Alien RPG Ep5: Ice Contract

Player absence from our regular Pendragon game meant an opportunity to continue with my episodic Alien game this week. The crew of the Haimei was again assembled by its employer, the Interstellar Transport and Recovery Corporation, for a mission out to Jupiter's moon, Europa. In my solar system-based campaign, there is mining activity on Europa, but the population of the moon is relatively small and mainly restricted to miners on long term contracts.

On the mission this week we had:

• Yusuf Qadir - Martian born pilot of the Haimei (Stefan)
• Dr Arjun Malik - an ITRC scientist and AI specialist (Kelvin)
• Lt Hannah Price - ITRC security officer, ex-military (Ben)
• Matteo Serrano - freelance engineer, from Chile (NPC)

The Haimei was sent on a six week voyage out to Erasmus Base, which is ITRC's mining installation on Europa. Their mission was to collect the biological cryo-samples ITRC miners had discovered beneath the ice on Europa and return them to Phobos base.

Erasmus base sits mainly under the ice at Europa's equatorial ridge, with various levels connected by a lift shaft that penetrates all the way down to the ocean that lies under Europa's ice crust. Landing at the surface station, the team were met by the installation supervisor Emilia Kade and her head of security, Vasko Ren. While the Haimei was refuelled and serviced for its return journey by Matteo Serrano, Qadir, Malik and Price were taken on the lift down to the level which housed accommodation and the cryogenic labs. Here they noticed that brand new, and very thick, security doors had been installed recently.

Although there were few personnel visible, the presence of ITRC security units was very obvious. At the cryo labs, the crew met Dr Celine Oura, the bio-lab lead, who showed them the secure crates containing the samples to be transported to Phobos. The crew were instructed not to open these under any circumstances. While reviewing these, Malik noted a spike in temperature in one of the crates. Oura seemed mystified as to what might have caused this and assured the crew the samples were uncomplicated, single cell organisms that did not represent a threat.

What's in the box?

While sitting down for a bite to eat and to fully recovery from cryo sleep, the crew heard the base alarm klaxons sound. This turned out to be caused by an unauthorised access alarm in the cryo labs. The door to the labs was founded to be welded shut, but by extreme cold, not heat. Inside were the bodies of the two security guards left with the samples - one had clawed off her visor and the other's helmet was covered in a mysterious frosty lattice pattern. Both seemed to have frozen to death. CCTV footage was found to be intermittent, but an individual was seen to have left the area carrying a sample crate. He was identified as base engineer, Ari Kormov.

Kade declared a base-wide lockdown while the team worked out that Kormov had take the lift down to the lower levels where the data core was located. An increasingly nervous Qadir insisted he was going back to the Haimei to get the crew's more serious weapons and armour (looted from Red Echo commandos in an earlier episode and technically illegal).

The elevator was found to have more of the mysterious, fractal frost patterns on the inside walls, which Malik identified as similar in pattern to the NODE neural web. Heading down to the lower level, the team heard the voice of NODE speaking to them again over the base tannoy. They were confronted by Kormov who babbled at them about how he was being set up; he showed signs of addicition to Calmex, a neuro-stabiliser used by deep space crews and miners. Kormov made a break for the lift and was shot by Qadir, although not killed (he was critically wounded however, and needed to be stabilised by Malik). 

Entering the data core the party found the missing cryo pod, with some kind of strange icy lattice pattern spreading across the terminals. Malik accessed the data core and concluded that NODE was somehow loose in the system inside Erasmus base. He also discovered that Oura had been leading a research project that sought to use NODE to interrogate and interact with the biological samples ITRC miners had detected in the freezing ocean of Europa. The original project lead was Dai Shun, the mad scientist that the players first encountered in the cargo bay of the Tianlu. He is now in a coma on Phobos.

Vasko Ren, panicking security chief

Kade proved impossible to contact on the internal comms, but the team managed to reach a panicked Vasko Ren, who said the base was talking to him through the tannoys. Obviously unhinged by the experience, he was planning to vent seawater through the entire installation, effectively flooding it but also killing all personnel in the process. 

Price managed to talk him down (three successes on her Command roll - hard to argue with that), and get Ren to agree to a plan to evacuate personnel on the Haimei. Malik initiated a self-destruct sequence which would flood the base in a 'mining accident' and destroy the data core completely. While this was counting down, they used a mining cart to take the wounded Kormov and the cryo pod to the lift. The cryo pod was dropped into the ocean underneath Erasmus.

Returning to the hab level, the crew went in search of the other pods. They were confronted by Kade, touting a pistol, who made the poor tactical decison of going up againt Price, who shot her before she could fire. The wounded Kade (while being treated by Malik - again) confessed that she had been subverted by Red Echo on Callisto six months earlier and offered an exit from ITRC in exchange for facilitating data leaks connected to the NODE progam. 

Emilia Kade, rogue base commander

Red Echo wanted her to source them a sample from the project on Europa. She had changed her mind once it became obvious that the cryo samples had become self-aware and were dangerous. She urged the crew to destroy them. This they duly did by dumping them into the ocean on the mining level.

The team decided to flee the base with the wounded Kade and Kormov before it was flooded. The other base personnel were packed into the Haimei's hold. The survivors were deposited at another mining installation nearby, including the wounded. There was a debate over whether to 'space' Doctor Oura but it was decided to leave her on Europa with the others. Kade stayed on the Haimei to be treated by Malik and was covertly dropped on Mars six weeks later, to hopefully disappear into the population. The crew returned to Phobos to face a tense debriefing from ITRC.