M+M Session Seven - Lightning from on High - Part Two
This time the gameplay portion is probably smaller of the two things I need to go over. Maybe only just.
In any case, we return to Special Agent Q, Feather, Coltrane, and the Untouchable. Back in the Flight control tower, there's a little bit of overlap as Untouchable attempted to get a number of facts sorted out. He has quite a number of great ideas (using the ECM array installed on the Hauteclere to actually work against the Hauteclere, finding the "emergency landing protocol", "emergency shutdown", and other things) but few of them actually work in the trashed flight control tower. The group is surprised by the alertness of the ItX software when several ceiling-installed sentry guns pop out and start blasting at the PCs. (Actually they weren't surprised at all, damned notice rolls) The group makes short work of these but this suggests that they really need to get moving into the fortress itself before they get pinned down further. Untouchable slaves the security cams to his suit's HUD to assist with moving around undetected.
Feather spreads out her psychic fingers are determines that most of the surviving non-Chromie'd human soldiers are in the infirmary. Others are holed up in distant and separated parts of the fortress, likely soon to meet their doom. The team decides to head toward the infirmary, and proceeds down into the Storage Hold and makes progress. Their progress is stalled by Feather being a little too alert and blasting an otherwise innocent pile of construction supplies. This triggers the internal defense systems, which decide to blast the group with anti-personnel gas. Amazingly, no one in the group (including the guy in the powersuit or the robot-boy) is immune to suffocation or has life support. Still, only Feather and Special Agent Vale succumb to the gas and are rendered unconscious. Coltrane hefts them along while Q ignores the trap entirely and continues on toward the armoury. Untouchable stays behind to fend off and baffle some StunnerBots that responded to the alert. He manages to MacGyver up a handy IED, and tosses it toward the fire suppression system - which hoses all the bots with fire-retardant foam. While it doesn't fry them, it does make their sensors completely useless (darn those optic-light-only-models). This, combined with some handy "ghost images" he hacks into their sensor arrays, keeps them mostly busy.
The rest of the team makes it to the armory, which defends itself with a forefield preventing entry. Not so much a problem for Q, who just teleports past the translucent field, but Coltrane busies himself with trying to punch through the wall to little effect. (I figured he'd at least try to punch the forcefield. It had a much lower toughness than the walls, oddly. He never did.) Eventually though, Untouchable gets the field down and the team assembles back into the Armory. Q makes a vague search for some kind of Plasma Cannon (yeah, right), but only comes up with a RPG and some grenades. He does locate part of a heavy-weapons exoskeleton, but this is left behind in preference to keep moving (quelle surprise!). The team dodges a Chromie patrol but setting the StunnerBots on them using some tidy subversion Friendly-Fire software. Once Untouchable finishes that, they manage to get Feather and SA Vale back in the game with some well-placed amphetimines The team has to dodge a few more sentry guns before they leave the armory (mostly empty handed, which I find completely incomprehensible). This is mostly an exercise in learning that both Untouchable and Coltrane have wicked awesome vertical jumps. After SA Vale advises that detonating explosives in the armory would undoubtedly kill them all, the group decides not to blow the entire top of the Hauteclere off, and just wrecks the armory behind them to prevent further pursuit.
This leads us to the Infirmary, where the security cams reveal that the exterior first-response Emergency alcove is deserted but should have "emergency" medical supplies should anyone need them. Beyond that is sickbay, where a few dozen wounded and immobilized EuMIT soldiers are sedated and awaiting conversion into Chromies. Beyond that is the Butcher Box, the surgical arena where a particularly troublesome looking multi-limbed robot was performing simultaneous cyber-conversion on several soldiers, with a new one being dragged in. The surgical chamber is a horror of severed limbs, discarded organs, seared flesh, and metal prosthetics slick with needlessly-spilled blood. It's patrolled by the newly-crafted Chromies and small patrol of Stunnerbots.
Coltrane gets the party started right by charging one of the Stunnerbots and planting his foot firmly into its chassis - causing the sucker to cave in around his foot and then rocket across the sickbay and into the Butcher Box. The team makes relatively short work of the bots and Chromies. Feather mostly just turning off the Chromies consciousnesses using her mental blast, while Untouchable hacked himself a new pet from one of the StunnerBots. It was a pretty damned hardy one too, it went all Robot Wars on the others and won. Meanwhile Coltrane and Special Agent Q went all out on the ButcherBot, who was considerably more formidable with his forcefield and refusal to fold after one or two hits. The Butcher almost managed to get Coltrane out of the fight with a sedation power, but a Hero Point took that out. Q layered on several shots with his OhMG of Electronic Disruption (a Nauseate effect), which effectively got the Bot to stop attacking. Once Feather got rid of the last Chromie, she went around and attempted to calm the soldiers and assure them that the Regulators would save them all.
Oh, she spoke too soon, since GM Fiat came down with a mighty "Release the Anesthetic Gas!!" from the Butcher Bot. Questions of how to save against the gas were met with a heap of Hero Points. The team wakes up a short time later in the brig, within a Neutronium-reinforced cell - rendering most of their abilities moot. That is, except Agent Vale, who was left outside of the cell being a "normal" human (And no, she wasn't Chromie-ized, she didn't have value as a member of the Hauteclere's crew. And she would be useful later as a member of ProAll...). Well, normal except for the fact that she was immune to Sleep effects. Vale attempts to free the PCs, but sets off an alarm, which brought a small group of Chromies into the brig. There was a short (very short) sequence of the PCs watching the NPC attempt to take down the Chromies on her own - which ended up being pretty damned efficient. Vale loots the bodies of the Chromies for an access card & releases the PCs. The team orients themselves and realize that while they weren't out of action long - they didn't have any time to lose. They now have 20 minutes to traverse the rest of the Hauteclere and regain command before the USAF considers them a lost cause and brings down the Hauteclere any way possible.
The team convenes quickly. While the Untouchable might be able to regain control from the engineering deck, there's no guarantee that whoever is in command wouldn't override it. They have to choose one or the other: try to sabotage Engineering and possibly destroy the Hauteclere (and possibly kill themselves as a result), or head to Command and hope that they have enough time to stop whoever is there. The team goes for the optimism route, and chooses command...but not before Feather senses that there is something conscious within the DALEC emitter. She has no chance to offer more than her psychic assurances that they will save whatever it is (a being of strange, perhaps alien, but certainly aberrant mental configuration - a being who thinks in fire and with great concern, responsibility, and fear), before they continue on. Coltrane discovers that during the infirmary fight, one of the captured soldiers had slipped an security bypass device into his pants pocket without him noticing. Which lead to this exchange:
COLTRANE: *looks at the device* Huh, that was clever, you think-
AGENT Q: -He's dead.
COLTRANE: 8^(
The team battles their way to and through engineering, capturing the main network relay between the Gravimetric Drive, the Main Reactor, and DALEC control. Here, they station Agent Vale as their failsafe backup. If they don't make it, she's tasked to blow the Drive and bring down the Hauteclere from her position. Vale, being well trained in the necessity of a suicide gambit from her days in the Special Forces, agrees and tells them not to waste time with long goodbyes. She takes a position and starts defending her position energetically. The team moves on to Command.
Agent Q burns a hero point to overcome the Grav-Null effect on his teleportation and KASPANGs into command. Immediately, he sees something is wrong: Command is much larger than it should be. The cylindrical command center extends far beyond where the hull should end: compressed space, a feat which he believes to be beyond the science of this dimension. In any case, below him, he can see a man dressed in beige-and-maroon tights and a cape (whose limbs have been harshly replaced by cybernetics), along with another greatly-converted cyborg being in the helms seat. About them float several skeletal-looking robots operating the various command interfaces.
The Big Bad actually gets initiative, so he gets to deliver his monologue without interruption. Untouchable recognizes him as The Collider - a French science hero with powers over magnetism who had disappeared several months back. The introduction of new cybernetics and his patter about being "finally at one with the metal" suggest that he is a recent inductee of the Iteration. The Collider grabs the Untouchable in his magnetic grasp (since he is wearing a big suit of metal), and flings him against the walls of the command center - jarring the hero and leading to this exchange:
UNTOUCHABLE: So, this guy picked me up and threw me.
GM: That's right. Your suit is full of metal.
UT: Right. So he threw me into the computer bay.
GM: Yup, smashed the hell out of it too.
UT: And we're in command, right?
GM: Right.
UT: So, what you're saying is that this guy threw the world's foremost computer expert and mechanical scientist into a computer bay in the room that has all the controls for the whole airship?
GM: uh...yeah.
UT: Okay. ... I take over the ship.
Which he pretty much does, sending the ship on an immediate reversal course out of Las Vegas, locking out the controls from the ItX carrier wave. Which he does by setting the ECM systems to amplify through the communications dish and setting up a jamming feedback that renders any remote control of the Chromies into disarray. He actually made this sound way better with some serious Trek-ish technobabble. The robots did default to internal programming, but Feather confirms that the Chromies are inert without instructions, taking the heat off of her position. UT also takes control of the Command Center's sentry guys, which he uses to lay down some suppressive fire on the bad guys.
The Collider proceeds to demonstrate he is not to be fucked with by throwing Coltrane pretty much through several support pillars, staggering the kid. Then he shatters the pillars is a lot of sharp metal shards - which he sends flying around the room. Meanwhile, the Master Control Unit (the cyborg at helm), attempts to regain command of his minions. When that doesn't work, he attempts several times to get a new one by shooting minature Compulsion-Darts at the PCs (no one actually succumbs, although he nearly gets Coltrane). The Bridge-bunny robots attempt to take on a few of the PCs, but are mostly ineffective, so they all combine into Assembly Mega. Basically a big-ass, fuck-off, Devastator-Robot with whirling blades that would make Maximilian cringe. Plus guns.
The battle goes for a while, with no side taking a clear advantage. Coltrane manages to pin the Collider within an unshakeable hold, rendering him mostly unable to do more than to continue to fling larger and larger objects into the command center in an attempt to kill the intruders with shrapnel (more support beams, a few drone fighters, a few full-size fighters, several catalyst-element tubes from the grav-drive). Agent Q dances between Assembly Mega, Collider, and The MCU, blasting away with his considerable Spatial Disruption abilities. UT continues to control the ship, but eventually attempts to start wailing on Collider as well once he's held down. Feather, on the other hand, invades the Collider's mind in an attempt to rouse and release whatever vestige of the hero's ego might have been left by the Iteration. Eventually the rest of the team gets into this, with Untouchable and Coltrane networking their datalinks to subvert the ItX programming compelling him to attack. Feather pleads with the Collider's tiny remaining spark of humanity to rise up once more for the sake of justice and heroism, to prove to all the world that even when the odds are at their worst and hope seems dimmest - that true heroes never give up and never lose faith. Plus, you know, being a cheese-eating surrender-monkey is just SO cliche.
The Collider sags in Coltrane's grip, looks at his butchered body with a disbelieving curse, and shatters his bonds in an explosion of magnetic power. Assembly Mega is flung from the command center, and Agent Q administers the coup-de-grace on the Master Control Unit before he can re-enslave the French hero once more. There's only so much willpower that he can call on, and Feather eases him back into a seat and continues to administer to his battered psyche.
Vale reports that the remaining robots have deactivated, and that the Chromied soldiers are coming back to themselves - although in severe need of medical attention. Untouchable reaches ProAll and USAF command with about a minute to spare, and arranges for a safe landing area out in the desert. Deftly, he also alerts the French Embassy that there is a French National on board the Hauteclere that needs immediate medical attention. It's a neat sabotage that would complicate any U.S. spooks from making the powerful science hero "disappear" for "medical observation".
Some time later, as the fanfare and celebration of the Sin City Saviors has faded into a dull roar - the Regulators are visited by the Secretary of State. She reports that based on the DOD's analysis of the Hauteclere's flightpath and the programming datamined from the overridden software, that they believe they know the primary target of the Iteration X hijacking. She invites the team to join her at the Hoover Dam, where a submarine emerges from the reservoir to take them to Project Allegiance's newly operational, top secret, metanatural/hypercrime detention center: The Cistern.
METAGAME: Wow. So much of that was just not supposed to happen. And yet, win!
-12th