Prison Pit

Apocalypse Now

high orbit, Jorait World, 1008/Spinward Marches, 231/1107

DM Note: To avoid confusion I am referring to the Nasty Aliens as Xenomorphs from here on... As Martha had remained aboard the Darmagan, Allan 'played' the Captain for some of this session to guide the ship's actions.

The crew of the Darmagan had not been idle. Klaxons howled their dissonant warcry as the Brigadier snapped out orders, sending half his remaining corptroopers sprinting to the hangar bay  and the remaining cutters waiting to launch. Martha took charge of co-ordinating the gunnery, directing the laser turrets to lay down a punishing fire between the point where the xenomorphs were emerging and the perimeter of the construction site. Green bolts of incandescent energy streaked down to tear up the frozen ground, blasting xenos and bits of xenos into the air. Alice sprinted off the bridge, slinging her fusion gun over her shoulder as she headed for the hangers.

construction site, Jorait World, 1008/Spinward Marches, 231/1107

Gripper rolled the Vanguard over onto her back as Manx stroked a control panel, muttering "nukes, nukes, we want them precious," for some reason. Bereft of such things, Zugh the Vargr nonetheless made the best of what he did have and hosed twin laser bolts back at the hospital where the G-Carrier of soldiers had just died. The range was long, but he was pretty sure he'd nailed at least some xenos before they got away as Gripper changed course to flatten out and head over towards the construction site to escort the unarmed cutters. Manx hastily cut the speakers as a wash of deafening static poured out of the Vanguard's radio - Martha had turned the Darmagan's radios back on at full power. This reminded him of something and he concentrated hard on shielding his mind. The Song of Exultation faded, something he took as a good sign.

high orbit, Jorait World, 1008/Spinward Marches, 231/1107

"Multiple launches detected," called out the Darmagan's sensor officer, "some kind of airborne.. craft? Very slow though." He snapped some visuals onto a corner of the main viewscreen, and gasps rang out, as well as a quiet mutter of "Dragons!" from someone, followed by embarrassed silence. Several flights of winged xenomorphs were climbing into the air, quite fast for winged animals, but nowhere near fast enough to catch the Vanguard or the cutters. The laser gunners turned their attention to the newcomers and soon carbonized corpses were dropping from the sky. Zugh began picking them off from the Vanguard, accounting for several as the starship circled the site. More were rising all the time, and despite the heavy casualties the airspace above the construction site was thick with the monsters.

construction site and above, Jorait World, 1008/Spinward Marches, 231/1107

Corptroopers hold the perimeter

Below, on the ground, the Tallis corptroopers were putting up a fight the Corps would have been proud of. All along the perimeter fences of the half-built research station, the troopers were stubbornly contesting every inch of ground, hammering gauss and fusion fire at the waves of incoming xenos. Without the Darmagan's orbital support they would already have been overwhelmed; as it was, they were holding back the ones that got through from the civilian construction workers sheltering within the site. A cheer - and a single ironic "Don't be a stranger, y'all" - ran along the perimeter as the last of the escaping cutters lifted into the sky, taking the majority of the civvies to safety. As they vanished into the darkness, the troopers buckled back down to holding the perimeter until rescue came.

It wasn't far away. Overriding all the safety warnings, the pilots of the second flight of three cutters had entered atmosphere at a horrifying angle, screaming down almost vertically towards the battle. For Alice and the thirty troopers the Brig had sent along it was a painfully rough ride, rattling around in the seatless cargo modules, but knowing what the people below were going through, no-one complained. Suddenly the shaking and turbulence increased sharply, and several impacts on the hull made the soldiers look up anxiously. Clad in battledress rather than the lighter corptrooper combat armour, Alice was able to make her way to the tiny bridge from where she could look out and see what was going on.

Repel Boarders!- click it for larger image!

The cutters had flown into the swirling airborne xenomorphs, and although these couldn't catch the cutters, they did their best to grab on or slash at the craft as they passed. A massive winged horror had latched itself to the dorsal surface of Alice's cutter, and was tearing at the hull plates with its' claws and hideous extensible teeth. Alice sprang up the ladder and thumped the stud to open the dorsal hatch, swinging her fusion gun off her back as she did so. Sticking her head out, she was glad of her powered armour as the airflow of the cutter's speed hit her like a fist in the back. Taking quick aim, she discharged a bolt of fusing plasma at the unwanted passenger. The shot was good, the bolt exploding right in the monster's face, searing its' carapace and - better - dislodging its' hold. It tumbled away in the cutter's slipstream and was gone, leaving Alice with the uncomfortable feeling that it hadn't been dead. She didn't have time to wonder, though, because the cutters were dropping rapidly towards the ground. She dropped back into the bridge and dogged the hatch. "Land in a triangle!" she directed, and the three craft did so, side doors facing outwards so as to prevent the evacuees from having to run around to find a door. The hatches rolled up and the ramps thumped down, and Alice and the troopers riding shotgun stepped up to the edges, weapons ready, as the radio call went out for the civilians to break cover and board the spacecraft.

high orbit, Jorait World, 1008/Spinward Marches, 231/1107

"More launches!" reported the sensor ops, "real ones this time!" Two 200-dton craft had taken off from the far side of the Sunless World and were climbing towards orbit, keeping the planet between themselves and the Darmagan. Captain Brown took his ship down into the atmosphere to reduce the distance the cutters needed to travel. On Martha's advice, Dr Murtagh broke out all the psi-suppressant drugs he had in stock and administered them to key crewmembers.

construction site, Jorait World, 1008/Spinward Marches, 231/1107

The last of the civvies jogged up the ramps and into the cutters, crowding down to the back to leave room for their brave defenders. Outside the station, a firestorm of gunfire mingled with the shattering effects of an orbital bombardment, fingers of fire reaching down from the heavens to rend the earth. "Evacuate!" howled Alice over the radio, and the corptroopers began to fall back towards the cutters. It was a manouvre of inevitable disaster. While they had held the perimeter, the troopers had managed to keep the xenos at a distance and almost no casualties had been suffered; as soon as they abandoned those positions, the coherence of their line was broken into small groups picking their way across the site with minimal cover. No starship gunner could possibly pick OB targets under those conditions, so the Darmagan's guns couldn't directly protect them, only reduce the numbers that got through. Pursued through streets and buildings, the troopers fought a desperate retreat, safe only as long as they kept moving. To be pinned in a dead end was death, and several groups were swarmed and massacred when they chose the wrong route.

Once they came into view of the cutters, the escort troopers were able to provide covering fire, their raised position at the top of the boarding ramps allowing them to fire over the retreating men's heads as they contracted the circle. Alice laid down a deadly pattern with her FGMP, blessing the bloodymindedness that had kept her practising until she finally mastered the weapon back on Inversar, Slowly the survivors, many of them wounded or acid-burned, struggled back to the cutters and aboard. Finally a man with sergeant's stripes on his armour paused next to Alice and gasped, "That's it; anyone still out there's dead." She could believe it; the torrent of snarling, writhing, drooling nightmares was close all around the LZ. "Dust off!" she radioed to the three bridges, and the hatches closed as the cutters lifted out of reach of the leaping monsters. Once they were a hundred feet or so up the pilots flicked the throttles all the way open and arrowed off horizontally away from the site as fast as possible, leaving the gunners in orbit a clear shot at the site.

low orbit, Jorait World, 1008/Spinward Marches, 231/1107

"All laser and missile, concentrated fire on two-thirty-two, five-eighty-six, nine-niner-seven!" yelled the Gunnery officer, and the gunners unleashed Hell onto the abandoned base. Every square inch within the perimeter became awash with fire and laser energy, ripped by flying shrapnel and gobs of superheated rock. The xenos died by the thousand, the very few survivors fleeing to the holes from which they'd emerged. Pursuing bombardment cracked the edges of those holes, breaching the underground spaces below.

As the cutters closed on the Darmagan's position, the sensor operator reported the two weaponless Jorait ships moving, orbiting the planet towards the Darmagan. "Ask their intentions," ordered Brown, and the commo officer radioed the question at the vessels. Unaware of Manx's telepathic conversation at their first contact, Brown had assumed that the Jorait - despite being hurt by radio waves - could still understand them; but he was wrong, and no answer came back. He waited a few more minutes - no need to rush given the ships weren't armed - then turned to the gunnery officer. "Take them down," he said with finality. A battery of the ship's laser turrets swung to line up with each of the hapless vessels and fired, green bars of blazing fire blasting into them with unfailing accuracy. The craft made no attempt to evade, and the bolts smashed through the hulls into the interior with terrible effect. One after another, their drive systems failed and the vessels dropped out of the sky trailing smoke as they plunged to smash onto the frozen rocks of the wastelands between the domes. As they did so, the sensor operator frowned. "I'm not picking up any life signs aboard," he reported. Martha and Brown looked at each other. "Fireships?" he asked doubtfully. A moment later, they had their answer as alarms blared, and screams and gunfire sounded through the intercom. A schematic of the Darmagan flashed onto the viewscreen with three areas marked in flashing red; part of the crew accommodation, one of the radio rooms, and the main jump drive room. Anti-hijack cameras showed frantic combat in all three locations, with xenomorphs tearing through ship crewers and the Brig's remaining troopers charging in to engage the enemy. "Seal those areas," said Martha, her voice as cold as death. "Contain the contamination or we're all dead." For once, even the Brigadier didn't answer, and the bulkhead hatches leading into the battle zones were locked. Silently, the bridge crew watched as the three desperate battles played themselves out.

As the Vanguard flew back over the planet towards the Darmagan, Gripper glanced down and frowned. He looked again; no, he'd not been mistaken. The city of Slammic, nearest to the construction site, was darker than the others; the glow of the dome and the city lights was noticeably less bright. This clicked in his mind with his experiences while on the ground in Slammic, and he called through to Martha. "The xenos have something to do with the power plants," he said, "and the power plants were firmly off-limits when we were down there. Unless I'm very much mistaken, they're in those great big hexagonal buildings near the city centres." 

DM Note: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.".

Martha turned from the three tragedies being fought out on the screen. "Guns?" she said, bringing up the planet view. "I want you to hit that hexagonal building there," she grinned nastily, "and I want you to hit it with a red pill." The gunnery officer blanched. 'Red Pill' was military shorthand for nuclear weapons, and using nukes on civilian sentients from orbit was one of the most serious of high justice crimes. Brown nodded. "Do it," he approved, and the officer gave the order.

All other weapon fire stopped. Although with modern gunnery computers the chances were minimal, no gunner liked to fire beam weapons at the same time that nukes were launching. The autoloaders shifted gear and cycled, and the ship's single missile bay coughed a salvo of fifty missiles at the heart of the central city of the Sunless World. Silence fell as the bridge crew watched them streak home and strike; even after more than four thousand years, atomic weapons still chilled the soul of humans. Manx was silent too as he watched, in his case at least partially from envy; he'd wanted to fire those!

With an apocalyptic roar, the nuclear missiles detonated simultaneously with a combined yield well into the megaton range. The central Jorait city vanished under the signature mushroom cloud as the firestorm rolled across the landscape, swallowing several of the smaller cities at the same time. Despite his inexpert mental shielding, Manx was unable to completely squelch the agonized shriek of pain and terror as tens of thousands of Jorait died in an instant. The damage was not limited to the point of impact, however. At the moment of explosion, all the domes and lights across the whole planet flickered - and went out. Puzzled, the sensor op zoomed in on one, to a scene out of nightmare. Everywhere in the city, xenomorphs were emerging like maggots from the ground and from openings in buildings and frenziedly attacking the Jorait wherever they could find them. Here and there, groups of the psionic aliens gathered and seemed to hold back the ravening xenos by strength of will, but more and more piled in until whatever defence they had mustered collapsed and the Jorait were ripped apart. The lethal race the Jorait had enslaved to feed their power plants took their revenge as the Sunless World died in fire and bloodshed. Brown watched, not without some sadness. "Take us back into space," he said at last. "We're done here."

high orbit, Jorait World, 1008/Spinward Marches, 231/1107

Once into space, they checked the status of the embattled areas of the ship. The troops had reached the commo centre quickly enough and managed to clear it; the jump drive room and accommodation block had been sealed before reinforcements could arrive, and everyone in both was dead. Brown ordered the atmosphere vented to space. What happened next was sobering. As the atmosphere thinned, the xenos started exploring their environments, looking for exits. This became more urgent as the pressure dropped to nothing - at which point a human would have been incapacitated or dead. Martha reached to the panel and switched off the gravity. This didn't much impede the xenos with their heavy claws, and they continued to search for an exit. After fifteen minutes, they started to slow down; after twenty they were sluggish, and after forty they finally released their grasp on the walls and drifted free. Brown was taking no chances; he left both rooms depressurized while the returning crew were dealt with.

DM Note: "My Vargr's got no Recon!" "How does he smell?" "Bloody awful!".

Everyone aboard the six cutters, and Manx and Gripper, was scanned in minute detail before being allowed out of the hangar bay. The vessels were also examined in minute detail - one cutter showed signs that a xeno had attempted to hitch a ride on the back near the engine mounting, but the blast of the airflow had been too much and it appeared to have fallen off again. As the weary soldiers trudged back to barracks, and the wounded were whisked off to sickbay, Brown and Martha turned their attention to the depressurized zones. The air was reintroduced, and the seals cautiously cracked. Martha led a squad of troopers in, and the dead bodies were prodded, then scanned. Although they hadn't changed much externally, the decompression had wrought considerable internal damage and there was no doubt they were completely dead. Alice selected three and froze them in one of the Darmagan's low berths; the rest were jettisoned. Gripper took the Vanguard on a loop around the Darmagan, to check the outside of the hull just in case, with Zugh, Manx and Benkin along. The harsh shadows of space made it a tough job, but they were reasonably certain there were no hitch-hiking xenos aboard when they came back.

A sensor sweep of the surface turned up no living Jorait; xenos in their hundreds of thousands prowled the surface, obviously searching for any survivors. Manx opened his senses and 'listened' cautiously; the Song of Exultation was gone, but he could hear what he could only describe as wailing; directing the sensor ops to the location, they discovered a shrimping platform in the midst of one of the Sunless World's two lakes. Six Jorait survivors were trapped there, overwhelmed by loss and distress at the collapse of the gestalt mind - most of their memories were gone. It seemed as if the xenos were'nt especially fond of entering large bodies of water. "Can we capture one?" asked Gripper. "He'd go off his head, alone," said Manx. Alice grinned cruelly as she watched the screen. With the loss of the power that had held the lake liquid, it was slowly but surely freezing over from the edges.

"Perhaps we should send them a pistol with five rounds," she commented with relish. "They wouldn't know what to do with it," said Manx, switching off the screen, as the Darmagan broke orbit leaving the last of the Jorait to their well-deserved and slow end.

	Session Date: 9th November 2011 (313/-2507 Imperial)