The Last Ship

Characters Present

• Nola Zur (Roger P.)
• Theta Omicron (Tony N.)
• Arza Gonsu (Chris H.)
• Captain Zechs (Jodi)
• Sabbath Rune (Jack L.)
• Tia O'Mandalorio (Laurie M.)

In the aftermath of the Mavros Contagion, the loose ends are piling up at Ranger HQ. Friends and allies continue to move through the halls, picking up tasks around the city and planet to clean up the problems left by the attack and plague. Director Dreyen Faso of CorpSec Security reaches out to the team to investigate a missing ship. Only this time it is actually a ship in the ocean going tradition.

The Volantius is a CorpSec research ship out in the eastern ocean. It has advanced sea-floor mapping capabilities and was being used to track the creatures that escaped the southern polar region. The ship has been out of contact for the past 18 hours after missing a report deadline. Storms in the region prevent the satellites from getting a good read on the ship's position. So CorpSec, with manpower stretched, offers the use of a sea launch to go investigate.

The team debates using other means to get out there, but the VOlantius was never designed to accomodate large ship landings, despite its size. Even aquatic ships would still need small vehicles to ferry passengers betweent he two large vessels,which are not designed to dock.

Wrestling against the seas and storms, the team finds itself within the eye of a large tropical depression, blanketed in fog. Using lookouts and scanners on the small craft, they eventually ping off the massive sea going vessel, which apparently is still underway.

The team closes in on the vessel and finds it the worse for wear. Barely operating on emergency power, the ship ploughs through the waves, seemingly abandoned. But the ship is not purely a research vessel. Equipped with ballistic missiles, it is most charitably a military research ship.

The team docks to the aft launch platform and magna-locks to the hull. In examining the launch bay doors they find the ship has experienced violent electrical surges, destroying much of the control systems, and at the hangar at least, mechanical failures wnough to seize the blast doors. They start climbing the surface ladders and make their way to the bridge.

Forcing the bridge door from the observation balcony, they find a horrid display of electrocuted crew and officers. Most of the ship's systems are blown or ionized and live wires are exposed throughout the bridge. The team restores emergency power to key systems using a protable generator, but many essential systems are blown, such as the helm and communications. The ship features an odd data relay system in that the computers are linked using a neurochemical fluid piped throughout the ship.

Descending into the depths of the ship to try and stop the ship, they instead encounter crazed crewmen, apparently driven by surges in their cybernetics. After killing and disabling them, the team discovers that they are not, in fact, cybernetic. The wires and hydraulics they are covered in are more of an infection. Medical scans reveal that the wiring draws power from contact with the hull, takes feeds from the temples of the victim, and issues controls through the spine directly. Essentially making the host a prisoner in their own body.

With that as a motivation, the group heads to the main reactor to shut down power, and hopefully put an end to this computer gone amok. As they approach the reactor bay and main engineering, they notice that the chaotic wiring and blown conduits of the ship get more intense as they descend.

Finally, in the research bay compartments before main engineering, they find clues as to what happened. The bay contains a moon pool and lifts. The signs of battle in the room, with multiple dead CorpSec security teams and scoring from high voltage electrical discharges indicate whatever they pulled out of the seas was responsible for the ship's crisis. The amount of cables pulled through the bulkhead to main engineering indicate that whatever is responsible is nesting in there.

Force Sense reveals a dozen or more crew trapped within, in desperate fear and terrified, thinking death is better than their fate. The team breaks through the bulkhead to find more cyber-infected crewmen, much further converted than the ones on the upper decks, defending a monstrous creature. Comprised of the main power system, the organic data core, and a coral-covered shell from which emerge tentacles infecting the organic computer core. Sabbath recognizes it as a Cantro Skepsis, the Vyjand control nodes that are being hunted.

They fight a ptiched battle in engineering with the creature and its puppets. Despite shrugging off grievous wounds, the creature is finally felled by Arza and Sabbath. Without its living brain, the puppets fall unconscious.

Comms are borught back online once the ship and victims are safe, and CorpSec is called to send a recovery crew. When pressed about why the ship was bringing the creature aboard, Director Faso points to the directives from the State of Emergency, "Capture or Kill these creatures." No one warned them that the mollusk-like beings were capable of taking control of a ship or do anything other than transmit thier weird low frequency signal.

It seems across the board that Vyjand creatures are highly adaptable, and in surprising ways.

Adventure Capsule

Date: 8/30/2020
XP Earned: 10xp
Credits Earned: 1250cr
Gamemaster: Bill M.

Duty Rewards (Choose)

• Harmonium: --
• Independents: 20
• Republic Remnant: --
• Scum & Villainy: --

Casualties & Injuries

• None Reported.

Notes

• CSS Volantius recovered and returned to the Corporate Sector Authority