Author's Note: After a (much longer than expected) hiatus, Traveller's Raid Society is back! The stars finally aligned for the Traveller group to meet up for a session recently, and with that momentum behind me, I was able to write up this long-awaited chronicle of our fourth adventure. Our Traveller campaign is now over five years old and still going strong-- and as always, it's a pleasure to share it with you. Thanks for reading.
That doesn't mean that there's no times when you're hanging off the edge of a cliff, trying desperately to comm your buddy for help, and then you realize your comm got fried by that Vargr's laser pistol blast and things are even more dire than you thought. Comms do, in fact, malfunction all the time: battle damage, lack of battery, immersion in the fetid swamp waters of the New Lusakan outlands. Absolutely. But in our business, there's no "comm malfunctions." Because when someone trying to hire you spins some pretty tale about a simple, harmless comm malfunction at an outlying settlement that needs to be investigated—there's always some little detail they're not telling you, and that little detail usually comes back to bite you in the ass. And that's exactly what happened on Death Station.
The contracting agent didn't call it "Death Station," of course. He was an ordinary Imperial bureaucrat at the consulate on Balthazar, and he found our name from some place (maybe they had a list of particularly expendable guns-for-hire) and told us about a little, tiny comm malfunction happening in system, on some scientific station called 02.
"Just a little comms malfunction," he told us, leaning over his desk at the Imperial consulate towards us. "Nothing to worry about. We're just a little shorthanded on ships at the moment, and we heard you have a free ship at the moment—" (Alex nodded enthusiastically at this, having been working quite hard to refurbish the starship we'd inherited) "—and so we'd like you to just go check it out. It should be a quick in-and-out, but we'll pay you for your trouble."
It's not that we didn't sense danger; after all, as Travellers our senses of paranoia are quite robust and well-developed. But at this point, we were all so desperate for some quick credits that we accepted. "Excellent," the bureaucrat said. "Also...we have another contractor we'd like you to take along. This is Sergeant Hanklin Stockert, formerly of the Imperial Army."
Sergeant (ret.) Stockert was a hard-faced man who looked like he'd gone through a lot of scraps in his day, but what immediately caught our eye was the laser rifle he was carrying at his side: high-powered, military-issue, and more firepower than anyone else in the group.
"Just haven't been off Balthazar since I mustered out of the army three years ago," Stockert said. "Been feeling the need to go stretch my legs outside of orbit." As a group, we collectively shrugged. He looked like he knew how to handle himself, and he had a laser rifle, heavy firepower Daniel kept casting longing glances at. You never can be too cautious. So we all climbed into Wolf and took off, breaking atmosphere for the first time in our new ship.
As we approached 02, we could see it was in the standard spinning-top shaped design for space stations: several rings centered on a single spire, with a docking pay around the waist of the station. We touched down in the docking bay and crossed over to the station, to be met by a member of the station's crew in uniform, who walked us to a security checkpoint for incoming visitors.
Yes, at this point, from the fact that there was a security checkpoint on a gorram research station to how vague and unspecific our escort was being about the exact type of research the station was doing, we should have figured out that something was wrong. Daniel still claims that he knew something was wrong from the moment he set foot onboard the station, "as soon as I tasted the smell of death in the air."
The guy at the security checkpoint was giving us a hard time about our weapons. Turns out that the multiple pieces of military-grade armament we were packing weren't exactly regulation for the research station.
"The rapier is ceremonial!" Vanai insisted. "As is the automatic pistol. And the rifle. That's ceremonial too."
"Look, ma'am, I really can't let you take these on board. Look, just hand me your gun and you can have it when you get back."
"I was knighted in service to the Imperium, you know," Vanai seethed, as she handed in her rifle to the man at the security desk.
In all the commotion, Alex, Hanklin, and Daniel had managed to slip past the desk, and the security guy decided not to make an issue of it. "We're here about a comms issue. Which way to communications?"
"Up on the upper spire. You want me to give you an escort too?"
"No, actually."
The level we were on turned out to be full of mostly humdrum administrative offices. None of us were feeling anything amiss in particular—but there was something up, something we couldn't quite put our collective fingers on.
"There's hardly anyone here," Amelia said. "I've been on research stations like this before. They should be bustling with people."
"We can just go take a look around the station," Alex said. "I'd like to know a little about what kind of research they're doing here."
We found an elevator, but it required a key to access the upper levels. "No worries, guys," Amelia said, pulling out a screwdriver and her comm. About 30 seconds later, we were on the elevator as it ascended to the level marked "Upper Administrative."
The air was stale and the lights were dimmed in this level of the station, but we advanced cautiously out into the corridor to investigate.
"Over here!" Daniel said. "I knew this wasn't a harmless little research station!"
He was standing in the doorway to an immense room, which as we gathered around saw was dominated by an immense industrial fan, now lying dormant and blackened by an explosion. Around the catwalk surrounding the fan were scattered the dead bodies of half a dozen heavily armed people in anonymous body armor. Amelia crouched down next to one of them.
"This is Pyotr," she said. "He was one of my brother's gunmen, one of his most trusted. I think...I think this is a hit squad from the Mondasian mafia."
The rest of us were digesting that information when Hanklin nudged Alex. "That scientist chick is with the Mondasian mob?"
"Her brother is. It's a whole thing."
"What would the Mondasian mob want with a bunch of scientists?" Hanklin asked, the question that had been on all of our minds. Daniel went and peeked out the entrance on the other side of the fan. Beyond was an airlock.
"Looks like they came in through here in a hurry," Daniel said. "Used a torch to cut through the airlock after it was sealed."
"Then got cut to pieces by a bunch of scientists in the first room they entered?" Vanai said. "That doesn't sound right. There's hardly any security here on the station."
"So you think this caused the comms blackout?" Alex asked. He was cut off by the sound of a slow, scraping gait from the corridor outside. We quickly and quietly took up firing positions by the door. Staring down the dimly-lit corridor, we saw what looked like a single person in a lab coat advancing slowly towards us.
"Don't move!" Vanai shouted. "Put your hands up, or we shoot!"
The person didn't respond, instead still marching stiffly towards us.
"Hands up, or we shoot!"
Nothing. The person was just fifteen feet away when Daniel's shotgun sounded and its head vanished in a spray of red mist. They toppled over with nary a sound, and we went to get a closer look.
The unfortunate scientist was covered in cybernetics, with what looked like a mechanical exoskeleton extending all across his body and covering much of his face, at points protruding through the skin.
"Some messed up sicko," Hanklin said.
"This man wasn't killed by the shotgun blast," Amelia said, kneeling beside the corpse. "Hmmmm. That is most interesting. Most interesting, indeed..."
"What do you mean?" Alex asked.
"He died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Some time ago, maybe two weeks."
"So someone popped his body into a robot suit and made him into a meat puppet," Alex said.
"Informally, yes."
"So these are zombies. This space station is full of zombies?"
"So are these what killed the gangsters?" Vanai asked. "I didn't see any bullet wounds on their bodies."
"Whatever it was, we need to go deal with it," Alex said. "We have guns, they don't. But if they get down to the main crew area, they'll all be dead faster than you can say 'Braaaaaaains'."
We shouldered our weapons and moved out.
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| 02 Zombie (Artist's Impression) |
"Line up your shots and fire on the zombies!" Vanai shouted. We all lined up our guns and fired down the corridor at them, lighting it up with sound and fury as we watched the corpses go down. Hanklin's laser rifle lit up the dark corridor for an instant, and we saw it filled with the advancing dead, even as those in the lead went down under our hail of fire.
We were so busy pouring fire into the poor undead saps advancing down the corridor at us that we didn't even check behind us-- until a zombie that must have snuck up through a doorway jumped Alex, pummeling him with a crowbar. Alex shouted, unsheathing his navy-issue cutlass and batting at him with the blade, toppling into the rest of us as he wrestled the zombie off of him, slashing deep cuts into his face.
"We need to fall back!" Hanklin shouted. "We can't hold this!"
In the chaos of the undead advance and Alex trying to keep his face from being eaten off by the zombie, our defensive position fell apart—Amelia took off running first, followed by Hanklin and Alex, who'd finally dispatched the zombie, followed by Vanai yanking a furious Daniel along as he pumped shotgun shells at the undead horde. We raced down the darkened corridor and Amelia found a control panel on the wall, punching in a command and shutting an airtight door behind us. We were safe-- at least for the moment.
"Hang on," Daniel said. "Where's Vanai?"
Vanai herself had taken a wrong turn—when the airtight door had slammed shut, she'd found herself at the intersection of two corridors, with a door behind her separating her from the zombies, but a door in front of her separating her from the rest of the party. Only the corridor to her left lay open, and so she walked that way, pistol in hand. A single door at the end of the short corridor lay ajar, and she pushed it open. It's a testimony to how fast her heart was beating that she nearly riddled the shadow-clad form at the other side of the room with bullets before realizing it was just an abstract statue gazing impassively at the door. On a pedestal sitting beneath the statue's gaze was a sword in its scabbard. Mindful of the trusty blade she'd been forced to leave behind with security, Vanai reached for the blade and withdrew it from its scabbard.
As her fingers touched the hilt, a tremor ran through her, as if she'd stuck her finger in an electrical outlet, and the memory of her investiture ceremony, of kneeling before the duke as she received the service medal and collar tabs marking her as a knight of the Imperium, flashed through her mind.
"Finally. You don't know how good it feels to have a wielder of decent breeding."
"What?"
"After my wielder was taken captive far from home, I passed through many a grubby commoners' hand before today. In the hands of you, my new mistress, glory will once again be ours."
"So...you're the sword?"
"I am as fundamentally different from any common blade as fine porcelain is from an earthenware spittoon! Forged of Casterly steel, with an exquisitely-thin monoblade capable of striking cleanly through practically any armor."
"I'm always glad to have a blade, especially one as fine as yourself," Vanai said, at last remembering her manners. "How is it that you can speak?"
"All the better to serve your every command, my mistress. For I am bound to serve truth, justice, and a feudal system of government!"
"Right," said Vanai drily. "Well, I have a lot of techno-zombies between me and my friends right now-- you think you can help me with that?"
The rest of us were still in the sealed-off corridor, tending to our wounds and counting our remaining ammunition, when a sword blade began to thrust through the airtight door of the compartment, carving out a roughly human-sized oval, before Vanai stepped in. "Delighted to see you all."
"The hell? What is that sword?" Hanklin said.
"His name's Joffrey, he can cut through anything, and he's a monarchist. I found him in one of the back rooms here."
Alex was scratching his head. "So....that's great, Vanai, now what?"
"There's one more level to this station," Daniel said. "In my experience, when you're looking for a big bad? You go to the top."
"There's an emergency ladder shaft on the corridor back that way," Vanai said. "Passed them on the way over. We get to the top-- maybe we can figure out what the hell is going on here and turn it off."
We shouldered our weapons and moved out. We didn't see any more zombies on the way to the emergency ladder—it was like they'd all melted into the ventilation shafts like so many rodents. By some miracle, the emergency ladder supported the weight of Daniel's combat armor, and we made it to the upper level in good order.
The upper level was, of course, the worst. The air was inhumanly cold, weird steam was venting into the corridors, and all of the offices were trashed, in some cases with blood sprayed across the desks and walls. Amelia stepped into one of the offices, while the rest of us guarded the corridor with our rifles.
"Looks like this facility was working on advanced AI development," Amelia said. "Some sort of high-tech project. Computers are down, so I can't find out the details."
"So we're dealing with some kind of rogue AI," Alex said. "One with the capability to create those cyber-zombie things."
"We can proceed in accordance with that hypothesis," Amelia said.
"So all we've gotta do is march up to the computer, disconnect the thing, or maybe just shoot it until it stops working," Alex said.
"It already knows we're here," Amelia said.
With that sobering thought in mind, we advanced deeper through the station. The floor had begun to slope downward, an unusual feature for a space station, and then Daniel, leading the way, held up his fist in the military "stop right where you are" gesture. He pointed through the gloom (Side note: where does a space station get all that mist from? It was like they had a whole bank of fog machines going) at the zombies milling around near an important-looking door.
"Two hostiles, maybe more, near the door," Daniel said. "I'm guessing that's where the big bad is."
Hanklin was hardly even listening. "I got this," he said, stepping forward with his laser rifle, and then he blasted the first one, practically blowing its head to pieces. The other one had barely turned in confusion when a full volley of small-arms fire from the rest of us practically turned it into chunky salsa.
What can you say? We're Travellers, and we travel armed.
"Well, there goes our chances of surprise," Vanai said, striding forward. "Let's go see who our charming host is tonight."
We all let Daniel do the honors. "BREACHING!!" he bellowed, and rammed through the double doors. Inside...well, inside looked like a scene from an architect's worst nightmare. The vast room beyond was the very biggest room we'd seen anywhere on 02, with a bizarre chasm criss-crossed by a variety of bridges, which, of course, had no railing. Beyond the chasm, on an immense island or pedestal on the far side of the room, was an immense liquid-computing tank filled with a reddish gel, fed by a nest of wires and tubes.
"HAVE YOU COME TO TERMINATE ME?"
The voice boomed over hidden speakers in the walls. Vanai ignored the question and responded with one of her own. "Are you the computer that runs this place?"
"I AM A COMPUTER! I'M GLAD YOU NOTICED."
"Why did you kill the people who worked here?"
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| Friend Computer (Artist's Impression) |
"KILL IS SUCH A NEGATIVE WORD! I PREFER 'REARRANGED'. I 'REARRANGED' THE PEOPLE HERE. THEY SAY THEY LIKE IT MUCH BETTER NOW. THEY SAY THAT I'M THEIR FRIEND."
"This is some creepy-ass monologuing," Alex muttered to Vanai.
"What about the mafia killers that were here earlier? Did you "rearrange" them too?"
The computer giggled, a breathtakingly-awful sound. "NO, SILLY! I KILLED THEM. I KILLED THEM ALL BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO DESTROY ME. YOU WOULDN'T DO THAT TO A FRIEND, WOULD YOU?"
"Right now, you need to cede control of the station's functions and power down your zombies," Vanai said.
"Playtime's over, cyber-freak," Hanklin growled.
"OH, I DON'T THINK SO," the computer said. "OH, I DON'T THINK SO AT ALL. YOU'LL ALL DIE TO ME—OR MY NAME ISN'T FRIEND COMPUTER!"
All of us Travellers had already begun spreading out across the platform we were standing on, readying our weapons for action. A moment later, gun turrets dropped down from a panel in the ceiling and opened fire, spitting bullets at us as we collectively dived for cover. A moment after that, the floor panels in the room, all islands amongst the darkness-shrouded chasm that was the room's sorry excuse for a floor, began to erratically move up and down, some raising into the air while others sinking down, all while Friend Computer's maniacal cackles filled the room.
In those moments of chaos, we all found ourselves separated. Vanai, Amelia, and Alex dashed for cover and started returning fire at the turrets, while Hanklin's laser rifle spat its beam at Friend Computer's mainframe and Daniel, clad in his full-body combat armor, stood out in the open pumping shotgun blasts at the computer. "Knew we should've brought explosives!" Daniel shouted over the din.
From behind a conveniently-located waist-high partition, Vanai, Amelia, and Alex kept their heads down as automatic gunfire rang out overhead. A few well-placed shots from Amelia's stunner fried one of the turrets, but another round of turret fire sent Hanklin to the ground, clutching at his leg.
"Friend Computer's just too well-armored!" Alex said. "That laser rifle barely scratched the paint on its casing."
"If I can get close, I can make it hurt," Vanai said. "I'll head over on the left, you take right. Amelia can give us a distraction."
"Wait, can you even distract a supercomputer—" Amelia started.
"Go!" Vanai shouted, brandishing Joffrey over her head as she dashed from cover, leaping across a gap between platforms to advance closer to Friend Computer. Alex followed, racing across the platform, past Daniel and Hanklin, skirting along the rightward side of the room. Past the broad, flat platform at the entrance to the room, the remaining floor tiles became narrow and further between—just far enough from each other that you could jump from one to another. In retrospect, Friend Computer was toying with us, the equivalent of a predator playing with its prey. Friend Computer knew that all of our combined firepower could do little to hurt it. What it hadn't counted on was Joffrey.
As the others resolutely kept firing, spraying Friend Computer with enough laser blasts, stunner bolts, Gauss rounds, and shotgun shells to shred any living opponent, Vanai leapt from platform to platform like a trained gymnast, all while the sword in her hand shrieked something about upstart peasants. With one final, daring leap and a roll, Vanai landed on the platform at Friend Computer's base, bringing the blade with a single swift motion through the mainframe, sending sparks flying. She brought the blade down again, hacking and slashing through the computer and its accompanying tubes. The gun turrets fell silent.
"Did we kill it?" Daniel called from the other side of the immense room.
"Think so," Vanai said. "Some of the hardware might still be intact, but it's definitely cut off from the station's systems."
"Do we have a medic or something?" Hanklin called. "I think I'm bleeding out over here." Amelia rushed over to tend to the wound in his thigh.
Vanai scrutinized the jigsaw-puzzle pattern of the room's floor. "I'm gonna try and find a way back to you guys—"
"You'll do no such thing," said a cold voice from behind her. "Drop your weapons and put your hands on your head."
From the other side of the room, the rest of us looked on in shock as four men, heavily-armed and with the trademark trenchcoats of contract killers, shuffled out from a maintenance door, guns pointed at Vanai as she set down her sword and her gun onto the floor. We had all the firepower necessary to splash their bodies up against the wall, but even the most trigger-happy among us knew that we couldn't kill all four of them before one of them put a bullet through Vanai.
"Let's try and talk this out, can we?" Alex said. "We don't mean to pick a fight with you." The four men ignored us. One of them bent down next to Friend Computer's shattered casing and began fiddling with a hand terminal, evidently trying to upload data. When he'd finished, he stood up and the hit squad began to back away from the door, one of them grabbing Vanai roughly by the arm and pulling her along.
"Any of you try and follow us, the dame gets it!" one of them called. "Once our ship is away from the station, we'll be in touch."
"Don't worry about me!" Vanai called. "We'll get it all worked out!"
Her positivity wasn't shared by the rest of us, who looked on pretty much helplessly as they led Vanai away as a hostage. The door closed firmly behind them.
"The hell was that?" Hanklin said.
"I recognized those men," Amelia said softly. All eyes turned to look at her. "I'm sure those men were from the Mondasian mafia. And if I'm right, Vanai's in a lot more trouble than she thinks."
