Flight of the Icaron: Ep 3 - Contact

Cutting a stark silhouette against the stars as you look up the

design of its visibility hub. Long, narrow holes. Their edges too smooth to clean, like polished stone worn by centuries of water. They fly in unnervingly tight formations. These are Martian strikecraft known as coffins. Matt Black surfaces broken only by thin bands of crimson light that pulse faintly along their spines, no engines blaze, just drifting

with predatory silence. As you guys make your way across the zenith hub, on your way to the central lift that will allow you to travel

down to the comms station of the ekoron. You watch as these craft float

overhead identified by fish cakes toward the Meridian docking stations for which both kiki and fish cakes were where you arrived for the event that has turned into the disaster at which you all find yourself. Question. Yes. Is the phrase, like, is the name coffins a very specifically like tearing name for it? Very much so very much a name

from the war on tranquility. Would kiki know what the protector it calls them internally? Yes, you would. These are XRV-2s.

Ooh. Seeing these Martian craft, I'm going to

I got this weapon at my side. I know that my X-Wife and my daughter are back in the Hab room that we're leaving. And I'm just going to continue to press my way as fast as I can. Or rather, I should say, as carefully and quickly as I can towards the communication hub. I am trying my best to keep up this pace. I'm an older man squat. I have a sort of

clipped beard that is now running with flop and terror, sweat. I am not a soldier by any stretch of the imagination. And this is all of my worst nightmares realized. I'm still wearing my sort of formal

“presentational garb for Agala. And I think that I am struck by the”

sort of absurdity of me in my little James Bond sci-fi future best. But, you know, a five foot, five little, you know, dwarven looking guy running along in a spaceship coming. Okay, communication. The hub. Okay, okay. And I'm going to take us towards the comms deck, which I believe is the next deck is like halfway to where these what Andre is thinking of as. But for a moment, he was

like terrorists and now he goes, oh, this is, this is, we're under invasion. This is an invading. These are barbarians at the gate. This is Mars. And I think he's just plugging the one to get to the comms. At this point, seeing Mars, he's more frightened that he was when he thought these guys were terrorists. He said, this is worse. What they'll do to us is going to be worse.

“With Andre's sort of like muttering, do you look, uh, frazzled?”

Yeah. Uh, then Kiki, who, at this point, she's five feet tall, dark skin, hair pulled back into a bun. That's that level of severe that he can look formal. If it needs to, or just tucked away, uh, because she's divested herself of her 10 meters of extraordinarily expensive, uh, sorry material. She's just wearing a like close fitting black jumpsuit now and kind of looks over at Andre and just hold, hold on. Just, I need to take

like two deep breaths before we keep going because I think you're getting more agitated, and I need you to get calmer before we go do whatever we have to go do now. Uh, sir, you want to sort of hold your breath at the top and the bottom of your, of your inhales and exhalations. Did my two breaths that were faulty get me at least part of the

“way, would one breath at top form do it or should I start over? I mean, honestly, I'd prefer”

start over, but I appreciate that you're making a joke right now.

position, which is somewhat folded overhead down almost scurrying their small form,

“sort of sticking to the sides of the hallways and moving in, uh, sort of short bursts, almost like”

one of those creepy little spiders that that goes really fast in short bursts. You all proceed forward. Andre takes you to one of the central lifts, which are the lifts that kind of move along the spine of the ship carrying you from level to level. As you approach the segmented shutters of the lift fold back, peeling away into the walls, retracting along hidden tracks to reveal a bullet-shaped cabin waiting for you. As you step into it, you hear a soft chime

and an announcement. Emergency protocols are active. Please proceed to your why level of

threat station designation. As you all step into the space, uh, you see that the opposite side

is clear and reinforced class. And again, you are able to see these coffins, these vessels of Martian origin moving through space. And as you watch, they begin to open fire. You see golden radios peering from the ships striking at the different vessels that were docked along the Meridian. And you watch, you feel a shutter in the ship as these golden rays hit the vessels. You see that it looks like the damage they're taking is not like explosions. It's

not glass, but you see that the you see circuitry and wires flashes of bright light as the ships disconnect from the meridians and begin to descend down following into open space. There's a clear indication here of where you can press, should you want to proceed to comps. The ships that were being fired on were those primarily transport ships for the dignitaries that were here, or a like defensive response. The transport ships, the ship you were on,

you watch from whom these golden rays appearing from the ships, fizzles, lights, flashes, and then the ships decoupling from the meridian and falling into space. They're taking a lot of preventative measures to ensure that nobody escapes. I assume that they'll be taking the same sort of precautions in the communications room. What is our plan of ingress? Into comms deck. If we get to comms deck, we are going to try to find a long-range

communicator that they are not taking offline. My hope is that they are trying to take command of bridge for piloting before they are thinking about comms. We have narrow window to try and find okay back channel. I'd like to make some kind of check to see if I know a way to get into comms somehow. You want to give me technology or let's go with tech. Or actually, can I just give investigation? Yes, please. Let's go for investigation.

What shenanigans do I have? They can help me if anything. None. That's okay.

“We have counter measures up to that's how this view currently are undetectable.”

16 plus nine is 25. Fantastic. Andre, this is a military vessel. The nature by which it is constructed is deeply segmented and the reason for that is for a moment like this. If people are trying to take over the ship, it is more difficult if their flow and ability to move through the ship is not easy. There's not a staircase that goes from the zenith hub down to comms. You have to take the central lifts. You have to be able to control the central lifts to move up and around the ship.

So, in terms of getting into comms, the ways in or through the central lift or, I mean, you could maybe use some kind of power line or the different conduits to which the plasma from the thermoplastic routing core through which that energy moves. However, that would be probably

“immensely dangerous because of the amount of power that's turning through them right now. I think”

that on a 25, I mean, you would surmise that the reality is if there are people in comms, you will have to

fight people in comms. However, once you're in comms, you will know like the the entrance it's an exits are so limited that if there is no one there, you guys will be able to control the space easily. Comms is a very is one of the smallest sections on the ship in part because of the amount of technological, there's so much data that is being processed in that space that the actual room itself is actually quite small. Okay, we have to get to comms. If if entire ship is shut off and

power systems are offline, you can potentially go through service channels for thermoplastic routing

So, and to shut off ship, we need to be in different places and then we back to square one how we get there. So, gonna have to be central lift. Question for us is, central lift has lift and then central lift has shaft. If we don't want to be track on the lift part, maybe we just chance trying to hardwire door open and get down the old fashioned way. Immediately, Andre is like, if we press the elevator button, they're gonna know. They will know that someone's in comes.

I'm gonna say so, we need to do this all-fashionally. Do you think it will be beneficial

first to take out the elevator's done entirely? Right now, they don't know how much of a problem

“we are. So, I think what they know is some of the people upstairs kill some people and run away.”

So, let's keep as much a mystery as we can. I don't want to start to my thinking is maybe it's better for them to think we just somewhere hiding until it's too late. Point of clarification, does anyone know that we have a skate? I don't think they do. Nobody made it out. No person made it out of the zenith app. This is a military vessel. I think to what Andre is speaking to, I think in your very kind of present space, fishcakes,

you've seen cameras, but you've seen, you've walked through kind of like ID biometric

scanners that take count of when people exit and entrance. I don't know if they would know it's like it is Vira and Kiki and Andre, but they know that people are like someone, especially Andre,

“you could speak to with that 25 investigation. Someone's on central command.”

Like, this is what comms does. Communications isn't just how people speak out. It's also where data being received is processed and then transferred down to the command deck. Even if these were just a group of criminals, what they're not going to have walkie talkie, they're going to go for what's 15, 20 minutes with their accomplices keeping you in the room upstairs and not say, "Hey, how it's going with hostages?" No, they're going to. They know that their companions

are already dead. They know it for sure. Agreed. Well, then in that case, I mean, it doesn't hurt for us to get into the elevator shaft and possibly disable it. Andre, go ahead and give me an technology or investigation check on the nature of like, as fishcakes mentions that. That's a 26 incredibly difficult. This is not like a elevator that's like on a police system and a gravity drive infused manipulation of gravity up and down the amount of

technical, like you could spend the next several hours attempting to disable this machine and you might get it. So Dr. Cortez designed this central lift to withstand approaching solar flare. I have this pistol. I don't think we're going to do it. Also, it does make sense to cause less disruption so they don't see us as a problem they need to go deal with. I see, I see. All right. Well, let's say, I say that it seems like the only point that ingress for

communications is this elevator shaft. So we go in and we in make sure that we that another car is not coming towards us and we get to comms. Climb down to comms. Yeah, I don't know how we're going

to do that first part, but we can use shaft to get to comms. Okay. And I do just want to flag to the

group that if I was the Mars protectorate abducting the star of tear and defense, this would be a thing they want to broadcast to Earth. So we are not going to be the only ones interested in comms. Yeah, maybe maybe through or maybe maybe they're not done yet. Maybe they have this in their sights, but they don't have their teeth in the throat just yet. So we're going to try to act

“like there's hope because if there's not hope, then it's okay to act however. I think at that,”

like as you continue, like sort of move forward emotionally with the next part of the plan, that's when Kiki like steps back and takes two slow breaths to like center herself and ground herself to you. Ah, we had a central lift. Fantastic. You guys are here standing in the central lift. Go ahead and give me a assessment check as you look for a way to kind of get into the

Another 26 investigations. Oh, I mean, Andre, you've been here while they built the thing.

“You know, there's a panel underneath the kind of command array where you can designate where you”

would like the lift to travel. Should you remove that, it will be a tight squeeze, but you could probably, you'd have to tear up a few a bit of wiring and other things, but you could probably fit into the shaft beneath. Okay, we're not going to come back to the lab anytime soon. I don't know. Let's start tearing it. Can you let it flare? You're okay. Out of this. Mark's, as you guys watch Andre work, you see that there is kind of do this. Maybe like three foot tall panel that

he's removed and that's the wiring is taken out. There does seem to be kind of like a three by two foot

hole that you could kind of really force yourself into. I will say as you Andre pull up these wires, you see it is probably about a 15 foot descent to the next like kind of ribbed doors that open up to comms. So you will have to, there is that in your brain. Gotcha. And this is, are we sort of looking at getting down through a wiring channel? Or is this just like the broad open shaft, the broad open shaft? Oh boy. Okay, I'm going to get my little spider climb gloves

back. Oh my gosh. And I'm going to go, okay, we're going to link up. They want to fuck with me. They don't know that this, I might be a little boy. This is like the house alone. They're not gonna, they're not gonna fuck with me here, okay? So link up and I'm going to try to take a little ummm, carabiner thing and just keep my climbing gloves and link into this cocktail down somewhere. It's a jumpsuit. Okay great. Yeah. Just linking up and it prepared to shimmy down

and get down to comms. I absolutely love it. You guys, link up. All right. To, I mean, a, if that's that is probably not built to support the weight of two other human beings, Andre. How will

“you be descending? Are you going to go first? Are they going to go first? How are you seeing this?”

I'm going to go first, okay? Because I can, if someone's sleep or fall, I'm not going to fall.

I can maybe catch, uh, because if one of you fall, I think we're going to be okay. If both of you fall, you know, I know that gloves are going to stick to the wall. I don't know my hand, stick to the inside of the gloves. You Andre, descent, uh, you shimmy, uh, you feel the kind of, uh, sides of your belly kind of fold up as you kind of make your way into the hole and then, uh, release yourself as you entry empty, the open shaft. I remember all the training videos about having to stay in shape and

space that I absolutely did not do much of the lunch space. This is why you guys eat on Jesus. Andre, I will not ask you to make any checks in this moment as the gloves like you're saying allow you to easily begin to make the climb. As you kind of descend down this open shaft, again, we enforce the glass behind you looking out into the void. You are able to get almost kind of like at the top corner of this seven eight foot doorway that leads into comps. You are at the top corner

as you feel the snag of the, uh, of the, of the tethers that you have attached to, uh, Vira and Kiki. Okay. I will look at this new area and I'm going to try my best to open up and get us into comps as much as I can. Give me an investigation check. That 20. Yeah. That 20 baby. You see that kind of around your foot seems to be kind of a maintenance pad, keep had something that probably connects to the

“internal kind of command display for the central lift with a net 20. I think you are able to easily”

trace where those wires might intersect traversing up the kind of lift wall and are able to open up a panel that's within reach, tear that open and you know easily by removing those wires. You could get the, uh, you could get the door open. Why is out getting the door open? You see that the, uh, ribbed doorway to comps opens up hell. Yes. I mean, while you, you went, went into your tethers attached to fish cakes, um, it is looped into my incredibly sturdy, uh, harness that I have

on my overalls. I am just above clinging onto the wall on the inside of the shaft, um, just above where the door opens. Can I poke my head sort of duck under the top of the doorway and poke my head in? You mean into comps? Yes. You have about a 10 foot descent from where you guys are still

magnetize to the wall. He has climbed down the shaft 10 feet. As you feel pulling on your overalls,

“the snag of the hooks that are connecting when you descend from the central lift where you guys are”

standing, it will be some element of scrambling and controlled falling to attempt to maneuver yourself to fall into the open doorway that Andre has just created. If that makes sense. Yes. I do have fast and agile where climbing no longer costs extra movement and I can, it says move in flying leaps. That will definitely apply. Yes. I'll get in through the open doors tug on the little sort of connective tethers and these doors to comps. The elevator itself, the lift has internal,

just like an elevator has the doors that are part of the cabin and these others. Could I leave

these doors permanently open on comms? Easily. Great. I'm going to leave them open because if someone's going past and not going to comms, the elevator will still just be closed. But it's a way for us to without having to use technology to keep a track on what's going on with the elevator. So I'll just leave those doors open and maybe even we hit your eyes. We find out where people are going to go. And I will pull on the toes and ready and action to give help to anybody who is falling

“or who slips. Fantastic. How much loose wiring in footage do you think that I have gathered?”

Go ahead and roll me to D4. 3 and 4, 7. You have 7 feet of water? Great. While all of this was happening, I was just tying all the wiring together. And I hand you, I'm handing you wire and then at the end of the length, I hand you the top of the head of a grappling hook. Oh, this is even, this is even better than when I was gonna thank you. Cool. Fish case, can you describe me this grappling hook you carried into this space? So the grappling hook that I have is

something that expands. It normally looks just kind of like a little flat rectangle of metal. But when pushed it expands kind of like a tripod and the little hooks claw out and form the hook

“for the to grapple things with question. This is really nice. Do you want to keep that?”

Because if I use it here, we're not gonna have it for later. Well, we have to do what we got to do. Oh, I believe you can, you can't even catch it if it's yank to the right way. Okay, we'll see what we get. I'm only got seven feet. So this will be harder, but

okay. Who would like to go first? I'll go first, yeah. Fish kicks. You begin to maneuver down.

With your ability, I will allow you to make this check with advantage. Go ahead and give me a athletics or acrobatics, whichever you prefer. I'll do acrobatics. 13 with a 13. Fish kicks. How is it that you are maneuvering down this shaft? As you kind of, you easily kind of fit through the hole that Andre has made. I crawl into the hole and I just sort of finding almost go like finding the tiny crevices and the cracks in the

paneling of the walls. I make my way down sort of using the seven feet of the wiring as a guide. And for the rest of it, I just use my fingers and the toes, my toes, which are in those the toe shoes. Yes, the individualized toe shoes. Are you Andre or fish kicks washing this? Yes. You see a child who has the strength of like, I mean, the only comp I have is free solo. Yeah. Like this is this child's finger strength is unbelievable. Ordering on inhuman.

What's happening? I can't see a crack there and you see me like my little head peek out. Oh Jesus, got you. And so I clamber down the rest of the three feet or so and sort of hang by my fingertips above the doorway. Easily. 13. Fish kicks. You're able to use your core strength to swing into comps confidently and easily. That's remarkable. How you do this? Practice. Okay. All right. Kiki, we're ready for you. Okay. Well, both of you post up. If I

pluck this up, you have to catch me. That's not going to be a problem for fish kick. Fish kick.

wiring, I'll let you make this role with advantage, acrobatics or athletics. Yeah, that's a 23.

“Yeah. So you see like, Kiki's head like popped out to go see what Andre was muddering about a new”

and then saw you fish kicks muddering and oh, that's terrifying. Head pops back and then what drops like fully through this like open panel is seven feet a wire snap and you see her like use her body to like crack the whip. So she's back against the other wall and just whips herself in the direction of like the landing zone and I'm going to try, I'd probably be a separate check at the like sort of apex of where she would normally just let go and try the land well. She's going to

try to like crack the whip again just to see if she can move. I don't want you to lose your

grappling hook if I don't have to. So she's going to make like a little extra check to try to untether that. Go ahead and give me a flat acrobatics shirt. Seven. You whip it to try and give the wiring back and you're not fully in the landing zone. No, I didn't let go. Yeah. You hook it and succeed in getting the grappling hook undone. However, you immediately feel your weight shift in an awkward way. I'm going to need a red action from

either fish kicks or Andre to grab Kiki. Got it, Kiki, physics. Would you say that this is a saving throw or a athletics check or what? You had a red action, right? Red action. I'm leaning toward a skill check. Okay. I would say at athletics. Let's go. Athletics in that case 14, 14 beats a 12. I was I was ready to like hook my legs and sort of try and trap these artists grab her. I had a full inhale and was squatted down holding the tether right on my weight. Like I have it right

in my groin chakra on the belt. And the second I hear the slightest little from Kiki. Just the intake of breath. Let's just something's going wrong. I meet that with a full exhale of jumping straight backward as hard as I can. Andre, you jump straight backwards. Slide six feet as you grab Kiki's weight, Kiki, you fall, holding onto the bar, you are in hard tug but are secure.

Along with this Kiki's like little mental always cover yourself and not trust the rest of the group.

You tug back but where you see Kiki when she lands, I'm going to use phase shift. So I'm actually like three feet behind you in the other direction in a mild defiance of physics but she looks completely startled. I'm looking around at I've seen fish cakes just do this this like nightmare thing that to me like seeing a starfished like person, finger and toe climbing

“down a shaft. I think like Andre's his like son when he went to university at the moon showed him like a”

nightmare slob auto gen channel and that was like one of the other auto gen nightmare girl crawled to air vents like starfish. And then I see you teleport and I go like, man I fucking died. I'm dead. What? I died and go to hell. Hey, I can hear that. Okay. Do you are you both are you both Martian and my under arrest? Is this is this a you have powers you buy out giant from Mars but you ever say that I'm a Martian? You are from Mars. Okay, my Martian. Let's go to coms and I'm

just going to wipe that from my memory and I'm just like I'm like there's two I'm like I can't get into whatever psychic powers or like bio gen stuff is going on so I'm just going to keep it huffin over to the coms panel. Thank you for trying to save my grappling with. No I did. Oh you

“call it. Yeah. That's why I had to pull so I grab it as if I'm grabbing a stuffed animal and I”

tug it close to me and I say thank you. It's okay if you didn't have to get it but it's just I know we can't we don't necessarily need to use it but it just makes me feel better to have it and they click the click the metal prongs back in. Thank you for trusting me with it and thanks for help. I used to that. I'm still being tugged by this man. Let me un-un-buckle. As you un-buckle and Andre you feel walking deeper walking into the coms area feel the two tethers that you gave to your

two. I don't know if you would go so far as to call them com rails but associates return to your

that brings the energy up from the thermoplastic routing core into this space. The exterior

walls are lined with antenna wiring receivers and relay hubs fiberlight conduits run across the walls like glowing veins visually representing the constant flow of data from external sensors into processors curved walls screens display sensor data star maps radiation levels and communications traffic. There are also in this room several quantum encryption nodes that studs the chamber securing all coms traffic against marching in reception or tampering. What you see Andre you know on the

far wall opposite where you all have entered the space is a specialized Z wave communicator that

uses gravitational particle manipulation to send missives and communication data that is the

you would have known or talked about that is the the crown jewel of the communications array here on the Iran. We are quite far from earth right now we're very close to the sun. I'm just thinking I just want to be prepared that if we send a message we will not hear back immediately. Look does the Z wave mean you can hear back immediately? The Z wave is a singular piece of

“technology which means you will hear back immediately. I think Andre remembers confidence that”

he's had with his kids where they asked if if the Z wave was faster than light travel and he had to explain that it's like it's like it's not travel it's not nothing can travel faster than speed of light but some things don't have to travel some things can be in more than one place at the same time and I is going to get on that distance start to punch in to send an emergency missive to earth letting them know that Mars has attacked the Iran. While he's doing that

you said that information goes in there is there a security array? How do you mean? Like cameras is this where the camera feeds come in? 100% yes. Let's go fishcakes. Okay so we've got visual information for the entirety of the ship. We have comms down to earth. Is there anything else interesting or of note on the comms deck? Like as Kiki does a little spray of like what does this room actually do? Andre as you are walking over to the Z wave communicator scanning different

relays and outputs. The past that you were doing brought you within roughly 150,000 kilometers of the sun and you are seeing readings that say that you are roughly in the numbers going down

but you are roughly 85 million miles from earth. Getting closer are we getting closer because

“of the past around the sun? Yes I think you are a lot of the sensors on this ship. You see”

are not perhaps prepared for reading data. Like you see that several of the sensors are white it out on the side that faces the sun but in terms of the star maps where you are you have very much done your pass around this you were meant to be viewing the sun at this point in the kind of display the kind of flex kind of impress the brass moment that would have been around this time if not a bit earlier. So you are very much on your coming back headed towards earth having sling

shot it around the sun. Andre's a little bit has a moment hesitation as he realizes this is go time which means that it's the time for an engineer when everything should work if you did all your bath right. So you are hitting the Z wave communicator to communicate with our fish cakes but you are checking the security footage everywhere. I'm checking the security monitor array and ensuring two if I can figure it out that there's nobody on their way to comms and I assume that once the

message gets sent that it will bring attention to comms. So I'd like to surveil just sort of glean any information that I can. Fantastic keeping an eye on that kick you is there anything you're doing in this space.

“Is there any other like system in this room about monitoring and understanding the icaron writ large?”

A very much so this room is very much about taking all the data and then the data that the captain wants is disseminated down to the command bridge. So any data you wanted on the icaron or

Okay, so the thing that I want to do is find that pinch point for where all of the data set gets

dumped into one specific thing for the captain and route it so specifically I want it to be routed through kiki's tech. So I see whatever the captain wants to see and if someone comes and messes with the feed from Mars they will see my name attached to it. Fantastic. Okay, we're going to start with Andre. Nothing is more important than getting a message out but Andre is starting to realize like as you get to the end of a plan you start to go well wait. If I'm

winning how much can I win by right, it starts to go the best the the this old thing has been

worn earth worn earth worn earth and now that he's here he goes worn earth without Mars knowing

“and I think that that becomes his thing where he goes okay it's it's good for earth to know”

it's even better if earth knows and Mars doesn't know. Okay, so that's his sort of like ideal scenario is can I send a message in such a way that Mars will not be able to tell that I've sent a message. Go ahead and give me a technology check. Oh, here we go. That's a not one. Oh no, no. Zway of technology is perhaps one of the ways in which you have surpassed Mars. You understand that maybe within the Icaron that information may be communicated. I think on a not one you assume Mars

doesn't have tech that can process. You barely understand Zway of tech. How could that? I think

there is just something there's a confidence with just the nature of the technology itself that the missive will likely be exclusively between earth. You think maybe somebody who worked in comms said something one time about how this is in its own way stealth communication. They put everything into biogen they neglected their traditional engineering. Okay, you know, open up a

“channel. No need to. I think it just is then going to open up. Are you saying that out loud? Yeah, I think so. Okay,”

Broadway and it's just going to try to get the big call. Everybody do a go to the group chat, start a face. Everybody who wants can jump in, baby. You see that this is the way of communicator is it's built into the bulkhead of the panels. It's standing taller than a person. shaped like a broad pillar of brush steel within laid glass panels. It's surface is broken by rows of indicator lights and our green and white running a neat vertical bands pulsing gently

to show the active channels. At chest height, there's a recessed console that folds out offering a clean array of touch sensitive panels and a hand shape cradle where the operator rest their palms for biometric clearance. By putting your hands on this, you see your name come up on the screen. Your name comes up on the screen. You have as one of the stations chief engineers. You have access to use this communication technology. And you see that the console projects are a

hollow feed of waveforms and coordinates that you understand to be for the global executive security station on earth. As the transmission begins, you feel a faint vibration as through the decks plating, nothing dramatic, but just the sense of heavy machinery going into work out of sight. There is a sharp, clear chime that cuts through the home of this room as you hear. It's a general harsh in any Houston Texas. Come in, Ekoro. His voice is crystal clear,

almost as if he is in the room with you. It's a general harsh. And G-Sex, Houston Texas, come in, Ekoro. General Hodge, this is chief engineer Andre Delca of the Ekeron in making our paths around the sun. We have been attacked by Martian strikecraft. Martian have taken the bridge and taken command of the Ekeron. I'm sorry, we're seeing a while of a threat. We assume that it was in reference to the sun or the intensity. It's, you are boarded. We are boarded additional craft arriving right

now on the vessel. They have attacked the bridge, Dr. Emanic Cortez is dead. They have taken the command

“of the bridge. Sorry, I'm sorry, you have to slow down. Dr. Cortez is dead. Dr. Cortez is dead.”

There is, we need immediate aid and the Martian find the coordinates that we believe that they have collaborate or within the crew of the vessel. Understood. Are you safe? Are you able to

Yes, yes, the attackers do not know that we are here. Okay, we are going to transfer communication

over to the G-Second tranquility and resume communication. Give us just a second. Okay. Andre,

“as that conversation is happening, fish kicks. How is that a mad one?”

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. It's probably fine. Fish kicks. Give me a technology check as you are looking at this panel. I mean, you can see that you are immediately seeing a few feeds. You see three kind of wide, hot curved hollow screens that run along the wall that are projecting different camera feeds from around the ship. 14. You are pretty quickly able to, while not being able to maybe understand the way in which the things are organized, you find the kind of two, the left

click and the right click to kind of move through the different sets of feeds around the ship.

The feature looking at as you start are fabrication. Currently in fabrication, you see nobody moving around. As you click through, you move from fabrication to the gravity drive where you see

“like a multi-tiered chamber at the center of which is a conduit of light that is”

exposing off these different little particulates that feed into the gravity drive of the entire ship. There is no one currently stationed there, either. You click next to the cameras labeled thermoplastic routing core. In each one of these spaces, there are about three different cameras. In thermoplastic routing core, you see three men. You see the men are speaking in a tight circle, speaking to one another, intently, clicking next to an Adir Hab. You see three cameras.

One of which shows a sealed pair of bulkhead doors with someone wearing a similar g-sac uniform to the one of the gentleman you dispatched earlier, standing outside the bulkhead doors. Inside, you see a crowd of people, roughly 20 or so. You see in the brief moments that you're looking, you watch as they drive valiantly to break down the doors. As you see them running against the doors, you see someone is working the control panel next to the doors. There's about 20 or so people

trying to get out. And do I see are those the people that were taken? They are not. What you do recognize the gentleman wearing a wall-wad jersey. You see the he is kind of at the front, leading several larger men in raming against the door. You then click back. You are now again looking at the zenith vizhab where you see Talia and Bogo and the children. You see Talia holding her side arm eyes on the elevator from which you guys have descended. You then look at comps and see

yourselves. You then look at the command deck. On the command deck, you see the crowd of people who were taken from the zenith vizhab. You see them with their hands bound, blind folds on, sitting against the wall. You see several of them in the global security off outfits, standing over them. You see one of those men is turning toward an area that the camera seems to point at that you see, looks similar to the central lift area that you took from the zenith

tab. As you watch four Martians, all seven foot tall, minimum, wearing sleek, matte armor, step off of the lift and begin to talk to them. Fishcakes turns their head sideways so that one eye is peripherally looking at the screen and one eye is peripherally looking at Andre and Kiki, they're here. Kiki, you are attempting to steal data, correct? It doesn't have to be steal. It needs to be, I want to be just above the pinch point for whatever the captain's feet is because I

know that everyone on comms are on the command deck will be working off of that information too.

Okay, the first thing I think is you go to rewire the data, it asks for credentials. You can try

and override that, or you can try another way. You tell me it'll be a technology check you the way. As that's happening and maybe this is like during your conversation with Hodge just to

“distract you a little bit Andre. Are you important enough to get the captain's feet?”

Get the captain's feet. Yeah, I maybe. I need your credentials. Come here. General Hodge one moment, please, and I'm going to step over to give my credentials to Kiki.

I'll just cut away from you to go back to the general. And my speaking with tranquility. Sorry, we are, this is an all-hand situation. We are attempting to get members of the executive council

as well as the leaders of G-Sec. If you just hold on for one second, Andre, please, holy.

Then I'm going to try to do it myself. All right, go ahead and give me a technology. Check DC is 17. Cool. I'm also going to stack my defiant on there, which is a D4 I get to add once per rest.

“Oh my God. Could you imagine if I world a natural one on my dice and then a one on the four also?”

Okay, cool. Yeah, that works for me. Oh, I can give you a little gift. I can work with that. Yeah, great. That's a one in 80 odds. Yeah, yeah, not for a little SUV. Okay, great. Hey, you know, I you asked me to pick one of those dying. I picked all the way. I did. Fuck. You watch as the system flags this input

and closes you up. God damn it. Andre, you hear General Hodge go. All right, Mr. Galka,

I'm going to transfer you over to tranquility. Mr. Galka, you will be speaking with executive council members of Lil Renek and Vaughn Mercer, as well as General Sloan and drank patting you in that. You hear another chime. We speaking to Andre Dalka. Yes, this chief engineer Andre Dalka, Martian craft appear and have taken the Ecaron. The ship is fallen. We are being militarily occupied by Martian invader. Understand, can you upload your current ordinance? Do this, you wait for me to get it.

I'm going to upload the Ecaron's current community. Yes, the Ecarons, I upload through the

communicator. Fantastic. They receive it. All right, you're still pretty far out. In terms of

regaining control of the ship. Does it feel possible? Does it feel doable? There's a long pause

“and I go. Are you guys talking to each other? Or are you talking to me?”

One of the generals asking another general if it's feel doable or you asking chief engineer Andre Dalka? Mr. Galka, this is counselor Renek. We are asking you. The coordinates that you have sent us, as soon as we could have craft in the area, is to move. It's at that point that fish cakes see the Martians stepping out of the elevator and moves their periphery to look at both the screen and their companions and goes, "They're here."

General, and leaders of G-Sec, the military presence on the vessel. I am not certain if it is here. I will review security measures if their security force I can try to provide engineering aid to them, but ship is falling. If there is not a cavalry that is scumming, the voices you hear on the other side begin to speak to one another, you hear the voice that identified themselves as Sloan, say, "I mean, it's tomorrow." The thing we should be focused on is not the echelon. It is tranquility.

You see, Renek, I understand, but we cannot abandon the project. It's not about abandoning the project, the project. I mean, there's no point to the project if tranquility falls. You see that Renek goes, "I understand. I understand. I'm strong." Do you have any understanding of the size of the force? I'm going to look to my companions to have been gathering information. Really not how as large force is? Could I have ballpark estimated the number? Like, I know the

specs of those coffins. Could I have rocked or at least approximated? Like, a cloud that big is usually this many people flying. Cloud that big 15 individuals. Okay.

“Ish, and that's what you saw. What we saw on the way, sorry, Emma, can you hear me?”

Yes, hi, this is Councillor Renek, two of whom I'm speaking. On Kiki, I was able to see 15 XRV2s in the air. Well, they were also destroying all of the ships that could reasonably leave here, so my best guess is that they're going to kill the ship and anyone that's still on it when they're done doing whatever, making whatever proclamation they're here to make. They've taken your very nice ship. At the point where it's the hardest you will have to work to come and reinforce it. This ship

They have ship. You hear the sounds of stagger breathing and clenched jaws on the other end of

this Z-wave line as the voice of General Sloan's picks up. Understood. We're going to make our calculations down here. We'll report back to you soon as possible. No, no, stay on the line. What are you calculating? I'm sorry, is this Kiki? Mm-hmm. Hi, Kiki. We are going to be doing calculations with regard to what measures we would like to take next and we will tell you your role in that when we are complete. That's so fun. But I know part of your calculations is accounting for

“whatever you think we still have up here. So if you want to share the beginning of your map,”

maybe we can make some countermeasures up here too to buy you some goddamn time. Sloan.

Understood. Our first thought is that we need to understand the capabilities of the

year-go-raught versus the defenses we have present here at Tranquility. We understand that your command we will be on standby waiting for their instruction. We may have to move from this place. If it is not long-term safe, but we will we have methods of returning here if we need to. Thank you very much General. Thank you. I'm going to click the Z-wave off and go. They're going to we gotta move. We gotta figure out a way to disable ship because worst outcome is ship falling

“to Martian hands. You know what they're going to do before they let the ship fall into Martian hands.”

After a lot of younger works, oh yeah. So we gotta go and figure out how to make this ship

not worth stealing or not the possible to steal. In this moment, as you say that, all of the lights go out, all of the screens go down. Suddenly you find yourselves in complete and utter darkness as all of the screens around you the illumination from the wiring, from the Z-wave communicator, all goes out. Seconds later replaced by emergency lighting that you see along the floor along the ceiling, gentle yellow light. You hear the gentle home of backup life support, not the kind of

thrum of the main of the kind of central life support unit. Instead, something gentle or softer. Andre, you would know that this ship has gone into some sort of reset. Something has been drastically adjusted elsewhere in the ship. Also in this moment, you watch as the central lift descends deeper into the ship. As everything goes off, I would like to use on-off to try to activate some of the safety lights just in the calm stack. You are able to turn on several of the lights

“here in the calm stack, kind of a better illuminating the space. Question. So that wasn't you?”

No. Do you know what part of the ship can do that? Well, yes, probably several, but if it's intentional, there are a lot of things that can do that everywhere unintentionally. And I'm going to make a technology check to see if I can tell if this was intentional, unintentionally if it was done on purpose and where it was done from and maybe for what reason, please. That is going to be a 16. May I assist with by telling him what I saw on the cameras? Very much so.

In the thermoplastic reactor core, there are three men speaking very intently in the moment ago, yes. Okay. It's still going to be a 16. The men she's speaking about, you immediately assume are likely tubes and the two assistants who were who you met earlier this earlier this day. Not the Martian. No, not Martian. There was also in in the Nader habitat, the silver CAD doors with G-sick uniform dunes on the outside and inside a crowd of about 20 people trying

to break down the doors, including the man in the wildwatchersie. Man in wildwatchersie. That is Nate Sharp, the security who you, the wildwatchersie is his slideball team. Yeah. Also, four Martians have just boarded. On that 16 and with the information from fishcakes, you think that this is some sort of reset or command shift that was likely done from the command

What maybe we can count on is that they're going to be interested in weapon system,

“bridge command. So I think we got to go down to reactor core fine tubes and try to”

damage or otherwise scuttled ship. If the ship is not useful to Martians, then it is not dangerous to Terence. Sure. Oh yeah, because they're, yeah, they're going to, their calculations are going to blow us out of the, but if we disable the ship, though, then the Martians have no reason to keep it in the air either. Well, maybe they don't keep it in the air, but maybe they take hostages, try to salvage

some small wind from larger loss. We can think about the worst case scenario. What's going

to happen? But Martians, Mart, odds are they think they know what the biggest wind for them is. So when we know nothing, best thing to do is try to keep them from getting what they want.

“Are you here a moment of feedback as an internal PA system comes online and a voice emanates?”

Do those of you aboard this vessel? You are now under the command of order and desperate wrong of the Mars protectorate. In this moment, I would like to directly address those of you presently in 2nd or 3rd of this station, Andre Dalka, Maxis Davis, not this, the designs you remember are the fruit of law and peace and labor. Your trespass is but a fleeting disturbance. This vessel is hereby seized. In New Eden already rise upon the horizon

and to fear your low kid who confirms the true order of you, Maxis and Andre are in the possession of intellectual property of Pharaoh Allen that property belongs to Mars. Vira, you will be returned home. I'm going to, I'm already moving and I'm going to look at the shaft and how we get all the way to the other side of the ship that there's a thermoplasmic routing. As you are looking down into the shaft, you see that the lift is rising up to meet you. We gotta go, I don't know. I'll

see if I'm going to look for it anyway. Go ahead and give me a percent of the check. Seventy. You said it before as you entered the room and I think your mind goes to the reset. Right now, low to no power is churning through the conduits that run all up and down the arc line of the acoron. Your eyes, a light on the conduit in the center of the room. As the central lift rises, interior gates on the lift itself open in two Martians, seven feet in height,

encased in sleek matte black armor within crimson striping reinforced at the joints with cortical implants at the base of their neck. You see ordinary faces altered only by the faint telltale signs of surgical scars and a flat affect on their faces that you might recognize as a neural dampening. They raise magnetic rifles at all three of you. Please roll initiative. Let's go. That's going to be 14 for Old Andre Dolca. 23 for Kiki. 12 for Fischke.

Kiki, you turn as you see Andre stepping back from the lift turning toward this central pylon area. As you watch these two impressively tall specimens step off of the lift and into

the room with you weapons raised. You are first to act. Okay, so they are fully stepping off of

the elevator. They have step off of the elevator. Weapons are raised at the three of you. I'm going to my eyes are going to flick to whichever one is like who are they, the like barreling down on specifically because there's three of us. Going to give me precipitation checks. 11. You see they are scanning the room and seem to be a severe and then I think fixate on you on Kiki and Andre. Then we're going to try to force this armum. Your twice strength or dexterity

“saving throw. Let's go strength. And you need to be a 16. I do not. I get a 15.”

Okay, the hot one between the two of them. I want his gun. The only thing you see is

gravity base. So you are manipulating force in the space, shifting invisible mass through the space

“as you alter it with the powers embedded in you. So then everyone feels it and we're used to”

gravity changing like we've all been in rooms in space where those have stopped working. All of the gravity shifts. So suddenly, Kiki is bought like she's down. So this flies out of his hand and sales me like I am the new arbiter of all and you can all feel like the change in drag on you. That like Kiki has become a well of gravity here as like the gun lands down. Andre, you feel a slight hole, not so oriented at you that you yourself like loose control, but there is something

to Kiki in this moment becomes a center of gravity. I'll like sort of hit bump into Kiki as I go as this power manifests in front of me. Are you able to take the weapon board? Is it just no, it's my now. Fantastic. You now have a magnetic rifle that does one D6? Cool. You fully disarm

“one of them in. That moves to Andre. Looking at the I've already got the lights up and I think I'm”

going to go and just open up one of the light channels all the way. There are some rotational lights that are used to the directional lights that are used here for spotlighting work that happens on the actual comm stations here. It's not all tracklighting in other words. There's some that's like directional. Everything here is very ably. The technology behind all the lightboats. None of this is like a Sylvania 60 watt. Everything here is on a dimmer that all ties the efficiency

channels all tie directed to thermoplastic radine core. So I am just going to juice one of those

directional lights and cast flash. And they basically make it so bright that it's, so I want to burn

their retinas out of their eyes. Hell yeah. We're going to roll its 6D10 hit points to see it affects them without a saving throw. This is also a nice way for us to measure exactly how scary these guys are. Because if it doesn't work, we know how many hit points they've got. Well good. 1319-2231 hit points and it needs to beat their hip or what does it need to do. Creatures within 20 feet of the point are affected in ascending order of their current hit points ignoring unconscious creatures.

So it's very much like sleep. Got it. So it needs to hit their hit point maximum to be effective. It affects both of them correct? It affects both of them but it uses up hit points essentially. You watch as they both turn to look as you take one of the sources of lightness room and expand it out, pushing it to the maximum. You watch as Pfizer's descend down over their eyes as the light flashes and neither of them are affected. You watch an old father know that he's

going to get murdered by Martians in this room. More certain that he's been of anything today as he's going to die right here. Give me a perception check as those thoughts rushed to your mind. That is going to be a 11. As you foresee your death with certainty at the hands of these big men, you are a band from within the central pipeline. We are now going to move to the man who still has his weapon. Races it up says I'll secure the child and moves towards fish cakes. Fish cakes

he is going to fire at you with a dart. Does a 12 hit? No it does not. You watch as he flicks his weapon and you see the light on the front of it go from red to green firing out a

syringe light dart that lands just at your feet. He's going to take a second shot on you. As

“he moves he's going to move within 15 feet of you. I think kind of five feet away from from Andre”

and Kiki. Does a 24 hit? Yes. I'm going to need a DC 12 constitution saving throw. Dirty 20. Dirty 20. You feel a dart hit the fat part of your belly of which there is little because you are so frown. But smile. You feel it release a toxin into you. You feel your limbs want to

get hot and push through that feeling. That is fish cakes turn. Okay. I sprint towards the one

“Martian that does not have a gun grabbing the dart on the floor as I do. How far? You can easily close.”

Okay. So I'm going to close and I am going to climb him like he is a tree. In incredible, you scoop

the dart off the floor. Charge. Andre, you watch knowing you're certain death hearing the sounds. This small frail child scories up this man and are assuming you're going to stay up. Yes. I'll go ahead and give me that attack. Okay. That's 24. 24 hits. Okay. This is a big role. He adds a plus one to con. If he does not succeed, he is stunned. This is a DC 12. So he needs 11 or higher on the dice. That's a 15. You still do 2D6 plus your attack. I would not say this is a

sneak attack. Okay. That's 8 points of damage and is the dart still in his neck. Very much so. Cool. I'm just going to hang on to it there and cling to him. Free solo. Yeah. You got it. You have climbed up in this mid. Stabbed him in the neck. You feel the toxin inject. It seemingly does not take effect. However, you feel you have caused this man an immense amount of pain. That is the

second one who does not have his gun is going to rush at you. Kiki. He's going to reveal a

stunned baton off of his heels and take two swings at you. What is your AC? 15. One of them hits. You take 9 points of damage as you feel. He swings hard into your shoulder with this stunned baton dealing not only in immense amount of force but also in electricity that runs through your body. You are in close combat with him. The other guy is about 5 feet to the left of Andre who has moving towards fish cakes but as fish cakes move forward you see the he's turned around and there's

you guys are kind of in a clump right now. The Kiki and Andre and the first of the Martians and then

standing closer to the left is the second Martian with fish cakes on him. We now go back to the top of initiative with Kiki. Okay. We are huddled up so a rifle is now an inconvenience.

“Can I get a shot off or is it just truly too clumped up to like try to get a shot with a gun?”

I would say you could get a shot off if you wanted but yeah it would be with disadvantage this close. Yeah okay then Kiki who is closer in build and temperament to fish cakes. Right. Climb them. I'm going to try and climb this man and put him to sleep the old fashion way by like choking him out with his rifle. Okay cool and the ability I'm going to use there's an ability on the stack on this called defensive technique. The throttling is just sort of

a like general melee attack. Got it. What are the rules or what do I need to roll for? All it is is like extra damage if he messes with me while we're in close proximity.

“Got it. Do you want me to make any check on top of just melee attack? No I think let's start with”

the melee attack as you attempt to wrangle this way. 22. Are you succeed? So I'm up there like choking him out. Yes you are almost his height and thus able to kind of get a solid amount of leverage on him as you pull the rifle into his neck. You see that he is using one of his hands to try and keep it from fully collapsing his windpipe. Nice. Then I think just for flavor on top of that she very specifically like when trying to lock him up with the gun she's going to loop her like pop hand

behind the capel going up back behind the back of his neck if he throws me off too quickly. I'm going to do my best to take whatever he's plugged into with me. Hell yes. Andre that is you. Your two companions have some of the both of your enemies. I I I dead this is the hallucination of a man who's bleeding out a martian kicked my throat off and now I am dying in these are my last. This is what you see before you go to hell. There's everyone's membranes are nicktating.

X-Wife is here and that's not going well. But I'm going to go and go well. It's a dream.

“What would you do in a dream? If anything can be real, what would you do? I go I grab the gun off my side.”

As I'm pulling it up out of the holster I fumble it and toss it off on the ground. It flies off. I go and looking at the fact that these guys are there's like in bullet time wrestling actually does kind of last forever. Like if you're thinking about bullets being fired by getting hit with a baton and suddenly it's like a grapple. I just I watch myself start to move and they call it the fight or flight response because it's not conscious which means occasionally you start fighting

even when you don't choose to. And I go to my belt and I take off a uranium battery pack

which we use to occasionally. If a power doesn't totally fails you just have to go old school tech and use nuclear. So it's a small nuclear reactor in a battery. It's like oh it's like a fucking

“it's like having a version of like drywall. Look it looks back home. I think a small nuclear reactor.”

I go to the Martian next to me and I'm going to clip this uranium reactor. He has marine armor like Martian marine armor. So I know that stuff works as life supports it has to be able to work in space and I'm going to clip a uranium battery onto it where it's not supposed to go and flood his life support system with radiation. Oh yes. He has to make a constitution saving throw. DC. The DC for your boy Andre. Texas A of DC 15. He fails. Let's go. He is going to take. Oh hot roll. 21 points

of radiation damage and get so for a level of exhaustion. I think this is all just from I'm just like fix it. Click and just click a battery onto this guy so that all of his water life support. Everything that's supposed to keep him breathing in a live in space is just flooded with nuclear radiation. He went from a still suit to a sparkling suit. He now has this advantage on all ability checks. Andre, you feel your arms and limbs moving in ways. Maybe you told him to do this.

Maybe you didn't. I don't know. You got this pack. You know how to attach it. It's not actually that hard. You do it and step back and watch this person screams in pain. Kiki, you are up in his grill. You watch the square of his eyes. Go from white to radiant yellow in seconds as he I'm covering his mouth. As you do, 21. What is it? Kiki, you have this rifle up against his neck. Go ahead and roll me a D6 worth of force damage as you are pulling against him.

Whoa. You hear some bones crack in his hands as he is desperately trying to force this rifle off of you. That is Andre. The Martian that has just had his system flooded with radiation is going to attempt to throw you from his back. Kiki, this one, the power takes effect. If you're making me make a save, then yes, it is. He is going to ask you to make a save. Yeah. DC is 12. Sweet, he takes four more points just for the goal.

That's it? Yes, please. 14. You easily, he attempts to wrench you off by kind of almost

“folding himself in half, turning over. I think it's up to you whether you leave him and land on your”

feet or if you would like to remain in place. I think I like kind of go ask over to Kiki, I'll get to the front of him and then crawl up so now I'm in his grill hand over his mouth. And now I'm just grabbing the back of his head. I don't want to disconnect his systems anymore because that's getting him like irradiated in real time. Yes. So I'm just in his face trying to block his view of what's going on going. You're going to die here and no one's going to remember.

You see his mouth both. That is his turn, fishcakes. You are still on top of the second,

as he attempts to wrench you off. So I sort of nestle myself in tighter, you know, like fingers and toes in the crevices of body armor, visor, and I take the dart that is still in my right hand. And I stab him again with it in the neck. Fantastic. Go ahead and give me that attack roll. That's only a 10. A 10 does not hit. You see he's now moving so violently in terms of

All right. Then instead of my cunning action, I'm using fast and agile and can I attempt to

interact with with his cortex wires. Sure. All right. I would like to start pulling them. Okay. I'm going to use this syringe as kind of a leverage to try and pry them out. Fantastic. So you're not being you want to pull all of them out, not any particular one. Great. Fantastic. Go ahead and give me a slide of handshake. The 19 in the die plus five for 24. You are using the sharp part of the needle to start pulling at the cortex threads. You don't know in what ways you are impacting him,

but you definitely feel yourself ripping loose cords. It is his turn. He's going to attempt to throw you off of him. Go ahead and give me a dexterity saving throw DC 12.

He's 19. He is trying to grab at you and you are moving around his body as you continue to

rip at these wires so effectively. Yeah. Monkey like I am clamoring into places where his hands are not. I'm going to roll D20. Okay. You see sparks and elements of his life support system begin to fizz and flicker. He is going to take a bit of fire damage at the start of each of his turns. He will take one D4 fire damage at the beginning of each of his turns, including this one for which he will take four points of fire damage. As you see sparks and smoke start to emit

out of the spinal area of his armor. He attempts to throw you off and fails. We are back at the top of initiative Andre. The banging you heard in the central pylon is getting louder. Kiki, that is your turn. Do I hear whatever you heard? Go ahead and give me a perception. 19. Something is rambling around inside of that central pylon. Quick look down at Andre. That look normal. For someone to be strangling someone to death and be like, "Are you going to

get the door?" Is a, I Andre just starts doing it. Andre sees your look and it's like, "Yeah.

“Well, you have to get the pylon open so the monster come out because his hell all monsters welcome.”

And then, then it just starts walking the door in a full fugue state, full fugue state. Fantastic. Kiki, it is your turn. Okay. Sorry. Central pylon. That's not the lift. No. This is like a power conduit in the center of the calm station. Oh, okay. Facing the front now, I'm not choking him anymore. Let's try to line up an executioner shot.

Great. Go ahead and give me what are you attempting to do? I'm on the front of him. Now I want to koala like grab the rifle from off the back of his head, hooked around him with just my feet, lean back and shoot him in the center of the forehead. Yeah, go ahead. You are more than welcome to attempt that. 17. 17 hits. Cool.

Three points. Three points of damage. Yeah. You feel the magnetic particle fire out of the weapon. Strike this man in the head. You see a bit of blood begin to trickle. Go ahead and give me a lower check. Something that would speak to your experience with Martian tech or soldiers.

“20. As you move to make this shot fire it off. Perfectly nail it. You remember that certain”

Martian soldiers of higher rank have sub-dermal implants that make shots like this, that make the obvious what especially Terrance would think to do places they would think to aim less effective in terms of like injuring or killing Martians. You think you have hit some sort of

hard steel or at carbon alloy that is embedded just below his forehead. Amazing.

Thereby what should be an execution shot is three points of damage. I think Kiki starts cackling madly and the way she's holding the rifle, if anyone's on the right side of her. I don't know if I've mentioned it out loud. She has a fully prosthetic pinky. It doesn't look like there was there's no other scarring. It was absolutely just oh

“I think fish cakes might know this was just a flex and she's made enough deals and worked”

enough with the Martian protector it that she just got a prosthetic put in as a like little thank you and a connection with Mars in general. So her pinky is out as she wiggles it and goes sometimes you will wonder if you're still a human and then you do something silly.

I just didn't think you were that important as he raises up. Kiki at that point is going to drop

off in scrambled back. Fantastic. You drop off for this man moving. You see that he is dead set on killing you before you kill him. Andre as you are moving in death towards this central pillar you know what this is. This is the plasma transfer conduit. This is where energy moves from the thermoplastic ground and core up here to operate comms. Things like that Z wave communicator take a lot of energy. This is the thing that moves that energy up here.

You see there is the maintenance hatch that is allows you to let something you worked with a lot

when the ship was still being built. But of course as you mentioned before tons of plasma

is running through here when the ship is fully powered up. As you move toward it here in the banging you approach the pillar seeing the hatch and the hatch opens and sticking his head out wearing the same magnetic gloves that you were wearing earlier is tubes. No, you died. What are you doing man? What are you doing? The, ah shit. The tubes is arriving on initiative 20 but it is

“you and him will share initiative. I think that I want to and this is not even Andre like”

I'm flavoring this that Andre is not even consciously doing this but I am going to burn the tech points for another use of a radiate on the guy with the battery pack and his armor. Hell yeah. So he'll make another save and he's had the level of exhaustion so yeah you're making another con save DC 15. He succeeds exactly 15. Gotcha. Then then no damage that run. No damage. So he's just still being irradiated by that. I'm going to go over tubes and go where the

wing to should leave the core. Yeah man. Martians are here. I know the Martians take over the ship. Hi there's two right here. Yeah I see some tubes come with me. Tubes kill them. No come with me. I jump in the hole. You jump with the hole and immediately smack tubes in the face. The two of you hit each other and like jumping into a river. You feel that gravity is pushing up this conduit right now and so when you jump in you immediately feel force kind of push you back up

to the point where now you and tubes are jostling for space in this hatch area at the top of the two.

“You see tube goes. It's a raggedy bastard. Yeah I think you know we're every”

adventurer's a new one. Andre talk is a 57 year old engineer. I think his friend opened the hole and there's a way to get away from the Martians that are murdering everybody. He irradiated the hell out of one guy. It's time to go. You irradiated the hell out of one guy. His suit is flooded. You jump into the tube feel yourself immediately get kind of pushed back out but are floating in this hatch. Kiki. You see the Martian who is squaring off with you going to be an inside check. Natural 20. You've heard

this shit out of this guy. His system is absolutely irradiated. These are mechanically engineered men. Yeah. You could stay here and try and do get out with this person. It would be a point of pride more than it would be anything close to strategic or advisable. Okay part is over. You good? Come on. Come on. Come on. And I'm backing away towards the hole. And yelling Andre so

“fucking helped me. You need to stop jumping in the holes all the goddamn time. Every time a fight”

fucking breaks out you silly son of a... This is your third hole that I saved you the holes.

It's Romanian mole man. Mother fuck it up. They cannot find this into holes. Kiki, in that moment you are going you begin to back up. It is that Martian's turn. He's going to run at you and strike you again with that baton. Sure. It does a 15. It does a 16 hit. It does hit. And a 20 hits as well. He's going to do 11 points of damage at you as you. You will not be killing me. I will be killing you. He swings in you twice as he moves towards you. Fish cakes you are clambering on this man.

He is attempted to throw you off. He has been unsuccessful. I clamber up closer to his head. And I whisper in his ear. I'm going to pull all of the wires out unless you tell me where

19 and a one. You see the neural dampening apparent on this Martian's face. You wonder if his brain

“is capable of understanding or processing fear. I leap off of him and on all fours, I scuddle”

towards the hole. Pounding into the hole you clear. Andre, the entrance to this tube is getting grabbed it. There are too many people in this tube. You see fish cakes on all fours, pounds bound into the tube. Fish cakes you immediately feel that gravity well pushing up as you lurch forward and then

are kind of buffeted back and held in between these two gravity spaces of the tube and of the

comms array. Kiki, that is your turn. So I'm clear inside the tube. Yes. We have that inside check it on the goons on the Martian's turn. Got it. So you you're your intention was to move. Yeah. But

“now it is your turn and your opportunity to move. Sweet. I think she gets hit so hard her whole body”

like slamps to the ground in her head bounces off of the ground. She's almost dead. She's going to push herself up to standing a little bit. Her eyes aren't quite focused and there's a part of her that wants to stay and finish this fight. But she knows she needs to get out of here. So I'm going to turn and use my movement because I don't think it takes movement and like a dash action. No. Then for my action before I turn and run, I'm going to do my best to make eye contact

“even though my bell has been absolutely wrong and I'm going to use an ability called sieve.”

Especially if a fish cake is just about in the tunnel now. Then it's just grabbing. All the sliders got slid all the way up and I want him to feel how much I hate him in this moment. So it's just localized on him and radiating out and I'm going to roll a hit die and take

that back. It's my little second wind. Who? I'll take six back and then turn and run for the whole.

The intensity of gravity bears down on you as you regain strength, turning, running as you approach tubes now goes, flip it, flip it, you feel gravity reverse pulling you sucked into this narrow tube. Essentially orient yourself so you're essentially like a kind of bob sledding. It's like each of you kind of locked in as you descend into darkness and into the heart of the Ecaron. That was Erika Ishii as Vera Fishcake's lamb, a pre-aingar as Kiki Davis,

Brennan Lee Mulligan as Andre Dalka, and me Lu Wilson as everyone and everything else. Flight of the Ecaron is produced by Fortune at Horse and Worlds beyond number, edit and sound designed by Brian Flarity of many sided media and score by Will Savino. For even more stories like this, join us on our Patreon. We'll see you there. [Music]