The C&C platform was listing pretty severely now and we were preparing to jump back to the office platform. Quold started signalling wildly with the signal lamp on his sewer suit but I couldn’t figure out what he was saying. Gav couldn’t either so he called him on his walky-talkie. Turned out he was telling us the platform was about to crash and we should jump off it. As we finished figuring this out the platform started to drop. We all jumped off but Gav and STD-01 seemed to get stuck, presumably in some kind of gravity field from the platform itself. Quold tried to get the office platform to help the get free but it said gravity field generators were a restricted technology so it wouldn’t be able to access them, besides which it didn’t want to get near the C&C platform even in its current state.
Quold started saying something about using a fire extinguisher as propellant. I still had one in my pack after that time when me and Skrood got set on fire. I hate getting set on fire! I was progressing away from the platform alright, but Gav was still stuck so I threw it over to him to use to increase his velocity. I managed to angle it right so the momentum made me move faster towards the office platform. STD-01 had been a lot further out from the platform when he got stuck in the field and he started to break free as well.
Suddenly the platform dropped down about 3 metres, dragging Gav and STD-01 down with it. Boomeron and I were quite far out from the island now and everyone else seemed to be at a safe distance, apart from Gav and STD-01 of course. The C&C platform dropped another metre just as I landed on the office platform, and STD-01 got his shotgun out to try and push himself away from the gravity field. This seemed to work and both he and Gav managed to get free of the platform’s AG fields just as the platform finally failed and started to slowly crashed into the nanotech forest below.
After we’d all landed safely on the platform Quold asked it if it had any healing capabilities as many of us were quite beaten up. It didn’t really seem to know anything about it and suggested maybe the bathroom or the orgy platform. Quold asked it what its primary function was, and it said it had been configured for administrative duties. After hearing this he decided he should try and see if there was any way he could indict the captain using bureaucratic evidence from his terminals. He tried to use the terminals but a load of errors came up, followed by a message the security had been called. Gav started looking a bit interested at this point as he was legally obliged to arrest Quold, but, he eventually decided the pleasure of beating him wouldn’t be worth all the paperwork he’d have to fill out afterwards. We decided we should rest before going to confront the captain but there was some debate about where we should go to do that. Boomeron was very keen on going to the orgy platform but everyone else was a bit more reluctant after what he’d been like lately.
We eventually decided to stay on the office platform since we knew it was safe, so I made some dinner. Nobody else wanted to eat it. They said I’d taken some really fine ingredients, made them into a bland gruel and made it taste slightly of sulphur. Ungrateful bastards, don’t know why I even bother sometimes. We all went to sleep, and when we woke up I made breakfast, despite their reactions last time. Quold put on some weird music that was apparently supposed to be rousing and inspirational, but it was mostly just quite annoying. We had planned to go straight for the captain but felt we might be a bit under-armed with just the two xeno-weapons, so we headed back to the captain’s quarters to get the other one from his museum.
We decided we should go in through the central courtyard again since the nursery robot seemed to have been pretty harmless last time. The platform agreed to take us to back to the captain’s villa but it didn’t want to get down low near the nano-tech forest which might be infected with the Sanctus Sanguine virus. It was a lot easier to get into the mansion this time since we had the AG-belts and Gav had blown the doors off. As we started drifting down on the AG we saw that the security swarm was still there but had spread out all around the place, making everything around us all glittery. The nano-tech defences were more concentrated around the area where Gav had fired the xeno-railgun but there were less around the side of the building where the xeno-weapon we hadn’t already commandeered was. Gav and I could both remember a reasonably empty corridor on the other side of the villa that we could hopefully blow a hole into without triggering any nano-tech defences. The only things in there were some drapes, which it didn’t seem too likely the captain would want to protect with loads of nano-tech.
Skrood set a charge and we withdrew to a safe distance using the AG-harnesses. The charge went off and seemed to crack the wall and make a few small holes, but nothing big enough for us to get through. The foliage around the house below where we were hovering started getting rather agitated when the charge went off and started forming weapons podules to defend the captain’s villa. Gav and Boomeron fired some grenades into the foliage and seemed to do a bit of damage. I decided I should probably go make a proper hole in the wall so we could get that weapon. As I started heading down toward the weakened section the nano-tech bushes fired on us and hit Boomeron and me. They were firing some kind of flechette rounds and a load of them got embedded in the front of my armour as I was landing. Boomeron got hit a lot worse than me since he doesn’t have as heavy armour. I activated my strength cyberware and smashed a door in the wall with my shoulder. I stepped inside to get out of the hedges’ line of fire, and everyone else got their asses in there pretty quickly as well.
Boomeron disappeared somewhere after saying he’d take point, like he seems to do a lot of the time. The rest of us tried to be stealthy so as not to provoke the nano-tech security and headed towards the xeno-weapon. When we got there Boomeron was stood staring at the display case. He said we should just blow a hole in it and I was pretty much inclined to agree. Gav seemed to think we should have an exit strategy before smashing the case and alerting the defences and started talking about blowing a hole through the ceiling to lift everyone out with the platform, or blowing the whole display case outside through the wall. Skrood dug out some spray-on explosive he though should blast through the case and everyone decided that I should be the one to reach in and grab the xeno portent weapon since I had the heaviest armour and was one of the fastest runners.
Skrood sprayed on the explosive and rigged up a detonator. We all withdrew to a safe distance and took cover. He detonated the explosive which put a pretty big hole in the cabinet. As I ran up to it the bottom of it had started turning into nano-bot defences like we’d seen elsewhere. I smashed my hand in and grabbed the portent-weapon. It was a long cannon with a hole to insert your hand and a firing mechanism inside. Bits of the case tried to wrap around my hand as I grabbed the gun but I tore free and started to run away. The swarm bit down on me hard as I was running and that really hurt, but I managed to get free enough to continue running, with the swarm of nano-bots nipping at my heals. Gav and Boomeron started firing back to thin the swarm and I just made it to the doorway around the same time as Quold, jumping up into the air back up towards the office platform and avoiding the locust-like nano-bots below.
When we were safely back on the office platform Gav had a look at the weapon we’d retrieved and compared it to some of the entries in the xeno-weapons manual. Eventually he found a similar sounding entry that said it wasn’t a physical weapon so would go straight through armour, but it drew power from the user so only people with strong portents should use it. Quold said none of us should ever use it under any circumstances because it would destroy us all, but he says stuff like that a lot.
No comments:
Post a Comment