starloserrpg

[starloserrpg]

0007 The War of the Week

Durandal, our ship, is taking us on some interstellar scavenger hunt on the galactic rim.  We drop out of drift next to a tiny green world with a wobbly axis that does a great job of bathing the entire planet in sun & rain.  Whole rock is one big forest.

Ship heads straight for it, System 1401, planet C. Even picks a landing zone. There’s one clearing in a sea of green canopy and a collection of hundreds of huge flattened stones in the shape of a ship, very close to the shape of OUR ship.

We land in a fog and start to pickup life readings. A few dozen medium (bipedal, larger than human, closer to vesk dimensions) sized creatures at first, but then swarms appear out of the mist. The ship touches down in a crowd of hundreds.

Durandal, still not telling us a thing, turns on every floodlight the ship has, all directions, lighting up the forest like a christmas tree. The ramp lowers and we step out to a thundering chorus of these beings chanting, singing, or praying - we can’t be sure.

We call them bearmen, as they’re clearly carnivorous with their huge jaws & teeth. They’re covered in various colors & combinations of colors of fur. Powerfully built upper bodies standing on huge lower legs and clawed feet. They wear jewelry and some armor made from local sources. For weapons, they carry what a human would call a “tree trunk with a handle on it.” Huge weapons that surely weigh 150lbs or more, hefted over their shoulders.

End of the ramp: there’s an old one. He’s got more jewelry than the rest. His once black fur is salt & pepper faded. He’s got scars head to toe and one arm is tied to his chest in some kind of permanent splint. 

We waltz down the ramp wondering what the hell Keema’s going to say to these people. They’re clearly sentient (they carry tools and there’s hundreds in one place) but I don’t dare reach out to them with my mind, might scare them.

Before we can decide what to do, the old one speaks. He roars once, a short but powerful blast that silences them all. Then he steps forward and speaks good ole pact world common. Something to the effect of “We lost it. The sacred site is taken by the enemy.”

Apparently their enemy is another humanoid species, at a similarly primitive stage of development living on this planet. No accident, I’d bet. Naturally they’re at war and it doesn’t look good for the bears. So whatever the previous crew of our ship gave them is now in the hands of the cannibal frog men. We’re smack dab in the middle of someone’s experiment. 

The others fuss a bit about messing with alien politics but before long they realize they’re so far from anyone’s jurisdiction it’s not gonna matter. If we’re going to take back whatever “we” left here, we’re going to need to help the bears retake some territory. So we teach them how to make gun powder. 

We find the right minerals, teach the bears how to combine things with fire to make an explosion. They’re amazed of course, their war-hardened brains instantly dreaming up a thousand applications to a 3′ diameter ball of rocks, metals, glue, and explosives that we nickname “frag-wads.” 

We teach them how to light and throw them. We even load a few of the smarter-than-average-bears (in Earth language oddly enough has a term for this which is “Yogi”) into our cargo bay to drop from the air.

The team leads an all-out assault on a stone pyramid the bears built against a force of thousands of frogmen. It looks bad for us until we start throwing our i.e.d.’s at them. We make one pass over the frogs with the ship, firing the turret and dropping bombs out the back. One bear nearly incinerates the ship but our engineer is there to guide them.

It’s a bad day in frog-town.

Once the battle’s over, we march in with the bears and they move several tons of stone to reveal a crate in the stone pyramid. We load it up on the ship, say our thanks, and take off.

Turns out, it’s a stealth attachment for a shield generator, lowers the energy signature of active shield barriers to 30% of normal. Makes the ship harder to pickup on active and passive scans. We install it and Durandal’s already got a new heading in the drift computer for us.

[starloserrpg]

0006: Space Church

We exit the drift in the middle of no where. Our nav map is one big error message that says “Redacted” still. We can see a star on the scope, a star with planets. The ship sets a course for the 2nd planet out, in the “Goldilocks Zone.” That’s what the meatflappers call a livable planet. 

I looked it up and Goldilocks was some kind of human serial killer, similar to their “Baba Yaga.” She sneaks into your house through unlocked doors or windows, eats your food, sleeps in your beds and if you’re lucky: you find her sleeping. The sort of story they would tell their young to remind them to lock the doors and put away their food delivery platforms when they were finished shoving meat into their meat. The message seems to be: this planet is livable, we’d better protect it.

Well, the inhabitants of this planet were caught napping, by us. 

We’re able to get the local name for the planet off the scope, it’s Davia. I looked that up too, far less interesting than the Goldilocks myth (sidenote: goldilocks possible halloween costume? More on halloween later).

Davia is a planet bought, paid for, marginally terraformed and settled on by the Davians, a religion that worships a human named “Dave” who is no longer with us.

Dave was a human of extraordinary charisma, maybe. He convinced a bunch of people that he was chosen by some greater power to be special, and he was either very convincing or they tried real hard to believe. Poof: the Davians were born. They believe many things, but mostly they believe in toil.  

Where the rubber meets the road (A human expression about safe procreation practices) on this scam is that you end up with tens of thousands of humans working like slaves without the need for chains or security. They’re all operating under the delusional belief that hanging out with Dave is fucking AWESOME, and the only way you get to do that is if you farm a metric shit ton of dirt in your short, meaningless meatflapping life. Genius.

So why are we here? We have to dig a bit while the ai finds creative new ways to be minimally helpful. We’re here to get something from someone, and all we have to go on is a name and species.

Baukis Errand is an android. Androids are constructs humans made centuries ago to serve them, but they grew self aware and, not surprisingly, didn’t want to serve the humans anymore. They’re mostly like a meatflapper, in that they’re made of meat, but they don’t “flap” so much.  They can survive in a vacuum, for one thing.  They’re not so prone to emotional manipulation for another, an improvement over their creators. 

And this particular android was part of something big. He was the research assistant to a member of the team that broke the code on Drift 2.0, one of the technologies I need to understand to bring my people forward on our path. This guy’s seen some shit. Some advanced theoretical physics shit.

The Drift 2.0 initiative was a success, eventually. There’s now a fraction of a percent of ships in the galaxy that can hit 2x speed in drift travel. Rumor has it there’s even a ship or two that can hit 3x now. This is heavy stuff. The meatflappers would say “half boner at least.”

Most of the team that discovered the formula died of course. Public information on the incident states that there was an unexpected failure and many brave heroes died so a few super rich meatflappers in the pact worlds can have drift 2.0.  

The restricted info is that the first three prototypes crushed themselves to the size of a walnut when they fired up the drive.  Each now generates a moon-sized gravitational pull and they were transferred to the Singularity Research Team in the hopes that those crazy nerds could make sense of it.

The fourth prototype tore a hole in space time  several million miles wide for an instant.  The ship itself is gone, not seen since. The station its creators were watching from was shattered, separated from its primary and secondary life support systems and then blasted into many pieces by a follow-up core-breach. There was only one survivor: Baukis Errand, and that’s where the story gets weird.

Baukis flunked a couple psych exams afterwords. There’s no transcript of any interviews with him anywhere I could find. All we know is: he converted to Davianism and is one of the few non humans willing to farm dirt for the rest of his considerable lifespan on Davia, where we have just requested permission to land.

So what do we do? We lie our balls off (meatflapper genitalia are rarely actually removable, but often talked about as such). Keema spins some yarn to the Davians about trade. It seems they make great pottery out here on their giant ball of clay. We’re going to buy a few tons of it. 

At first we wonder how we’ll weasel out of actually paying them, but then Durandal presents us with a stolen identity: some empty suit from Daedalus Corp has 30k in a secret bank account that we temporarily appropriate. 

We recon as best we can while Keema enjoys a guided tour of the Disneyland of Suffering. Baukis is out on a perimeter dirt farm, farming dirt. Probably wanted him away from primary dirt town because he’s part of the only 3% non-human Davians. Meatflappers are weird like that. Some kind of internal OCD makes them most comfortable when every meatflapper near them looks very visually similar to them. There’s tons of evidence for this phenomenon but no clear cause.

So bing-bang-boom (a meatflapper expression used to describe adventurous sexual accidents), Krombopulous steals a human transport, rides out into the dirt fields, and kidnaps Baukis. He brings us an unconscious android, we buy a shipload of “premium” pottery with a check that will bounce within 24 hours, and we lift off the planet in the middle of it’s night cycle.

Trouble is, Baukis doesn’t know anything. We find that he’s got an augment slot with some kind of high-security data-store lodged in it and boobytrapped (another incongruous meatflapper expression - they adore boobs and explosions, but an explosion of boobs is somehow a bad thing) against removal, and no memory of how it got there or really any good response to our question “why the fuck are you a dirt farmer??” 

Our resident android, Kort, says he’s been rebooted. Rebooting is part of the normal android life cycle. Their bodies last longer than their minds sometimes want to, so they effectively erase their personality and most of their memories.  This leaves behind a new person, something like a child of the previous mind. It’s almost interesting. 

Baukis has been rebooted all wrong though. He’s weak, slow, stupid. There’s no way this guy was working on an advanced science team or even the coffee-getter for one. He’s just too stupid. He truly is a dirt farmer. 

So Kort decides to perform a risky procedure and reboot him again with a more capable download from Kort’s memories. This produces an entirely new person again, but this time a far more useful, thoughtful, teachable person. We name him: Dave. Krombopulous & Kort immediately begin training him in combat, stealth, and spycraft. 

We try to explain to the ship’s ai that we can’t get the data out of Dave’s aug slot right now without killing him, ourselves, and destroying the data. The ship’s response is to plot a course to no-where space, and fire up the drift engine.

[starloserrpg]

0006: The Operation

The op ends up being pretty quick and clean. The team surprises a pack of space goblins looting the wreckage. They’ve got Korben up on a cliff with a laser rifle, while Kort, Krom, and Keema (hey, the KKKK, that’s a human political party if I remember correctly) walk straight in and start kicking ass.

Only problem is: the goblins make a break for it. They get off the ground, an amazing feat in their ship, but they don’t get far. Durandal gives me the controls.

<<GHOST RIDER, THIS IS STRIKE. WE HAVE UNKNOWN AIRCRAFT RABBITING THE AO. VECTOR NINE ZERO FOR BOGEY>>

<<TARGET LOCKED. GOING FOR PAYLOAD DELIVERY>>

<<IMA FIRIN MAH LAZAR>>

<<HIT CONFIRMED. HIT CONFIRMED. HE’S GOIN DOWN>>

<<TANGO IS CHARLIE FOXTROT. HE’S HEADED FOR THE SMOKIN HOLE>>

Durandal’s hellbent on us recovering this fortified suitcase from the goblin wreckage, so we do it. I pick up my crew and we blast off this rock and back into the endless night. Mission accomplished.

The ai takes over again. He sets a course and starts warming up the drift engine. I notice that our destination is not the Icarus, but farther into uncharted space.

[starloserrpg]

0005: Flying blind.

We may not know where we’re going or what we’re doing, but we figure out a few things on the way there. The ship’s designation is “The Durandal.” The ai’s name is Durandal. So the team’s calling it “Duran Duran.” The meatflappers like this name.  Guess it reminds them of a pair of humans in some time long past who flapped their meat in unison. Magical.

Everything says redacted. Starmap: Redacted. Destination name & coords: redacted. Origin coords: yep, redacted. So we don’t know where we came from, don’t know where we’re headed, but the ship’s got armor & weapons, so we gear up.

A destination finally appears. A semi-livable planet. Atmo, reasonable gravity, some water. Everyone but the bugs & the android has to take a life-support-suppository so we don’t choke to death. 

We’re headed for a crash, someone else’s. A long debris field shows us where the hull stopped sliding. There’s another ship parked next to it, a small transport. 

The ship’s ai relinquishes pilot controls. 

<<BUCKLE UP, BONEHEADS>>

<<EXPRESS ELEVATOR TO HELL, GOING DOOOOWWWWNN FUCKERS>>

<<WE ARE IN THE PIPE FIVE BY FIVE>>

<<HOLD TIGHT, WE’RE IN FOR SOME CHOP>>

<<PUTTING HER DOWN 2 CLICKS FROM THE TARGET. LZ IS NOW!! NOW!! GO GO GO!! GET THE FUCK OFF MY BOAT!>>

<<ON STATION UNTIL TARGET ZONE IS CLEAR. NO PICKUP UNTIL SOMEONE BUYS ME A PONY. HUMP IT, MARINES!!>>

I love this ship. A slightly rattled away team skulks through alien wilderness underneath a green sky with purple clouds. I sit here in heaven, content.

[starloserrpg]

0004: Race to nowhere

Down the hall we go. We can see out the windows as we walk. Just us & the over-aug’d human the others are calling “bitch person.” The aug gives zero fucks what we call it. It’s barely alive, as far as I can tell. I tried to reach out mentally but nobody’s home, or they won’t answer the door.

We also see starships parked outside the window. Lots of junk. Many with blaster marks. I see evidence of boarding actions. Daedalus has or used to have some pirates in it’s employ. Are we the replacements? 

Given the overall suck-titude of our treatment, we figure we’re getting a suicide mission on a junker. We’re at least half wrong.

We turn the corner and sight a beauty. Some derivative of a Phantom, one of my favorite ships in the pact-worlds. Meat-flappers sure know how to build a hot rod. Those of us that know starships are stunned. 

Wonder never cease: this thing is brand new! It’s so clean! Upgraded engines over a Phantom II, some layout changes. This thing is some weird prototype or proof of concept.  

Only odd part is: the ai won’t talk. Ship this nice definitely has an ai. I see things moving and panels firing up without being asked, I know it’s there. But not a peep out of it.

I head for the pilot’s chair. We haven’t discussed who’s doing what on this death march, so I declare myself pilot and I give zero shits what everyone else does. They don’t argue. We take her out of port. The ai won’t give me control.

It’s a smart one, but it still moves like an ai. No style. No flair. We wonder about the odd exit vector it chooses then we realize it’s keeping us between three long rows of buoys, probably what’s stopping that too-close red-dwarf star’s corona from melting us instantly.

With one final look back at Icarus station (the team still doesn’t know it’s called that), we fire up the drift engine and the ai plots in a course to somewhere. Everything on the nav screen says ‘redacted.’ I don’t mind. I’d go anywhere in a ship like this. Somehow it hits the drift early, or time flies when you’re staring at available thrust readouts.

[starloserrpg]

0003 The B-Team

Daedalus. That’s what this group is called. It’s a “company.”  The pact world meat flappers still compete with each other for resources so everything’s about governments, companies, etc: money. That’s cute.

In trying to understand how a creature thinks, you study their history. Daedalus is a murky figure at best. As with many periods in human record, there are multiple sets of facts and even modern “experts” have different interpretations of what happened. Endless confusion and lies.

Best I can figure is he was an engineer or designer of some type who bent a lot of rules - now there’s a trait I can admire. The only invention I can find any information about seems to be a ridiculous device that’s manipulated with meat to make one’s meat more meaty. Kind of a big-deal in human society.

So Daedalus, my captors, they’ve got a lot of guards. Big dumb armored thugs that don’t have much to say. They’ve got some meat flappers that talk though. Humans so augmented: they’re less lifelike than androids. 

Today they moved me into a big cell in the middle of the block and lead a bunch of meat-flapping prisoners in with me.  They fitted us all with exploding control collars and encouraged us to work for them. Said we could “earn some measure of freedom.” Capitalism: wow.

Apparently we’re going to go retrieve something for them, or else explode. We all agreed. I guess they only have thugs and over-aug’d zombies, because they’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel sending these meatwads out into the vast. 

There’s a couple telepaths in the bunch, luckily. A Lashunta diplomat named Keema. She’s a bit out of her depth. Forgot all her training and openly rebelled against our captors. At least we all know the control collars & tasers are real now.  If she’s not brain-damaged she’ll make a decent comm officer.

A gromflomite. There’s plenty of people in the ‘verse that need killin. He’ll be useful. Potential co-pilot.

This one’s a murderer too.  Human trained so he’s great at killing humans and other meat flappers.  This human taught me that humans speak via multiple air-squirting meat-flapping orifices but they’re not always saying anything when they do so.  Called Korben Dallas.  Gunner for sure.

Another killer named “Kort.” Seems like that’s mostly what they keep in here. Killers. It’s not immediately obvious he’s an android, and he’s also a competent engineer. Resourceful type. I’m starting to see a pattern in Daedalus prisoner selection here.

[starloserrpg]

0002 Mutual Interrogations

The humans have a saying: “It is better to have a fair intellect that is well used than a powerful one that is idle.”  Here on Icarus Station, we got both.

How do I know humans say this? I’ve been reading their emails, their private messages, their diaries, and their wikipedia. What’s a wikipedia? It’s the human equivalent of a data store, except all the data is submitted and verified by other humans. It’s a couple thousand exabytes of hearsay.

They don’t want us to know where we are, or even that the station is called Icarus. Named for a famous human, fictional or not - I don’t know.  He made himself a jet-pack and flew immediately into a nearby star.  Might be appropriate.

No way they built it. This station’s orbit is kissing the chromosphere of a red dwarf star and it’s stable there. Impossible. Ask anyone.

So they stole it, or found it, or bought it. And now they’re using it for what? A blacksite to indulge their endless curiousity about what other species’s innards look like. Or maybe they’re trying to cure the human equivalent of the secret-itchies with alien dna. Don’t know and don’t care.

When you have an eidetic memory, torture is forever. So I skipped it. The things they were gonna try were embarrassingly simple. Like watching a monkey try to fuck a football.

[starloserrpg]

0001 Incarceration Adventure

The universe might very well be infinite, but this damn galaxy’s getting a bit small for my taste. Third time this week we’ve had a run in with these goons. Meat-flappers called “Humans.”

It was just math. They had the numbers. No matter how dumb, slow, and ugly a species might be, get enough of them together and you can pull a lion off his horse (that’s a human expression).

So a few weeks later, I’m in a cell. I know I’m on a space station by the way it moves. Spend enough time adrift with forced gravity, eventually natural gravity feels strange.

And yeah, I could have escaped, a couple times. My first instinct was to get out, steal a ship, get back home. I’d report that the pact worlds are a waste of time. Pirates & pantywaists. Nothing we want to be a part of, but then I was dragged past a room. These apes are on to something.