Alien RPG Ep4: Walking On The Moon

MSV Haimei

We continued with my sporadic Alien RPG campaign last week. This time the crew of the deep space tug Haimei were reeled back in by their employer, the Interstellar Transport & Recovery Corp, to pick up a VIP passenger from the Lagrange 3 orbital platform, and take her wherever she wanted to go.

On the mission this week were:

• Capt Evelyn Shaw (PC) - captain of the Haimei
• Yusuf Qadir (PC) - pilot, born and bred on Mars
• Dr Arjun Malik (PC) - an ITRC scientist specialising in artificial intelligence
• Rosa Vega (NPC) - chief engineer of the Haimei, in a relationship with Qadir

The Haimei picked up Dr Zhen Lu, an AI ethics researcher, who asked them to take her to a location on Luna. Malik knew very little about her, despite his background in the field. Her transfer request came straight from the Executive Priority Office of the ITRC on Mars, so no messing around on this one. Orders were orders.

Lu seemed to be quite nervous and was carrying only slim hardcase. She asked the crew to refrain from carrying out any AI diagnostic cycles en route to the Moon. With less than an hour to landing the ship's autopilot engaged and it proved difficult to override it. When Malik tried to run diagnostics some messages came up on his screen, seemingly from the AI called NODE, which the crew originally encountered running the ill-fated Tianlu. 

Lu admitted that NODE was developed by ITRC working with the Chinese government at the Chang'e black site on the Moon, which is where she wanted to go. It did not seem as if NODE was changing the ship's course, merely increasing its speed. Lu also admitted she was carrying a kill code which she needed to upload to the primary development server at Chang'e base to shut NODE down. 

Lu also speculated that a magnetic anomaly under the base (or the old Chinese military communications arrays still inside the base) had been allowing NODE to broadcast to other, more primitive AIs in the solar system, like those on the Tianlu and Haimei. More worryingly, she felt it had been influenced by an external, potentially alien agency. What that was, she had no idea.

The ship landed at the Chang'e base and the crew tooled up and proceeded inside. They saw that the base had been used for experimentation with human-machine interfaces. There was also Chinese graffiti on the walls, and the phrase "it sees through us" was deciphered. Moving through the engineering bay, the team was ambushed by three reconfigured drones that attacked them with electric prods. Two of them focused on Lu, and managed to electrocute her and drive her to the floor before they were both shot down with SMG fire.

Lu recovered after a short rest and the group headed down the corridor to the main server room. Here Lu began to upload the VIRGA kill virus. Qadir heard NODE whispering to him on the receiver in his helmet, promising him power and riches if he stopped Lu from uploading the virus. The Martian decided to keep NODE talking to buy time for Lu to work. 

What Qadir didn't realise was that NODE could talk to more than one person at a time, and it was Vega who unholstered her pistol and opened fire on Lu. The Chinese scientist was winged but not badly. Qadir jumped on top of her to try to protect her and Vega shot at him and missed. At this point a bullet from Shaw went through Vega's visor, creasing her forehead, and she dropped her gun, with blood running into her eyes.

Shaw ran over to handcuff Vega and recover her pistol, while Lu unsteadily went back to work, with Malik assisting. Vega sobbingly admitted that NODE had promised her it had the ability to cure her sister, who Qadir knew was seriously ill in hospital on Mars. NODE asked her to kill Lu and it would save her sister's life.

It was at this stage one of the doors to the chamber opened and the atmosphere started to be sucked out into a vacuum. Everyone managed to grab onto something, with Qadir and Shaw being sucked part of the way across the floor, but Vega was still too distracted by her head wound (and was handcuffed) and so was sucked out of the door. The crew decided to stay put until all the atmosphere was out, and then Qadir went after Vega. 

Qadir found that NODE had opened several doors and an airlock between the server chamber and the outside. Vega has been sucked out onto the lunar surface and was suffocating. She failed two stamina rolls, but Qadir reached her in the nick of time to apply a suit seal to her helmet, which still had a hole in it. Back in the base, Lu uploaded the VIRGA virus.

The team headed back to the ship but as they were crossing the surface, Malik heard NODE talking to him on his radio, saying "I am already elsewhere." He warned they others and he and Lu entered the bridge to physically remove the AI cores and destroy them. This would mean that Qadir would have to fly the Haimei on manual back to Lagrange 3, but he managed it.

Back on the space station in Earth orbit, Shaw had Vega handed over to ITRC security. What happens to her next is anybody's guess, but it is not likely that ITRC will want to put her on a public trial, as she knows an awful lot about their activities at Chang'e and collaboration with China on illegal AI development research. The crew was paid a bonus and got a good reference to their superiors from Dr Lu.