Turn 8.1 - 8.2 "Problems, Problems Everywhere!"
November 2, 2495...02:39:59
In the electronic world of the localized ComTech Grid...
Zach was startled as the shadow image started to blink out, saying,
"Please, wait! I'm here for Geneva Day. How can I participate if I
don't have a visa?" The image never replied and he cursed as he could
have sworn it smiled back at him with that same irritating "helpful" smile
that all officious beauracrats wore upon their faces.
Calming himself down, Zach thought about what Geneva Day could mean.
He certainly didn't recall any holiday, national or international, that
was called by the name of Geneva. He looked at the countdown and tried to
think about any station processes and what would start in roughly an
hour. Again, there was nothing on the normal schedule for that timeframe...
but maybe something had been added? Perhaps he could take a look at the
existing schedule of events and see what might be triggered by the
countdown?
Trying to think of other possibilities, he also tried to remember any
significant events that may have happened on that day in the past. "Any
sort of revolutions, coups, war victories, that might get terrorists going?"
he muttered to himself, half-startling Alex sitting next to him.
"Revolutions? War? Terrorists?" Alex said, "What are you talking about?"
Zach ignored him for the moment, concentrating on the task at hand. He
scrambled and descrambled the letters of Geneva Day trying to see if they
could come up with any meaningful code. Oddly enough, Geneva was Vengeance
without the C and one E. He wondered if there was a bomb on board or if
someone had set the self-destruct sequence for the station. Where could he
find the link to the countdown? It must be somewhere in this sculpted
world...
He "banged" on the counter trying to see if he could get the attendant to
come back. Not having much success he muttered, "Damn it, I'm going to get a
visa!" So he started hacking at the system to see if he could forge himself
one. An hour and 15 minutes, what ever was going on, he didn't think they
had much time. With some assistance from his shadow, he began the complex
process of writing a program that might allow him free passage through the
system...
After a few minutes, he opened his eyes and looked at Alex, shook his
head a moment and said, "I'm not sure what's going on, but I think we have
only about an hour and 10 minutes left to figure it out. You and Nola go
down and talk with Reed and the others and ask them if Geneva Day means
anything to them. I have to go back in so I can get more answers."
He didn't wait for acknowledgement, but swivelled in his chair, closed
his eyes, and went back to working on a visa. He was only going to allow 30
minutes for this... and he had already used 5 of them. He thought about it
for a second and finally decided to let his shadow continue the task without
him. He would risk the "police" and start poking about by himself.
Hopefully, his shadow could come back if it got the visa...
-------------
Back in the real world...
Alex, having carefully listened to Zach, got up from his seat. Taking a
notepad, he scribbled down the words "Geneva Day?", also having no idea what
it meant. He began to head in the direction of the stairs and the catwalk,
intending to find Nola, then realized that he had a comm-link. He tapped
the unit with one hand and carefully spoke into it.
"Hello? Anyone there?"
No answer. Alex's heart skipped a beat as he imagined the worst might
have befallen his friends. Then, he realized his comm-unit was still
switched to channel five. Rolling his eyes, and feeling stupid, he switched
it back to channel one, and his unit immediately flared to life with
communication traffic.
"...pinned down in the Gamma Barracks! Repeat, shots fired! Everyone's
okay... but we're pinned down in Berthing Compartment Gamma... over!" It was
Jake's voice.
-------------
Nola's heart raced as she vaguely heard the muffled sound of shots being
fired. Knowing that the others might have run into trouble her mind raced at
the possible actions she could take. Hearing the return fire from Dig's
charge rifle she realized that all was not lost.
"Nola! Nola! Come in, lady! We're being fired upon down here and we're
pinned down in the Gamma Barracks!" she heard Jake's voice over her comm-unit,
"Repeat, shots fired! Everyone's okay... but we're pinned down in Berthing
Compartment Gamma... over!"
She turned and ran to the edge of the catwalk overlooking the Comm-Pit.
She called down to Alex and Zach, warning them of the danger. "Gunshots!" she
said, "See what you can find out and report back."
"Yeah! I heard!" Alex said, tapping his comm-unit as well, and staring
off just slightly past her.
She held onto the rail as she put one hand to her mike to activate it.
"Guys? What's happening?" she asked, starting to turn her back to the others.
"Wait!" Alex yelled, his voice drowning out the response from Jake and
confusing Nola that much more. "Geneva Day!" he called up to her, "Zach said
something about Geneva Day. He wanted me to ask you guys about it... does
that ring a bell?"
Nola shook her head and waved the pilot away, although she knew he
couldn't actually see the gesture. Finally, she just said, "No, never heard
of it!" and turned away so she could concentrate on what was happening to
Jake and the others. She pressed her comm-unit closer to her ear and
listened more carefully to the men that were trapped below.
"Say again," she spoke, "I didn't catch that..."
"I said we're in Berthing Compartment Gamma," Jake replied, "Someone's
firing at us from down the hall. Looks like they must be pretty close to
the lift." His words were interrupted as he fired another burst of shots.
"We're keeping our heads down right now...but, the Doc says we gotta move
these people to Sick Bay. Most of them are already dead...and we're gonna
lose the rest if we don't do something. But dammit..." Somewhere in the
background noise, the unseen attacker fired again, and then Jake's voice
returned. "Nola, there's no way we're gonna cross this hall to Sick Bay.
And we sure can't bring'em back up the lift until we get this loonie out
of our way!"
Sliding away from the catwalk and over to the elevator shafts, Nola
took a peek down each one, checking to see if anyone was down there.
Although she could see the rooftop of Lift Number Two, she couldn't see
past that to tell if anyone was inside the actual car.
"What do you want me to do?" she called back, "I could drop a
grenade... but a stun grenade's not gonna do anything through all that
metal... and a plasma grenade will probably ruin the lift to the point
that no one can use it anyway. The other one's already trashed. Do we
want to risk losing both of them?"
-------------
Alex looked back toward Zach, realizing that the grid-pilot was too
busy to help Nola check the station security systems. Besides, the
ComTech system only hooked into the drivespace communications relay
network anyway... not the actual station, itself. Shaking his head, he
realized that he'd have to deal with it instead. Maybe Cal could help
him?
He left Zach behind and marched up the steps to the main station
computer terminal located on the catwalk. He pulled the computer-lead on
his AI's Memory Harness and plugged it into the terminal. "See what you
can find, Cal," he urged, "And hurry."
A few moments passed while Cal dumped several of her
consciousness-programs down into the main station computer, and finally
she responded, "There appears to be an attacker in Lift Number Two, Alex.
It looks like that man, Akers, from the Engineering room that everyone was
concerned about. He has some sort of device sitting with him on the floor.
A box of some kind... with electronic components. Should we let the others
know?" Her voice sounded worried. "It could be a bomb!"
-------------
Meanwhile, down in the ice-box...
Dimitrio cursed into his hands while he rubbed them together to try and
keep them warm. Sitting in the cold while someone took shots at you was not
something he looked forward to every day. "Damn, what an awful way to die,
just feeling yourself go numb all over," he commented, looking down at the
bodies of the dead and imagining that they could all be the same pretty soon
if Zach's environmental controls didn't kick in...and if Jake didn't get
them out.
Seeing the T'sa working up a storm with the patients, as fast as ever,
the mechanic tried to defuse the situation, "Hey Doc, have you ever been
frozen? You know, that cryogenic thing that your people do. What does that
feel like?"
Lugwig blurted out as he scanned the survivors with his medical
gauntlet, "Yessss, Mr. Fontecelli, Dr. Lugwig been in cryogenic
sssusspenssion, not too bad. Firssst T'sssa feel what you humansss call
goosse-pimply then big sssleepy sssleepy. Hopefully, there are no
problemssss and you wakey wakey. Cryogenicsss one of T'ssa greatessst
achievementssss, yessss." He then tried to figure out who was in the
worst shape and applied a Life Support Pack to Teri Reed. It was important
to safeguard her life, if he wanted to turn over the reins of leadership
anytime soon.
Dimitrio zipped up his jumpsuit so that very little skin was exposed to
the frigid conditions; his dead white skin was turning bluish from the cold
and his breathing left vapor clouds around his face while he tugged the
rest of the living bodies out of the deep freeze.
He dropped the person he was carrying when he heard another shot. He
carefully took out his charge pistol and slowly went towards the exit where
he had left his shotgun with Jake. Seeing the security specialist firing
his rifle gave Dimitrio a sense of safety and he added, "C'mon Jake, I
don't want to get caught in the deep freeze here. Let's just go after that
bozo Akers and get this over with..."
"Mr. Fontecelli take care of pesssky Akersss, you da mansss!" Lugwig
cheered from behind them.
"Rushing into someone with a clear field of fire like that is a swift
way to get ourselves killed," the marine said, cutting short Lugwig's
enthuisiasm and Dimitrio's bravado with his words, while looking over his
shoulder at them, "Besides, I think the Doc's gonna be too busy saving those
three to spend anytime worrying about our gunshot wounds afterwards."
"C'mon Jake, I'm being shot at too many times," Dimitrio whined, "I
wanna do some shooting of my own. And, I'm going with or without you. I
hate being shot at..."
Almost as if to punctuate his words, more shots were fired from down
the hallway, ricocheting around the doorway and making them both duck.
"Alright! Alright...that's it!" Jake replied, "This is starting to piss
me off royally..."
"Okay, look," Jake said to Dimitrio and Lugwig, "This room shares a
bathroom with our original Berthing Compartment. Dimitrio, you already
opened the door to our room, and it leads down the hall at a right angle
to this guy's position. How about if one of us flanks this guy while the
other attracts his attention from here? We'll get him in a crossfire and
take him out. That way, we save the lift and Nola doesn't have to drop a
grenade on his head. Doc, you'll need to make sure the patients stay safe
while we're doing all this...and Dimitrio, you'll still need to open
the door leading to the bathroom. It's probably locked down like all the
rest..."
The mechanic spoke into his comm-unit to Nola, "OK, woman we got
trouble here, someone is trying to put a dent in my head. Me and Jake are
going after him...we are going towards our original quarters and we're
gonna flank him...so just hold on."
As he noticed Dimitrio heading for the door and saying something to
Dig, Lugwig applied Trauma Packs to the rest of his patients and continued
to monitor their vitals. He tried to find something to cover his patients
up with, managing to locate several blankets on the nearby beds... the
same blankets the huddled bodies of the dead had tried to wrap themselves
in.
Dimitrio spoke to Lugwig on his way toward the bathroom door, "Doc,
stay here and do what you can. Keep your comm-unit open and maybe put
that walking tin-can to good use. He may be able to help."
"Hey Repo, can you generate sssome heat without harming ussss?",
Lugwig asked as sort of an after thought, then yelled over to Dig, "Hey
let me know when coassst issss clear we mussst get patientsss to Sssick
Bay sssoon asss possssible." Lugwig then focused his attention on his
patients, saying a little prayer to K'san Ch'Nak for their well-being.
Dimitrio palmed his shotgun and then dug into his tools. "Watch out
everyone. Keep out of my way. I'm gonna hunt me some loonies," he
muttered.
The door to the bathroom was a joke... or so Dimitrio thought. The
access panel slid away easily enough and he realized that the other
engineers, many of them already dead, had tried the same thing. But he
could also see that in the cold conditions, they had made a critical
error and short-circuited the wiring. "Damn," the mechanic swore,
"There ain't no way to bypass that..." He looked back to Jake and
Lugwig with a hopeless expression.
Just then, the blue flame of a cutting torch sprang to life,
illuminating Repo's features as he waved it about with his
fine-manipulation arm. "Will this help to warm up anyone," he asked
Lugwig, his attention completely focused on helping the doctor, and
oblivous to Dimitrio's dilemma. The mechanic quickly realized that,
although the tool wouldn't do for heating purposes, it would certainly
suffice to cut through that bathroom door...
-------------
Meanwhile, back in the Grid:
As he looked over the sculpted system, Zach tried to see if there
was some building that might pass for some sort of lookout tower, or
some sort of observatory. Those probably would be symbols for the
camera system.
Emerging from the visa office, he looked across the way and spotted
a tall building with a broadcast antenna upon it in the distance. The
exterior was clearly labeled with the GNA-logo, the Galactic News Agency.
He knew that that particular enterprise represented the single largest
journalism outlet in the Stellar Ring. They were into publications
though holovid, Grid-casts, and regular articles produced on 3D crystals.
He had no idea why the ComTech team had chosen that particular icon... or
the GNA-logo, but it certainly helped to orient him. Perhaps an
organization like that would provide access to some sort of camera... or
at least some sort of recording mechanism. It probably contained reports
on all of this system's activity.
He began to make his way toward it, trying to stay out of the main
streets and mingling with any crowds that appeared. Most likely crowds
would represent data, and there didn't seem to be much of that going on
here right now. In fact, the city was nearly deserted. In the distance,
he could hear some sort of air-raid sirens, as if the city was preparing
for some sort of attack.
Although wanting to solve the problem at hand, Zach was also intrigued
by the work done on this system. As he passed various buildings, he
checked out the structures, ran his hand over various windows. Every once
and awhile, the part of him that was connected to reality would kick
in and essentially say, "Come on Zach, we have to get this done. There
will be time for sight-seeing later."
Just as he finished that thought, he rounded the corner and saw a
police cruiser headed toward him. He quickly looked around for someplace
to hide, but the officers in the car must have spotted him already. They
were too close. Cringing, he kept his head down low and tried to walk past.
The car slowed to a stop next to him, pointed in the opposite direction from
his path. A mirrored-glass window rolled down to reveal an officer. The
mirrored-sunglasses on his face were just as unrevealing as the window had
been.
"Hello, citizen," the officer called out, the same green computer code
lighting up across his lenses, "Are you aware that there's a curfew in
effect? No one's allowed on the streets until the Geneva celebration begins.
You should return home. The festivities will begin in about an hour. Would
you care for us to escort you home for now?"
---------------------------------------------
---------- Turn 8.1 - 8.3 Comments ----------
---------------------------------------------
1. Okay...a lot of people have just been given a lot of different
information. Pay close attention to what I distinctly explained to just "your"
character within the story. You shouldn't allow knowledge of what the others
have learned creep into your decision-making yet. Wait until they share it
with you.
2. For now, Alex is the only one that can confirm Akers is involved in
the shootout... or that he has some sort of electronic 'box' with him... or
that he's physically located inside Lift Number Two. Nola is situated just
a little ways from him, over by the elevator shafts, but with all the chaotic
noise inside the Comm-Pit and up on the catwalk, she wouldn't have overheard
Cal's warning.
3. Dimitrio, Jake, Lugwig, and Repo are the only ones that know they're
going to have to take an extra amount of time to cut through the bathroom door
in order to flank their attacker. At the moment, Nola thinks you guys are on
your way to deal with the situation. It's up to you let her know that you've
encountered a temporary road-block.
4. Lastly, Zach, Nola, and Alex are the only ones that have any knowledge
of Geneva Day... and really, only Zach and Alex realize that there's some kind
of countdown involved with it. Also, no one besides Zach has any idea of what
the Grid-world is like inside the ComTech computer system.
5. At this point, Jake is being run as a Supporting Cast Member (i.e.,
NPC). I'm still copying Paul with all of our emails... so hopefully, you'll
let me know your status, Paul? If you won't be available any longer... or no
longer have a desire to participate, let me know something. I would be
willing to offer one of the lurkers an opportunity to pick up the character
instead. I won't, however, be introducing any new characters at this point
if Paul is no longer available. I'd rather continue with Jake the Marine for
now.
6. Feel free to send more than one post... in order to respond to one
another. Lately, I've been getting a single post from everyone... and only
rarely do they actually respond to what someone else has sent in their
previous post (Brian and Fabian, excluded). I sort of had to link everyone's
stuff together this time with my own made-up responses. I'd rather that you
guys stay in-character and act out your own character's words and actions.
7. I apologize to Fabian and Brian... I had to move your discussion
about cryogenics, etc. further into the timeline of events than you had
originally indicated. Normally, I can't incorporate your responses to
stuff that I've already fully covered in the previous turn summary. I don't
mind you guys interjecting a bit of roleplaying into the middle of the
material... I just can't always bring it into the next turn summary with me.
This was good stuff, though, so I felt obligated to somehow work it in. By
moving it to "after hearing the gunshots", it still seemed to work, and it
added some nice color between your characters. Nice job, both of you.
8. Hai didn't get a chance to respond this turn, but he did send in an
explanation...so he's off the hook. Sorry I didn't wait for you Hai, but I
thought that in the interests of keeping up a good pace, I'd go ahead and
post the next turn summary without you. I also pretty much performed a few
actions on your behalf... I hope you don't mind.
9. Actions? Questions? Comments? Is the game still proceeding at a
good enough pace for everyone? Is it what you expected? You can always
send me your opinions on those topics. I certainly appreciated Brian's
encouragement on the last turn. But they don't all have to be positive...
I can handle constructive criticism, too. So let me know what you think
from time to time.
Sincerely,
-- Neil, DM
Sorry about the lack of posts everyone, but school is kicking my @$$. But
while I'm waiting for my next group meeting to begin...
BTW, is the "bomb" beside Akers hooked up to anything (i.e. a computer
terminal)?
-- Hai, Alex (
geocities.com/hainphan/rpgs) (
geocities.com/hainphan)