Session 15 (18 August 2023)

Location: The icy planetoid Pel Avena (Far Home 1528)

Date: 101-5600

Travellers: Torka Jax, Griff Kodiak

NPCs: Drs Wilkinson, Luó, Mutesi, and Abbasi (scientists); Maximilian Stana, Rejor, Zhi, and Nicolau (mercenaries)

You press on through the narrow rough-hewn passage of ice and rock, towing Wilkinson's body behind you on a short tether — easy enough in the low gravity. Your helmet lamps illuminate a small chamber ahead, in which three more spacesuited bodies are strewn about. Two are dead: Drs Mutesi (female astrophysicist, 51 years of age) and Luó (male xenobiologist, 35). They appear, from the tears and abrasions on their suits, to have been pummeled, beaten, tossed about with enormous force, as if they were rag dolls.The third, Dr Abbasi (a 33-year-old molecular biologist), lies prone on his back, making feeble, uncoordinated movements. The interior of his helmet's faceplate is spattered with vomit: he's thrown up, but appears otherwise unhurt. 

Looming behind Abbasi's prostrate form is a gaping hole in the tunnel wall: beyond is a cavernous space whose floor, ceiling, and walls appear to be made of a fleshy, pink organic substance. Your lights barely reach the far edges. Whatever this thing is, it's evidently what the scientists were investigating.

When Abbasi sees your lights and shapes looming before him, his mouth forms words, but you don't pick them up: he's using a non-standard radio frequency. You adjust your suits' comms and tune in. Abbasi is struggling to express himself: he sounds exhausted and confused. Oddly, he seems to have been expecting you. Claiming to have what you seek, he wants you to get him out of here. When you ask him what happened to his fellow scientists — "What attacked them?" — he becomes agitated. He demands to speak to someone named Stana. You press him, and he grows angry and exasperated. "I've done what you asked, I used the drug, I got the data ... now get me the frak out of here!"

You eventually deduce that Abbasi arranged with someone named Stana to eliminate the other three members of the research team and steal all the data on the find. He apparently ingested some kind of black-market combat drug provided by Stana, giving him superhuman strength for a short time. Now physically drained, he's waiting for extraction and assumed you were Stana's people. As you put the pieces together, you become aware of the peril you may now be in.

Administering a drug to sedate Abbasi, you place him in an emergency tent to stabilize him and make sure he has oxygen: his own suit's tanks are almost empty. You find a data wafer in an external pocket of his vacc suit and remove it. Torka examines its contents using Godfrey, his suit's computer. It seems the scientists hypothesized that they had found the remains of a Harvester, a kind of space whale parasite spat out by the millions by the immense Voyagers that infested the sector more than a millennium ago, feasting on energy and minerals (ships, buildings, vehicles) and causing the complete collapse of interstellar civilization for over 700 years. If true, this would be an historic and valuable discovery, for no one had seen one of these things for over a thousand years. Evidently someone was willing to kill to obtain the data and Abbasi had been only too willing to oblige.

Your comms crackle as a new voice begins using the frequency. "Abbasi, do you read? We're coming to your position. Over." About the same time, you note that the comms relay Sasha had set up where this mining tunnel left the main spoke has gone silent. A malfunction? More likely it was destroyed. You deduce that it's Stana, and he's coming your way.

Stana's mercenaries enter the mine spoke access dome.

Griff connects the name and the voice. When he was in the marines, he knew of a fellow grunt named Maximilian Stana with a reputation for brutality and ruthlessness. This was a guy who wouldn't think twice about mowing down a grandmother pushing a baby carriage full of kittens to achieve his objective. If this is indeed the Stana now approaching, you'd best be ready.

You pull the bodies of the scientists inside the Harvester's vast "stomach" cavity. Planting two grenades on opposite walls of the narrow tunnel just before the chamber, you conceal a camera to observe your enemy's approach remotely. Soon enough, a figure in well-used combat armour floats into view, bouncing along gently in the low gravity, laser carbine raised to fire. The merc spots the camera and reaches for it; you detonate the grenades. A blizzard of ice, rock, and blood erupts in the confined space. You hear other voices on the channel, cursing. Stana's voice orders someone forward to cut through the slowly collapsing tunnel with a laser saw. This buys you some time, during which you plant yet another grenade at the entrance to the space whale's belly, take up firing positions at the entrance to the whale's intestine, and mess with Stana's head by talking to him using a computer simulation of his own voice. It becomes clear to Stana that someone is jeopardizing his mission and he's clearly pissed. He warns you to back off: his boss has deep pockets and will hunt you to the ends of the galaxy. A few minutes later, two other mercs appear at the entrance to the belly, one with a grenade in hand. You open fire and detonate your IED, wiping out both mercs in another gory explosion and unleashing another stream of profanity-laced threats from Stana. 

Unsure of how many other mercs might be coming against you, you take the opportunity to retreat through the twists and turns of the intestines, finally pushing your way out through the dead whale's anus and dragging yourselves through a winding natural passage that eventually brings you out to some mining tunnels. You head back to the nearest spoke and take a magrail car to the surface, where you are immediately surrounded by a troop of marines, weapons at the ready. Someone's reported a firefight in the tunnels and they're here to arrest the perpetrators. It looks like you have some explaining to do ....

Image credits: space merc screengrab from a video collage of AI-generated sci-fi art posted on YouTube.