Tim (Kraid Naiben) decides that he would much rather hang out in a Federal prison than with the likes of us, so he misses the day's session. Ernest (Liz Blessing) is overcome with concern for his unwell family members and is only able to attend for the briefest of moments. The rest of us have no concern for the suffering of any other creature, and are perfectly happy to burn away our precious, precious lives in gaming: Chuck, Paul (Bob the Saurk), Chris (Caleb Kagan), and Bruce (Goat Gulgusskun).
The Salt Witch pulls in to New Saigon and immediately the characters pile out and head over to Uncle Jesse's Custom Starship Shop to stock up on nifty accessories. The characters buy up:
As a bonus, the characters get a free calendar featuring Cousin Maisie. There is Cr 60,225 left in the ship's account. There are also 4 gauss carbines and 3 vibro ninja swords in the Ship's Armory alongside the 12 7mm rifles acquired from the hayseed insurgents of the Aetna back country.
Goat Gulgusskun goes off to buy himself his very own gas mask (Cr 40) and military vacc suit (Cr 3500, AV 20, Enc 0).
The characters also remember that they have acquired Jake Reflux as a companion. He is a former space pirate who decided that working for the characters would be marginally preferable to being thrown out an airlock. The characters leave him with his military vacc suit, but refrain from issuing him an actual weapon. He whines a lot about this terrible injustice.
There's some disturbing news in here. It looks like the ICPA fleet might be getting just a bit over committed, what with two shooting wars starting up.
Liz Blessing heads out into the New Saigon fleshpots to see if she can learn anything interesting about the illicit psyker trade and the state of the local Mob. She finds out that the local organized crime syndicates are doing okay, and that Stitches is regarded as doing well as a protégé of Nicky The Czar out on Aetna. She learns nothing about smuggling psychics around. The closest the local criminal trade comes to the skin trade is in bringing low-cost "entertainers" in from Earth.
Caleb Kagan looks up Jake Reflux's local criminal record and finds out that he doesn't have one.
On the way to Bedlam, the characters look the place up in Microsoft Encarta 2343. The main world of the system is an arid world with no native life more advanced than primitive lichen. The mining facility is based out of a central facility with warehousing and processing equipment. It is surrounded by seven satellite mineheads, linked to the central base with rail lines. The mining equipment and rail lines are constructed so they can be disassembled and reassembled at a different mining location when a particular vein is worked out. Each minehead employs about 100 workers, housed in corrugated metal shacks. The central base employs another 2000 workers. Simon Pravad (the Aetna native who is the nominal reason for the characters' visit) was a manager at minehead #1.
The characters decide to adopt a cautious approach to Bedlam. Kraid Naiben plots the Salt Witch's incoming course so it will break out of jump behind a gas giant (from the point of view of the main world). From there, the ship will drift insystem with the engines off, giving Caleb Kagan plenty of opportunity to make passive sensor sweeps all the way in. However, all he manages to pick up is an automated SOS from the mining colony. There is no sign of either missing ICPA ship. "Except for all that space debris that hit the ship when you were all asleep," says Caleb, "And then there was that body in an ICPA uniform that slid off the front viewscreen. But I didn't think that was worth waking you all up for."
Everyone agrees that having a Love Doll decoy ready to push out the airlock would be a great idea. They hope that when the Giant Space Squid appears it will eat the decoy first.
Still with nothing on the passive sensors, Caleb asks the others' opinion on turning up the active sensors. Liz indicates that she would be all about this if two ICPA ships hadn't already vanished. The final decision is to spend a day or two observing the planet surface, looking for crash sites. Caleb detects an additional site a short distance from the mine complex proper. Bob cries out, "That's not a blue dot! That's a space station!" Caleb intones, as wisely as he can, "That's too big to be a space station!" Liz gets tired of her shipmates quoting archaic movies and points out, "Actually, it just looks like another mine site, just without the rail link." The other characters fall silent, momentarily embarrassed.
The characters land about 8 kilometers to the West of Minehead #1. Caleb does another passive sensor sweep and predicts that there could be a dust storm later in the afternoon.
Kraid Naiben and Jake Reflux "volunteer" to stay with the ship. Kraid is duly empowered to lock Jake into a stateroom until the others get back. Everyone else piles into the SUV and drives over towards Minehead #1. Liz Blessing fires up the MP5 player and thunders across the terrain at unsafe speeds while rocking out to Portuguese rock and Lithuanian death metal.
The minehead complex consists of a half-dozen prefab buildings. "Are there any signs of a fight? Combat scoring? Feasting fleshopods?" Liz Blessing is disappointed that none of these things are visible. The preferred mining style is strip-mining, so there is also a massive twenty-ton automated shovel standing over a huge pit in the ground.
As the characters drive closer, they can see that the place shows signs of being deserted: doors are swinging open, windows are at an angle, and so on. The closest building is a barracks. The characters park and take a look inside. The place is subdivided into "living cubes" containing a bunk, a chair and a desk. The outside is very bleak - even the tumbleweeds had to be imported.
The second building is an administration building. It is also unoccupied, but shows some signs of having been abandoned rapidly, mostly in the sense of people having not come back from work one day.
The third building is a commissary. Liz looks inside, turns to Caleb and says, "Head on in! I'll cover you!" He steps through the door, ready for action. He sees overturned chairs and furniture. The lighting is irregular and flickering, suggesting problems with the power system. Caleb hears something in the back. He moves further in to investigate.
The other characters see Caleb stumble back as a swarm of bugs crawl all over him. Bob asks, "Can I assume that he's making noise now?" All agree that Caleb is, in fact, making all kinds of noise. Bob moves forward with his ninja sword to kill some bugs. He lays about to the left and right and "dissipates" the swarm. Caleb points his combat shotgun and sprays a second swarm, dissipating it. Liz turns and runs for the SUV, on the thought that huge Starship Troopers-esque swarms of bugs might be chewing on the tires.
Bob presses the attack, spraying bits of shattered alien bug all about. He "dissipates" yet another swarm. And then the remaining swarm rushes all over him, doing no damage. Caleb cleans up the remaining swarm as Liz and Goat head for the SUV.
Liz pulls the SUV up to the front door in a cloud of dust while Caleb and Bob investigate the place. They find that the bugs came out of the kitchen, which has been thoroughly trashed thanks to the bugs breaking into the containers and eating everything. Caleb comments, "But look! They left the Spam alone!" Liz suggests that he might want to check the bar to see if there's any booze left. She also radios back to Kraid and suggests that he might be well-advised to seal up all the doors and have Jake run around the ship with a steak tied around his neck, looking for bugs.
Next stop on the tour is the Cargo Terminal, which seems to have also served as a main office. The front door is closed and barricaded. The windows have been barricaded with doors and furniture. There are signs of small-arms fire and other battle damage. Liz takes a tour around and finds that there are two large roll-up doors on the back, leading to the cargo dock and the rail line. Caleb looks into a window and sees a foot, albeit one not attached to a leg, much less a body.
Bob tears off one of the barricades and forces his way in. It looks like someone fought a last stand here with improvised weapons and no armor. There are a number of body parts, and quite a number of bloodstains. Caleb spends some time collecting papers and datachips, even the ones with blood on them. From out in the SUV, Liz calls, "Guys! There are bugs on the way!" The characters gather what they have and run for the SUV. The bugs seem more interested in attacking the commissary building, and ignore the SUV as it peels off.
Back at the ship, Caleb is able to determine that Simon had been promoted and transferred down to the Main Hub complex. He also notices that there is no mention of a minehead #8.
The characters decide to take off, turn up the active sensors, and fly to the main hub. Along the way they are able to get a much clearer picture of the state of the complex. Mineheads #3, #5, and #6 are all in ruins. Minehead #3 looks like it was destroyed by ground-based explosions, as if the locals had attempted to defend themselves with mining explosives. #5 and #6 look like they were hit by missile strikes, apparently due to the efforts of the Marines. There is an SPB grounded near the main hub. All of the rail cars are at the Main Hub. Some of them apparently crashed into the hub buildings, causing quite a bit of damage.
As the Salt Witch approaches the main hub, it becomes obvious that the downed system boat did not land in a controlled manner. The name on the side is Ventura, matching the second patrol boat sent to the system. It looks like the ship crashed, but there is no sign of weapons damage on the hull.
Caleb yells out, "I want a nice clean dispersal this time!" Kraid flies while Liz does the dustoff thing and drives the rest of the group down to the wrecked ship. They enter through a convenient gaping hole in the side of the hull.
It doesn't take the bugs long to emerge. Caleb and Goat blaze about in the wrecked corridors. Goat finds out that the bugs will retreat from him. He concludes that they don't like psychics!
From outside, Liz yells, "Holy crawfish gumbo! When they eat enough, they get bigger!" Two massive bugs, each of them half the size of an SUV, crawl from under rubble. She slews around and starts shooting at them. Goat tries to drive the bugs away and discovers that it isn't so much that he can drive them away as they simply ignore him.
After a few minutes of blazing away, the bugs have started to climb in underneath Bob's and Caleb's armor. Both of them start to take damage. Caleb pulls back towards the door, then concludes that trying to run from the bugs is death. Goat moves forwards and tries healing Caleb, but this only staunches the bleeding a little. Caleb grabs Goat and pulls him backwards into a storage locker while throwing a flashbang grenade behind them. The grenade goes off, killing a number of bugs. He notices the survivors are eating the casualties.
Bob steps forward to engage the two overgrown bugs. One of them cuts him, without any dramatic damage. Bob chops one of them into pieces while Liz peppers away with her pistol. Bob kills the other one.
Goat continues to heal Caleb. More grenades. Once he's convinced that most of the bugs have been chased away, he calmly walks out of the locker, thinking buggy thoughts ("Seek flesh... click click click...")
Outside, four more overgrown bugs come around the corners of the wreck.
Caleb pulls on a gas mask, "I'm gonna start using tear gas here!" Goat yells back, "Thanks for letting me know!" Goat burns an Emergency Die while failing to open the bridge door.
Liz calls up Kraid and asks him to provide a bit of fire support. Then she gets a bug's attention by shooting it. Two of the overgrown bugs swarm the SUV. Liz slews around trying to get the bugs to lose their grip. They stick on, then she rams the hull of the Ventura. One of the bugs is caught between the SUV and the hull. It goes crunch!
Caleb tosses a tear gas grenade, with Goat managing to pull his mask on only instants before the grenade goes off. Caleb is happy to see the swarms scurrying away from the gas. He throws another grenade.
Goat finally manages to open the door to the bridge. He finds incredible chaos inside. The pilot lies dead in his chair, having clearly been chewed upon massively by bugs. There are little bugs all over the place, climbing over Goat's boots, crawling through Goat's hair, lurking in Goat's coat, everywhere. Goat walks over to the console and realizes that he needs some careful instruction if he's going to have any prayer of downloading logfiles or finding the black box. He yells into his comlink, "Hey Bob! Could you get yourself out of combat so you can explain this to me?"
Bob is expecting to have to defend against a bug when it suddenly turns and runs. He thinks, "This can't possibly be a good sign." And then a truly massive bug comes over the rise. He decides that if they eat enough, they can really get bigger. Bob moves quickly to the SUV and chops at the bug still hanging onto the hood. Then Liz shoots it. Bob gets sprayed with ichor. Still dripping bug guts, he climbs into the SUV and starts explaining what Goat needs to do. Goat manages to get the box, then calmly walks back to the hole in the hull, shaking bugs out of his coat as he walks.
By the time he gets outside, the two granddaddy bugs are trying to chew the SUV apart. Caleb takes enough damage to cut him practically in half. Liz slams the SUV into drive and heads for the hills. And then the Salt Witch shows up and sprays down the countryside with gauss gunfire. Liz drives on board the Salt Witch in dramatic style as Bob comments, "Hey Goat! You should check us all for mite and egg infestations when you get back to your lab!"
In the aft cameras, Caleb and Bob both notice that one of the granddaddy bugs is going into convulsions. Both of them conclude that the bugs probably have some other trick up their sleeves. Some very unpromising trick. Something like shooting huge balls of plasma out of their butts. Kraid gets sent back to Gunnery as Liz takes the helm and Bob drops into the turret. Bob tries shooting the convulsing bug. He hits it about a dozen times. In response, the creature flips over and bursts, spraying out dozens (Hundreds? Thousands?) of little bugs. Kraid pastes the other one.
Caleb shoots himself up with painkillers and heads for an airlock to send down a line and pick up Goat. On Goat's way up, he meets one of the big bugs. It walks away from him.
Liz hears the airlock doors cycle and yells, "We get into freakin' orbit!"
Goat walks around healing wounds, then goes to the medical bay to work up an antiseptic skin cleaner.
With the Salt Witch safely up in orbit, Caleb fires up the active sensors. He is able to pick up some wreckage. And he is able to get a ping back from the Schwarzenegger's black box.
Liz tells Goat: "Gimme that black box, Dances-With-Bugs!" Goat hands over the box from the Ventura, then heads off to administer his caustic antiseptic skin cleanser to Bob the Saurk. Bob loses a 5mm thick layer of grease and sludge and whatnot. Everyone else is terribly surprised to realize that underneath all the grime, saurks have baby-pink skin. Bob slinks off in embarrassment, intent upon a heroic wallowing session in his sludge-pit back in Engineering.
Caleb Kagan extracts the last records of the Ventura from their black box. The ship arrived in system, saw the civilian SOS and the military black box ping from the debris of the Schwarzenegger. The ship investigated the civilian SOS first. The Marines landed, ended up fighting huge numbers of bugs, and killed thousands. In the process, they blasted mineheads #5 and #6. All the Captain found out about minehead #8 was that the locals told him it was a storage site, and there was nothing there.
The Ventura was eventually destroyed after some bugs got on the ship and killed the pilot, causing the ship to crash.
When the Ventura arrived, there were still a fairly large number of surviving miners, enough that the Ventura couldn't evacuate all of them at once. The miners didn't know anything about the Schwarzenegger. They said the bugs had started up a few days before.
Bob offers, "Let's turn up our active sensors as high as we can and take a really good look at site #8." Caleb fiddles with some dials and comments, "At this setting, they'll get cancer. But it'll be a long time before they die." Bob tells him, "Just don't set it so high that we get cancer." Caleb warns, "Cover your genitals, I'm turning it on."
The great discovery is that someone has power out at site #8. But there is still no response to radio communications.
The complex at site #8 seems newer than the other sites. It is surrounded by a fence with several large holes cut in it. The characters touch down some distance outside the perimeter, then drive in on the SUV. Liz stays behind as pilot.
The characters can see that the people who held out here at least seem to have put up something of a fight. There are destroyed weapons and bloodstains all across the compound, including a SMG cut in half by a bug's pincer. One building still has lights on.
Caleb knocks on the door. It sags open, clearly unlocked. Everybody puts on gas masks. The characters move into the building. The back room was once some kind of clinic. The place has lots of medical equipment, and looks to be much better equipped than the mine infirmary.
Caleb finds one guy lying on a bed. He isn't dead, but he is catatonic, and starving because he's being fed from an IV that ran out some days ago. He looks somewhat atrophied. Caleb moves him to the SUV.
The characters take the survivor back to the Salt Witch where Goat patches him up. Goat's diagnosis matches Caleb's original opinion: he is suffering from dehydration and malnutrition, but is otherwise in good shape.
Jack listens to the characters' description of the scene and comments, "You guys found half of an SMG? Marines don't normally use SMG's..." The characters deduce that the defenders weren't from the Ventura or the Schwarzenegger. The other defended sites showed a lot of improvised weapons and no automatic weapons at all, implying that the defenders might not have been miners either.
The characters mount a second mission to the clinic to look for records. Between Caleb and Goat, the characters figure out that most of the bodies the bugs ravaged were already dead when they got there (they spend a lot of time looking at the shape of the bodies and the blood sprays). They find one building that was used as an armory. Caleb locates and decrypts some encrypted files from the site database. They turn out to be a log of the last few days of the installation. Part of it reads, "Subject has responded well despite setbacks. Project will be well under way... some problem over at the mine, not our trouble... I know Jim's been stealing toner, and he's been looking at me funny... They're all out to get me... Bugs everywhere!" The progressive mental disintegration of the author is fairly obvious.
The characters launch back into orbit to check out the ruins of the Schwarzenegger and pick up its black box. The biggest piece of wreckage is the front third of the ship. There is quite a bit of speculation that the ship might have met up with a heavily-modified Mako-class yacht with XPG gauss guns. It turns out that Jake has the best ("only") Zero-G skill, so he and Bob are detailed to go out to bring back the black box. They come back with the box.
Caleb pulls the data out of the box. The records start from the drop out of jump. The ship was on a routine patrol into Bedlam, with the crew very much expecting nothing exciting. Then they see some weird sensor readings that quickly resolve into a very big ship, a ship at least 50% bigger than a strike carrier with a hull made from an unknown alloy. The crew realizes that the unknown vessel is firing on them, and moments later the recording stops dead as the Schwarzenegger is torn apart by multiple strikes. Caleb gets some sensor data on what the attacking ship actually looks like.
The session ends with the Salt Witch in orbit around Bedlam. Each character gains five experience points.