The Ice-Moon Rescue

Re-cap of sessions 70 through 72 played on 11, 18 and 25 July 2025.

Location: Belenia, moon orbiting a gas giant (position V) in the Larssen-Randin system (Halcyon 1917).

Date: 038-5601

A luxurious ship's boat carries you to the exclusive Amorita Park spa and resort on the ice moon of Belenia. It accommodates about 20 guests at any one time, in addition to a similar number of staff. A main habitat dome contains the hotel proper while other, smaller domes feature a system-famous restaurant, a zoo containing genetically revived ice-age megafauna from ancient Terra, and a marina with submersible craft that permit guests to explore the water ocean that lies beneath the icy crust that forms the moon's surface. All provide views of a massive cryovolcano that looms over the resort. At least once a day the volcano erupts, spewing plumes of nitrogen ice particles into the sky where they form spectacular aurorae.

After checking in and seeing your rooms, you decide to take out an ice speeder — ostensibly to explore the surrounding region but mostly so that Jacobe can perform donuts and other borderline-dangerous vehicular stunts. Eventually you decide to cruise over toward a facility set apart from the hotel complex, the control centre for the massive "planet engine" that the resort's architect-engineer, the brilliant Dr Wilmer Hopp, built to nudge the moon closer to the gas giant, thereby increasing the size of the cryovolcano's famous aurorae. As you approach, you see another ice speeder leaving the control centre in the opposite direction. You can clearly see its sole occupant through the transparent domes that cover each speeder's cockpit: a striking woman with high cheekbones and a piercing gaze (think Angela Bassett). She regards you coolly as your two vehicles race past each other. 

You find the control centre unlocked — odd — and, upon entering the main equipment-filled room, discover the body of Dr Hopp. He's dead, probably from the hole in his chest. It appears that before being killed he had just overseen a controlled burn of the planet engine. The computer's logs also indicate that crucial data has recently been downloaded.

Thoroughly alarmed, you search the complex for the murderer. In a side room set up as living quarters, you find a technician sleeping. She seems genuinely groggy when you awaken her: did she sleep through the crime or is she a fiendishly deceptive killer? Before you have time to make up your mind, alarms blare out from the control room and you are thrown off your feet by a massive quake. The technician, now fully awake, dashes to the computer display, where you learn the bad news: due to a miscalculation, the planet engine's latest firing has pushed the moon past the Roche limit. The gas giant's gravitational pull will soon rip the icy ball to shreds, leaving everyone and everything on it floating in space! There's no way, the technician explains, that the planet engine can possibly exert enough force to push the satellite back into a safe orbit. It's game over, man.

"Complete lunar disintegration will occur in 5.34 kiloseconds," the computer informs you helpfully. 

"Disintegration of the moon" by Eric Bagley

With the technician in tow, you pile into the ice speeder and race back toward the hotel. Knowing that the space yachts of the wealthy are sitting on the ice plains just west of the complex, you head there, hoping to commandeer a ship and GTFO. But a second quake wracks the moon as you near the landing pad and an enormous fissure opens in the icy crust, zigzagging crazily across the plain. You watch in horror as ship after ship teeters on tiny ice flows and then topples over, sinking beneath the surface of the cold subsurface ocean below. Your means of escape now lie out of your reach.

"Complete lunar disintegration in 4 kiloseconds," the system reminds you.

You recall that there's at least one escape pod on the hotel itself, but it won't hold everyone. Then you remember that there are submersibles at the marina. You could use one to reach the sunken ships. Speeding to the marina, you contact the hotel by radio and advise the panicked staff there to gather everyone to prepare for evacuation. 

Piling into one of the submersibles, you cruise beneath the ice toward the gaping hole in the crust where the landing pad once was. Descending slowly into the watery darkness, you despair when you realize how deep it is. You will never locate the sunken ships in time!

"Complete lunar distintegration in 3 kiloseconds."

But luck is with you: the craft's powerful lights reveal a single silver yacht perched precariously on the edge of an underwater ice cliff. Maneuvering close, you don cumbersome emergency space suits and swim across to the ship's hatch, abandoning the submersible. It's difficult enough to break into a ship under normal circumstances, let alone a hundred metres underwater, but you manage to open the airlock.

"Complete lunar disintegration in 2 kiloseconds."

There's no time to cycle the airlock properly: you force open the inner door and are carried on a wave of icy water into the ship. Jacobe makes his way to the pilot's chair and soon the gleaming space yacht is thrusting upward toward the light. Torka discovers that several other guests' ships have been slaved to a parking control computer program and manages to remotely guide them toward the surface as well. Things are looking up-ish.

You broach the surface and bank toward the hotel dome. The hotel staff inform you that everyone is ready for evacuation, except five guests who are missing. Two were last seen in the megafauna zoo. Three others remain unaccounted for. You hover the yacht near the zoo dome and see a desperate situation: two terrified guests cling to the lower branches of a Pleistocene spruce while a sabre-toothed cat prowls around beneath them. Evidently failing electrical systems, damaged in the seismic quakes, have allowed the megafauna to escape! There's no time to land: in a desperate maneuver, you ram the yacht into the dome, shattering one section, and lower a ladder toward the treed couple as the artificial atmosphere within the dome escapes in a violent rush. Soon enough you're hauling them aboard. 

"Complete lunar disintegration in 1 kilosecond."

As you land the ship near the main hotel dome, the cryovolcano erupts, spewing rivers of cryolava. Chunks of ice and rock smash into the dome, cracking it. The guests and employees scream in terror. You manage to herd them into the yacht's cargo space. The quakes are almost constant now. You catch a glimpse of a lone figure in a spacesuit making its way toward the escape pod attached to the main hotel. You have no idea who it is, but you suspect it might be the woman you saw leaving the planet engine control facility.

"Lunar disintegration now immin —"  The computer countdown shuts off suddenly as the moon comes apart in chunks of ice and rock that careen off each other violently. Your yacht whooshes to safety, leading a few other remote-controlled craft behind it. Only two guests did not make it. The fate of the person in the escape pod is uncertain.

Medical and emergency ships sent by the government of Randin, as well as some private ships belonging to the families of elite hotel patrons, rendezvous with you halfway to the mainworld. Police interview you about what you saw at the control facility: clearly they want to know who killed Dr Hopp, and why. Thanks to the technician's testimony and to your own bravery in rescuing so many, you're off the hook, despite being the first to discover the body.

By the time the rescue flotilla reaches the mainworld, the media have picked up the story and it's clear that you are the heroes: "Offworld laser tag athletes rescue guests as moon disintegrates" is the top story of the news cycle. President Gojumpy Camorundeen holds a press conference and gives you medals. Vicomtesse Shirley Eaton de Clovis invites you to her charity ball. Best of all, Captain Kerevi informs you that the Randin government will soon release you and your ship. You'll be free to go.

You attend the vicomtesse's ball for a few hours — enough time to eat some hors d'oeuvres, mingle with the upper crust, and disseminate subtly subversive messages intended to induce these comfortable people to question their government's militaristic invasion of a neighbouring system. But you're anxious to leave a place where you've been effectively prisoners, albeit with golden cages and silk prison uniforms. Not willing to risk overstaying your welcome, you return to the Dejah Thoris, load your bulk cargo and passengers, and take off. Between government and private reward monies, you're a million credits richer.

But there's also ominous news. At the press conference, a robot process server delivered court documents to you: evidently, your newfound fame has made it easier for others to find you. It seems that Nika Jarumi's family has begun legal proceedings to claim rightful ownership of the Dejah Thoris, claiming that the ship was not hers to give you and that it belongs in fact to the family. For the moment, there's little to be concerned about: Jarumi's family is 23 parsecs to trailing and in a completely different polity. But a legal process has begun, and eventually you will either have to dispute their claim in court or ignore it and risk becoming fugitives in a "stolen" ship. Of course, the fact that your dear friend Captain Jarumi is in fact a synthetic — a secret that only you and few in Jimin Iti know — doesn't help your case, as this revelation would only bolster their legal position. 

Next stop: Lon Marin (Halcyon 2014)!