Worlds Beyond Number - Flight of the Icaron: Ep 3 - Contact

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

The Icaron locks down as Martian strike craft take position, turning the ship into hostile ground. With exits gone and command in question, three figures slip into its hidden spaces, moving toward a communications deck that may be the last place still speaking to the outside world. Signals are active, systems are rerouting, and something aboard the Icaron is making its move. We are:Brennan Lee MulliganErika IshiiAabria IyengarLou Wilson Flight of the Icaron was produced by Fortunate Horse and Worlds Beyond NumberEdit and Sound Design by Brian Flaherty from Many Sided Mediahttps://www.manysidedmedia.com/Score by Will Savinohttps://wsavino.com/Sound Effect library courtesy of artlist.io Director of Operations: Melanie BowmanSocial Media Manager: Shannon HLorekeeper and Transcriptionist: Jack Morgan E.F. Lavandowska Special Thanks to: Amanda Freberg at Big Giant Head and the team at LaservisionCharacter Art Alecia Doyleyhttps://tallnquirky.carrd.co/Ship Art by Britt Andersonhttps://brittajj26.com/Graphics by Lu Tomkiewiczhttps://www.lumadethis.com/ You can find transcripts of all our episodes on our Patreon. Just navigate to the post for the episode and the transcript will be attached.

Cutting a stark silhouette against the stars as you look up through the zenith's visibility hub. Long, narrow hulls. Their edges too smooth, too clean, like polished stone worn by centuries of water. They fly in unnervingly tight formations. These are Martian Strikecraft, known as coffins. matte black surfaces broken only by thin bands of crimson light that pulse faintly along their spines. No engines blaze. Just drifting with predatory silence.

As you guys make your way across the zenith hab, on your way to the central lift, that will allow you to travel down to the comms station of the Icaron. You watch as these craft float overhead identified by fishcakes. toward the Meridian docking stations for which both Kiki and Fishcakes were where you arrived for the event that has turned into the disaster at which you all find yourselves. Question. Yes. Is the phrase, like, is the name, coffins a very specifically like Taryn name for it? Very much so. Very much a name from the war on tranquility. Would Kiki know what the protectorate calls them internally?

Yes, you would. These are XRV-2s. Ooh. Seeing these Martian craft, I'm going to, I've got this weapon at my side. I know that my ex-wife and my daughter are back in the Hab room that we're leaving. And I'm just going to continue to press my way as fast as I can, or rather I should say as carefully and quickly as I can towards the communication hub. I am trying my best to keep up this pace.

I'm an older man, squat. I have a sort of clipped beard that is now running with flop and terror sweat. I am not a soldier by any stretch of the imagination. And this is all of my worst nightmares realized. I'm still wearing my sort of formal, presentational garb for a gala. and I think that I am struck by the sort of absurdity of me in my little James Bond, sci-fi future best, but, you know, a five-foot-five little, you know, dwarven-looking guy running along in a spaceship going,

this is how the hub, this is, okay, communication, the hub, okay, okay. And I'm going to take us towards the comms, deck, which I believe is the next deck is like halfway to where these, what Andre is thinking of as, for a moment he was like terrorists and now he goes, oh, this is, this is, we're under invasion. This is an invading. These are barbarians at the gate. This is Mars. And I think it's just plugging the loan to get to the comms. At this point, seeing Mars, he's more frightened than he was when he thought these guys were terrorists. He said, this is worse. What they'll do to us is going to be worse.

With Andre's sort of like muttering, do you look frazzled? Yeah. Then Kiki, who at this point, she's five feet tall, dark skin, hair pulled back into a bun that's that level of severe that it can look formal if it needs to or just tucked away. Because she has divested herself of her 10 meters of extraordinarily expensive, sorry material. She's just wearing a like close fitting black jumpsuit now and kind of looks over at Andre and just hold. Hold on. Just I need you to take like two deep breaths before we keep going because I think you're getting more agitated and I need you to get calmer before we go do whatever we have to go do now. Sir, you want to sort of hold your breath at the top and the bottom of your. of your inhales and exhalations. Did my two breaths that were faulty get me,

at least part of the way, would one breath at top form do it, or should I start over? I mean, honestly, I'd prefer to start over, but I appreciate that you're making a joke right now. Okay, let's go. Fishcakes, who had been staring intently at this man, returns to running position, which is somewhat folded over, head-dead,

down, almost scurrying their small form sort of sticking to the sides of the hallways and moving in sort of short bursts, almost like one of those creepy little spiders that goes really fast in short bursts. You all proceed forward. Andre takes you to one of these central lifts, which are the lifts that kind of move along the spine of the ship, carrying you from level to level. As you approach the segmented shutters of the lift fold back, peeling away into the walls, retracting along hidden tracks to reveal a bullet-shaped cabin waiting for you. As you step into it, you hear a soft chime and an announcement. All threat station designation as you all step into this space. You see that the opposite side is clear and reinforced glass.

And again, you are able to see these coffins. vessels of Martian origin moving through space and as you watch they begin to open fire you see golden radials appearing from the ships striking at the different vessels that were docked along the meridian and you watch you feel a shutter in the ship as these golden rays hit the vessels you see that it looks like the damage they're taking is not like explosions it's not blast but you see that the you see circuitry and wires flashed of bright light as the ships disconnect from the meridians and begin to descend down, falling into open space. There is a clear indication here of where you can press should you want to proceed to comms.

The ships that were being fired on were those primarily transport ships for the dignitaries that were here or a like defensive response. The transport ships, the ship you were on, you watch these golden rays appearing from the ships, fizzles, lights, lights, flashes, and then the ships decoupling from the meridian and falling into space. They're taking a lot of preventative measures to ensure that nobody escapes. I assume that they'll be taking the same sort of precautions in the communications room. What is our plan of ingress? Into comms deck, okay. If we get to Coms Deck, we are going to try to find a long-range communicator that they are not taking offline.

My hope is that they are trying to take command of bridge for piloting before they are thinking about coms, we have a narrow window to try and find. Okay, back channel. I'd like to make some kind of check to see if I know a way to get into comms somehow. Yeah, do you want to give me technology or... Let's go with tech. Or actually, can I just give an investigation? Yes, please.

Let's go for investigation. What shenanigans do I have that can help me, if anything? None. That's okay. And we have countermeasures up too that's helping us. You currently are undetectable. 16 plus 9 is 25. Fantastic.

Andre, this is a military vessel. The nature by which it is constructed is deeply segmented. And the reason for that is for a moment like this. If people are trying to take over the ship, it is more difficult if their flow and ability to move through the ship is not easy. There's not a staircase that goes from the zenith. have down to comms. You have to take the central lifts. You have to be able to control the central lifts to move up and around the ship. So in terms of getting into comms, the ways in are through the central lift or, I mean, you could maybe use some kind of power line or the different conduits

through which the plasma from the thermoplastic routing core through which that energy moves. However, that would be probably immensely dangerous because of the amount of power that's churning through them right now. I think that on a 25, I mean, you would surmise that the reality is, if there are people in comms, you will have to fight people in comms. However, once you're in comms, you will know, like, the entrances and exits are so limited that if there is no one there, you guys will be able to control the space easily. Coms is one of the smallest sections on the ship, in part because of the amount of technological, there's so much data that is being processed us in that space, that the actual room itself is actually quite small.

Okay, ways to get to comes. If entire ship is shut off and power systems are offline, you can potentially go through service channels for thermoplastic routing core, but the radiation from thermoplastic routing core make that not safe for how it is right now. So to shut off ship, we need to be in different place and then we're back to square one, how we get there. So going to have to be central lift. Question for us is central lift has lift and then central lift has shaft. If we don't want to be track on the lift part, maybe we just chance trying to hard wire door open and get down the old-fashioned way. Immediately Andre is like, if we press the elevator

button, they're going to know. They will know that someone's incomes. And I say, so we need to do this old-fashioned way. Do you think it would be beneficial for us to take out the elevator system entirely? Right now, they don't know how much of a problem we are. So I think what they know is some of the people upstairs kill some people and run away. So let's keep as much a mystery as we can. I don't want to start to...

My thinking is, maybe it's better for them to think we're just somewhere hiding until it's too late. Point of clarification, does anyone know that we have escaped? I don't think they do. Nobody made it out.

No person made it out of the zenith half. This is a military vessel. I think to what Andre is speaking to, I think in your very kind of like present space fish cakes. You've seen cameras. You've seen, you've walked through kind of like ID biometric scanners that take count of when people exit and entrance.

I don't know if they would know it's like it is Vera and Kiki and Andre, but they know that people are like someone, especially Andre, you could speak to with that 25 investigation. Someone's on Central Command. Like this is what Coms does. Communications isn't just how people speak out. also where data being received is processed and then transferred down to the command deck. Even if these were just a group of criminals, well, they're not going to have walkie-talkie. They're going to go for, what, 15, 20 minutes with their accomplices keeping you in the room upstairs and not say, hey, how it's going with hostages?

No, they're going to, they know that their companions already dead. They know it for sure. Agreed. Well, then in that case, I mean, it doesn't hurt for us to. get into the elevator shaft and possibly disable it. Andre, go ahead and give me a technology or investigation check on the nature of, like, as Fishkeeks mentions that. That's a 26. Incredibly difficult. This is not like an elevator that's like on a pulley system.

Okay. It's like a gravity drive infused manipulation of gravity up and down. The amount of technical, like you could spend the next. several hours attempting to disable this machine, and you might get it. So Dr. Cortez designed the central lift to withstand approaching solar flare. I have this pistol. I don't think we're going to do it. Also, it does make sense to cause less disruption, so they don't see us as a problem they

need to go deal with. I see. All right. Well, let's, uh, I say that it seems like the only point of ingress for communications is this elevator shaft. So we go in and we make sure that another car is not coming towards us and we get to comms, climb down to comms. Yeah, I don't know how we're going to do that first part, but we can use shaft to get two comms. Okay.

And I do just want to flag to the group that if I was the Mars Protectorate abducting, the star of tear and defense, this would be a thing they want to broadcast to Earth. So we are not going to be the only ones interested in comms. Yeah, maybe. Maybe it's true. Or maybe they're not done yet. Maybe they have this in their sights, but they don't have their teeth in the throat just yet. So we're going to try to act like there's hope,

because if there's not hope, then it's okay to act, however. I think at that, like, as you continue, like, sort of move forward emotionally with the next part of the plan, that's when Kiki, like, steps back and takes two slow breaths to, like, center herself and ground herself to. We head to the central lift. Fantastic. You guys are here standing in the central lift. Go ahead and give me a processment check as you look for a way to kind of get into the shaft element. Can I give the help action? You're more than welcome to.

Perception or investigation. Another 26 investigation. Oh, I mean, Andre, you've been here while they built the thing. You know, there's a panel underneath the kind of command array where you can designate where you would like the lift to travel. Should you remove that, it will be a tight squeeze, but you could probably, you'd have to tear up a bit of wiring and other things, but you could probably fit into the shaft. beneath. Okay, we're not going to come back to ZHab anytime soon. I know. Start tearing. Okay, out of this. Sparks, vizzles. As you guys watch Andre work, you see that there is kind of, through this, maybe like three-foot tall panel that he's removed and as the wiring is taken out, there does seem to be kind of like a three-by-two-foot hole that you could kind of really force yourself into. I will say, as you, Andre, pull up these. wires. You see it is probably about a 15-foot descent to the next, like, kind of ripped

doors that open up to columns. So you will have to, there is that in your brain. Gotcha. And this is, are we sort of looking at getting down through a wiring channel, or is this just like the broad, open shaft? The broad open shaft, my friend. Oh, boy. Okay. Okay. I'm going to get my little spider climb gloves back off the floor. And I'm going to go, okay. we're going to link up. They want to fuck with me? They don't know that this. I'm like the little boy.

This is like the house alone. They're not going to, they're not going to fuck with me here, okay? So link up and I'm going to try to take a little garabiner thing and just keep my climbing gloves and link into this cocktail gown somewhere. It's a jumpsuit. Okay, great. Yeah.

Just linking up and prepare to shimmy down and get down to comms. I absolutely love it. You guys leak up. I can't... I mean, a vest that is probably not built to support the weight of two other human beings. Andre, how will you be descending? Are you going to go first?

Are they going to go first? How are you seeing this? I'm going to go first, okay? Because I can... If someone's sleep or fall, I'm not going to fall. I can maybe catch. Because if one of you fall,

I think we're going to be okay. If both of you fall, you know... I know the gloves gonna stick to the wall. I don't know my hands stick to the inside of the gloves. You, Andre, descend. You shimmy, you feel the kind of sides of your belly kind of fold up as you kind of make your way into the hole and then, release yourself as you empty the open shaft.

I remember all the training videos about having to stay in shape and space that I absolutely did not. I had too much of the lunch paste. This is why you guys eat so many cheese. Andre, I will not ask you to make any checks in this moment. As the gloves, like you're saying, allow you to easily begin to make the climb. As you kind of descend down this open shaft, again, reinforced glass behind you looking out into the void, you are able to get almost kind of like at the top corner of this seven, eight foot doorway that leads into comps. You are at the top corner as you feel the snag of the tethers that you have attached to Vera and Kiki.

Okay. I will look at this new area, and I'm going to try my best to open up and get us into comps as much as I can. Give me an investigation check. Nat 20. Yay! Nat 20, baby. You see that kind of around your foot seems to be kind of a maintenance pad, keypad, something. that probably connects to the internal kind of command display for the central lift.

With a Nat 20, I think you are able to easily trace where those wires might intersect, traversing up the kind of lift wall, and are able to open up a panel that's within reach, tear that open, and you know easily by removing those wires, you could get the doors open. Wires out getting the door open. You see that the ribbed doorway to comms opens up. Hell yes. I, meanwhile, one end of your tether is attached to fish cakes, it is looped into my incredibly sturdy harness that I have on my overalls.

I am just above clinging onto the wall on the inside of the shaft, just above where the door opens. Can I poke my head sort of duck under the top of the doorway and poke my head in? You mean into comms? Yes. You have about a 10-foot descent from where you guys are still in the central lift above. Andre has climbing gloves. You see that allow him to technologically magnetize to the wall.

He has climbed down the shaft 10 feet as you feel pulling on your overalls the snag of the hooks that are connecting. When you descend from the central lift where you guys are standing, it will be some element of scrambling and controlled falling to attempt to maneuver yourself to fall into the open doorway that Andre has just created, if that makes sense. Yes, I do have fast and agile where climbing no longer costs extra movement,

and I can, it says move in flying leaps. That will definitely apply here. Yes. I'll get in through the open doors, tug on the little sort of connective tethers, and these doors to come, comms. The elevator itself, the lift has internal, just like an elevator has the doors that are part of the cabin and these others. Could I leave these doors permanently open on comms?

Easily. Great. I'm going to leave them open because if someone's going past and not going to comms, the elevator will still just be closed. But it's a way for us to, without having to use technology, keep a track on what's going on with the elevator. So I'll just leave those doors open. And maybe even we hit your eyes. We find out where people are going to go? And I will pull on the tutors and ready an action to give help to anybody who is falling or who slips. Fantastic. How much loose wiring in footage do you think that I have gathered? Go ahead and roll me 2D4.

Three and four, seven. You have seven feet of wiring. Great. While all of this was happening, I was just tying all the wiring together. And I hand you, I'm handing you wire. and then at the end of the length, I hand you the top of the head of a grappling hook. Oh, this is even better than what I was going to thank you.

Cool. Fishcase, can you describe for me this grappling hook you carried into this space? So the grappling hook that I have is something that expands. It normally looks just kind of like a little flat rectangle of metal, but when pushed, it expands kind of like a tripod. And the little hooks claw out and form the hook for the, to grapple things with. Question.

This is really nice. Do you want to keep this? Because if I use it here, we're not going to have it for later. Well, we have to do what we got to do. Oh, I believe you can detach it if it's yanked the right way. Okay. We'll see what we get. I've only got seven feet, so this will be harder, but okay.

Who would like to go first? Um, I'll go first. Yeah. Fish kicks, you begin to maneuver down. With your ability, I will allow you to make this check with advantage. Yeah. Go ahead and give me a athletics or acrobatics, whichever you'd prefer. I will do acrobatics.

13. With a 13. Fish kicks, how is it that you are maneuvering down this shaft? Is you kind of, you easily kind of fit through the hole that Andre has made? I crawl in through the hole. And I just sort of finding, almost goat-like, finding the tiny crevices and the cracks in the paneling of the walls. I make my way down sort of using the seven feet of the wiring as a guide. And for the rest of it, I just use my fingers and the toes, my toes, which are in those, the toe shoes.

The eyebrows. Yes. The individualized toe shoes. The individualized toe shoes. Are you there, Andre or Fishcake's washing this? Yes. You see a child who has the strength of like, I mean, the only, the only comp I have is free solo. Yeah.

Like, this is, this child's finger strength is unbelievable. Mortaring on inhuman. What's happening? I can't see it. And you see me like, my little head peek out. Oh, Jesus. Got you. And so I clambered down the rest.

of the three feet or so and sort of hang by my fingertips above the doorway. Easily. 13 fish kicks, you were able to use your core strength to swing into comms confidently and easily. That's remarkable. How you do this? Practice. Okay. All right, Kiki, we're ready for you. Okay, well, both of you post up. If I fuck this up, you have to catch me. Catch me.

Not going to be a problem for fish cake. Fish cake. Strongest little guy in the world. Because of, I think, the ingenuity of the grappling hook and the wiring, I'll let you make this role with advantage. Acrobatics or athletics. Yeah, that's a 23. Yeah.

So you see, like, Kiki's head, like, popped out to go see what Andre was muttering about anew and then saw you fish cakes muttering and, oh, that's terrifying. hops back, and then what drops, like, fully through this, like, open panel is seven feet of wire, snapped, and you see her, like, use her body to, like, crack the whip. So she's back against the other wall and just whips herself in the direction of, like, the landing zone. And I'm going to try, it should probably be a separate check, at the, like, sort of apex of where she would normally just let go and try to land well. She's going to try to, like, crack the whip again. And, just to see if she can move.

I don't want you to lose your grappling hook if I don't have to. So she's going to make like a little extra check to try to untether that. Go ahead and give me a flat acrobatics check. Seven. You whip it to try and get the wiring back. And you're not fully in the landing zone.

No, I didn't let go. Yeah. You hook it and succeed in getting the grappling hook undone. However, you immediately feel. feel your weight shift in an awkward way. I'm going to need a ready-ed action from either fish cakes or Andre to grab Kiki. Got it. Shift.

Physics. Would you say this is a saving throw or an athletics check or what? You had a ready-to-action, right? Ready-to-action, yeah. I'm leaning toward a skill check. Okay. I would say athletics. Let's go.

Athletics, in that case, 14. 14. Beats of 12. I was ready to, like, hook my legs and sort of try and. and trapeze artists grab her? I had a full inhale and was squatted down, holding the tether right on my way. Like, I have it right in my groin chakra on the belt.

And the second I hear the slightest little from Kiki, just the intake of breath that lets you something's gone wrong, I meet that with a full exhale of jumping straight backward as hard as I can. Andre, you jump straight backwards, slide six feet as you grab Kiki's weight. Kiki, you fall, holding onto the wire. You are an hard tug but are secure. Along with this, Kiki's like little mental,

always cover yourself and not trust the rest of the group. You tug back, but where you see Kiki when she lands, I'm going to use phase shift. So I'm actually like three feet behind you in the other direction in a mild defiance of physics. but she looks completely startled. I'm looking around at, I've seen fish cakes just do this, this like nightmare thing that to me, like seeing a starfished, like person,

finger and toe climbing down his shack. I think like Andre, his like son when he went to university at the moon, showed him like a nightmare slop, Autogen channel. And that was like one of the, uh, autogen nightmare girl crawl to air vans like starfish. This. And then I see you teleport and I go like, oh man, I fucking died. I'm dead.

I die and go to hell. Hey, I can hear that. Okay. Are you both, are you both Martian? Am I under arrest? Is this a, you have powers, your biojourn? I'm from Mars, but don't you ever say that I'm a Martian? You are from Mars.

Okay, not Martian. Let's go to Coms. And I'm just going to wipe that from my memory. I'm just like, I'm like, I, there's two, I'm like, I can't get into whatever psychic powers or like biogen stuff is going on. So I'm just going to keep it hoofing over to the comms panel. Oh, thank you for trying to save my grappling. No, I did. Oh, you got it.

Yeah, that's why I had to pull so. I grab it as if I'm grabbing a stuffed animal and I hug it close to me. I say, thank you. It's okay if you didn't have to. get it, but it's just, I know we can't, we don't necessarily need to use it, but it just makes me feel better to have it. And I click the, click the metal prongs back in. Thank you for trusting me with it. And thanks for helping. I'm not used to that. I'm still being tugged by this man. Let me unbuckle.

As you unbuckle and Andre, you feel walking deeper, walking into the comms area, feel the two tethers that you gave to your two, I don't know if you would go so far as to call them comrades, but associates return to your kind of gear belt. You enter the comm station. A circular chamber around a central plasma transfer conduit that brings the energy up from the thermoplastic routing core into this space. The exterior walls are lined with antenna wiring, receivers and relay hubs. Fiber-like conduits run across the walls like glowing veins, visually representing the constant flow of data from external sensors into processors,

curved wall screens display, sensor data, star maps, radiation levels, and communications traffic. There are also in this room several quantum encryption nodes that stud the chamber, securing all comms traffic against Martian interception or tampering. What you see, Contrae, you know on the far wall opposite where you all have entered this space is a specialized Z wave communicator that uses gravitational particle manipulation to send missives and communication data. That is the you would have known or talked about. That is the crown jewel of the communications array here on the Icaron. We are quite far from Earth right now. We're very close to the sun.

I'm just thinking, I just want to be prepared that if we send a message, we will not hear back immediately. Does the Z wave mean you can hear back immediately? The Z wave is a singular piece of technology, which means you will hear back immediately. Shut up. Let's go. I think Andre remembers conversations that he's had with his kids, where they asked if the Z wave was faster than light travel. And he had to explain that it's like, it's like, it's not travel. Nothing can travel faster than speed of light, but some things don't have to travel.

Some things can be in more than one place at the same time. And he's going to get on that day and start to punch in to send an emergency missive to Earth, letting them know that Mars has attacked the Icaron. While he's doing that, you said that information goes in there. Is there a security array? How do you mean? Like cameras, is this where the camera feeds come in? Is it?

100% yes. Oh. Let's go, fish cakes. Okay, so we've got visual information for the entirety of the ship. We have comms down to earth. Is there anything else interesting or of note on the comms deck? Like, as Kiki does a little spray of like, what does this room actually do? Andre, as you are walking over to the Zy Waysayers,

communicator, scanning different relays and outputs. The pass that you were doing brought you within roughly 150,000 kilometers of the sun, and you are seeing readings that say that you are roughly, and the number is going down, but you are roughly 85 million miles from Earth. Getting closer. Are we getting closer because of the pass around the sun? Yes, I think you are, a lot of the sensor. on this ship you see are not perhaps prepared for reading data.

Like, you see that several of the sensors are whited out on the side that faces the sun. But in terms of the star maps where you are, you have very much done your pass around. You were meant to be viewing the sun at this point in the kind of display, the kind of flex, kind of impress the brass moment. That would have been around this time, if not a bit, earlier. So you were very much on your coming back, headed towards Earth, having slingshotted around the sun. Great. Andre is a little bit, has a moment's hesitation as he realizes, this is go time, which means that it's the time for an engineer when everything should work if you did all your

bath right. So you are hitting the Z wave of communicator to communicate with Earth. Fishcake. You are checking the security footage area. I'm checking the security monitor array and ensuring too, if I can figure it out that there's nobody on their way to comms. And I assume that once the message gets sent, that it will bring attention to comms. So I'd like to surveil,

just sort of glean any information that I can. Fantastic. Keeping an eye on that. Kiki, is there anything you're doing in this space? Is there any other, like, system in this room about monitoring and understanding the Icaron writ large? Very much so. This room is very much about taking all the data, and then the data that the captain wants is disseminated down to the command bridge. So any data you wanted on the Icaron or the elements of the world that are immediately outside of the Icaron is in this room. Okay. So the thing that I want to do is find that pinch point for where all of the data set gets dumped into one specific thing for the captain and route it so specifically.

I want it to be routed through Kiki's tech. So I see whatever the captain would want to see. And if someone comes and messes with the feed from Mars, they will see my name attached to it. Fantastic. Okay. We're going to start with Andre. Right. Nothing is more important than getting a message out. But Andre is starting to realize, like, as you get to the end of a plan, you start to go, well, wait. If I'm winning, how much can I win by? Right?

And starts to go, the best, this whole thing has been worn earth, warn earth, warn earth. And now that he's here, he goes, warn Earth without Mars knowing. And I think that that becomes his thing where he goes, okay, it's good for Earth to know. It's even better if Earth knows and Mars doesn't know. Okay. So that's his sort of ideal scenario is, can I send a missive in such a way that Mars will not be able to tell that I've sent a message? Go ahead and give me a technology check.

Here we go. That's a Nat one. Oh, no. Oh, no. Z-Wave technology is perhaps one of the ways in which you have surpassed Mars. You understand that maybe within the Icaron, that information may be communicated. I think on a Nat one, you assume Mars doesn't have tech that can process. You barely understand Z wave tech.

How could that? I think there is just something, there's a confidence with just the nature of the technology itself that the missive will likely be exclusively between Earth. You think maybe somebody who worked in Com said something one time about how this is in its own way, stealth communication. They put everything into biogen. They neglected their traditional engineering. Okay, we're going to open up a channel. No need to.

And I think it just is then going to open up. Are you saying that out loud? Yeah, I think so. Okay, Broadwave. And it's just going to try to get the bigot call everybody. Go to the group chat, start at FaceTime. Like, everybody who wants can jump in, baby. You see that this Z wave communicator is, it's big.

built into the bulkhead of the panels. It's standing taller than a person, shaped like a broad pillar, a brush steel with inlaid glass panels. Its surface is broken by rows of indicator lights, amber are green and white, running in neat vertical bands, pulsing gently to show the active channels. At chest height, there's a recessed console that folds out, offering a clean array of touch-sensitive panels and a hand-shaped cradle where the operator rests their palms for biometric clearance.

By putting your hands on this, you see your name come up on the screen. Your name comes up on the screen. You have, as one of the station's chief engineers, you have access to use this communication technology. And you see that the console projects a hollow feed of waveforms and coordinates that you understand to be for the global executive security station on Earth. As the transmission begins, you feel a faint vibration as through the deck's plating. nothing dramatic, but just a sense of heavy machinery going into work out of sight. There is a sharp, clear chime that cuts through the hum of this room. As you hear, this is General Hodge in Houston, Texas.

Come in, Icaron. His voice is crystal clear, almost as if he's in the room with you. This is General Hodge at G-SIC, Houston, Texas. Come in, Icaron. General Hodge This is Chief Engineer Andre Dalka of the Icaron In making our pass around the sun

We have been attacked by Martian strikecraft Martian have taken the bridge And taking command of the Icaron I'm sorry, we're seeing a wide-level threat We assumed that it was In reference to the sun or the intensity It's you are boarded We are boarded

additional craft are arriving right now on the vessel. They have attacked the bridge. Dr. Imani Cortez is dead. They have taken the command of the bridge. I'm sorry. You have to slow down. Dr. Cortez is dead. Dr. Cortez is dead. There is, um, uh, we need, we need immediate, uh, aid.

And, and, uh, the, the, the Martian find the coordinates that we believe that they have collaborator within the crew of the vessel. Understood. Are you safe? Uh, uh, No, there are... Are you able to remain at the communications station, or however, the Z-wave communicator on which we are speaking? Yes, yes, the attackers do not know that we are here.

Okay, we are going to transfer communication over to the G-Sec on Tranquility and resume communication. Give us just a second. Okay. Andre, as that conversation is happening, fish kicks. How is that a mat one? Oh, I'm in trouble. Yeah, it's probably fine. It's probably fine.

Fishcakes, give me a technology check as you are looking at this panel. I mean, you can see that you're immediately seeing a few feeds. You see three kind of wide, curved, hollow screens that run along the wall that are projecting different camera feeds from around the ship. 14. You're pretty quickly able to, while not being able to maybe understand the way in which the things are. organized, you find the kind of to the left click and the right click to kind of move through the different sets of feeds around the ship. The feeds you're looking at as you start are fabrication. Currently in fabrication, you see nobody moving around.

As you click through, you move from fabrication to the gravity drive, where you see like a multi-tiered chamber at the center of which is a conduit of light that is expousing off these different little, particulates that feed into the gravity drive of the entire ship. There's no one currently stationed there either. You click next to the cameras labeled thermoplastic routing core. In each one of these spaces, there are about three different cameras. In thermoplastic routing core, you see three men, you see the men are speaking in a tight circle speaking to one another intently. Clicking next to Nadirhab. You see three cameras, one of which shows a sealed pair of bulkhead doors with someone wearing a similar G-Sec uniform to the one of the gentleman you dispatched earlier, standing outside the bulkhead doors. Inside, you see a crowd of

people, roughly 20 or so. You see in the brief moments that you're looking, you watch as they try valiantly to break down the doors. You see them running against the doors. You see someone is working the control panel next to the doors. There's about 20 or so people trying to get out. And do I see are those the people that were taken? They are not. But you do recognize the gentleman wearing a Wawa jersey.

You see that he is kind of at the front, leading several larger men in ramming against the door. You then click back. You are now again looking at the zenith visit. where you see Talia and Bogo and the children. You see Talia holding her sidearm, eyes on the elevator from which you guys have descended. You then look at comps and see yourselves. You then look at the command deck.

On the command deck, you see the crowd of people who were taken from the Zenith Fis hab. You see them with their hands bound, blindfolds on, sitting against the wall. You see several of the men in the global security off outfits standing over them. You see one of those men is turning toward an area that the camera seems to point out that you see looks similar to the central lift area

that you took from the Xenipab. As you watch four Martians, all seven foot tall, minimum, wearing sleek, matte armor, step off of the lift, and begin to talk to the net. Fishcakes turns their head sideways so that one eye is peripherally looking at the screen and one eye is peripherally looking at Andre and Kiki.

They're here. Kiki, you are attempting to steal data, correct? It doesn't have to be steel. It needs to be, I want to be just above the pinch point for whatever the captain's feet is. because I know that everyone on comms or on the command deck will be working off of that information too. Okay. The first thing I think is you go to rewire that data, it asks for credentials. You can try and override that or you can try another way.

You tell me it'll be a technology check either way. As that's happening, and maybe this is like during your conversation with Hodge, just to distract you a little bit, Andre. Are you important enough to get the captain's feed? get the captain's feed yeah i maybe i need your credentials come here general hodge one moment please and i'm going to step over to to give my credentials to ghi give me a luck check seven uh andre is not cleared god damn okay that's fine that's fine i'll just cut away from you to go back to the general and say am i speaking with tranquility uh sorry we are um this is an all-hand situation we are attempting to get members of the executive council uh as well as the leaders of GSEC.

If you could just hold on for one second, Andre, please. Holy. Then I'm going to try to do it my damn self. All right, go ahead and give me a technology check. DC is 17. Cool. I'm also going to stack my defiant on there, which is a D4.

I get to add once per rest. Oh, my God. Could you imagine if I world a natural one on my dice and then a one on the four also? Okay, cool. Yeah, that works for me. Oh, okay. I just want to give you a little gift.

work with that. Yeah, great. That's a one in 80 odds. Yeah, yeah. Not for, not for a little Suvie. Okay, great. Hey, you know, I, you asked me to pick one of those, die, and I picked the other ones. I did. Fuck. You watch as the system flags this input and, uh, closes you out. God damn it. Andre. You hear General Hodge go. All right, Mr. Dalka, I'm going to transfer you over to tranquility. Mr. Dalka, you will be speaking with executive council. members Lyle Renek and Vaughan Mercer as well as General Sloan and Dreg, patching you in that. You hear another chime.

We're speaking to Andre Dahlka. Yes, this chief engineer, Andre Dalka, Martian craft appear and have taken the Icaron. The ship is fallen. We are being militarily occupied by Martian invader. Understand. Can you upload your current coordinates through the Z-Wave communicator? I'm going to upload the Icaron. current community, uh, uh, yes, the Icarans, I upload through the communicator.

Fantastic. Uh, they receive it. All right, you're still pretty far out. In terms of regaining control of the ship, does it feel possible? Does it feel doable? There's a long pause and I go, do you, are you guys talking to each other? Or are you talking to me? One of the generals ask another general if it feel doable? Are you asking chief engineer André Dalca. Mr. Dolka, this is Councillor Renner. We are asking you.

The coordinates that you have sent us, the soonest we could have craft in the area, is tomorrow. It's at that point that Fishcakes sees the Martians stepping out of the elevator and moves their periphery to look at both the screen and their companions and goes,

they're here. Leaders of GSEC, the military presence on the vessel, I am not certain if it is here. I will review security measures. If there is security force, I can try to provide engineering aid to them, but ship is fallen. If there is not a cavalry that is coming, the voices you hear on the other side begin to speak to one another. You hear the voice that identified themselves as Sloan, say. I mean, it's tomorrow. The thing we should be focused on is not the Icaron.

It is tranquility. You see Renick go, I understand, but we cannot abandon the project. It's not about abandon the project. The project, I mean, there's no point to the project if tranquility falls. You see that Renick goes, I understand, I understand. Mr. Alka, do you have any understanding of the size of the force? I'm going to look to my companions who have been gathering information, do we know how it's large forces?

Could I have ballpark estimated the number? Like, I know the specs of those coffins. Could I have groked or at least approximated? Like, a cloud that big is usually this many people flying? Cloud that big, 15 individuals. Okay. Ish. And that's what you saw.

What we saw on the way. Sorry. Am I? Can you hear me? Yes. Hi. This is Counselor Rennick. To whom I'm speaking?

I'm Kiki. I was able to see 15 XRV-2s in the air. I mean, that sounds like a boarding party if I've ever heard of one. Well, they were also destroying all of the ships that could reasonably leave here, so my best guess is that they're going to kill the ship. And anyone that's still on it when they're done doing whatever, making whatever proclamation, they're here to make. They've taken your very nice ship at the point where it's,

the hardest you will have to work to come and reinforce it. This ship is lost. That's just what it is. Ship lost is second worst outcome. What's the first worst? They have ship. You hear the sounds of staggered breathing and clenched jaws on the other end of this Z-wave line. As the voice of General Sloan speaks up, understood it.

We're going to make our calculations down here. And we'll report back to you as soon as possible. No, no, stay on the line. What are you calculating? I'm sorry, is this Kiki? Mm-hmm. Hi, Kiki. We are going to be doing calculations with regard to what measures we would like to take next.

And we will tell you your role in that when we are complete. That's so fun. But I know part of your calculations is accounting for whatever you think we still have up here. So if you want to share the beginning of your math, maybe we can make some countermeasures up here too to buy you some goddamn time. Sloan. Understood.

Our first thought is we need to understand the capabilities of the Ecoran versus the defenses we have present here at Tranquility. We understand your comment. We will be on standby. Waiting further instruction, we may have to move from this place if it is not long-term safe,

but we have methods of returning here if we need to. Thank you very much, General. Thank you. I'm going to click the Z wave off and go. They're going to, we got to move. We've got to figure out a way to disable ship, because worst outcome is ship fall into Martian hands. Yeah.

You know what they're going to do before they let the ship fall into Martian hands? I've done a lot of junker work. So yeah. So we got to go and figure out how to make this ship not worth stealing or not possible to steal. In this moment, as you say that, all of the lights go out, all of the screens go dark. Suddenly you find yourselves in complete and utter darkness as all of the screens around you, the illumination from the wiring from the Z wave communicator, all goes out.

seconds later replaced by emergency lighting that you see along the floor, along the ceiling, gentle yellow light. You hear the gentle hum of backup life support, not the kind of thrum of the main, of the kind of central life support units. Instead, something gentler, softer. Andre, you would know that this ship has gone into some sort of reset. Something has been drastically adjusted elsewhere. the ship. Also in this moment, you watch as the central lift descends deeper into the ship. As everything goes off, I would like to use on-off to try to activate some of the safety lights

just in the comms deck. You are able to turn on several of the lights here in the coms deck, kind of better illuminating the space. Question. So that wasn't you? No. Do you know what part of the ship can do that? Well, yes, probably several, but if it's intentional. There are a lot of things that can do that everywhere unintentionally. And I'm going to make a technology check to see if I can tell if this was intentional, unintentional, if it was done on purpose and where it was done from and maybe for what reason.

Please. That is going to be a 16. May I assist with by telling him what I'm. saw on the cameras. Very much so. In the thermoplastic reactor core, there were three men speaking very intently moments ago, yes. Okay. That's still going to be a 16. The men she's speaking about, you immediately assume are likely tubes and the two assistants who were, who you met earlier this, earlier this day. Not Martian. No, not Martian. There was also, in the Nader habitat, the sealed bulkhead doors with G-Sick uniforms, goons on the outside and inside a crowd of about 20 people trying to break down the doors, including the man in the Wawa jersey.

Man in Wawa, Jersey. That is Nate Sharp, the security who you, the Wawa jersey is his slideball team. Yeah. Also, four Martians have just boarded. On that 16, and with the information from Fishcake, you think that this is some sort of reset or command shift that was likely done from the command bridge. Okay. Where are they going to go? They're going to go from here. I don't know where. What maybe we can count on is that they're going to be interested in weapons system, bridge, command.

So I think we've got to go down to reactor corefine tubes and try to damage or otherwise scuttle the ship. If the ship is not useful to Martians, then it is not dangerous to Terrans. Sure. Oh, yeah, because they're, yeah, they're going to, their calculations are going to blow us out of the... But if we disable the ship, though, then the Martians have no reason to keep it in the air either. Well, maybe they don't keep it in the air, but maybe they take hostages, try to salvage some small, win from larger loss. We can think about the worst-case scenario what's going to happen, but Martian smart, odds are they think they know what the biggest win for them is.

So when we know nothing, best thing to do is try to keep them from getting what they want. You hear a moment of feedback as an internal PA system comes online and a voice emanates To those of you aboard this vessel, in Desmus Rock, in this moment I would like to directly address those of you presently. In sector three, the designs you met with are the fruit of long and patient labor. Your trespass is but a fleeting disturbance. This vessel is hereby, see. The terms that you are in the possession of the intellectual property of Pharaoh Allen. That property belongs to Mars.

Vera, you will. be returned home. I'm going to, I'm already moving and I'm going to look at the shaft and how we get all the way to the other side of the ship, but there's a thermoplasmic routing cord. As you are looking down into the shaft, you see that the lift is rising up to meet you.

We got to go. No, I'm not safe. And I'm going to look for any way out. Go ahead and give me a perception check. 17. You said it before as you entered the room, and I think your mind goes to the reset. Right now, low to no power. is churning through the conduits that run all up and down the arc line of the Icaron.

Your eyes alight on the conduit in the center of the room. As the central lift rises, the interior gates on the lift itself open. And two Martians, seven feet in height, encased in sleek, matte black armor with thin crimson striping, reinforced at the joints with cortical implants at the base of their neck. You see ordinary faces altered only by the faint telltale signs of surgical scars and a flat affect on their faces that you might recognize as neural dampening. They raise magnetic rifles at all three of you. Please roll initiative. Let's go. That's going to be 14 for old Andre Dalca.

23 for Kiki. 12 for fish case. Kiki, you turn as you see Andre stepping back from the lift. turning toward this central pylon area, as you watch these two impressively tall specimens, step off of the lift and into the room with you, weapons raised. You are first to act. Okay. So they are fully stepping off of the elevator? They have stepped off of the elevator. Weapons are raised at the three of you. I'm going to look at Andre, and then my eyes are going to flick to whichever one is, like,

Who are they, like, barreling down on specifically? Because there's three of us. Go ahead and give me perception checks. 11. You see they are scanning the room and seem to be severe, and then, I think, fixate on you, on Kiki and Andre. Then, fuck, we're going to try to force disarm them. Oh? Your choice, strength, or dexterity saving throw.

Let's go, strength. And you need to beat a 16. I do not. I get a 15. Okay. The hot one, between the two of them, I want his gun. The only thing you see is, what have we used to describe her sort of like abilities thus far? I mean, they are gravity-based. So you are manipulating force in the space, shifting invisible mass through the space as you alter it with the powers embedded in you. So then everyone feels it. we're used to gravity changing, like, we've all been in rooms in space where those have stopped

working. All of the gravity shifts, so suddenly Kiki is bottomed, like she's down. So this flies out of his hand and sails to me like, I am the new arbiter of, and you can all feel like the change in drag on you, that like Kiki has become a well of gravity here as like the gun lands in it. André, you feel a slight pull, not so oriented at you that you yourself, like, lose control, but there is something to Kiki in this moment becomes a center of gravity. I'll like sort of hip bump into Kiki as I go, ah, as this power manifests in front of me. Are you able to take the weapon, or is it just, uh... Nope, it's mine now.

Fantastic. You now have a magnetic rifle that does 1D6. Cool. You fully disarmed one of the men. That moves to Andre. Looking at the, I've already got the lights up, and I think I'm going to go, and just open up one of the light channels all the way. There are some rotational lights that are used, the sort of directional lights that are used here for spotlighting work

that happens on the actual comm stations here, so it's not all track lighting, in other words. There's some that's like directional. everything here is variability the technology behind all the light bulbs none of this is like a sylvania 60 watt everything here is on a dimmer that all ties

the efficiency channels all tied directly to thermoplastic routing core so I am just going to juice one of those directional lights and cast flash and basically make it so bright that it's what to burn their retinas out of their eyes hell yeah we're going to roll it's 6D10 hit points to see, it affects them without a saving throw.

This is also a nice way for us to measure exactly how scary these guys are, because if it doesn't work, we know how many hit points they've got. Oh, we're all good. 13, 19, 22, 31 hit points. And it needs to beat their hip, or what does it need to do? Creatures within 20 feet at the point are affected in ascending order of their current hit points,

ignoring unconscious creatures. So it's very much like sleep. Got it. So it needs to hit their hit point maximum to be effective? It needs to hit their maximum hit point to be effective. It affects both of them, correct? It affects both of them, but it uses up hit points, essentially.

You watch as they both turn to look as you take one of the sources of light in this room and expand it. pushing it to the maximum. You watch as visors descend down over their eyes as the light flashes, and neither of them are effective. You watch an old father know that he's going to get murdered by Martians in this room. More certain than he's been of anything today is that he's going to die right here. Give me a perception check as those thoughts rushed to your mind.

That is going to be A-11. As you foresee your death with certainty at the hands of these big men, you hear a bang from within the central pylon. We are now going to move to the man who still has his weapon, raises it up, says, I'll secure the child, and moves towards fish cakes. Fish cakes, he is going to fire at you with a dart. does a 12 hit?

No, it does not. You watch as he flicks his weapon and you see the light on the front of it go from red to green, firing out a syringe-like dart that lands just at your feet. He's going to take a second shot on you. As he moves, he's going to move within 15 feet of you,

I think kind of five feet away from Andre and Kiki. Does a 24 hit? Jesus. Yes. I'm going to need a DC, 12 Constitution Saving Throne. Dirty 20. Dirty 20. You feel a dart hit the fat part of your belly, of which there is little because you are so frail.

But you feel it release a toxin into you. You feel your limbs want to seize up. They want to restrain and be held in place. You feel something in the back of your head get hot and push through that feeling. That is Fishcake's turn. Okay, I sprint towards the one Martian that does not have a gun, grabbing the dart on the floor as I do. How far am I?

You can easily close. Okay, so I'm going to close, and I am going to climb him like he is a tree. Incredible. You scoop the dart off the floor. Charge. Andre, you watch knowing your certain death, hearing the sounds. This small, frail child scurries up this man, and I'm assuming you're going to stab? Yes.

Go ahead and give me that attack. That's 24. 24 hits? Okay, this is a big roll. He adds a plus one to Khan. If he does not succeed, he is. stunned. It's a DC12, so he needs 11 or higher on the dice. That's a 15. Damn it. You, you still do 2D6 plus your...

Snake attack? I would not say this is a sneak attack. Okay. That's eight points of damage. And is the dart still in his neck? Very much so. Cool. I'm just going to hang on to it there and cling to him. Free solo. Yeah. You got it. You have clamped up in the man, stabbed him in the neck. You feel the toxin inject. It seemingly does not take effect.

However, you feel you have caused this man an immense amount of pain. That is the second one who does not have his gun is going to rush at you, Kiki. Sure. He's going to reveal a stun baton off of his hilt and take two swings at you. Yeah. What is your AC? Fifteen. One of them hits.

You take nine points of damage as you feel. He swings hard into your shoulder with this stun baton, dealing not only an immense amount of force, but also an electricity that runs through your body. You are in close combat with him. The other guy is about five feet to the left of Andre, who was moving towards Fishkakes. But as Fishkakes moves forward, you see that he's turned around.

And you guys are kind of in a clump right now. the Kiki and Andre and the first of the Martians. And then standing closer to the lift is the second Martian with fish cakes on him. We now go back to the top of initiative with Kiki. Okay, we are huddled up, so a rifle is now an inconvenience. Can I get a shot off? Or is it just truly too clumped up to try to get a shot with a gun? I would say you could get a shot off if you would.

wanted, but yeah, it would be with disadvantage this close. Yeah, okay. Then Kiki, who is closer in build and temperament to fish cakes, right, climb him. I'm going to try and climb this man and put him to sleep the old-fashioned way by, like, choking him out with his rifle. Okay, cool. And the ability I'm going to use, there's an ability I want to stack on this called defensive tech. the throttling is just sort of a male like general melee attack got it what are the rules or what do I need to roll for all it is is like extra damage if he messes with me while we're in close proximity

got it uh do you want me to make any check on top of just a melee attack no I think let's start with the melee attack as you attempt to wrangle this by 22 uh you succeed sweet so I'm up there like choking your mouth uh yes you are almost his height and thus able to kind of get a solid amount of leverage on him as you pull the rifle into his neck. You see that he is using one of his hands to try and keep it from fully collapsing his windpipe. Nice. Then I think just for flavor on top of that, she very specifically, like, when trying to lock him up with the gun, she's going to loop her like offhand behind the cables going up back behind the back of his neck. If he throws me off too quickly, I'm going to do my best to take

whatever he's plugged into, with me. Hell yes. Andre, that is you. Your two companions have summited both of your enemies. I'm dead.

This is the hallucination of a man who's bleeding out. A Martian kicked my throat off and now I am dying and these are my last. This is what you see before you go to hell.

Everyone's membranes are dictating. This is awful. I'm having the worst. day ever. My best friend just got shot and killed. Ex-wife is here and that's not going well. But I'm going to go and go, well, it's a dream. What would you do in a dream? If anything can be real, what would you do?

I go, I grab the gun off my side. As I'm pulling it up out of the holster, I'd fumble it and toss it off on the ground. It flies off. I go, uh-huh. And looking at the fact that these guys are, there's like, in bullet time, wrestling actually does kind of last forever. Like if you're thinking about bullets being fired, people getting hit with a baton, and suddenly it's like a grapple, I just, I watch myself start to move.

And they call it the fight or flight response because it's not conscious, which means occasionally you start fighting even when you don't choose to. And I go to my belt and I take off a uranium battery pack. which we use to occasionally, if a power system totally fails,

you just have to go old school tech and use nuclear. So it's a small nuclear reactor in a battery. It's like old, it's like a fucking, it's like having a version of like drywall, like spackle.

I take a small nuclear reactor. I go to the Martian next to me and I'm going to clip this uranium reactor. He has, he has marine armor, like Martian Marine armor. So I know that stuff works as life support because it has to be able to work

in space, and I'm going to clip a uranium battery onto it where it's not supposed to go and flood his life support system with radiation. Hell, yes. He has to make a Constitution saving throw. DC? The DC for your boy, Andre. Tech save DC 15. He fails.

Let's go. He is going to take, ooh, hot rolls, 21 points of radiation damage and suffer a level of exhaustion. I think this is all just I'm just like, fix it, click and just click a battery onto this guy so that all of his water, life support, everything that's supposed to keep him breathing

and alive in space is just flooded with nuclear radiation. It went from a still suit to a sparkling suit. He now has disadvantage on all ability checks. Andre, you feel your arms and limbs moving in ways maybe you told him to do this. Maybe you didn't. I don't know. You got this.

pack, you know how to attach it. It's not actually that hard. You do it and step back and watch as this person screams in pain, Kiki, you are up in his grill. You watch the sclera of his eyes go from white to radiant yellow in seconds as he I'm going to cover his mouth. As you do 21 points of damage. Kiki, you have this rifle up against his neck.

Go ahead and roll me a D6 worth of force damage as you are pulling against him. Yeah, hold on. You hear some bones crack in his hands as he is desperately trying to force this rifle off of you. That is Andre, the Martian that has just had his system flooded with radiation, is going to attempt to throw you from his back. Kiki, is this when the power takes effect? If you're making me make a save, then yes, it is. He is going to ask you to make a save.

Yeah. DC is 12. Sweet. He takes four more points just for the gall. Deck save? Yes, please. 14. 14.

You easily, he attempts to wrench you off by kind of almost like folding himself in half, turning over. I think it's up to you whether you leave him and land on your feet or if you would like to remain in place. I think I, like, kind of go ass over tea kettle, get to the front of him, and then crawl up. So now I'm in his grill, hand over his mouth. And now I'm just grabbing the back of his head. I don't want to disconnect his systems anymore because that's getting him, like, irradiated in real time. Yes. So I'm just in his face trying to block his view of what's going on, going, you're going to die here and no one's going to remember. You see his mouth. That is history.

Turn fish cakes. You are still on top of the second as he attempts to wrench you off. So I sort of nestle myself in tighter, you know, like fingers and pose in the crevices of body armor, visor. And I take the dart that is still in my right hand and I stab him again with it in the neck. Fantastic. Go ahead and give me that attack roll. That's only a 10. A 10 does not hit.

You see, he is now moving so violently in terms of your ability. You strike armor again as you are attempting to find a soft part with which to inject. All right. Then instead of my cunning action, I'm using fast and adrile. And can I attempt to interact with his cortex wires? Sure. All right. I would like to start pulling them.

Okay. I'm going to use the syringe as kind of. leverage to try and pry them out. Fantastic. So you're not being, you want to pull all of them out, not any particular one. Right. Fantastic. Go ahead and give me a slight of hand check. The 19 and the die plus five for 24. You are using the sharp part of the needle to start pulling at the cortex threads. You don't know in what ways you are impacting him, but you definitely feel yourself ripping loose cords.

It is his turn. He's going to attempt to throw you off of him. Go ahead and give me a dexterity saving throw DC12. He's 19. He is trying to grab at you and you are moving around his body as you continue to rip at these wires so effectively. Yeah, monkey-like, I'm clamoring into places

where his hands are not. Fantastic. I'm going to roll D20. You see sparks and elements of his life support system begin to fizz and flicker. He is going to take a bit of fire damage at the start of each of his turns. He will take 1D4 fire damage at the beginning of each of his turns,

including this one, for which he will take four points of fire damage. As you see sparks and smoke start, to emit out of the spinal area of his armor. He attempts to throw you off and fails. We are back at the top of initiative, Andre. The banging you heard in the central pylon is getting louder. Kiki, that is your turn. Do I hear whatever you heard?

Go ahead and give me a perception, shit. 19. Something is rattling around inside of that central pylon. Quick look down at Andre. Does that look normal? For someone to be strangling, someone to death and be like, are you going to get the door? Andre just starts doing it.

Andre sees your look and is like, yeah, well, you have to get the pylon open so the monster come out because it's hell. All monsters welcome. And then just starts walking to the door in a full fugue state, full fugue state. Fantastic. Kiki, it is your turn. Okay, sorry. Central pylon.

That's not the lift? No, this is like a power conduit in the center of the. the comm station. Oh, okay. Facing the front now, I'm not choking him anymore. Let's try to line up an executioner shot. Great. Go ahead and give me, what are you attempting to do?

I'm on the front of him, so now I want a koala, like, grab the rifle from off the back of his head, hooked around him with just my feet, lean back and shoot him in the center of the forehead. Yeah, go ahead. You are more than welcome to attempt that. 17. 17 hits. Cool. Three points.

Three points of damage. Yeah. You feel the magnetic particle. Just fire out of the weapon. Strike this man in the head. You see a bit of blood begin to trickle. Go ahead and give me a lore check, something that would speak to your experience with Martian tech or soldiers.

Natural 20. As you move to make this shot, fire it off. Perfectly nail it. You remember that certain Martian shoulders of higher rank have subdermal implants that make shots like this, that make the obvious what, especially Terrans would think to do, places they would think to aim less effective in terms of like injuring or killing Martians. You think you have hit some sort of hard steel or carbon alloy that is embedded just below his forehead. Amazing. thereby what should be an execution shot is three points of damage. I think Kiki starts cackling madly.

And the way she's holding the rifle, if anyone's on the right side of her, I don't know if I've mentioned it out loud. She has a fully prosthetic pinky. It doesn't look like there was, there's no other scarring. It was absolutely just, oh, I think fishcakes might know this, was just a flex. And she's made enough deals and worked enough with the Martian Protectorate. that she just got a prosthetic put in as a like little thank you and a connection with Mars in general.

So her pinky is out and she waggles it and goes, sometimes you wonder if you're still human. And then you do something silly. I try to shoot one of you guys right in the forehead. All right. Well, I will kill you. I just didn't think you were that important. As he raises up, Kiki at that point is going to drop off.

and scramble back. Fantastic. You drop off of this man moving. You see that he is dead set on killing you before you kill him. Andre, as you are moving in death towards this central pillar, you know what this is. This is the plasma transfer conduit. This is where energy moves from the thermoplastic routing court up here to operate. Coms, things like that Z wave communicator curve take a lot of energy.

This is the thing that moves that energy up here. You see there is a maintenance hatch that allows you to, it's something you worked with a lot when the ship was still being built. But of course, as you mentioned before, tons of plasma is running through here when the ship is fully powered up. As you move toward it, hearing the banging, you approach the pillar, seeing the hatch, and the hatch opens. And sticking his head out, wearing the same magnetic gloves that you were wearing earlier

is Toops. No, you died. What are you doing, man? Huh? What are you doing? Ah, shit. Tubes is arriving on initiative 20, but it is, you and him will share initiative. I think that I want to, and this is not even Andre, like, I'm flavoring this that

Andre is not even consciously doing this, but I am going to burn the tech points for another use of irradiate on the guy with the battery pack and his armor. Hell yeah. So he'll make another save. and he's got the level of exhaustion. So, yeah, he's making another con save DC 15. He succeeds. Exactly 15.

Gotcha. Then no damage that. No damage. So, but he's just still being irradiated by that. I'm going to go over tubes and go, where the, did you leave the core? Yeah, man. Martians are here. I know the Martian take over the ship.

Hi, there's two right here. Yeah, I see. Do something. Tubes! Come with me. Tubes kill them. No, come with me. I jump in the hole.

You jump with the hole and immediately smack tubes in the face. The two of you hit each other and like jumping into a river. You feel that gravity is pushing up this conduit right now. And so when you jump in, you immediately feel force kind of push you back up to the point where now you and tubes are jostling for space in this hatch area. at the top of the tube. You see Tube goes, are they coming? Uh,

uh, I think I'm floating away. I think I'm just, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, get away from the Martians that are murdering everybody. He irradiated the hell out of one guy.

It's time to go. You irradiated the hell out of one guy. His suit is flooded. You jump into the tube. Feel yourself immediately get kind of pushed back out, but are floating in this hatch. Kiki, you see the Martian who is squaring off with you. Go ahead and give me an inside check.

Natural 20. Woo! You've hurt this shit out of this guy. His system is absolutely irradiated. These are mechanically. engineered men. Yeah. You could stay here and try and duke it out with this person.

It would be a point of pride more than it would be anything close to strategic or advisable. Okay, party's over. You good? Come on, come on, come on, come on. And I'm backing away towards the hole and yelling, Andre, so fucking help me. You need to stop jumping in the holes all the goddamn time. Every time a fight fucking breaks out, you silly son of a. This is your third hole?

there is safety in the holes it's Romanian mole man motherfucker they cannot find us in the holes Kiki in that moment you are going you begin to back up

it is that Marchant's turn he's going to run at you and strike you again with that baton sure does a 15 does a 16 hit it does hit

and a 20 hits as well he's going to do 11 points of damage at you as he you You will not be killing me. I will be killing you. He swings in you twice as he moves towards you.

Fishcakes, you are clambering on this man. He is attempted to throw you off. He has been unsuccessful. I clamber up closer to his head. And I whisper in his ear. I'm going to pull all of the wires out unless you tell me where the tracking implant is. Give me intimidation with disadvantage. Oh, that's a one. That was a 19 and a one.

You see the neural dampening apparent on this Martian's face. You wonder if his brain is capable of understanding or processing fear. I leap off of him and on all fours I scuttle towards the hole. Pounding into the hole, you clear, Andre, The entrance to this tube is getting crowded. There are too many people in this tube. You see fish cakes on all force, pounce, bound into the tube. Fish kicks, you immediately feel that gravity well, pushing up as you lurch forward and then are kind of buffeted back and held in between these two gravity spaces of the tube and of the comms array.

Kiki, that is your turn. So I'm clear inside the tube, yes? We have that inside checkup on the goons, on the Martians' turn. Gotcha. So you had your intention was to move, but now it is your turn and your opportunity to move. Sweet. I think she gets hit so hard. Her whole body, like, slams to the ground, and her head bounces off of the ground.

She's almost dead. She's going to push herself up to standing a little bit. Her eyes aren't quite focused, and there's a part of her that wants to stay and finish this fight. But she knows she needs to get out of here. So I'm going to turn and use my movement because I don't think it takes movement and like a dash action. No. Then for my action, before I turn and run, I'm going to do my best to make eye contact even though my bell has been absolutely rung. And I'm going to use an ability called sieve.

Especially if fish cake is just about in the tunnel now, then it's just gravity. Like all the sliders got slid all the way up And I want him to feel how much I hate him in this moment So it's just localized on him and radiating out And I'm gonna roll a hit die and take that back It's my little second wind Oh, I'll take six back And then turn and run for the hole

The intensity of gravity bears down on you As you regain strength Turning, running As you approach Tubes now goes Flip it, flip it. You feel gravity reverse, pulling you, sucked into this narrow tube, essentially orient yourself so you're essentially like a kind of bobsledding. It's like each of you kind of locked in as you descend into darkness and into the heart of the Icaron.

That was Erica Ishii as Vera Fishcake's Land. Abrea Aingar as Kiki Davis. Brennan Lee Mulligan as Andre Dalka. And me, Lou Wilson, as everyone. and everything else. Flight of the Icaron is produced by Fortunate Horse and Worlds Beyond Number, edit and sound designed by Brian Flaherty of many-sided media, and score by Will Savino.

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