Unity, Solar Union, fought up bloody and most ten years. The Confederates, otherwise known as the UCC, were winning. They had more ships, more experience, and more of a reason to fight. The HSU were not willing to let the colonies of Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune run themselves independently.
Thus, Project Amsoil was born. In the conflict's final years, the Union deployed weapons referred to as Vikings. Genetically altered, backgrown humanoids with the express purpose of making and winning war. The first contact with the Vikings, the Confederates surrendered 300 and one days later.
The screen comes in on a star field scene like all of the episodes start, the title credits of Viking fade to black, and the same green text comes up. The text reads, 21 years ago, date 2489. Ship, CS, Ticonderoga, Confederate transport frigate. Location, 1.5 days from the Jupiter gravity well.
Deceleration, mission, transportation of diplomats. Off grid, classified. We come in on the bridge of the ship. The bridge of the ship is Confederate class vessel of frigate variety would probably have maybe 10 or so crewmen aboard at various consoles and stations.
Tim is going to be playing the role of our lieutenant commander who is in charge of the vessel. We do a sweeping panorama around the bridge and come to Lieutenant Commander Isha Shaddid, Confederate junior officer of the Ticonderoga, age 31 years, deep olive skin, black hair tucked under a kneady under a naval keffia. The first stream was trimmed black beard, star tattoo next to the right eye socket, and dressed neatly in a naval bridge uniform. Lieutenant Commander, the scene is yours.
Alright crew, station reports. I want everyone reporting in. Ensign Faroo comes up to you. He's basically your second second hand on the bridge.
Sir, Lieutenant Commander Shaddid comes to this reporting in. Emergency beacon, 96,000 kilometers out. Call sign is the CS Atkinson. She's been reported missing now for a week.
What are your orders? Alright, let's see what we can do for him. The rest of the bridge immediately falls into action diverting the ship's course to check out the CS Atkinson. We cut to the crew quarters.
We see a small room with bunk beds. Petty Officer Mulvaney, who's played by Charity. Petty Officer Mulvaney is a rifleman of green team, age 19 years, dark brown hair, muscular body type, like a Tom Hardy of sorts. Naval combat dress, tattoos, signature tattoos under both eyes.
Under one eye it says, have 15. Under the other eye it says, oh two boys. So Petty Officer Mulvaney stands outside the open door, talking with one of the various deck hands on ship. Inside the Spartan Naval crew quarters is our other actor, Jason, who's playing the role of Chancellor Nelvery.
She is, Madame Nelvery is the Confederate Chancellor of Emerald Station. Her, she is 46 years old, short cropped gray hair, average body type. She's dressed in green form of wear that's wrapped around her body. She's Indian of ancestry.
Her, like multiple belts and things festooned to keep the flowy dress of hers from getting a little too out of control. So she is inside this room sitting on her bunk. Her daughter is sitting across from her on her bed reading a book. Next to the Chancellor is her speechwriter, Beauford.
On one of the bunks asleep and strapped in is the CEO of Godfrey and Sons Construction, Bailey Godfrey, who looks like insert any annoying CEO type you've seen in the news. He's fast asleep strapped into his bed with a mask and headphones on his bunk. Beauford sits next to Nelvery and he says, okay, so I think we should go with a more call to action framing. We want the companies who've stuck by us to feel secure that the Confederacy will protect their interests, right?
That's true, but we need to ensure that the people understand that they won't be taken advantage of. We need to walk a safe line here. Right, right. Maybe if I can change a few things in this, soften it a little bit, right?
Let's, let's shore up what we can extend out, but also make sure our partners know they're well cared for. Your daughter's across in the other bunk. She puts her book down, Jasa is her name. Jasa speaks up and says, how much longer are we going to be on this thing, Mom?
Long enough, but look at just pay attention to Bailey over there. Looks like he's about ready to have a little nap, perhaps you're handling this better, little Jasa. Thanks, Mom. She goes back, rolls her eyes and goes back to reading.
Beauford says, I don't think it should be too much longer. Petty Officer? Sir? What?
About how much longer are we out from the Galilean colonies? I turn around to a small computer bay in this, where you said we are, the punks or whatever. Yeah, and you're like standing right outside the door. There's like terminals and stuff around that you could access.
Not much longer. A day, two max. See, Jasa, this will be fine. Okay, so all right, I'll move some.
I think if we, and then the scene dissolves to black and we come back up to the bridge, we see on the main view screen the ship of the CS Atkinson, which is a similarly sized frigate to the ship that you're on. However, this frigate is an attack frigate. So instead of transporting people and supplies, this thing has guns on it. We see that the square nose of the ship has four, has four shoots for torpedoes on the front.
And then there are two large barrel macro turrets that are sitting one on top and one on bottom. And these turrets are meant to shoot capital class ships and disable or destroy them. So in our last episode, we saw this little frigate gunboat. These are much bigger.
Again, if we're going to think in terms of like, what does our Navy have, this would be like, like a guns that a small destroyer would have meant to attack other capital class ships. Okay. The camera zooms in on the bridge and we see, well, the audience's camera I should say. Zoom's back in on the bridge and the screen, we get this over the shoulder view of Lieutenant Commander looking at these various view screens.
The main view screen has the Atkinson pulled up and different portions of the ship are highlighted various colors with different warnings on them. One reads, venting coolant, 8.4%. Another highlights the rear portion of the ship hull damage, layers one through three compromise. And then another, another screen reads fusion drive, 21% operational capacity.
All right, boys, we got a leaking duck. Did it come from the inside? It was an external. Andson Faroo speaks up.
We're checking that now, sir. All right. Let me know as soon as you can. We're able to hail them on the comms.
You trial channels. Yes, sir. We've tried to hail them and there's no response. All right.
One of the other bridge bridge made speaks up. Andson, would you look at this? And the andson scurry's over to his screen. Lieutenant Commander, you may want to look at this.
What up? The screen changes and the digital, the green display fades out and fades back up on a different camera angle or a different camera view. This is not like a digital display. This is like a live camera feed of the ship.
And you see that there is a big hole and there's just a fuel pouring out of the side of the ship. Life support appears completely dead, sir. But there are beacons activated inside of the ship here. And one of the comms then throws the superimposes that a map, like a diagram map of the ship, and there are beacons activated inside the ship.
There's like little pings that are pinging towards the center. Can we confirm anyone on board? Sorry, sir. We've been trying, but we can't get anything.
The signals say they've been on for 110 hours. Do you know who ship this is? It is our ship, sir. We've confirmed it is the CS Atkinson.
All the call signs match up diagram data is the same. How many does that boat carry? 50 men, sir. How the hell they go?
I don't know. They might be held up in the crew quarters, though, conserving oxygen 100 plus hours with no life support. I mean, they'd be pretty lucky to make it that long. All right.
Everyone back off the ship could blow up at any time. Let's reposition and see if we can't figure out what happened to it. Right away. Navigation.
Move us about. And the ship, you feel like the lurch of the ship as it adjusts the rusters and repositions. And some crew walks back over to you, Lieutenant Commander. He says, sir, we've got a message beacon out to fleet com.
If there are sailors aboard that ship, they're going to run out of air before fleet com gets the beacon. Now, in terms of in universe, a message beacon is like a torpedo that you can shoot in a direction that will carry a message. It's the only way that you can send messages faster than ships in travel is basically shooting a space message gun. That's not a laser.
I quit. Sir, permission to speak freely. Yeah. Well.
If there are men aboard that ship, I think, well, I think we should send boarding teams to see if they're okay. Well, what would happen if that happened to be a trap? Would you take the responsibility for that decision or would I? You would, sir.
That's right. So why don't we back off try to confirm life from the outside? We don't need to send more bodies into a trap. Yes, sir.
You heard the man move us about the ship rotates and turns, cut back over to the crew quarters. So you all have felt like the constant acceleration of the ship you get used to that ships traveling in one direction for a long time. You don't even notice ship stops, begins rotating. You feel all that as your bodies are changing momentum.
Madam or Petty Officer? I go back to the little station, computer station in the hallway and just check the status of the ship. So you as a Petty Officer would not have access to like the direct, like what the captain's doing. You would basically put in like ask your commanding officer who would be like a warrant officer more or less.
Yeah. Hire up the chain. Okay. I go over to the officer channel on the comms.
I go over there. I put it to the officer channel. I'm the commanding officer. Mulvaney?
What's the status of our VIPs? Stable. Good. Sounds like we've come up on the Atkinson.
It's a ship that went dark about a week ago. What happened? We're not sure. She's venting a lot of her vitals though.
No sign of life on the ship yet. Are they holed up somewhere? Trying to conserve oxygen? Likely sir.
You wouldn't call you sir. Likely Mulvaney. Likely bitch. Stand by.
I don't know what we're going to be doing, but just stand by for orders. Keep eyes on the VIPs. Actually keep them in their rooms if you can. Roger that.
Kind of wary of things, but focusing on the speech and working through things with you for keeping my daughter in line. Again, the Chancellor of Emerald Station. When the Confederacy was an independent state, the Chancellor's were the highest ranking person on that station. They would only report to the governors who were in charge of that systems colony.
All the colonies in Jupiter would report to the governor, but each individual colony would have a Chancellor and you're a Chancellor of Emerald Station. Anything happening that's alarming me with the way the ship is moving? You know that you're being taken away from the inner, farther away from the inner systems because the year is 2489 and this is like in the early stages of the Civil War between the enters and the exoplanets. So, stopping movement might be a cause for a long time.
Petty Officer. Yes, ma'am. Have we changed course? I have a very important speech to give and it cannot be detained.
I understand that ma'am. I'm receiving, waiting on receiving orders from my higher ups and I will alert you of any changes to our navigation. Beaufort leans over to you. Beaufort, adjust those paragraphs as I said.
Thank you. Yes, ma'am. He goes back to you. Petty Officer.
Yes, ma'am. Who's the commanding officer of the ship again? That's a great question. Lieutenant Commander Shaddeed would be the highest ranking officer.
Your next in command would be warrant officer O'Reilly. Would be your direct report. It would be Tim's character, Lieutenant Commander Isha Shaddeed or Lieutenant Commander Shaddeed. Lieutenant Commander Shaddeed is in charge.
I'd like to have a, I'd like to speak with Lieutenant Commander if I may. Remind him of my deadline for my speech. It's very important. Our navigation team and our captain is very hard here.
Petty Officer, I understand that. I'd like to speak with the Lieutenant Commander. Excuse me. I need all of you to go back to your quarters.
That's the order I just received over my comms. I would like to impress upon you that part of the oppression that we decided to separate ourselves from was from the police state of the Solar Union. We operate differently here and I'm sure you're aware of that. As an O2 boy, I know you love you.
You identify with your freedom. I want to ensure the importance of the speech is more important than any delay that may be possible. Listen, lady, we're going to get you to your speech on time. Now go back to your room before I call in reinforcements.
You've made a grave mistake. Don't forget who you're speaking to. You could. So again, because you guys don't know like what you don't know.
A couple of things. Chancellor, you could just go around to this petty officer and just like call his, her, his, their superior and demand whatever it is you want. Petty officer, you, these may as well be civilians and you as a branch of the Confederate military should technically be able to tell them what to do. And if your orders are to stay in your room, then that is what you should do.
But you also should recognize that being a Chancellor of a station, I mean, presents a certain amount of authority. I'll tell you what, I'll go get Lieutenant and I'll bring him to you. Please stay in your quarters. Don't make me ask you again.
I am here to ensure your safety. Don't forget that. I think that sounds like an acceptable idea. We're all on the same team here, Chancellor.
It's good that you remember that. I turn and try to go find the lieutenant. Sure. So you walk down.
I mean, the ship isn't huge, but it is like a frigate transport ship. So it's quite long. You say that like I know what that means. No, I know.
Sorry. I hate to speak with so much jargon. A like sizes of ships go like battle cruiser as the biggest, a carrier would be equivalent to a battle cruiser. There's like the biggest ships.
Then you have destroyers and cruisers, which are the second largest capital class ship. And then you would have frigates and corvettes, which are smaller, more maneuverable craft that are more specialized. Destroyers and cruisers can kind of do whatever. Frigates are small enough to where they can specialize and do a specific thing.
The ship that you are on and that you are assigned to as a naval officer is the frigate Ticonderoga, which is specifically a troop transport or in this case, dignitary transport ship. There's a lot of places for people to live and there's a lot of weapons on the ship for those soldiers to use. So yeah, that was a lot of exposition to just tell you it's a smallish, but not very small ship. So you approach the bridge and there's two warrant officers that are in vac suits, but they don't have their helmets on, which is standard procedure to be prepared.
And as you approach, one of them says Mulvaney. What's everything okay? The Chancellor's demanding to speak to someone in charge. Jesus Christ.
Seriously? I told her that it's our job to keep her safe and that she needs to follow my orders, but she pulled rank on me. Alright, Lieutenant Commander is pretty busy. We came upon the Atkinson.
I heard. She's worried about making her deadline. This is really weird, Mulvaney. What?
There's no life signs on the ship. It's a ghost. Alright, so we give it a space burial and we move on. We've got bigger fish to fry.
I'll let you talk to the Lieutenant Commander and he steps aside and goes on to a comms and he says, yep, the one she's watching the Chancellor. He's watching the Chancellor. Thank you. Sorry.
Yes, I know. Cut over to the bridge. Lieutenant Commander, one of the warrant officers that's mainly responsible for putting people around in the ship comes up to you. Sir?
Yes, what is it? Petty Officer Mulvaney. Is there a problem with the Chancellor? The Chancellor's demanding to see you, sir.
Alright, very well. Where is she? She's confined to reporters as ordered. Should I have her sent to you?
No, I'll head down. Monitor the situation up here. If anything changes, notify me over the comms immediately. Yes, sir.
Ensign Faroo. Ensign Faroo comes over and he begins organizing people. Okay, so we're going to do another pass and make sure to scan for this shit. So the camera follows you, Lieutenant Commander, as you walk through the ship.
And as you pass, other Confederate Naval officers stand in detention for you to pass. And then once you pass, they return to doing whatever it was they were doing. Madam Chancellor. Lieutenant Commander, I'd like to thank you for your gracious hospitality.
I'm no stranger to zero-g and the movements of ships that fare in space. I noticed that we have been taken off course. I would like to ask, is there something that is happening or can we resume course? We've been momentarily sidelined in order to assist another ship.
It was one of ours and we're not detecting any life signs. So we're doing our job figuring out what happened. Oh, Joseph speaks up. So you're telling me this is going to take even longer?
Oh, Joseph. Settle down. Please, continue your reading. We're working as fast as we can, but it's important to remember that many lives were very likely lost.
That ship carried 50 people and we're not detecting anyone. Oh, that is a tragedy. What is the name of the ship if I may ask? The Atkinson.
Am I aware of that? No. It's just another small time. It's been missing for a week.
And I'm Chancellor of the Emerald. Emerald Station, which is in Saturn systems. Okay. People of Emerald Station do grieve if truly all these lives are lost.
Please do what you need to see to your efforts, but understand that we have a very important speech to deliver on time. I can really understand. I appreciate your input. I would also ask that you teach some etiquette to your petty office.
Lieutenant Commander, you get calmed over your headset. I'll do that right away, Chancellor. Yes, what is it? We have a situation on the bridge.
I'll be right there. I must go. C2R duties. Thank you.
I bow and I leave. So you come back onto the bridge, Lieutenant Commander, and everyone has a tense look on their face. What's happened? Warrant officer, play it back again.
And you see like a sound waveform come up on the screen. And you hear, help. Hey, whoever's out there. We've been just, we're running in the box engine.
Please if you can hear us, if you receive this, we are alive. Confederate Petty Officer Nicholas. First class aboard the Atkinson. There's, there's ten of us.
We're running out of oxygen. If you're out there, plit. And then it cuts off. Sir, it's, it's not a recording.
We have an open calm with them. No, it was a message burst. There's no where to come from. From inside the ship where the, we're getting these beacons.
I've been Lieutenant Commander for a long time. You get to develop certain feelings after a while. Yes, sir. I feel good.
Agreed, sir. We have to do what we can to help the soldiers out there. I want to make one thing clear. Yes, sir.
You keep that line open. Yes, sir. We can dispatch a landing team. We don't even have to go near the ship.
Where are you prepared to land? We've calculated an entry point here and the screen changes to that same diagram map. We could get one, if the, if the ship, if the bay doors won't open, we can get one of our landing crafts in this breach in the hole here. We can send two fire teams in to investigate.
We can keep the ship out, the engines warm. We can bail if we need to. But, sir, those are our men. All right.
Let's do what we can. Yes, sir. On your order. Everyone stations and the bridge suddenly becomes a hive of activity as people are moving to various consoles and the bridge lights change from a standard fluorescent bright white to like a deep humming red color.
People's chairs shift and change like sit back further so that if the ship needs to pull any crazy Gs, they're situated safely. Crazy Ds. Lieutenant Commander, there is a bridge station that folds out that it gives you, you know, 360 degree view of the bridge also has straps so that, again, if the ship turns sharply, you're not going to go flying into the roof. Cut over to the crew quarters.
Petty Officer, you get calmed. Don't I know it. Petty Officer Mulvaney? Yes, sir.
We're dispatching blue and red teams on gunboats to investigate the ship. Green team's going to be held up here. Roger that. I'm sending over the rest of green team.
You put them where you need to, but make sure that family and those VIPs remain secure. Got it? Roger that. And Lieutenant Commander jumps on the cam.
And Mulvaney? You're in your job. You're off the boat. Yes, Captain.
Lieutenant. Lieutenant. Lieutenant Captain. Lieutenant Commander Shaddeed.
That's Doctor Mr. Professor Lieutenant Captain to you. Oh, I love it. All right.
So let's see where Lieutenant what Lieutenant Commander Shaddeed. So the we do a like a transitional scene where we know time has passed and the bridge we were back on the bridge and the main screen has changed from a huge map of the ship to now. Several small screens have appeared that all have body cameras, the 10 body cameras of the two squads of five that are on the gunboat in route to the Atkinson. The camera views on the screens are the interior of this gunboat and the screens jerk violently.
Well, the cameras jerk violently. So the screens are distorted. It's just a lot of shaking. Under on each camera, there's a name in rank in black text.
And above each camera is a heart rate monitor and oxygen meter. The bridge is audio is filled with live sound from the two squad leaders, blue squad leader and red squad leader of their comms and onto the bridge. Blue and red check in. Tycho, this is blue squad leader Hudson checking comms.
Do you read loud and clear? Tycho, this is red squad leader Michaels checking comms. Do you read? I read you.
Now stay in contact with each other. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And so we watch as a blue squad blue and red squads, the gunship that they're on approaches, the exposed hull of the Atkinson.
And we see little venting thrusters as the ship angles and positions so that it can fit in between the debris and it disappears inside of the Atkinson. It's all we hear is like the military jargony stuff coming through comms. Like, OK, check your corners. Go here.
Red one. Go to blah, blah, blah, blah. Cut over to the crew quarters. It's very quiet inside the crew quarters at this point.
Pio Mulvaney, how do you dispatch your men? You've got a team of four others that you can tell what to do. Where do you put people? What do you do?
So this crew quarters is like how big would you say this? It's probably about the size of the space we're in right now, like a large bedroom. And there's two bunks and a writing desk and then a door out in the hallway. And the hallway is where all the other like various crew quarters of rooms that are the same as this one down until you get to the bridge.
And then how many other people are on this ship? Are the other crew quarters? They're all empty. Everybody is out.
Everybody's just noodling about the ship. Yeah. Sorry, I'm not talking about the microphone. No, that's OK.
So I put one in my place watching over this room. I send one to the bridge. And I, so that's two. Yep.
You got two other guys. So I leave these other two and we are just on like a circuit around the ship, kind of just making sure everybody's keeping cool and getting out of line. Yeah, you're going to come from your commanding officer. Mulvaney, boarding teams have breached the Atkinson.
Stay on point. Keep the VIPs calm. It's probably nothing but we aren't taking any chances out here. We're still at the end of half deceleration away from the colonies.
So just be on alert. Roger that. Thank you. Chancellor, what do we see in your room?
So again, when the ship goes on to alert status, the normal bright fluorescent lights go away and the lights are replaced by this deep red like combat readiness light that allows your eyes to best function so that you can see both in darkness, but also there's enough light to make out details that you need to see. So at first, my daughter kind of gets scared immediately. But then as nothing is dangerous, this happen is becoming more okay with it. But the longer that nothing is happening, all the adults are getting more nervous.
So the child is getting more exploratory and like, oh, this is fine. All the adults are kind of sitting around. So I'm kind of, Jossa, just come sit with me. Let's read and I pull up a like a pull up a data pad and I start reading like the space version of the the moon or whatever that book is, you know, it's her and almost taking her into a childish more childlike place and reading like, here's a here's a story you like to read when you were five, you know, and yeah, just kind of reading with her.
She like really like enjoys this. Okay. All right. Something familiar and you can see a view for it is like nervously like tapping his foot and like just continues to erase and write and well, okay.
So I said, right in a race, but he's definitely typing this. You would not want like eraser flakes floating around in a ship. Right. He's working on a pad.
Yeah. And then I see that he's doing that and I said, come here for come over here. And then I say, tell me a story from your childhood. Jossa, Oh, would you like to hear that?
Oh, yeah. No, that would be great. I turned it into story time. Yeah, tell us.
Sure. Chancellor, should we wake up? Okay. Well, so I grew up in a small station in the belt, actually, the first time.
And then it sort of fades on him telling this really boring story about living on some shithole gas station in the middle of the belt. We go back to the bridge where if tensions and crew quarters were like somewhat light, extremely tense and quiet as again, that all we can hear is the sound of the fire teams like reporting in like, okay, green one, opening the door, clear, moving ahead. Not green because we're not. Oh, sorry, red team.
Yeah, red and blue. The main screen looks as it did before. Heart rates have increased across the board. Cameras pan along walls showing grainy images of bullet hole riddled hallways.
Tycho, this is Hudson. Blue team is entering bridge access. Red team. What is your status?
Hudson, this is Michaels. Red team is nearing the crew deck. ETA less than a minute to the beacons. Is there any sign of life still on the ship?
Lieutenant commander, other than the beacons. No, Ensign for real pipes up. No, we haven't received anything since the last communication, sir. Tycho, red team reporting in crew deck search beginning.
No sign of survivors. I have one of the beacons here, though, in the camera. Of the guy that's of squad leader goes over to another person of red red team that's looking down at a flashing beacon that's just on the ground. There's a portable terminal next to it, sir.
The terminal is on. Ensign for upives up lieutenant commander readings on the port side of the ship. Pressure loss on the deck on deck four. Shit running important on our ship.
Report to the deck team return. Holy shit, sir. Red red team squad leader says, sir. And the camera pans to a terminal that has like just a simple line of text on it.
And like the flashing like text cursor thing at the end of it. And it says dead feds odin sees all. God damn, holy fuck. Michaels, what the fuck?
Pull back. And he looks up and you see there is a corpse of a confederate soldier that's been blood eagle to fuck out on the ceiling. And so you give the orders to pull out and you immediately hear the sounds of gun fire on the ship on their ship, not your ship. Sir movement on the far side of the Atkinson, sir, the turrets, they're turning.
Oh God. All right. I need a green team to go to deck where the pressure loss is happening. I need red team and blue team to come back.
We need to reposition the ship, tell the chancellor about to make some moves. But you officer Mulvaney, I hear your call. We're headed there now. So yeah, you get the orders to check deck four where the pressure loss is.
And all right, let's see how we're going to do this. So I guess we'll end that cut on sir. They're targeting us. There's a firing solution and blue team says, sir, the bridge.
It's been sealed shut. There's no getting in and cut back to the crew quarters. As a well, I'm assuming. You see the two green team people that are watching that were standing in front of the door that Petty Officer put there immediately go up to comms and they like rack slides on their guns and put the visors down on their vac suits.
One of them turns into the room. Get vac suits on right now. Shut the door. Don't open unless one of us tells you to got it.
And I nervously shake my head. Yes. And I start putting a vaccine on my daughter first. They walk outside of the doors and hit the the door shut and the door shuts close.
So quick world building thing. So Vikings have not been like people don't know what they are yet. So you would not know that they were like, I should have said that earlier. I didn't set that up right.
But you would just presume, Oh, this is HSU special ops or something weird. Right. Cause I thought that the Vikings were created because of a known threat and like people just knew about that. People didn't know the Vikings existed really until like after the war and when the video was released.
Yeah, when the video was released of the Vikings, basically committing war crimes. Okay. Until then Vikings were like whispered about, but they didn't have a name. They were just like these super soldiers and the HSU had.
Oh, sorry about that. No, no, no, that's not on you. That's totally fine. We're we can wear adults.
We can wreck on that. Not a big deal. So all you think is like, we can play a role playing game correctly. We could do whatever we want.
So Lieutenant commander, give me, I don't know, give me a set of orders and we'll see how people do. That's your order. Burp, Burp Bart. I need red team, try and blow a hole to the bridge.
Go around if you need to. I need blue team return back to the shuttle. I need people here on the bridge to fire on those gun turrets. I need the green team to secure the airlock and I need someone to check in with the goddamn chancellor.
Blue team gunship. We need. Sorry, fire on the fire on the guns, fire on the guns, blue team return a ship, red team go for bridge. Green team green.
You guys already have your orders. So you're ahead of the curve. Yeah, we're going to deck four or whatever. Yep.
Where the pressure loss was. Let's go over to the green team. This will be cool. So green team, you guys move down into deck four, which is engine, which is the engineering deck, which is where most of the mechanical bits of the ship are, where the fusion drive is, where like life support and all that shit.
So you head down like these gantry stairs, like what you would see in some like factor. They're like these metal slatted stairs and the light is all red. You carry a pulse rifle in your arm. You're in combat armor.
A what rifle? A pulse rifle. Shoots, pulses. It shoots in a pulsing manner.
Pulls bullets out hard. OK, cool. It's like a heavy caliber. Like it fucks shit up.
Right. So you're you're leading your team. So tell me how you search this deck and I'll tell you what happens. Well, green to check the status of the fusion drive.
Green three check the status of the life support for the rest of the ship. The rest of you with me when I lock down the figure out the air loss right away, green leader and everyone goes about their duties. And so this is all right. So we we watch from a first person perspective of you, Mulvaney, and we see your gun up on your shoulder.
We get like the first person shooter perspective, right? When we see your gun looking around in all the corners, checking for anything. Flashlight on the end of your gun, illuminating where it needs to on your heads up display and your in your helmet. You see the heartbeat of your squad mates.
And so you sent someone guy you sent on life support. Sir, I think I found and his radio cuts off and his heart rate just flatlines. And you hear gunshots come from where he was in your life support. Green team.
What the hell just happened? We lost someone. I'm not sure. Hang on.
Green team to the life support. So you all form up together and life support has these two hallways that run parallel to each other that eventually terminate around this life support module that provides oxygen and CO2 recovery and all of that. And so you three are walking down one corridor and the other guy that you sent that to move back with you is down the other corridor. And you guys are walking in tandem.
And again, we see like a flashlight checking corners and you hear a loud thud and this thing you look across this other walkway and you see this thing that's seven feet tall. It's huge. Thickly corded with muscle is on top of green to and it's just pummeling him to death with his fists and the sound of his helmet crunching into the. The deck gives you pause roll a fear save for me.
So I've given you NPC character sheets, which have a stat called instinct and you roll instinct for everything unless you have a special scale that adds to it. OK, that's really cool. So you'll just roll under your instinct for a easy stat block. So I'm not.
Oh, yeah, I'm not looking at Frankie's character. I'm just that's correct. I rolled a five and then double zeros. So five.
So you don't have to. Five. This is zero. Yes.
Cool. Since that's your 10 digit, it's a zero and your one digit is a five. So you roll the five. It's only 100 if you roll a zero on the other dice, then it's a 100.
I know it's stupid and confusing. That's how it would be. Sorry, I'm going to ask this question because I've been confused before. I rolled that that would be 100.
No, if you rolled zero zero, I can't see it. Sorry, they're both zeros. That would be 100. But if I rolled zero zero one, that would be one.
OK, cool. Right. So I rolled five. So I pass you pass with flying colors.
So your other soldiers freeze, but you don't. You can act. What do you do? I chime into the lieutenant.
Lieutenant, we've been boarded. There's a foreign creature in the life support. Pay in the far hallway. And it turns and looks at you, Frankie, and it's like wild eyes, like looks somewhat human, but it's bone structure like you can vaguely make it out in the red light.
It's humanoid looking, but if you added 180 pounds of muscle and underneath, like its skin has armor plates, so its features are incredibly pronounced. It's got like a super thick fat forehead. You've got like plating underneath its arms and it's not in like a backsuit or anything. It's just a guy naked.
That's pummeling the sky to death on the on the deck. And he he's looking at you while he does it and he stops and he pulls up the head and the green to his head is just completely like caved in. Green team open fire on the foreign creature. Oh shit.
And they all just start shooting at it cut over to the bridge. So let's see how your orders go. Lieutenant commander. So we had a red team flank and breach the bridge.
OK, blue team going to the gunship and your bridge bridge men shooting at the gun turrets. OK, they so they critically succeed. So since you are a transport frigate, you don't really have you can't go toe to toe with this thing, but you do have these things to bring its guns all the way online. So you get first shot and you really only have one anti capital class gun.
So you immediately take out one of the turrets that was slowly panning over to broadside you in a plume of yellow fire explodes out from this gun turret atop the Atkinson. But the other one continues to turn and you hear your engine called Brace for impact cut over to the engineering. No, cut over to crew quarters. So you feel the ship shake as these macro turrets atop the frigate fire.
And probably can hear gunfire coming from below decks. I mean, it's not that big of a ship. Yep. I just I literally I pick up.
Jossa, my daughter and I got a role to see if I'm a coward or not. We're not a coward, but like do I fight or flight? Yep. Oh, I go into the corner.
I could take her with me and I kind of set her in the corner. I stand in front of her and I get down and I just kind of start praying. Assume. Yep, something.
Beaufort is now visibly shaking and rocking in his chair and says, it'll be OK. There's enough men on the ship. We're going to be OK. They're going to stop whatever's happening and we're going to be fine.
We're going to be fine. And all of a sudden, the guy that was sleeping on top of the bunk like takes his eye mask off. What what what is what is happening? Chancellor, we've been boarded.
What the and you didn't think to wake me? You piece of shit. And he like gets up from his bunk and floats down over to Beaufort and starts like shaking at Beaufort who's now just like an incoherent sobbing mess. And Jossa looks up at you and says, Mom, what is happening?
And that kind of steals me. And I grab her and I say, we're getting out of here. And I run past these two fighting dolls and I start prying open the door and making my way into the hallway. All right, roll instinct for me.
Oh, that's a seven. So you the the door is so you can't pry it open, but you see that there is a key card that's hanging on like a little, like trying things and I grab it and swipe and it just opens go through. Cut over to Green Leader. So your squad opens fire on this thing and you see bullets are tearing into it and like bits of flesh come off.
But as the flesh comes off, you see it impacts like something solid underneath. And the thing cocks its head and pushes in zero G and jumps up into the ceiling. You hear screams come from behind you. And another one of these big things is pounced on one of your other guys and it's just pummeling him to death.
Shuddy, this is some real crazy shit. We need backup down here ASAP. No backup. There's two of them.
Now I'm losing men left and right. We just sent two teams to a trap. Mulvaney, I need you to get the VIPs out of here. OK.
On a camera. Mulvaney retreat to crew corners and exit the VIPs. You see this thing take your green floor's arm and just rip it out of its socket and throws it and the thing spins in zero G away and you lose sight of the thing that crawled around in the ceiling. So let's get the fuck out of here.
Retreat to retreat. Let's go. So you haul ass back up these stairs up through engineering back towards the crew quarters, cut back over to the bridge, ensign through. There's like clacks ons that are blaring.
Sir, sir, they're about to fire on us. Remember your goddamn training. Steal yourself. Full of thrusters get us out.
Get us away from being broadsided and someone punches in commands into the ship. And you've all of you, everyone on the ship at once falls over as the ship hard turns to try to not present its entire flank. So it's a smaller target. And then let's see.
So so an explosion rocks the back of the ship as one shell goes wide and misses. But another hits like the back half of the ship as it's kind of turning like clockwise and hits the butt of the ship and the red lights change to being a stronger red and a flashing yellow light also. So super good if you have Apple Epstein cut over to the chancellor. We're in the hallway or one of the pathways through different quarters and or different sections of the whole.
And I, you know, I'm not even really sure where to go. I just don't want to be stuck in a corner like like we just need to be moving. So I'm listening for where there is activity and then trying to remember where we boarded, but it's like so much is happening. There's so much sound, so much movement.
Yeah, light that I'm just very disoriented. I'm Mulvaney. So you, you come up the stairs and you see on an adjacent in an adjacent hallway, the chancellor and her daughter run past. They're probably like 60 feet away, like down, like you go down this hallway and would make like a left and they just run past you.
I go after him. Okay. So you, you begin running down the hallway. Well, I send a team member to the quarters to gather the rest of the people that were in that room.
Okay. So and then I go after him. He's dead. So there, there is just one left.
Yep. At least one whole guy left. Yeah. And one whole guy.
No, no, no. Yes. You, so you sprinting down the, well, you're not sprinting again. So there's no gravity.