Thinking: well, I am really out of place here. But I wonder what the shiny sphere tastes like. Pity it's so far away....

Saying: Cha0z, could you bring me to the shiny sphere in the other room, I could taste it and get valuable information (like sweet, bitter, ...) about it.

Doing: waiting full of hope the answer of Cha0z. ((Edited after reading Cha0z's post)) If the sphere is in reach, taste it carefully. If not, use appendages #5, #7 and #11 to approach it!

go and guard squid and francis, and help francis carry dino if I kill the last drone or someone else does
"ok. so lets all take a breath and calm down, and try not to yell, its hurting my eardrums."

Kai'isha, maybe you're right. Maybe I shouldn't be calling him an idiot.
But you know what, after seeing him knock himself out, do somersaults, activate the stations defense mechanism, walk on his hands and worst of all, remove half is hand after I told him to NOT TOUCH THE CONSOLES. I really think that he is an idiot...

And I don't want to be a leader, hell I couldn't care less about that, the only thing I want is getting out of here alive, and that's not going to happen if half of the team acts like they have pudding in-between their ears...

Idiots everywhere...

Reload my gauss rifle.

Yeah sure little guy.

Drop isssshhhhh off at the floating sphere, look out for the missing drone in the mean time; if I see the drone, find cover and if it is in range of my blowtorch, use my blowtorch on it.
Observe the room, look around for valuable information, objects.

Squidhead, could you save some of that duct tape to close of my suit? And I also think that Karthus still has a hole in his suit, albeit it is small, so a bit of glue should suffice to close that.

Take a look at my wound, pull the metal fragments out of the wound if they aren't in major arteries. Then take my blowtorch and a big, flat piece of metal, heat it and use it to cauterize the wound. (only do the cauterizing part if the wound is bleeding badly)

Turn 53
Time: Time: 3 minutes 30 seconds until next pulsar sweep, 8 minutes until dark space ETA (two minutes used (yes, two minutes, congrats on the longest turn))
Squad 1: BFett, Dr. Cha0zz, Karthus

Dr. Cha0zz After responding to Kai'isha, you step back and make sure your Gauss rifle is loaded, and then start over towards the alien sphere in the next room, walking down the left side of the computer console. In your pocket, isssss-hh is requesting you drop him off over there. It's really not any of your business what he does, so you don't feel like standing in his way. Besides, it'll give you a chance to look around at things. You keep an eye out for the missing drone just in case.

As you near the sphere, you feel a now-familiar tug at the edges of your mind - the same you felt in the airlock. Feeling a little more wary this time than previously, you set isssss-hh at the bottom of the sphere as quickly as you can and step back. Looks like you got away safely.

The rest of the room is mostly silent, except for Squid, Francis, Karthus and Kai'isha helping with Dino's wounds. The glass on a large number of stasis pods at the front of the room has shattered - and violently. Part of you half wonders why any civilization as clearly advanced as this would bother with glass - but then again, it's cheap and easy to create. What puzzles you more is the lack of any bodies in the shattered pods - but when you look closer, you see that there is some sort of strange material lying in the bottom of them. This observation leads you to lean against the glass of one of the undamaged pods, wiping away the purplish dust and grime that had collected there over the years. What you see stuns you into speechlessness.

Inside the stasis pod you'd chosen to examine is a very humanoid figure - so humanoid that you'd almost be completely certain it was human, had it not three eye sockets, and a small variety of other tiny differences. Yes, sockets, not eyes - what you see is not a living figure, but a corpse, dried out until it looks so brittle you can hardly believe it's still holding together at all. Something here went wrong - terribly wrong. Perhaps it was related to the scorch marks you saw near the generators upstairs - perhaps the power failed somehow, and they all died in their sleep. And that means their secrets died with them.

Feeling a little disappointed at the loss of scientific knowledge, you step back, ignoring Dinosawer's screams as you look around the rest of the room. The computer console is nothing special, but at the back of the room rests some sort of strange device - it almost resembles some kind of atomic assembler, or field generator... but alas, it is most definitely dead, and its scientific value dead with it. The telltale blast marks of a plasma rifle have scarred its surface, exposing delicate machinery - someone must have damaged it in the crossfire during the battle. The only other interesting objects in the room is a drone lying on the surface of the machine, and a drone lying beneath the left hand pallet at the front of the room.

Heaving a heavy sigh, you look over your wounds. There are a few metal shards embedded in it, but it doesn't look very deep - with some degree of pain, you manage to pull the shards out of your side, dropping them to the floor. The wound, reopened, begins bleeding again - but it's not too severe. You shouldn't have to cauterize it.


isssss-hh "Cha0zz, could you bring me to that shiny sphere in the other room? I could taste it and get valuable information about how it tastes." You wait hopefully for his response, and he soon answers: "Yeah, sure, little guy." He seems completely unconcerned, walking over to it, and you feel a little rush of glee as he sets you down on the base of the pedestal. The material here is shiny - and it's not half bad, but not nearly as delicious as your barium anion sticks. It's disappointing - you'd hoped for something better. It's still not a total loss, however - you can climb up to the sphere!

And so you do. One appendage after another, carefully maneuvering #5, 7, and 11, you work your way up the pedestal, taking advantage of its little crevices and the malleability of its structure to assist you in your attempt. Partway up, you find a cylindrical portion that seems to lightly emanate some form of radiation, and you sit there for a moment, basking in its warmth. The pulsar itself was more enjoyable by far, but this isn't half bad.

The sphere itself, though, is pulling at your mind - and is perfectly in sync with you. So perfectly that you are almost astonished - there's been very little you've ever seen that was so completely in sync with your time phases. It resonates with you, and even had it not been gently urging you to approach, you would've done so purely out of curiosity. It wills you to move your appendages - one after another - and you obey without resistance, hoping for a taste as you look upwards into it. Its surface ripples, spins, melting around itself as though some kind of gateway, or warped gravitational field - but you care for nothing but its taste. As you arrive at its surface, you reach outwards with one final, curious appendage - #7 - and you feel your consciousness drift away... You fall into a trance-like vision.

Gradually, you find that you can see the entire room much more clearly than before - you feel yourself looking at separate places in it, as though it was layered like a deck of cards. It's a most unusual feeling - it's as though you could see everything that exists right here, all at once - all that delicious, shiny metal, no longer flashing between universes, but staying still for you to taste. You could taste a veritable rainbow of universes, spread out before you in all their delicious colors - so warm and inviting. You find yourself able to stretch your consciousness a little farther, and notice that there is an instance of the computer consoles that are completely saturated with the pulsar's radiation. It looks so perfect - like the sweetest desert of Polonium rods you could possibly imagine - and you try to float your consciousness towards it...

~~~

You awaken on the base of the pedestal, feeling a little woozy. You can't quite remember letting go, and there's a strange burning sensation in your mind...

Well, that wasn't too comfortable.


BFett As Francis picks up your backpack, chucking it into the next room with a call of "Gun for grabs!" you raise your eyebrow at him curiously. "Careful there, Francis," you warn him. "You might pull a muscle." Nonchalantly, you stroll over and pick up the backpack - your backpack, to be clear - and then take it just as calmly back to the stairs, putting it back down exactly where you'd left it before. Francis and Squidhead - and apparently Kai'isha, too - have already started on fixing Dinosawer's leg, and his screams are really loud - hurting your ears, in fact. As you walk back to the alien artifact, you turn down the volume on your comms a bit, and keep moving until you're within your PDA's hack range: close enough to hack, but far enough to be safe. And then you get to work.

The hack is a total fail. You get absolutely nothing of value from it. Your return data is broken. It's almost as if the sphere isn't a proper control surface - or like it isn't all contained here, much the same way the panels act. Multidimensional, perhaps - it just doesn't act natural, which is a little frustrating to you as a hacker. It is putting out some signals of a particular wavelength that gives you the feeling that it's using some form of short-range telepathy, but you'd need to move closer to be sure.


Karthus As Squidhead, Francis, and Kai'isha move towards Dinosawer and get to work on him, you stand guard, alert as ever, ready to attack any intruders that come your way. As Dinosawer starts screaming, you turn his comm levels down a little so you can hear better - and that's when you hear that Foreigner has seemed to have found the last drone. It's not dead, though, so you remain behind as Francis and Kai'isha begin carrying Dinosawer back up to the airlock.



Squad 3: Foreigner, Kai'isha

Foreigner You enter the final room, leaving your blowtorch just inside the doorway, and pick up The Cursed Metal Bar of Imminent Death from the computer console, brushing it off fondly. Cursed though it may be, it's saved your life more times than you can count now. And now, you're hoping it'll save your life again.

You walk to the southernmost side of the room, carefully, peeking around the first row of stasis pods - but there's nothing there. Not daring to believe your luck, you continue cautiously towards the final aisle - and that's when you see it - and when it sees you. You duck back quickly, just in time to avoid a plasma ball flashing mere centimeters in front of your faceplate, and then step back out, hurling your Cursed Metal Bar like a spear towards your target, even as the drone is charging and preparing to fire. The metallic bar glances off of it, putting it into a spin just as it fires - the shot goes wide and hits the ceiling, but now you're short one Imminent Death bar and the drone doesn't appear to be damaged in the slightest.



Squad 4: Dinosawer, Francis (with isssss'hh), Squidhead

Dinosawer "PEOPLE!!" you yell, after counting the drones you've killed. "Watch out, there's still a drone hiding somewhere! We only destroyed 13, and there were 14!"

At that, you feel incredibly dizzy from the exertion of yelling, and the room begins to spin a little...

~~~

Suddenly you find yourself in some sort of half vision, peering at some half reality. It's like covering one eye with your hand: just as you could choose to see your palm or the world beyond, you can choose to see either your reality, or this new reality, and they intermix at times... except that this "new reality" isn't "new" at all. You see Squidhead's damaged metallic body bending over you, with Francis and Kai'isha holding you down on either side; you hear yourself screaming in agony as your other self struggles desperately to get away. "HOLD HIM DOWN!" you hear someone faintly yell.

It burns.

~~~

You gasp and wheeze as you feel your consciousness shift back to reality. Squidhead is lying you back down against the floor, and Francis is helping. "Hold Dino down," you hear Squidhead say. "Especially his leg - I don't need him thrashing around with what I'm going to do now." You frown at this, and just then, Squidhead turns to you. "Dino, this is going to hurt like hell. I'm going to stop the bleeding of your leg, but I have no time to be gentle here, and I'm lacking equipment. This will involve duct tape and a blowtorch. I can't give you strong painkillers or sedatives as you have to be able to get out of this hole. If you faint or vomit in your helmet you are probably going to die here. Ready?"

You shake your head with as much force as you can muster. "Squidhead, I think I'm more likely to pass out without painkillers, I think..."

Squidhead is already administering shots to you through the ports in the front of your suit, and pays no attention to your requests. "We're ready, Squidhead," Kai'isha says. Kai'isha and Francis are holding you down, as Squidhead lowers the blowtorch to your leg. You grit your teeth in expectation of the pain, knowing that the painkillers couldn't have had a chance to kick in yet. As it soon turns out, nothing could have prepared you for this. As a roaring pain fills your consciousness, you hear yourself screaming in agony; your conscious thought is gone, filled with a primal desire to desperately break free and escape the intense pain. "HOLD HIM DOWN!" you hear, faintly, in the distance, as you struggle to get away. It burns... and it's not even over yet. After Squidhead finishes on your leg, he begins working on your foot - you scream madly with the pain - but slip away and descend into a darker place, barely clinging to consciousness...

~~~

You're only half awake.

You feel light pressure on your leg; on your foot; someone is doing something down there. It hurts, but not as much as it did. It won't be fun to walk on.

It's only then that you realize you're still alive - the fact gently nudges at your thoughts, but you hardly notice it. That's nice, you feel yourself think.

Someone is down below you somewhere - somewhere closer to your legs. "Francis, Kai'isha, you need to get Dino out of here and into one of the ships as fast as possible." Someone is talking about you - you think it's Squidhead. "If he can still steer the ship by the time you get there, get him in his cockpit. If not, put him into the cargo container with the intact drone."

At that, you feel yourself pulled to your feet. "Whoa... where we going?" you hear yourself slur weakly. The meds are kicking in - you're gradually growing more awake. Francis seems to be on your left side, Kai'isha on your right side, and they're helping you towards the stairs.

As your mind clears even more, you begin to wonder - what was that you saw? A premonition? Did you actually see that, or are you remembering it wrong? If you did actually see that, then, was it some sort of side effect of the alien sphere?

But your mind still feels foggy. It's all you can do to just keep moving, doing everything in your power to avoid putting any extra pressure on your left leg. You look down. Your suit is still stained with blood - a lot of blood - but it looks like Squidhead made some temporary patches here and there on it that should hopefully keep it sealed - at least until you get back aboard the Tartarus.

It isn't much longer before you arrive at the airlock.



Squidhead You take the two kits from Francis. "Thank you. Can you assist me with patching Dino up? I could need some assistance from someone who isn't quite as adrenaline and testosterone-filled as the other guys in here. Can you manage that?"

He gives a nod. Opening up the repair kit, you remove a bit of duct tape and carefully tape your broken pieces back into place. It's a touch and go thing - a quick patch - and you're not even sure how long it's going to last.

Hopefully long enough.

Francis follows as you walk across the floor with three of your remaining tentacles, tugging your two kits behind you with the others. You wave BFett and Dr. Cha0zz out of the way, asking for Foreigner's blowtorch. Foreigner motions towards the doorway, where he's dropped it. You carefully walk over, pick it up, put it on top of the repair kit you're dragging behind you, and continue onwards towards Dino.

Dino's in bad shape. No, worse than that - he looks like he got up on the wrong side of the bed, and then the bed fell on him somehow. And then knocked him out a window. ...Onto a frag grenade. Right across the street from a pack of hungry dogs. He really looks awful. His suit is ripped, he's missing huge chunks of his leg and foot, and you can't imagine how he'll ever be able to use them again without some extreme surgery. Worse still, he looks like he's hardly conscious. You lay him gently onto his back, and begin administering painkillers, coagulants, and anti-shock meds, as you give instructions to Francis and Kai'isha. "Hold Dino down, especially his leg; don't need him thrashing around with what I'm going to do now." You also try to give Dinosawer some instructions as well, but you're not even sure he hears you. He seems to slur... something. You just hope it's acknowledgement. "Ready?" you ask, looking at your assistants. Back in your old labs, your assistants would be highly trained... but for now, Francis and Kai'isha are going to have to do. They nod at you, and you begin. The medkit doesn't contain much useful - certainly not as far as surgery goes - so you decide you're going to have to use your own fingers as clamps. The blowtorch is terribly overpowered for this kind of job, but you don't have much choice.

Well... it's not as professional as your old office, but with your skill... it should be good enough. Switching to your medical lenses, you get to work.

It takes several passes: after carefully and quickly cleaning each wound, you reach in, pinch the main arteries shut, and use the blowtorch to weld your fingers together. Were you a human, this would hurt like hell - instead, the worst it does is make some of your cameras flicker and die. That certainly shouldn't happen - it means something is going wrong in your visual translation centers. You could probably use a doctor yourself after you get back. You try your best, but some of the melted metal drips into Dinosawer's wound; he screams even louder, struggling to get away, but he's already so weak with blood loss that your two assistants are able to hold him down - at least where it matters. He almost manages to hit you once, but at least that means he hasn't lost consciousness. It takes a bit of time, but overall, the procedure is a success. After his wounds are patched and the gauze and bandages applied, you seal it all up with duct tape. It won't hold forever, but it should hold long enough to get him back to the Tartarus. Hopefully they have medical personnel standing by - your medkit doesn't contain any blood packs, and Dinosawer could really use some right now.

"Francis, Kai'isha, you need to get Dino out of here and into one of the ships as fast as possible," you instruct them. They listen carefully, nodding. "If he can still steer his ship by the time you get there, get him in his cockpit. If not, put him into the cargo container where the intact drone is."

Your assistants pull Dinosawer gently to his feet and begin taking him towards the stairs, leaving you alone in the room, apart from Dr. Cha0zz, Karthus, BFett, and Foreigner. And of course, isssss-hh, who is lying at the bottom of the alien sphere's pedestal, just a couple feet away.

And that's when you realize that a few of your tentacles are snaking their way towards it, seemingly of their own accord - you feel a strange sensation, as though an external mind is forcing you to want to touch it... and it's difficult to fight. Not as difficult, perhaps, as it was for Dr. Cha0zz: exerting a tremendous force of willpower, you yank your tentacles away from it. You'll touch the thing when you're damn well good and ready, and not a moment sooner.




Francis Picking up the backpack on the stairs, you toss it into the next room, towards the rest of the squad. "Gun for grabs," you say, and then back up into the shadow of the stairwell, taking big, deep breaths. Squidhead approaches you then and offers you a hand - or, a tentacle, rather. "Thank you. Can you assist me with patching Dino up? I could need some assistance from someone who isn't quite as adrenaline and testosterone-filled as the other guys in here. Can you manage that?"

You nod. That's something you can handle. You're grateful that he's actually treating you like a regular REKT member, instead of... an "idiot", like Dr. Cha0zz keeps calling you. You follow Squidhead out of the little stairwell foyer, who's moving like a mechanical, tentacled spider towards the spinning, glowing sphere. Kai'isha follows behind you, limping and holding tightly to the walls.

Before much longer, you arrive at Dino, just in time to see Squidhead administer the contents of a few syringes, talking quietly to him. Then, he turns to you and Kai'isha. "Hold Dino down, especially his leg; don't need him thrashing around with what I'm going to do now. Ready?"

"Ready," Kai'isha says, placing her arms firmly on Dino's body and bracing herself. You nod assent and do the same... and Squidhead lowers the blowtorch towards Dinosawer's leg. You look away, and soon find yourself wishing you could tune out your friend's screams. At least you don't have to watch.

~~~

It feels like ages before Squidhead's finally done, even though it couldn't have been more than a minute or two. You feel horrible, and Dinosawer, wheezing and hardly conscious, looks like he might be in even worse shape than he originally was.

Squidhead gets your attention as he finishes patching up Dinosawer's suit using duct tape. "Francis, Kai'isha, you need to get Dino out of here and into one of the ships as fast as possible," he tells you urgently. "If he can still steer his ship by the time you get there, get him in his cockpit. If not, put him into the cargo container where the intact drone is."

With Kai'isha's help, you get Dinosawer up onto his feet - he's mumbling something incoherently, but he at least seems to get the idea that he's supposed to do that "walking" thing. "Keep moving, don't use your left leg. You can do it," Kai'isha encourages him, herself hopping on one foot as the three of you move forwards, out the room, up the stairs and down the hallway. "Come on, Dinosawer, we're almost there. We just have to get you to your ship."

It isn't much longer before the three of you arrive at the airlock. Kai'isha takes the opportunity to speak up. "Francis, I don't know how to get this thing open again... I think Karthus got it to open by hurting his hand, but I don't think it's working anymore..."


Are you guys deaf or just playing games? I need a status update now! Long and pointless screams do not count. ETA four minutes, and we'll only have a couple minutes to stick around, so if you waste time, we leave you.

"SCAMPS, Mission status is critical. Watt and Goatman are dead, Dinosawer is seriously injured and is being led to the airlock by Kaisha and Francis. Francis is missing one of his hands. I haven't been able to determine the purpose of this alien base, but I can tell you that no life has been here for a while. This room appears to be of some importance because it was guarded by 14 drones and has several pods that might contain life forms. There isn't much for me to work with here. Do you want us to evacuate the base even if we don't determine the exact purpose of the base? "

Looks for a active electronic device to hack into and attempts to hack into it and shut off the drone and other defensive systems within the base. If none is found he walks over to the glowing sphere and places both hands on it.

SCAMPS, To add to what BFett already told you. We have a whole bunch of guys with punctured suits here, you might want to tell the idiots at the base that adding a suit repair kit to the standard equipment would vastly increase the mission performance.

Take a picture of one of the aliens in the stasis pods and send it to my ships' database and to SCAMPS. (while I'm at it, also visually inspect the stasis pod to deduct how it functions)

You might also want to have some xenobiologists have a look at this picture.

Walk over to one of the broken stasis pods and take a sample of the dust that used to be an alien (sample in a glass vial, close it and label it, then put it in my bagpack).
Also take an XRD scan from the dust, check my PDA for an IR scanner and if one is available, also take an IR scan from the dust.
Send the scanning data to my ships' database and to SCAMPS

Here is some additional info for the xenobiologists SCAMPS.

Walk over to the repair kit that was used to fix dino and use it to patch up my suit. (catch the duct tape instead and use it to repair my suit)

Then walk upstairs, go to the room with the cooling piping, use my blowtorch to cut a small hole in the pipe and catch some of the liquid that comes out of it in my glass jar (don't touch the liquid). ((only do this if I don't get a debuff for stacking actions at this point))

(At all times be on the lookout for the last drone, if I spot it I find cover, if it comes in range of my blowtorch, I torch it)

"What's a Mimir and why is it sending ships at us?

Anyway, the mission's not a failure, I think I know what the orb is, kind of... I touched it and saw..things..."
I describe the vision I had.
(( ))
So, that means, I think, that the aliens are interdimensional, or interuniversal - we see shifting buttons and panels because we try to see all instances at once. I'm not exactly sure what they used the orb for though..."

Kai'isha wrote:Francis, I don't know how to get this thing open again... I think Karthus got it to open by hurting his hand, but I don't think it's working anymore...

"It's okay, I know exactly what to do.

...

GUYS, HOW DO WE GET THIS THING OPEN?"

"Francis, wait!
You still have a bloody big hole in your suit, if you cycle the airlock now you'll asphyxiate."
"Kai'isha, I have duct tape in my bag, can you use that to fix Francis' suit?"
I'll hand over the duct tape and glue to Kai'isha.
While she's busy, I'll try if I can mentally "pull apart" the button panel like in my vision.
When she's finished patching, poke at it with Francis' crowbar - trying to poke at a specific panel that looks right (or a random one) if I managed the previous thingy.

"Oh."

Don't do that thing with the scrap metal and the panel.