(Anthony, Larry, Michael and Robb)
Raiding the Icebox
Since the Fall, every place has its ghost stories. Some more than others. Few as many as Iapetus.
You were once just a survivor of the Fall, like everyone one else scattered across the solar system. One of the lucky few who were either already off planet, or who fate allowed to escape in the final days. And like everyone else over the decade since you have been trying to make your way in the new order. But unlike everyone else, you stumbled on the truth and now share a secret – the TITANs are still a threat, and the future of transhumanity rests on the edge of a very sharp knife. One way or another, that secret has made you a member of Firewall, a clandestine conspiracy dedicated to protecting what’s left of transhumanity from existential threats. You are the last defense between the legacy of the TITANs and ultimate extinction.
Due either to your unique skillset or your singular experience you were recruited by Firewall and assigned to an Erasure Squad. As such, your orders are always simple. Go in, eliminate the X-threat AND sterilize the scene – sterilize having a very broad definition that usually includes witnesses. Kill, edit or recruit – no one gets away free.
For the past six months you have been embedded on Over the Moon, an Autonomist torus habitat orbiting the strange remnants of the Saturnian moon Iapetus. OtM serves as a base of operations for Autonomist survey and scientific teams as well as a for-hire base of operations for the surprising number of salvage crews prospecting after unique resources, technological insights and priceless Earth artifacts brought by the refugees and now hidden within the icy tomb.
Your job is to make sure nothing dangerous gets out. Ever. And at all costs.
•••
A week ago, a Firewall Crow who had infiltrated a Cognite research team on Iapetus reported that something was hincky with the project and that he might need some backup. Four days ago contact with the agent was lost and a contentious team of Sentinels farcasted to Over the Moon and infiltrated the base via an automated supply shuttle. Three days ago all contact with the Sentinels was lost at the same time orbital seismographs reported what was likely an erratic series of small explosions. Two days ago, a Jovian cruiser took up a high orbit and launched a recon craft to the surface, landing suspiciously close to the original base.
Your handler, Dr. Saya, has no idea what’s going on but the arrival of the Jovian navy has him uncharacteristically anxious. After a day spent pacing back and forth – which it turns out is not a very effective way to burn excess energy in zero-gee - he orders you to grab your gear and go see what the hell’s going on. Your mission parameters are to eliminate any active X-threats, erase all signs of Firewall presence, and figure out what happened.
As usual, you have been ordered to shoot first and ask questions later…
• Jimbo Lee, Ahmir, Tyson and Turk - skill-sets and psychoses associated with a typical Erasure Squad mixed with some station-fever. Suffice it to say, the party was glad get out of the simulator, don their Hoplite battlesuits and jump into the real world.
• From several options the squad chose to infiltrate the moon by catching a ride on an Autonomist cargo shuttle and dropping from orbit using EVA packs. It mostly goes well, and takes the team only a few extra minutes to regroup.
• A dangerous but short overland, micro-gravity ice-hike got the party to a vantage where they could observe the Jovian encampment. They were dug in above the landing gantry outside the tunnel entrance to the original Cognite base. Tyson made a daring, battlesuitless climb, infiltrating under the gantry and rigging it with explosives.
• The team then accessed one of the tunnels on their survey map by the simple expedient of finding a thin spot in the ice and bashing their way through. Once inside they made their way to the Cognite habitat chamber, blew the landing pad as a distraction and proceeded to slaughter everyone.
• The fight is very one-sided and both the guards and the technicians went down quickly. Turk and Ahmir were particularly effective and Jimbo was so brutal with the fleeing technicians that he suffered a minor break in the aftermath of the carnage.
• Tyson managed to capture a technician - an electrical engineer - alive and proceeded to terrify and psi sleight him into telling everything he knew about both the Cognite and Jovian operations.
• The squad recovered all of the stacks from the original Sentinel team, as well as all of the artifacts they had recovered from the Cognite operation. It is clear that the Jovians had been collecting and examining these objects, trying to figure out what was originally, and more recently, going on at the site.
• The team then ventured down into a large well in the ice and discovered the remains of the server destroyed by the Sentinels. While exploring the well they came under fire from Jovian soldiers above them on the shaft rim. While taking cover in a side tunnel, they were also attacked by the mutated denizens of Iapetus. With Hoptlite suits, plasma weapons, neurochem and suppressive fire even the coincidentally combined forces of the Jovians and the indigenous monsters had little chance. The Jovians who survived retreated and the monsters were slaughtered.
• The team quickly mopped up the remaining soldiers at the surface camp - losing this instantiation of Turk in the bloody process - made another over-ice trek and strong-armed a team of seismologists setting out sensors to give them a ride back into orbit.
• It might be important to note that all the cortical stacks from the Cognite and original Firewall teams, and the storage device which contains the TITAN artifact, have been recovered from the moon and are now in Firewall’s procession.
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