We began by introducing two new PCs: Huey Lewis, a thrill-seeking 100+ year-old gerontocrat (sleeved into a sylph that looked like David Bowie) who was hanging out at a party on the IHNIWID and got invited to participate in a fantasy LARP; and Huxley, an Indian orbital worker (sleeved into a flexbot) aboard the Pebble in the Sky, who was conversing with an AGI named "Janitor", that AGI being sleeved into a swarm morph, and seemed to be obsessed with keeping things clean. At this point, news started going around the scum swarm's mesh that one of the members of the fleet, the Void Maiden, had suddenly gone dark and cut off mesh access. Huey and Huxley, both Firewall members, started conversing by The Eye about the incident. However, they failed to notice that there was already another Firewall team already headed there (OOC, they failed their Networking: Firewall checks, and also the two PCs were behind in the timeline, trying to sync up still).
Huey Lewis was able to borrow an EVA sled, while Huxley began probing the Maiden's mesh, which was still broadcasting, though locking everyone out. Huxley was finally able to get into their systems after about a half hour, but when he attempted to observe their spimes, he could see little as all their lights were down. So Huey and Huxley boarded the EVA sled, and approached the airlock opposite from where the Valhalla had docked. Huxley was able to force the airlock to cycle through, but instead of the two investigating in-person, they decided to have Huey Lewis's guardian angel bot investigate inside. The bot, equipped with all sorts of advanced sensors, spotted people behaving very strangely inside, seeming to be immersed in work, in the complete darkness. Some strange pyramid apparatuses were spotted as well. The bot proceeded into the cargo hold, which had been partly converted for passengers, and spotted some of the people assembling a bunch of scrap into... something. Huxley, who was familiar with nanotech, though it had something to do with (IIRC) growing morphs.
At this point, the other members of Firewall were able to make contact with the two newcomers, bringing our party to:
(tell me if I forgot anyone)
The rest of the party gave the two newcomers a summary: the people on the Void Maiden had been compromised by some sort of basilisk hack (the words "basilisk hack" were never used IC, but that's what this sort of thing is called). We discussed tactics for a bit, began to vent the atmosphere (causing Huey to lose his guardian angel), before deciding to try to shoot up all the biomorphs and pods, while hacking into the synths and infomorphs.
Skinchanger and Huey proceeded inside, and took out three of the biomorphs, while Neural Ninja with Skripatch began to hack into the synths and infomorphs. At this point, we noticed the engines coming online. Considering the state of everyone onboard, this seemed like a potentially very bad thing. A synth and a biomorph were spotted in the engine room, manually activating and configuring things. The two superhackers (Ninja and Skripatch) were able to shut down the synth in the engine room, but it reactivated a moment later, possibly as a puppet.
At this point, the situation is:
+ ~1 hour post-start