queries though and it looks like it will take some time for it to finish running its search algorithm for unusual activity.

Donovan didn't say anything else, but thought to himself that the avian would always be Ralph. He quickly dressed himself, looking over the sleeve as he did so, getting a feel for the body. He was still a bit groggy, but followed Jetz into the common room. Pinging his location and gathering his mind as he did so.

     Following Jetz's trail down a short and relatively cramped corridor, you make it to the common room.  The room is more spacious than the one you woke up in with furniture designed for both gravity and zero-g.  A vending machine stocked with an assortment of travel food and beverage bags takes up some space on one of the walls.  Jetz appears to have taken up perch on a bar, an array of AR screens screens visible in front of him.  He doesn't appear to be vomiting anymore but occasionally clutches his skull and mutters a string of curse words.  Visible on the screens you see a feed of various news sources.  One of them appears to be set displaying a news story titled "Anarchocommunist plot thwarted.  Terrorists still at large".

After floating into the room, Estella halted her momentum by hooking her foot on a nearby object that was affixed to the bulkhead. "What is it?" she said, pointing at the screen with her chin in a short upward nod.

     "Have a look for yourself."  Replied Jetz as he blew up the AR screen for the two of you to see before taking wing to the vending machine and having it dispense a bag of what appears to be gelatin cubes.  As he works on opening the bag and eating its contents you get a chance to read the mesh article.

     Yesterday, station security forces conducted a raid on a B Block residential apartment based on reports of suspicious activity from neighbors and concerned citizens.  In the apartment, security forces discovered a number of restricted items including military grade explosives and an illegally operated nanoforge.  The terrorists were identified as an anarchocommunist cell based off a manifesto found among the files on a seized hard drive.  The terrorists, found to be using illegal mesh anonymizing programs and falsified identities were not in the apartmentat the time of the raid and remain at large. Please be on the lookout for a human male, a human female, and a neo-avian male possibly traveling together.  They are considered armed and extremely dangerous.

"Well shit." Estella cursed flatly and scowled. "I don't remember becoming a communist. So what the hell is this?"

     "My personal cover."  Said Jetz through a beak full of gelatin cubes. "I make sure to fill my drives with communist propaganda and write up a crazy manifesto for  the authorities to find in case shit goes ass up.  Great for making sure that the local security forces don't look too hard at the why's and keeps Firewall on the down low.  It works more than you would think.  Probably would make me some enemies in the outer system if any of the real collectives found out but hey, I never have to go out there." 

     He finished the bag of cubes and pulled a bag of liquid out of the dispenser and squirted some of its contents into his open beak.  "Oh yeah help yourselves.  I'm always hungry after I sleeve."  He said, pointing to the dispenser.  "Anyways, whatever happened, we hopefully are dead, blew our stacks before we bit the dust, and my dead man's switch triggered our backup forks sleeving.  Which leads us to the here and now...  plan B so to speak."

"Evidently the goal of plan A wasn't included in my backup, so let's start there before we go over plan B." Estella replied, arms still folded. She wasn't sure if she was hungry, at the very least it would probably be another hour before the smell of sick faded from her memory.

"Well, what's the move from here? Do we need to lay low for a while?" Donovan floated his way over and dispensed himself some of the cubes as well and popped a few into his mouth while trying to process the situation.

     "Maybe if we had the luxury of time we could lay low but we probably don't.  We're already more than a week behind schedule from this start point....  which I guess brings us to why we were out here in the fist place."  Replied Jetz as he began to call up more AR screens.  In just a few short moments there middle of the room was a cloud of displays.

     "So we'll start where Firewall got its first whiff of something going on."  At this Jetz brought a screen to the middle of the cloud and enlarged it.  The image was of a debris field with a backdrop of Earth.  A magnifying window centered on a section of the image showing a grainy image of an all- terrain vehicle affixed with rocket boosters making contact with a large spaceship.  "A little more than two months ago... sorry, closer to three months ago now I guess...  a gatecrasher team entered the Martian gate with the backing of a hypercorp trillionare.  Three days later their all terrain vehicle was spotted by one of our Scanner cells that was monitoring known routes off old Earth where it made contact with a vessel belonging to the same trillionare's personnel security firm."  He nodded to the image.  "I'm hoping we're all able to somewhat grasp the million problems this could present to the future of civilization as we're know it."

     

"An x-risk." Estella stated flatly, though there was a hint of a smile on her lips. She had been recruited by Firewall as a specialist in xenobiology, presumably because her knowledge would be useful combating alien terrors beyond transhuman comprehension, but that was secondary to her goal. Collection and study of biological samples from the same xenos she should be wiping out for the safety of the Sol system.

Natural curiosity, and a desire to push the limits of transhumanity's knowledge of the universe would ensure that she got her hands on samples. Then it was a "short" hop back to her labs in an Extropian territory to experiment. Sometimes on other transhumans. She would get the proper paperwork of course, no shortage of people to be "convinced" to volunteer.

Behind her, just on her periphery invisible to Jetz and Donovan, the shadow lurked and agreed with her. Always prodding, always directing her to continue her work. She couldn't say she minded its "enthusiasm", but had that always been the case? It had been too long at this point to know any differently.

"Where do we go from here?" she asked Jetz.

     "Ah that's the best part!  Cote d'Infini!  Monte Carlo of the stars, playground of the system's wealthiest, and one of the many residences of a one Dorian Holbach: the trillionare backer of our gatecrashers."  With this Jetz brought up two windows, one showing various advertisements for Cote d'Infini that were all glitz and palm trees.  The other window showed the dossier for Holbach.  "As you can see...  Our information on Holbach is limited to the few mesh articles our preliminary scans were able to pick out.  He seems to have been up to this point an otherwise unremarkable hypercorp trillionare. He primarily makes his money through military contracting, hardware, spaceships, heavy weapons, standard stuff but he keeps s finger in every pie he can reach.  As with most men of his means, he of course has his own private army: Barracuda Tactical Solutions.  They're the ones that picked up the gatecrashers in orbit."

     Jetz pulled up a brief couple of images of the security company's equipment and notable operations before pulling up an image of a palatial estate with a notable BTS presence.  "This is Holbach's Cote d'Infini estate which has recently become his primary residence and which he had more than doubled his security forces on. Whatever it is he's up to, we're guessing it's there... and that's where we're came in more than a week ago.  Whatever we found out, it probably got our asses wrecked so we need to figure out what Holbach is up to and stop it."

"Well, that's what we need to do but we should try to find out exactly what got us wiped out before. If we don't figure it out before we go in again we will have the same thing happen again. Maybe we can get some boots on the ground and catch wind of what's going on?

     Jetz put a talon on his beak and let himself float freely as he looked to ponder, slowly rotating in space.  "Hmm...  Good point...  Whatever we did before must have got us killed...  Reinforcements could be helpful but...  Well it might take some time.  We could always call in some Erasers but those dudes don't fuck around and their use is considered a last resort.  I'm not sure how much help we could expect from them without more information or proof of an imminent X-risk going nuclear."

     "Maybe..."  Wondered Jetz before being interrupted by an AR screen projecting across most of the open surfaces of the walls.  Huge red letters on a black and yellow hazard stripe field and accompanied by blaring klaxon made itself known.


     Jetz's eyes widened as he looked at the two of you.  "Uh...  That can't be good!"  He exclaimed before pulling up a screen that appears to be showing a debris field with a shuttle floating along.  "Fuck, who the shit is out in a debris field in the middle of nowhere?"

Donovan
      As the shuttle navigated the field of debris you catch a glimpse of an insignia: a red wolf's head howling at the moon.

Donovan strained his eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of the approaching vessel.

Donovan
      You recognize the symbol from your ventures through the inner system's black markets.  It's the logo of The Wild Hunt: the largest gang in the Lunar-Lagrange region.  They run guns and other restricted items all throughout the region for the larger syndicates and organizations.  They're better known though for their predator lifestyle and the fact that they will jump anyone they think they can get away with and their propensity to take their prey alive only to hunt them for sport later. 

Seeing the emblem, Donovan paused for a moment. "Fuck. Looks like things might be about to get choppy. That's the fucking Wild Hunt, not sure why they're here but they probably see us as an easy mark. Unless they happen to be your friend, Jetz but judging by your reaction I doubt it. You any good with a gun?"

     ""What? Gun?  Uh...  Yeah sure.  Shit they're real close."  Replied Jetz, looking panicked at mention of the Wild Hunt.  You see him looking around and patting down the harness that served as his only article of clothing.  "Fuck, my gun! Where's my gun?  Shit did I..."  He looks around the room one more time before flapping his wings to reorient and dart back the way you came.  "I need to find my gun, you guys defend the airlock.  I'll be right there!"  You hear him yell as he glides down the corridor.  An AR waypoint guides you down the opposite corridor to what you presume is the airlock.

     In the meantime, the approaching shuttle which had been growing larger and larger on the screens tracking its approach as you talked, appears to have pulled alongside your vessel.  You hear several loud thunks as magnetic grappling lines attach to the hull.  Jetz's voice projected through the ship.  "Damn it!  They must have been hacking the Flash12 before we even saw them. They've already disabled our thruster controls.  I'll try to hold off their attempts to take control of the airlock but you don't have much time."

Pulling out his pistol, Donovan carefully makes his way to the airlock. He was still woozy from the re-sleeve, and didn't want to push it.
"I'll do what I can. I'm a pretty decent shot!"

Help him. Estella directed her muse, indicating that it should assist Jetz in fighting off the hostile hacking attempts. Simultaneously she was drawing her pistol and loading it with AP rounds as she drifted down the corridor after Donovan, methodically, so as not to lose footing and end up flailing around without a handhold.

     On getting down the corridor you arrive at another room, smaller than the one you were just in, only to hear the hiss and clunk of a bulkhead opening off down one of the side exits and where the navigation trail lead.  "Come out come out wherever you are!  We thought this was just going to be some abandoned ship but it looks like the hunt is on!"  You hear yelled out as a predator sticks his leering head out from behind the cover of their bulkhead.

     The predator, catching sight of the two of you draws his pistol and fires off a quick burst as he yells "I've got two here!"  As the predator withdraws back to the cover of the bulkhead, another predator flips out around the corner before kicking off to fly at the two of you, brandishing a crackling taser goad.  Unfortunately for them, they appear to have slipped a bit on the metal surface they kicked off on and instead of gracefully flying into the two of you, they go spinning off to the side before bouncing off one of the walls of the room and winding up gently floating towards the middle of the room, arms flailing to try and catch something.


Combat Info

Spoiler

Initiative order: Predator A, Predator B, Donovan, Estela

Distances:
Predator A: 11 m from both
Predator B: 6 m from both

[close]

Donovan winces as the bullet hits him, thankful that it was more of a graze than anything. He wheeled around on his heels, aiming his pistol at the goon helplessly floating through the hold. Three rounds rang out from the chamber.

     The bullets thud into the helpless predator's torso and he grunts in agony as he flails to try and reach for a nearby cargo net.

Spoiler

Initiative Order: Predator A, Predator B, Oath, Estela

Enemy Status
Predator A: 11 m, Minor Cover (-10 to be hit), At Range (-10 to be hit)
Predator B: 6 m, easy target (+20 to be hit), Wounded

[close]

Estella managed to avoid getting shot, barely. "That is enough from you." she said, concentrating on the man that had shot at her. She sent a wave or blast or whatever it was defined as, of psychic energies at him with the intent of turning off the part of his brain that knew how to shoot a gun. Then braced for the consequences of using that power.

     The predator appears to have taken no notice of your attempted psychic assault as he hugs the airlock's corner.   "The fuck is going on here?  Get in there and earn your claws noob."  Comes another voice from the airlock as a third predator walks down the "ceiling" of the airlock as if he was in normal gravity.  Upon seeing the practically helpless predator slowly drifting across the room and the two of you, the new arrival quickly sucks up to the airlock bulkhead, and lets loose a spray of bullets from their assault rifle.

     The predator armed with a pistol, apparently encouraged by the new arrival's orders and the provided covering fire, starts to pulls himself along the walls, firing another burst at the two of you.

     The third predator, still drifting, tries to orient himself to try and grab onto a nearby crate that's secured with cargo netting but fails to hook onto anything, continuing his perpendicular drift.

Combat Information

Spoiler

Initiative order: Predator A, Predator B, Donovan, Estela, Predator C

Enemy status
Predator A: 1 m
Predator B: 6 m, easy target (+20 to be hit), wounded
Predator C: 11 m, minor cover (-10 to be hit)

[close]

The new predator rolling out drew Donovan's attention. He let go of his pistol and swung his rifle around from his back, stepping forward towards his adversary. "You wanna fuckin' go?!"

     The predator continued to spray their fire at you, tracing your path just behind you and narrowly missing the predator that had been advancing towards the two of you who had to flip themselves up to avoid the pinging bullets.  Their fire was interrupted by your hail of bullets most of which thudded into their vest but one of which caught them in the arm with a small spray of blood.

Irritated that her psychic attack had no effect, Estella whipped her handgun to the side and squeezed off a burst at the Predator floating helplessly in empty space.

     The burst of fire nails the floating predator but doesn't appear to have done much to them as they continue to try and grab hold of something. 

     The predator with the assault rifle fires off a long burst at Donovan, emptying the rest of their magazine before quickly flipping back into cover behind the bulkhead, but their shots go wide.

     The advancing predator, now a mere meter away from Donovan, takes the initiative to drop their gun, letting it drift in space, and draws a knife with which they lunge at Donovan with an overhead stab.

     The floating predator manages to finally grab hold of one of the nearby crates and pulls himself up against it, taking their time to crawl along in their approach on Estela rather than attempt another flying charge.


Combat information

Spoiler

Initiative order: Predator A, Predator B, Donovan, Estela, Predator C

Enemy information
Predator A: 0 m from Donovan/
1 m from Estela, point blank range (+10 to be hit by ranged)
Predator B: 2 m from both, point blank range (+10 to be hit by ranged), wounded
Predator C: 10 m from Donovan/11 m from Estela, at range (-10 to be hit), minor cover (-10 to be hit)

[close]

Donovan stepped back the best he could as the knife cut into his armor. He pulls up the rifle aims towards the wounded man  and holds down the trigger, a hail of bullets stream towards the predator that had regained his footing.

     Your burst of fire blasts through the predator who was unable to dodge at such close range even despite the unwieldy nature of your gun at that range, a few of the bullets passing completely through him in a red spray.  He loses his grip on the netting and begins to drift motionless back away from you.

Turning from the now disabled Predator, Estella focused on the nearest threat and squeezed off a burst of gunfire.

      Estela's shots miss their mark as the predator pulls himself down to get a better grip on the wall.  The third predator camping the airlock takes a moment to eject a his spent magazine and slap in a new one as he peeks around the edge of the bulkhead at you two. 

     Suddenly, piped directly into your brain via your mesh inserts, you hear Jetz's voice.  "Hey guys! Good news, I found a gun and I was able to get control of the ship again... kinda... and cut the ship's wireless.  Bad news is it looks like they still have access.  I've shut down the ALI they were using but I think they have a Grey Box hardwired into the ship.  Look for a transmitter wired into the walls somewhere around the airlock.  Once you cut that shit free we can reboot the ship's computer bug free.  I'm on my way."

     The predator nearest to you two, unaware of the talk from Jetz, pulls himself into stabbing range of Donovan once again and continues to rain down overhead stabs but doesn't manage to land anything.


Combat Information

Spoiler

Initiative Order: Predator A, Donovan, Estela, Predator C

Enemy information
Predator A: 0 m from Donovan/1 m from Estela, point blank range (+10 to be hit by ranged)
Predator B: Disabled, Wounded
Predator C: 10 m from Donovan/11 m from Estela, at range (-10 to be hit), minor cover (-10 to be hit), wounded

[close]

Donovan pulls himself away from the knife wielding predator and fires another hail of bullets. Jetz was on the way and he wanted to make sure the airlock was nice and clear for him.

     The predator raises his arms to try and shield himself only for your hail of gunfire to blast right through and plug him in the chest.  The predator goes pale and limp and starts to drift away from the wall he had been clinging to.

Knowing full well she probably wouldn't hit her target, Estella fires off a pot shot at the remaining combatant. "I'm a scientist not a goddamn gunslinger!" she grumbled loudly while pulling the trigger.

     The burst of bullets thud into the  predator who grunts in pain.  Putting a hand to his chest, the remaining predator sneers and grumbles "Fuck this."  before turning to retreat back down the airlock passage.

"Let's take care of that box." Estella said, gesturing to Donovan once the wounded predator fled. She took a moment to reload her handgun and then picked her way towards the airlock past the limp floating bodies of the other two assailants.

     As you make your way to the airlock, you hear the heavy clunk of magnetic grapples disengaging resonate throughout the hull.  "Uh...  you guys still alive?  I don't hear anymore gunfire."  You hear shouted from down the corridor behind you.

"Killed two. Last one ran. Sounds like they unhooked the ship."

     "Cool, we should still get their grey box removed.  Don't want that shit hanging around."  You hear as Jetz wings his way down the corridor to catch up with you.

     As you round the corner of the airlock bulkhead, you see the short hallway formed where the two airlocks meet.  You spot the last surviving predator at the far end where the Wild Hunt' ship's outer doors appear to be closing.

Donovan grabs his pistol as the remaining predator runs away. He rounds the corner and sees the door on the other side of the airlock starting to close. The box can wait. "Where in the fuck do you think you're going?" Donovan raises his pistol and lets a hail of bullets fly towards the final predator.

     As the airlock doors close, your burst of fire traces a line of pinging sparks and several hit the predator in the chest but appear to have not caused any real damage beyond the pain of impact.  The predator grins and responds with a middle finger displayed through the thickly reinforced porthole window of the airlock door before walking over to a nearby control panel.  You hear the clunk-hiss of the airlock rings disengaging as the predator in the airlock yells soundlessly what you can only assume to be a 'fuck you' judging by the movements of his mouth.

Donovan clicked his tongue as the door closes. "Fuck, let one get away. Let's make sure the ship is clean. Don't wanna run into any more trouble." He proceeds to comb the area near the airlock looking for the grey box.

     Taking a second to look around, what you assume to be the grey box is easily noticed where a panel was pulled away and the device was wired into the ship's sysyems.  Jetz looks it over and clicks his beak.  "Well this shouldn't take too long to remove but it looks like they damaged some of the airlock's components too.  I don't suppose either of you are too good with tech?  I'll need to reboot the ship's computer and spend some time looking things over.  It would help if someone could work on this while I work on that.  I'm not super happy with getting us on course for Cote d'Infini until I know those asshats didn't leave something behind for us."

"Yes, yes... I'll see to it." Estella replied with an ambiguous wave of her hand. She happened to be fairly well versed in electrical engineering so she was well suited to the task. She told her muse to pull up diagrams and schematics to help.

     Despite the look of the damage from the grey box interfacing with thew ship's hardwiring you quickly find it to be a rather simple task to remove the box and repair the systems that were damaged.  You easily beat out Jetz's time running a security audit and reboot of the ship's mainframe.  In grand total everything is finished within an hour and Jetz gets the ship set on course for the station.