25/07/2011 Session

Before we left for the Captain’s quarters we got the Captain’s Table to fix up our armour and STD-01 got it to give him some fancy drugs.  We tried to get it to give us more info on the Captain’s condition but it would just say he had been making inappropriate suggestions.  We  gathered our weapons and armoured up, and it transported us up to the Captain’s quarters using the cauls.

We came out in a patio area with three circular layers raising higher from the centre to the outside, with water features around the edges.  The way up was staggered around the various layers, so we’d have to go all the way around to get up there.  There were some patio chairs and tables that looked like they might even be made of real wood!  Over the edges of the patio pit we could see some jungle type foliage.  I had another look and it seemed to me like it was a very high quality simulacrum of real jungle foliage.  There were a couple of buildings either side of the dome and several floating platforms, which we could see four of, as well as a large central platform where the Captain probably was with some floating stepping-stones leading to it.

STD-01 got out his scanner and was about to scan the area when he suddenly ripped the battery out, saying something about electronic countermeasures.  Boomeron and Gav said they spotted some odd shimmering amongst the leaves around the patio-recess and they got their fancy gun scopes out.  After they looked at it for a bit Boomeron said it was some kind of nanotech.  We thought about setting it all on fire, but Boomeron said it wouldn’t be a good idea.

We decided to sneak on into the room and try and get to the central platform.  Everyone snuck off and we all lost track of each other, apart from STD-01 who somehow got stuck in reverse gear and started reversing up the path, beeping as he want.  After a while some weird static noises started coming over the comms gear in my HEV suit, so I turned it off figuring something was trying to jam it just like STD-01’s sensors.  After a while STD-01 stopped beeping so I looked back and saw that both he and Quold had stopped, and Quold was cowering behind a patio chair.  Then I got a really bad feeling about this place and figured I should probably try and find everyone else.  After Boomeron disappearing earlier on I thought the best way to do that might be to turn the comms back on.

Eventually we all gathered around the floating stepping-stones that lead to the central floating platform, in large clearing in the middle of the nano-forest.  We decided we should probably go up but there was no way STD-01 could make it up with his tracks.  I was going to leave him at the bottom like bastard would probably have done to me, “the specimen”, but then I realised we might need him to do some hacking when we got up there.  He climbed out of his tracks and I stuck him up on my shoulders.  To be honest it didn’t really feel like there was anyone up there!  We started climbing up until eventually Boomeron stopped, clinging to one of the stepping-stones in fear.  Quold gave him some speech about how he was scared too but we all had to do things we were afraid of which I found rather annoying, so I told Boomeron to bloody move so I could get that bastard STD-01 off my shoulders.

He didn’t move and actually started grabbing onto the stone even tighter, so we tried to figure out how to move him.  STD-01 had got some better drugs from the Captain’s table so he decided to administer something to get Boomeron to move.  Whilst he was trying to decide what drugs to give him I figured I should get some of that jet energy drink into Boomeron, it might motivate him a bit.  I shook up the can then tried to open it as I shoved it into his mouth, but I kinda missed and hit him in the face with it a bit instead.  STD-01 said he’d found something to give Boomeron so I lowered him down and he blew up Boomeron’s nose with a straw.  Boomeron started humping the stepping-stone, though STD-01 said that was pretty normal for Ponce on the Pipe.  He still wasn’t moving and Skrood seemed to be getting a bit uncomfortable, presumably remember when Boomeron got infected by the blood cultists and raped him.  I figured we’d better get moving before everyone else started cracking up too so I wrenched Boomeron off the stone and picked him up too.  The pedestals were dropping down a fair bit each time I stepped on one, but I managed to climb up anyway carrying both of them.  When I got to the top I thought it would be pretty funny to shove them together, that would show STD-01, so I dumped STD-01 face down on the floor and threw Boomeron on top of him.  STD-01 managed to give him some Loony Toad Quack as Boomeron landed on top of him just as Boomeron started shouted “Surprise!” and started trying to have his way with him.  I felt a bit bad for STD-01 despite all he’s done to me so I picked up Boomeron by the scruff of his neck and held him squirming in mid-air, desperately seeking something to hump.  He climbed up onto my arm and started humping that.  I wasn’t too bothered as this HEV suit is proof against corrosive, high-pressure atmospheres, but Skrood seemed rather upset by it all so he tied him up.

We had a look around the platform and there were three extremely fancy large wooden desks with various unusual control surfaces on them, presumably for interfacing with the computer.  The rest of the platform was pretty open plan with a few guard rails and about ten metres in diameter.  We had a look around the rest of the Captain’s area and there a lot more trees, with pools and dining areas and other facilities formed out of the woods.  The villas either side of the dome had mostly opaque patio doors and the one that Quold seemed to be scared of had a few doors open.  I spotted some kind of feasting area through the doors with some people sat around a table, presumably feasting. 

Whilst we were looking around, STD-01 started trying to interface with the desks.  His fingers started glowing but then he pulled away, saying something inside there was trying to take control of his cyber ware.  Around then I realised these were some pretty powerful artefacts as they relate directly to the Celestial so we really shouldn’t mess with them unless we had a damn good reason.  Quold seemed quite determined to try and talk to the main AI so he got out his data-slate and started arguing with it.  There was a lot of bureaucratic talk I really couldn’t understand that seemed to go on for hours.  Boomeron’s humping grew less frenzied as the argument went on, but he still wasn’t calm enough for us to untie him yet.  Later on Quold said it had been an hour and a half, but it seemed way longer, but he eventually convinced the AI on this island that the Captain was unfit for duty.  He looked pretty dazed after the bureaucracy was done and was bleeding from his nose and ears again.

We decided we’d better ask the island AI about the Captain’s area.  Quold wanted to know if it could take us anywhere else in the ship, but it said it couldn’t leave the confines of the Captain’s dome as it was sealed off by the Captain’s Table.  It told us there was flight deck at the top of the dome with two entrances to the dome and the Captain’s personal flyer.  The villa that Quold was afraid of was the Captain’s official reception area, the other being the Captain’s home.  The other floating islands were a bedroom and orgy-platform, a holodeck and an advanced command and control platform.

11/07/2011 Session

After the meal the waiter took Boomeron and me aside and took us to a side room.  In the room the Captain’s Table itself spoke to us and offered us a job.  It seemed to represent itself as a blob of light that moved in time with its voice.  Boomeron asked it what we were actually talking to and it said it was a mimetically adapted construct that would adapt itself to our visual system.  It wanted to acquire some live zombie samples, but was unable to spare much of its own resources to do so.  It seemed like an honest enough technological artefact.  It didn’t want to open the doors to downstairs but it said it had a way of transporting us down there using some advanced alien technology, which would also allow us to send some zombies back.  It said something about cauls remaining for a certain time and it could recall them on our successful completion of the snatch mission, but I don’t really know what it was talking about.

It said it would transport us to some buildings around the base of the tower which held a load of supplies for the tower.  Boomeron was pretty enthusiastic about looting them until the Captain’s Table told us they were mostly filled with housewares.  Might be able to get some fancy bog roll though!  It said that the supply houses were in a separate compound that should be pretty free of zombies other than the staff, so we’d have to leave that area to find more interesting specimens.  It then said it would be expending a considerable portion of its energy to send us there so we had better bring back something interesting.  I was a bit worried by the way it said that but Boomeron didn’t seem to think anything of it.

The butler led us to some weird sarcophagus things in the wall which seemed to be shaped for me and Boomeron, with space for our armour and weapons.  We stepped inside the sarcophagi, I guess these were the cauls the Captain’s Table was talking about, there was a blinding flash and suddenly we were in the middle of a warehouse room, filled with broken tea-sets and some fused, broken shelves in a circle around us.  Boomeron said it reminded him of some old movie, but I’d never heard of it.  He had some plan about making giant fly-paper to catch the zombies so we set off in opposite directions to look for some carpet and some glue.  We were talking about how we should sneak around this place to avoid attracting too much attention when Boomeron suddenly disappeared!  I think he said he was as stealthy as a black ninja cat in the forest at night.  I’m not sure what a ninja is and I’ve never seen a forest, let alone at night, but I know cats are some kind of domestic animals on some planets so that’s pretty cool I guess.

I found some slow-drying glue that should be tacky for a while, but wouldn’t be enough to stick a zombie down, and some long but quite thin strips of carpet.  I started looking for Boomeron but couldn’t find him at all.  Eventually he jumped out in front of me and he’d got some other kind of glue that set faster and some drapes.  He started mixing the glues together but after a while his mixture set solid, though it turned out it was only the top that had set when he smashed the fancy plant pot he was mixing it in.  I had a go at mixing them myself and managed to make something a bit less solid but plenty sticky.  I figured we should hang the drapes between our weapons and then flank the zombies we wanted to capture.  With Boomeron’s microphone boom and my sewer scraper we wouldn’t have to get too close.

We headed to the main warehouse entrance and pushed the door opening button.  The machinery was pretty loud.  We waited in the shadows either side of the door, and after a few moments four zombies came in through the door.  They seemed to be moving more coherently than last time we’d seen any as there seemed to be some kind of pattern to their group movement, though the one nearest us walked into and started head butting a shelf.  I wasn’t sure exactly what to do, but then the door started closing and I saw Boomeron by it.  He started waving towards a darkened corner so I tried to sneak over there.  Unfortunately my sewer scraper hit a piece of shelving and the zombie started jogging towards me.  They’ve definitely never moved that fast before!  I was a way ahead of it so I started pouring some of the glue onto the drape.  Boomeron ran up behind it and swung his microphone boom at its legs.  It turned round to defend at just the wrong moment and he ended up taking out its legs.  We wrapped it up in the drape and parcelled it up, with a doubled over piece of drape in front it its mouth to stop it biting.

We glued up another drape and hung it from the end of our weapons and headed after the only zombie we could see.  We were sneaking up on it pretty well, but then I accidentally scraped the ceiling.  The zombie noticed us and started moving towards us.  We checked around and couldn’t see any of the other zombies, though I did notice that one of the sets of footsteps I could hear before had stopped.  We wrapped the zombie without any further trouble and bagged it up like the last one, though I did all the bagging this time.  Boomeron seemed pretty impressed by the way I’d unhooked the drape from his boom just using my scraper!

We headed off to hunt down the remaining zombies and Boomeron disappeared again.  I heard a splattering noise in the distance so I guess he found one.  I stomped up behind the other one and it didn’t seem to notice me, so I split it in half with my scraper.  It was pretty damned disgusting!  Blood, guts and rotting flesh everywhere.  Seen a lot of this stuff, but it still gets to you every once in a while.

We dragged the wrapped up zombies back to the cauls and stuck them on top.  Then we decided we’d better do some reconnaissance to find some special zombies.  Boomeron said we’d had some success with roofs before, so he climbed up one of the shelving units and tried to smash open the skylight.  After a few minutes he gave up and so I opened it with my scraper.  It took me a while to get through as I forgot to stow my sewer scraper first, but Boomeron made it up pretty quick after handing me his microphone boom.

We headed to the edge of the roof to check out what the zombies nearby were doing.  There were three around the door to our warehouse so we tried to stay out of view.  I had a peak over the edge and there were definitely 3 zombies, though one of them seemed to be losing interest.  I also spotted an unnatural greenish glow coming from around the corner which reminded me of the weird glowing zombies.  That made me think about those times when we’d met those filthy bastards before, especially the time they made weird green stuff ooze out of my ribs.  I got really mad and furied, though fortunately even though I really wanted to destroy the glowing zombie I was still thinking about the Captain’s Table wanting us to capture it.  In retrospect that was a bit weird, normally when furying you just want to smash everything.

I jumped off the corner of the building to go hit the green thing but I didn’t land very well so I made a massive dent in the ground.  Boomeron shot the 3 zombies by the warehouse door in their heads.  The three nearest zombies started shambling towards me.  Boomeron shot two before they got to me but one made it close enough to attack me.  I decapitated it, flipped its body up in the air and sliced it into several pieces, which flew into and knocked over the zombies nearest me.  Boomeron said he was pretty impressed by that!

I ran on towards the green glow, still carrying the bucket of glue and the drapes, and pretty much cut one of the next three in half with my laser finger.  Boomeron said it looked pretty gross through his scope.  He shot the next closest zombie just as it swung at me.  I slashed its torso open with my scraper just before his rounds exploded the corpse all over the pavement.  I carried on towards the next load of zombies and splattered the closest one just after Boomeron shot down the one next to it.  I got close to the corner the glow was coming from when I spotted a bound up sheet of lead.  I managed to grab it as I ran past and flipped the glued up drape over the lead.  Just as I got round the corner the zombie started glowing more brightly like it did when it hurt us before, so I charged it with the sheet spread in front of me.  While I was running, Boomeron did some crazy ninja leaps and rolls across the roofs and came up with his scope pointing at the glowing zombie ready to fire.

I grabbed the zombie with the lead sheet just as a bright green flash went off.  Boomeron said later on there was roughly a 15 metre sphere of sickly green light, but I guess I was shielded by the lead, or just didn’t care because I was in fury.  I leapt up into the air and folded the sheet around it like a Christmas present box, tying a bow round it with the steel cable the sheet had been tied with, before lobbing it through the skylight of the building with the cauls in.  (rolled 32)  Then I charged off around the corner looking for more zombies to kill.

I spotted one looking down at me from a roof and it had weird, puffed out cheeks that made it look like it was going to spit something at me.  I lobbed the glue bucket at it.  I didn’t quite get the bucket over its head, but it hit it in the side of the head and a load of noxious fluids spewed out of its mouth and started dissolving the masonry next to it.  Boomeron shot it in the leg with his rifle, which pretty much liquidised its leg.  I leapt up the walls of the building and wrapped the glue soaked zombie in the final drape, tying it into a sack with some rope from my backpack.  Even despite my fury, I still got the sense from my inner daemon that I should probably take this back to the cauls.  In all our travels, we hadn’t seen anything like this before!  I flipped myself down the end of the building and stomped to the warehouse with the cauls in, slaughtering zombies on the way and slicing the last one so that its hand hit the door opening mechanism.  I just made it back to the cauls and dumped the bagged-up zombie on top of one of the cauls before my fury wore off and I reverted to normal size, whereupon I sat down and sparked up a smoke.  At this point Boomeron emerged from the shadows.

We chucked one of the normal zombies and stepped back into the cauls.  As before, a bright flash enveloped everything and we were back at the Captain’s table.  The zombies disappeared into the floor and the Captain’s table seemed pretty grateful.  It offered us two more tapas portions from the menu.  We both had the eye stalks, and Boomeron had the mind prawns whilst I had the sky whale loin.

04/07/2011 Session

We all woke up from our cyber-surgery around the same time and prepared for our journey to the Captain’s Table.  The house AI told us we’d have to go back to the lift, possibly through the horde of Sanctus Sanguine cultists outside.  It had cut all external feeds, but based on its observations of the cultists’ behaviour and the data it extrapolated from our descriptions, it thought the cyborgised cultists would have gone into stealth mode and would possibly still be in the area.  There would be two more of the most highly-cyborgised members of the bureaucracy, now followers of the Sanctus Sanguine, outside the house who we may have to get past to get to the lift.  It agreed to send a security robot with us for cover.  Quold quoted a load of regulations and somehow convinced it to send the army of servitor monkeys out on a sweep to provide an extra distraction.

I wanted to lead the servitor monkey assault, but every time I tried to head for the atrium one of the robot butlers would distract me and the house AI would start talking to me.  It let the monkeys go out of all 5 exits but it still wouldn’t turn on the cameras to show us what was happening.  STD-01 and the security bot headed out first, shortly followed by the rest of us.  As we got outside I could see the servitor monkeys engaging the Sanctus Sanguine cultists.  They looked like they were having a great time!  Smashing cultists and throwing their severed limbs around and screeching all the while.  There were battle-sounds from all the corridors, and I noticed a particularly weird sound coming from the other side of the elevator shaft.  We all ran for the elevator but I noticed Quold was lagging behind a bit.  Boomeron told him there was a monster behind him, which made him run a bit faster.  I thought I should give him some positive motivation, like Gav told me about when he did that leadership seminar in the military AI’s house.  I told him he was the one who really wanted to go to the Captain’s Table, and it was only a lift ride away, so he should get his ass into that lift so he could put on his fancy uniform!  It didn’t seem to make too much difference, but he managed to catch up with STD-01 and the security robot.

We all readied our weapons as we neared the lift shaft.  The lift was in the centre of cross-roads and there were sounds of fighting coming from round the corner.  Boomeron got to the lift shaft first and tried to hide up against the wall.  When the rest of us got there I could see one of the head bureaucrats with two flunkies.  Two of the servitor monkeys was attacking them, but it didn’t look like it would last very long.  Gav emptied a full-auto blast from his combat shotgun into the bureaucrat which seemed to do some damage.  Chaz sprayed some of the flammable jelly from her sprayer over all three bureaucrats and the security bot tried to  and they fired back at them with their laser fingers, setting themselves on fire and hitting Gav in the chest.  One of the servitor monkeys picked up one of the flaming flunkeys and started hitting him against the wall.  Awesome!  I threw a grenade at the head bureaucrat, who seemed to be pretty badly on fire, but he was charging towards us as the lift doors were closing.  Just as they shut, I saw it explode right under his ass and send him flying up in the air, only to be clubbed with the flunky that the monkey had picked up as a horde of zombies came round the corner.

We all changed into our dress uniforms and then chilled out to the lift muzak whilst we waited for the lift.  We came out into the lobby, which was the fanciest place I’ve ever seen.  A robot maitre-d came out to greet us and asked for our reservations.  Quold said some stuff to it that I didn’t understand and asked to hand over all of our equipment, which was stored in a nano-tech sealed locker that they gave us the keys to.  We were shown to our table, and one of the best replicants I’ve ever seen turned up to take our order. 

The

Captain’s

Table

Menu

Entrées

Vulcor Bloodfruits

The savoury Bloodfruits of the Vulcor Tribune are one of the rarer fruits in the Emperion

collective, coming as they do from the now decimated eco-system of

Vulcor prime. The fruit is served on focai bread with a dusting of pepper.

Emperion Prime Starflower Seeds

Grown around the celestial fragment in the Emperion Prime system, these

flowers heads are one of the most prized delicacies. It is considered a huge

honour to be allowed to eat such an important symbol of the Emperion. The seeds

are dry roasted with a mixture of salts from all 15 of the ocean worlds currently

 subjugated by the Empire.

Mains

Classics

Melian Mega-Bison Ribs

The gigantic Mega Bison roams unchallenged across the tundra of Melia IV, weathering

 even the most titanic of Hyper-Blizzards. The Ribs are seasoned with the finest

Atargian spices and are served on a bed of fresh greens.

Lan-Cai-He Space Badger Steaks

Only the bravest of the Badgers makes it to the table; the rest feed it! Bred on-board

the Badgers are forced through a variety of trials before the final selection process

is determined by a Badger pit fit. The winners are served with a vegetable compote.

Hot n’ Spicy

Rasarian Cleft Beast Burgers (H)

The Cleft Beast is one of the largest predators in known space, larger than a

Craterian Ploust Critter or even the Mega Snark. The Cleft Beast Burger is an extremely

spicy dish served with fries or fresh potatoes.

Frozen Zergaun Monolith Dust with Vardi Sprinkles (H)

The Monoliths of the Zergaun system contain the memories of a long dead race known as

the Mamolock. Orbiting a near-dead celestial fragment, these organic mimetic storage vessels

are an exquisite delicacy. Pan fried and seasoned with Vardi fire spices, this is not a

dish for the faint hearted!

Special Cuts

R'Bari Shuffle Monkey Tails

R’Bari Shuffle Monkeys are exceptionally graceful creatures, their three tails are capable

 of independent movement due to a large zone of particularly tasty proto-cerebellum.

 The tails are vacuum boiled then coated in a smooth batter and served with a light salad.

Zerkon Beholder Eye Stalks

Nothing gets past a Zerkon Beholder, namely due to the thousands of independent

prehensile eye’s they possess. The Eye stalks are packed with a secret blend of

herbs and spices to produce a truly eye opening dish.

Special Cuts

Anagolian Reticulating Spider Claws

Soft and boozy or crunching and still reticulating, both are delicious and it’s your choice! Once

cut from the Reticulating Spider, the claws die within hours and ferment, losing their crunchy

texture but gaining 20% proof!

  

Seafood

Magha III Sky Whale Loins

The gas giant Magha III is home to one of the most potent animals known in the Emperion

Collective. The Sky Whales have the largest reproductive organs ever recorded, producing

a colossal 15 mega-jabbons of reproductive juice in a single mating. The loins are served with a

white wine sauce.

Sk'Zan Mind Prawns in Zergaunt sauce

Sk’Zan mind prawns are a parasite species that feed of the emotional energies of their

hosts. They are capable of infecting a wide variety of sentient and sub-sentient creatures. They are served live, though of course we make sure they are paralysed through the use of a tasty Zergaunt

grub sauce.

 

Vegetarian

Talotan Glamerilia Bird Eggs (V)

The Glamerilia Bird is regarded as one of the most ostentatious creatures ever recorded. Their

 diet is based on a variety of precious metals and gem stones which are partially digested

 and then secreted through special glands onto their expansive display feathers. The eggs

 are served frozen on a savoury ice cream base.

Vervort Pattern webs with Parvet

Stalks (V)

The Vervortian pattern webs are a quasi-sentient seaweed found on the Gaian ocean

world of Vertort. They form a significant portion of the data processing capacity

of the ecosystem. The accompanying Parvet stalks add a delicious nutty offset to

the creamy taste of the webs.

Desserts

Quizali Motile Cheese platter

Created in the Quizali bio-weapons research facility, the motile cheeses were

 an attempt to create a pan-species cheese borne smart-disease. The experiments

 were deemed a complete failure when it was noted that the research “volunteer’s”

seemed to be remarkably partial to the tainted cheeses and weren’t dying very

 often. The pathogens have now been mostly removed however it is not

recommended to imbibe them if you have a history of stomach ulcers,

 pattern baldness or space tourettes.

Esense Fruit Sorbet

Found very occasionally floating in small swarms in deep space, the Esense fruit is

thought to be a seed form of an xeno-celestial attempting to egress

the voids between worlds. The fruits are first scorched in the glare of an Emperion

celestial core before being pureed and frozen into a truly out of this world

sorbet!

We ate our meals and they were the most amazing food we’d ever had!  After we’d finished we all felt much better than we had before.  We had a few drinks and relaxed for a bit, then the maitre’d came over to talk to us.  It said it had been getting some inappropriate suggestions from upstairs in the Praetor’s quarters and that it would quite like us to investigate.

27/06/2011 Session

We went back and talked to the bureaucrat and eventually convinced him to help us.  He gave us a lift pass and told us the location of the upstairs security override, next to a kitchen.  Skrood made a shaped charge and blew a way in through the kitchen wall.  There was a lot of smoke and clouds of dust, but once they cleared enough to see through we could see a laser grid and another hovering security-bot.  Everyone opened fire on it, and Gav eventually finished it off with the last round from the material rifle, with sensor input from STD-01.

We tried deflecting the beams with one of our faithful mirror-on-a-sticks, but it burnt a hole in the mirror.  We figured the security bot must have had some mechanism to stop the lasers from harming it so I lassoed the dead security bot and we managed to pull it out of the laser room without doing too much damage to it, though its casing did take some damage from the laser grid.  STD-01 had a look at the bot carcass to try and figure out what it had used.  He found a few radio emitters that connected to the casing of the bot, a lot more than usual, but couldn’t figure out which of the mangled parts was the transmitter.  We also had a look to see if we could remove its rocket launcher, but the mechanism was trashed.  The warheads were still intact in the magazine, but they were pretty high-tech so we would need the right method to arm and detonate them.

Boomeron decided to try throwing water over the computers, but the lasers evaporated both the water and the bucket he threw before they got there.  Then he decided to try throwing things in and ripped out the kitchen sink!  We figured throwing everything we could move from the kitchen in there might deflect enough lasers so we could make it in to the room.  Quold was pretty useless at this and just ended up piling a load of stuff up just inside the doorway.  Fortunately I managed to smash it all out of the way by throwing a few cabinets through it.  They were blocking the laser beams to a certain extent, but slowly melting.

Boomeron then decided that the best thing to do would be to blow up some of the kitchen appliances.  He started fiddling with the settings on his under-barrel grenade launcher, so I decided I’d better go take cover with Quold at the back of the kitchen.  Everyone else took cover too, and Boomeron eventually fired a grenade and leapt out of the doorway.  He must have set the fuse to a timer instead of an impact trigger as the grenade only went off a few seconds later.  Loads of smoke and dust billowed out of the room and we couldn’t see much for ages.  Boomeron started coughing as he was the only one without any kind of breathing apparatus.

After a while we could see into the room a bit.  The closest computer stack was looking pretty fucked up.  STD-01 decided to head into the room to try and interface with it.  He climbed out of his tracks and crawled over the rubble which took ages, burning himself on some red-hot shards of the sink Boomeron threw into the room earlier.  He eventually made it to the stack and started saying something about how the computer was photonic rather than electronic, which I later found out means it uses light instead of electricity.  STD-01 said it would be pretty hard to interface with but he would give it a go.  He didn’t have much luck with that, so instead he tried bashing in the computer casing so the laser beam missed its receiver.  We’d hoped that the beam would cut through all the computer stacks in its path, but it cut out a few milliseconds after it missed the edge.

It was around this point I realised what STD-01 had meant when he said that the computer was photonic.  Photonic computers are powered by celestial light, so they’re an extension of the celestial itself.  Now I don’t really believe in all that stuff anyways, since everything I experience comes from inside my own head, but even without all the religious stuff I wouldn’t want to fuck with a celestial computer.  STD-01 was talking about plugging it into his head, which definitely wouldn’t be good for him.  I decided I’d better not say anything about that and hopefully that nasty little shit will fry his own brain.  Unfortunately he was too cautious to plug straight in and decided to go through the security bot instead.  He spent a while poking around inside it and definitely broke a few bits, but he got it to boot up into some kind of admin mode in the end.

He said he was going in to the computer and a few seconds later most of the security bot’s systems shut down.  We couldn’t tell what was going on but later on he said he’d fed back the computer’s signals through redundant circuits in his cyberware and attached a carrier wave, which enabled him to bypass the security and jump straight in to the main AI core.  Apparently he then had a battle with the red computer and its security programs, though he just twitched for a bit as far as we could see.  After a while his eyes and ears started bleeding and then the lasers shut down.  He came to after that and seemed rather pleased with himself, though he looked absolutely terrible.

The house computer came back online shortly after that.  It seemed pretty grateful to STD-01 and directed him to medical for an upgrade.  Before we headed over there, we asked it about the Captain’s table.  It said that the Captain’s Table was of the highest technology our race has ever encountered, and had been gifted to the Praetor of the ship.  It is an entirely discrete unit that the central administration Plex tower is built around, and it has technology that the computer does not fully understand.  Hopefully that means it won’t have been infected by the blood writing.

We all headed to the medical area of the house and it said we had to sleep before it could operate, we’d already had one artificial regeneration induced this cycle.  It bandaged our wounds and gave us a few shots then sent us off to rest.  We settled in to the dormitory and a servitor monkey in a butler’s uniform showed up with some refreshments.  It stood there holding the drinks tray.  I haven’t seen a monkey before so I went over to it and started stroking its head.  The drinks tray shook a bit when I started, but then it seemed to calm down and go into some kind of trance.  I guess it really liked me!

After we’d had a rest it took us to the dining hall where we had the best meal I’ve ever seen, served by loads of robot butlers.  The food was amazing and there seemed to be endless amounts of fine alcohol.  I got chatting with Quold about bureaucracy and it was actually kinda interesting.  I might have to go into sewer management if things ever get back to normal round here.  We sat around digesting for a while and then the computer directed us back to medlab.

It offered us a load of cyber enhancements and stuff.  I wasn’t really sure about that kind of thing but the computer was pretty insistent that I get a strength implant.  Then I remembered that bureaucrat with the laser hands whose hands I tried to cut off.  I asked it for laser fingers like that guy had.  It didn’t have laser fingers as good as he had, but it did build a laser into my hand instead.  More of a laser knuckle than a laser finger, but I like the sound of laser finger better.  It said it should be as effective as my high-penetration laser rifle, but could only fire six shots before it would have to recharge.  Apparently it recharges off my body’s own bioelectric energy or something, so once I’ve used it I just have to sit around for a bit and it’ll recharge.  Sounds like it mightn’t be too good for my hand though, the barrel doesn’t exactly stick out of my knuckles at all and those high-penetration laser beams are bloody hot.  At least they modified my EVA suit and my sewer armour so I can fire it without having to take my gloves off first.