Feron was tipped off by one of his contacts, a fellow info-broker "Arkady Palamas", about a derilict ship passing through the Saturn system. For a cut of the salvage bounty, Mr. Palamas pointed Feron to the location/vector of the Nebraska on Fire, a pre-Fall cargo freighter, built and crewed by the "Lakota-Sioux Space Agency", and lost for over a decade. Palamas advised Feron to bring along an assortment of specialists to help salvage the craft.
So Feron contacted Tomáš Jágr to provide medical support to any survivors in stasis; Garb to transport; Remy to provide infosec and technical support; Sven Reedson, a friend of Tamak and Titanian social worker to provide psychological support to any survivors; and Crow an uplift Fall survivor, to do infiltration and security.
We had about six days to prepare before the Nebraska on Fire came into range. Researching the craft, and based on Palamas's information, we found that the Nebraska on Fire had deviated into a highly-eccentric orbit (similar to a comet swarm) (which was the reason it had not been spotted until now); the crew and passengers were assumed to be in cryostasis, and that the crew had specialized "lungfish" mods to make the cryostasis process safer; the genetics of the crew and passengers alone would be worth a lot; any information and physical artifacts on the ship could also be quite valuable, had they been lost during the Fall; and there were rumors of various VIPs on-board, including the new Hawaiian-Polynesian monarchy. Besides information, we also got some pieces of gear that would be helpful--Tomáš acquired a mobile lab (to do genetics work) and a healing vat (to revive any survivors in stasis); and Sven got an ego bridge.
As the Nebraska on Fire came into range, we boarded the Ingenious Gentleman, and after a 36 hours transit, arrived at the derilict craft.
We scouted the exterior for awhile, observing some debris around the ship. Cargo container 5 had been cut open, and also the comm module on the spun section had been ejected. There was also a mesh network still active on the ship, though it was based on dated computers and electronics. After an initial pass around the exterior, Garb parked the Ingenious Gentleman next to the command module, and Crow spacewalked over to an auxilary airlock.
Crow entered into the derilict craft, finding the interior still-pressurized. He connected to the ship's mesh, and found that the ship's AI, "Sacrament", was still active. A few logs were also publically availiable. In the public logs, several events were recorded:
At this point, Crow tried hacking the ship's network to gain access to more information. Once he was able to get in, Sacrament messaged him, "Who are you and why are you here?" to which Crow responded, "We're here investiagting the ship." Crow located some diagnostic logs, indicating that the ship's engines had been altered in some fashion, that things seemed purposfully damaged, that the settings on the engines had been tinkered with, and that engineering was disconnected from the mesh. Crow was also able to pull up spime footage, and also a log indicating that, in AF 5, non-crew members had boarded. Then Crow recieved a message, full of gibberish, from Sacrament, and the mesh connection went down.
The rest of the party, still on the Ingenious Gentleman looked over a few of the spime records while Crow continued to scout ahead (finding several panels in the command section having been pulled, with parts of the computer section disconnected). Reviewing the spime footage, we saw that the captain had been awoken due to Sacrament encountering "hostile data". Sacrament said he had quarantined severeal sections of the computer, and informed the captain there was something in the galley.
In the galley, the nanofabbers had been working for several hours. The captain was then seen entering the galley. The nanofabbers opened. The captain said something which was redacted. The spime footage skipped. Then the captain was seen being stabbed in the neck. The spime footage stopped at that point, and there was no more from the galley, which was no disconnected from the network.
At this point, the rest of the party grabbed some gear and began to board (including Garb, who left an alpha fork of himself aboard the Ingenious Gentleman). Crow continued ahead. Over his intercom, some of the other party members heard "SOS" being physically tapped out from somewhere on the ship. Remy, who had now boarded with the rest of the party, found a physical interface jack, and plugged into the ship's network. He had a brief chat with Sacrament, telling Sacrament that they were there to rescue the ship (to which Sacrament mentioned that other people had come, but had not rescued the ship). During all of this conversation, Sacrament seemed really "off" somehow, like it had been damaged or edited.
Crow, up ahead, encountered two automech droids. A piercing, high-pitched noise, an audio feedback that sounded a bit like a dial-up modem, began to sound over the ship's speakers. The machines responded in-kind with similar sounds. The two automechs, along with a servitor bot armed with improvised knives, began to approach. Garb and Tomáš rushed in to the next room to help Crow, opening fire on the bots--Garb was able to hit the servitor, damaging and disabling it. Remy, meanwhile, was able to quickly put his hacking skills to work, and disabled Sacrament, stopping the two remaining bots in their tracks.
Remy, now unrestricted on the ship's mesh, began to use the network to explore around electronically. He found the galley was not lit up, and had no power at all; cargo modules 2 and 5 were in vacuum; in the recreation module was a dead body, and lots of dried blood, and that the rec area's hatch had been jammed; and that the robot repair bay, and medical areas were all accessible.
The party then approached the galley, finding the power coupling torn out. So we (who specifically?) deployed a disassembler swarm to make an opening in the door. Crow went inside first, coming to another opening that lead down to the galley itself. On the floor of the galley, he spotted someone, seemingly covered in moss, their hand tapping out the "SOS" signal. As we peered closer at the body, we realized it was not, in fact, moss, but a mass of flesh and hair.
At this point, a bunch of tendrils lurched out of the body, up toward Crow: it was clear we were now dealing with some sort of exsurgent mutation. Garb dropped a CR gas grenade down into the galley, Sven began to roast it with his microwave agonizer, and Crow (assuming he was to contact the creature due to being sleeved into a synthmorph), physically struck the creature. After a few seconds, Tomáš was able to get a good shot at it using a shredder--the creature fell apart into a sloppering mass of flesh on the floor of the galley.
The galley itself was pretty fargone: a sort of skin or membrane covered the entire surface of the room, covering the floor, ceiling, and walls. We were a bit concerned about Crow now having the exsurgent contamination on his syntmorph; but, we decided he was safe due to the fact that he was not only a synth, but also could detach the contaminated limbs. So Tomáš handed him the mobile lab, and had him take some bioloigcal samples of the exsurgent's remains.
We began to look through the rest of the logs at this point, and found that, in short, Sacrament, having been compromised by TITAN infection, had attacked murdered over half the crew, along with a trio of scavengers. As we explored around the ship some more, we came to the rec room. Garb noticed a holoprojector with a paused video. He hit "play". His Faraday suit began to deploy, but it was too late: his mind had been hit by a basilisk hack. Crow went into the room to turn off the video, and thankfully was able to without himself looking at the basilisk. Meanwhile, we explained to Garb's alpha fork what had happened. Garb-alpha affirmed he would stay with us, and also said he wanted the body back (since he had put a lot of money into the morph).
At this point, the party continued to look through the ship. We did not find any further booby traps, and instead found a lot of valuable salvage (to be statted in a bit). We debated how to split up the salvage, and what to do with the ship itself. Tomáš offered to attempt to fix Garb's basilisk hacked ego, but Remy warned that, even if the ego were recoverable, it might still be compromised by the TITANs.
loot
8 Rez points for each player. Joey gets 9 (for excellent role-playing)
+17 days post-start