Session 18 – The Purge
Scene 7 – The Purge
A console that has so far been dark suddenly jolts back to life. Captain Wada leans over the screen to study it closely. She frowns and looks up. “We’ve got a big problem.” Her face is a tense mix of stress and determination. “Someone’s overloaded the reactor and activated a Shanzidar sequence. It’ll affect us in about 30 minutes.”.
Captain Lysia Wada and I were looking at the computerscreen and there it was. The sequence had accelerated and now we only had 30 minutes to get off the station or we all would be dead. We only had 30 minutes to get off this planet. But that was easier said then done. The Zeluba Brigade controlled most of Dhaab 1, so we were more then likely to run into some of their soldiers on our way to the shuttle.
Just as we were getting ready to leave the command centre a woman called Niema entered. Moses had contacted her because she knew all the ins and outs of the the computer-systems on Dhaab Station. Together with Shamus, who was getting more and more focused, Niema was able to enter the computersysteem and slow down the sequence. It gave us an extra hour, to get away.
The alarm was blaring in the control room. T-minus 30 minutes the computerscreen said. We only had 30 minutes to get off this planet. With the Zeluba Brigade between us and the shuttle. How would we survive. Suddenly the door opened and Niema stept into the room. Moses had called her. She was familiair with the systems on the Dhaab Station. Together with Shamus she was able to find a subroutine for the reactor programm. This gave us one hour more time. Now for the plan. We had to stop the Zeluba brigade from taking the Nannite technology off-planet. Khadyr told us to get to the basement where the labs were. To make sure no one would alarm the others to our presence the three Zaluba soldiers were tied up in the relaxation room. Lysia Wada and Niema stayed behind to keep checking the mainframe.
Quickly we went down to the basement. There was a long corridor to the laboratory . We only made our first steps into the corridor and five soldiers were rushing towards us. Now what to do! To head for cover Khadyr threw one of our smoke grenades. Our visibility was zero and the corridor fell silent.
And then it happened. From this point on in the story i swear this really happened and was not a dream or a lie.
Now we had some more time we decides to try and stop the Zeluba brigade from taking the Nannite technology off the planet. We went to the basement where the labs were. But first we ties up the three Zaluba soldiers in the relaxation room. But first we took their smoke granites, their frag granite, the shock stick, a communicator and a vulcan carbine to take with us. Lysia Wada and Niema stayed behind to keep checking the mainframe.
Zeluba Brigade soldier spotted… We discuss what to do… together we come to a decision…. But, while the others…. Shamus groansss…. looks at the soldier”….. Sighs and inhals…. Shamus stands up…… Looks at soldier….. And screams
“Shamusssssss Loaaaaaadedddd!”
Like the wind, running towards target, just before reading the soldier…. Shamus reaches for one of his boots…. While waving it above his head… He throws himself ont the soldier.
“Here’s Shamussssss!!! Wooooohooooo!”
Rubber cracks a skull…
“Waaaahh!”
We hear teeth being removed…… A chainsaw is spinning up and tears bone. “Mamaaaa” hits, kicks, screams of pain. Finally…. the sound of something droping.
Shamus stands in front of the heap of flesh and bone. He licks his bloody fingers and laughs….
And as expected, in the basement we ran into a Zaluba soldier. Suddenly Shamus went completely crazy. Before we could stop him, hen ran to the soldier fiercely attacking him, shouting something about a Leeroy Jenkins. And before we knew what happened he killed the soldier. It was a bloody mess. Shamus laughed demonically and Moses told him that he was a good Red Hyena.
Our plan was now to rush the soldiers and shoot them one by one. We checked our carabines, discussed which soldier to take first, what was our fallback plan, did we have enough medical supplies and …… Wait what ? I heard a Warcry from Shamus. Something about a pet chicken and then he suddenly rushed towards the soldiers bare-handed. Moses abruptly ran behind him shouting: “Forgive him, he does not know what he is doing” . Then we all ran behind Shamus. It was a flurry of punches, bites and gunfire. When we finally approached the first soldier. He was already was stunned. Then we shot the second soldier. Shamus was breathing heavilly and surprised by his own action had to come to his senses. Moses tried to calm him down. A little to soon. The remaining Zeluba soldiers started shooting.
Fatally hitting one Red Hyena and hurting the second. Khadyr and i reloaded and were ready for our second volley. We just made our shot and there was a storm coming from behind us. A big furry was stampeding towards the other soldiers. The terror was visible on their faces. The last thing i heard from one of the soldiers was: “it was a good thing i put on the brown pants today”. Then silence. All soldiers were defeated. Moses calmed Shamus.
I was shocked about what Shamus did but I had no time to think about it, because the soldier was not alone. Quickly I threw a smoke grenade. Shamus and Moses attacked the first one. This time with the shock stick, stunning him. Then Armand shot the second one dealing some dammage, so I could kill him. The Red Hyena’s only managed to hit one of the soldiers but not killing him. The soldiers fought back wounding Armand and me. Shamus went wild again and with the help of Moses killing the remaining soldiers. Armand and I couldn’t believe our eyes. Was this the Shamus we knew and loved. While Moses calmed Shamus we saw Jussuf lying on the floor in the vaults behind the dead soldiers. We checked him and found oud he wasn’t dead.
After Armand did some first aid he regained consciousness and asked us to take him of of the planet with. In exchange we would share in the reward for the Nannite technology. We didn’t trust him with the very dangerous Nannite technology so we said he could come with us, but he had to give us the Nannite technology. Suddenly Shamus asked me if he could have my gun. He wanted to take a look at it he said. When I gave it to him, he walked up to Jussuf and shot him in the head. ” So…” he said, “That’s settled”
Behind the soldiers in the corridor we could see Jussuf lying on the floor in the vaults. We checked him. He was not dead. He wanted us to take him off-planet in exchange for the Nannite technology. While thinking about this proposition Shamus wanted to say something to Jussuf. He was whispering something and then a loud bang. Jussuf was dead. Probably for the better. He did betray us. Then we got the message we lost an hour. We had thirty minutes left. Our only option was to go into the Laboratory to try and access the subroutine again and give us some more time. We threw the nannite grenade into the lab and waited. This to make sure there were no Nannites remaining. We stepped into the Laboratory and Shamus was beginning to show signs of overexposure to the Nannites.
First we contacted Lysia Wada and Niema to access the mainframe. Together with the help from Shamus we had now two hours. This was enough time to put Shamus into one of the scanners in the Lab. Instantly it detected the Nannites. Luckily it started to remove them. But this would take another thiry minutes. Shamus was finally back to normal.
I got a message from Wada that we lost an hour. We had only thirty minutes left. Our only option was to go into the Laboratory to try and access the subroutine again and give us some more time. Because we didn’t know if there were Nannites in the lab we threw a Nannite grenade. When the damp it produced was gone, we went inside. We hailed Wada and Niema, but Niema said she needed Shamus to get into the mainframe again. We got Shamus and together they managed to give uw two more hours.
This was enough time to put Shamus into one of the scanners in the Lab. First Shamus was not very eager to go in. Moses kept asking him if this was what he wanted. But eventually he got into the scanner. It detected the Nannites and started to remove them. The computer showed that it would take thirty minutes. After that Shamus wad finally back to his “normal” self, or so we thought.
The time was going more quickly than we had anticipated.We only had 15 minutes to escape. We contacted Lysia and Niema to join us. We had to go to the Shuttle platform.
And there it was. Raquel with three soldiers. They had mounted two automated Dial gun’s. Outgunned an outnumbered we had to come with a plan. Khadyr and i threw the smoke and frag grenade onto the platform. This confused the soldiers and we hit one of the dial-guns. What happened next was a flurry of shots back and forth. Most were misses. But one did hit Khadyr. Then it was my turn but in the corner of my eye… there was Raquel and she shot me directly in the body. While i was lying with pain on the floor she took Moses hostage. She demanded we gave up the Nannite technology. We tried reasoning with her. The station was about to explode. She would not have any of it. During the shouting contest Moses got more scared and was asking Shamus for help. Shamus shouted he would help him. But how. We were pinned down. Is this the end ?
We now had no more then five teen minutes left. I contacted Wada en Niema and asked them to joined us quickly. But before we could get to the shuttle we had to get passed three Zaluba soldiers, with two automated Dial gun’s, at the platform. We were outgunned and Armand and I were wounded and we also felt sick. It turned out we suffered a mild Nannite infection we caught at the laboratory. To try something I threw a smoke grenade followed by Armand who threw a frag grenade. The frag grenade hit one of the dial-guns. Moses tried to get closer hoping to take out one of the soldiers. But he walked into Raquel, who stepped out of the shuttle. She put a knife to his throat and demanded that we hand over the Nannite technology to her or she would kill Moses. Moses shouted not to give her the Nannite technology and he cried out to Shamus.
What i did not told you that when Khadyr and i stepped into the laboratory we did got infected by the Nannites. Nothing serious. But we were getting a bit sick. Now because of this we now know there was one Nannite who had his last hurrah.
Before Raquel could act. Shamus leapt up and came like a flaming fury towards her. In disbelieve she was too late shooting him. Shamus killed Raquel and the remaining soldiers within seconds. The way was clear. We heard Timon’s voice from the communication system. We had to go now.
We suddenly heard Timon’s voice over the intercom system, urging us to leave. We quickly boarded the shuttle and took of. While captain Wada flew over the the station we could see a chain of axplotions, destroying Dhaab-2 en Dhaab-2 entirely and taking the Nannite technology with it. We sight with relieve that we survived and that the Nannite technology was destroyed as well.
While we were talking about all that had happened, Moses and Wada were also talking to each other. After a while they came up to us. Wada told us that she was going to work with Moses. She had nobody left she could trust, but Moses. After they dropped us at Sesame, Wada would go on to Djachrum with Moses to join the Red Hyena’s!
Because Wada was thankful for our help, she gave us her ship, the Mantella! She had no use for it anymore and maybe we could use it well.
The last soldier is lying in a black pool of blood in front of Shamus. Finally – tranquility. There’s nothing standing in between him, the birr and the formula now. Suddenly sirens start to blare and the room is filled with flashing yellow warning signs. A female voice declares “Terminal fusion collapse in T-15 minutes”. The message is then repeated again.
We all got on board and flew away. In the background we could see the entire station being destroyed by the explosion. We survived. And we got the Mantella as a reward. Lysia Wada did not need the ship anymore. She would work now for Moses and the Red Hyenas. And for us. New adventures!
This adventure wasn’t as easy as we thought. We had to fight for our lives an we nearly lost Shamus. Shamus who looked pretty normal again, showed us a site of him we never saw before. Were it really the nannites or…..
Before heading to Sesame, we first have to make a short top on Surha to pick up Shamus his barrel of junk and Jezebel. We didn’t have any money to pay for the repairs of the Black Moth, but we did have two extra ships now, and more importantly we made new friends, Lysia and Moses. They assured us that if they had an interesting mission for us, they would get in contact.
But first some rest and a prayer …..
Rewards granted
1 XP for each hero
Darkness Points
GM gains 2 DP (1 for a re-roll and 1 for flying beteween the dark of the stars in the next scenario)
Missions/Quests complete
People met
Niema
Mozes Umbara
Lysia Wada