Worlds Beyond Number - Flight of the Icaron: Episode 4 - Dead Ahead

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

The crew crashes back into Nadir Hab and straight into a nightmare: Martians on the bridge, an overwhelming presence lurking beyond the glass, and Earth dead ahead by morning. As trust fractures and long-buried secrets surface, our heroes are driven toward a choice that may cost them everything. 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.

A bald man stands against two massive bulkhead doors. The sound of banging on the interior of the doors rings out in the room as he smirks to himself, holding his rifle against his chest, keeping eyes down the adjacent hallways that leave out from the doors that he is guarding. bang comes again from the interior and then another bang the man looks up a second bang a third bang a hatch

about 15 feet up the wall across from the man opens up and our three heroes spill out smashing into this man who takes all of your fall damage as you all arrive outside the Nadir have

you land you have crushed this man. Is tubes alive? Yes, you come toppling out. Tubes, then Andre, then fishcakes, then Kiki. Tubes. Oh, God. Damn.

Andre, if you don't mind. Oh, sorry. God. Who did we kill? Oh, yeah. I think he was one of the guys. Oh, no. All right.

Okay. Let's get back to it. Okay. I'm going to jump and help tubes up onto his feet. Okay, great. You help tubes up. All right. I think this is where they're holding everybody.

Tubes walks over and starts working the, kind of with the control panel across from the door, pops off the kind of digitized keypad, and starts connecting wires, kind of sparking things, seemingly trying to get the door open. And he looks over at you, Andre. What the hell happen up there, man? We were at the gala, the reception, and Martians have taken the sheep. Oh, God, damn plug heads. I was down in the TRC.

I don't know what it was, maybe solar flares or something. We started taking on a lot more electromagnetic power than we were supposed to help. It was luckily me and Audrey and when Lewis were there, working to dump out some of the nuclear through the phase regulators and conversion vaults, make sure the whole thing didn't explode. We saw the alarm go off, but it was just too much power coming in. Sorry. Who else was with you?

These new fresh cadets from GSEC. Some boy named Argin and another one named Lewis. Arjun's all sweaty and Lewis is kind of too cool for school. Okay. Where are they right now? They're back up in the DRC making sure everything is stale. I'm going to give just a little pointed look over at Andre. Because I feel like he has such rapport with tubes.

I'm just kind of vibe checking anyone that sounds like they're new. given current events. I want to remember back to everything that I saw the new guys doing today and run back through if any of them have possibly been paving the way for these hijackers. Yeah, go ahead and give me, you can give me insight or... Oh, also, can I assist with my knowledge of what I saw on the security cameras? You can. Will that be the help action?

That would be the help action. Or investigation, if you would like. I'm going to do investigate. Rather than relying on my people sense, I just want to look if any permissions have been changed on their accounts. Or if any, if there's any log of them doing stuff on the ship, they should not have been doing under the guise of training. Yes. That is going to be a 17. 17.

I would say on a 17, you think about your meeting with those two guys when they were introduced to you with the member of the executive council. And I think you realize they're pretty green. I mean, you, the TRC is a complicated piece of machinery. If someone was going to try and take over the ship, fuck with things, your head goes to, the TRC is not the avenue of sabotage. It's too complicated and nuanced a system. Like, especially with tubes being there, you think tubes would have called bullshit on any sort of fuckery that is outside the bounds of the kind of delicate work you need to maintain the

machine. Don't have to worry, I think. Those two cadets too young to have, I mean, not to stereotype, but too young to have the training to take over the ship from here. And also, Martian, what are you going to do? You're going to learn how to drive new car you never drove before by putting a wrench in the engine from the driver's seat, or you're just going to sit in the shotgun seat and put a gun to the driver's head? Fair? Well, we need to take it back. Otherwise, the council is going to take care of us.

Yeah, I know this. Tubes keeps, continues to spark the wire. Got it. A yellow light begins to kind of siren as the two bulkhead doors slowly open, revealing many of your friends, including commander named Sharp pointing guns directly at the four of you. Hands up. Andre. Kiki? You put your guns down a little too quick.

You don't know what sad we're on. I mean, I know Andre Dalko. And I know if anyone, I could trust this man. Jesus Christ, I'm glad you're alive. He hugs you. They have my daughter. They have her. Listen, we have sent out communications to GSEC,

which is a good thing and is also a bad thing. They cannot be here in time to liberate the ship. So if we don't liberate, they're going to secure the asset. Andre, it's just come, come inside. Tubes, can you fuck with the central lift? Give us another 10 minutes. Got it. Nate beckons you guys in, and you enter the Ndirhab.

An exterior ring stacked three high with rows of sleep pods, a separate med bay, and then in the center, kind of the opposite of its zenith counterpart, a tall kind of stacked cylindrical area that has a mess hall in the bottom, a slide ball court on the second floor, and then a gym, and other kind of amenities on the third, and then descending from there, another visibility hab, much like the one at the top of the station. Nate brings you in.

You tell me what you've seen, and I'll show you what we've been dealing with, down here or at least trying to figure out how we're going to deal with. And you see that he's leading you down, kind of down toward the visibility have at the bottom of the show. Okay, what all happened? We are there at the gala, Martian fire guns, kill Dr. Cortez. Jesus.

They take hostage. How many, uh, Kiki fish, you see them, how many takes from the ship? I give a quick rundown of everything that I've seen on the ship. security cameras and the current status of all the different rooms. You see Nate kind of furrow his brow rubbing his forehead. God, God, that makes... They flipped the command, you know. We were working during the building process, everything was isolated,

and the reset is clearly... They're making it so they can run the ship from the command bridge. Okay, yeah. And there's no way to interrupt that? Once it's thrown, during the development process, you know, GSEC has a way they were... want to do things and they want control. They want everything to be isolated. They want everything to be separate, but they also want everything to talk to each other. And during the development process,

well, Andre was doing his work and people were working on the different systems. Everything was separated. Now everything is talking to each other, and that's all going from the command bridge. It's the beginning, Andre. And you see, as you arrive down at the bottom of the spiral staircase, leading you to this kind of suspended lounge area that hangs over this, this kind of viewing window that exists at the bottom of the ship. Hanging motionless in space, lit only by the lights of the arc line and the nearby meridians. A fleet of Martian vessels hangs motionless in the void. The station's lights catch only a fragment of the ships as they rotate around. glints along holes, a red flicker across an exposed vein.

The thousands of smaller coffins, XRV2s reflect almost nothing. Their needle-thin bodies vanish entirely when the beacon strobes pause, and behind them loom larger transports, fewer in number but monstrous in silhouette, wide-ribed spines bristling with dormant vector pods and shield pylons. you see Nate stand and point. It's an armada. The arc line, taking the ship is the beginning. This is it.

We're on the front lines. They're going to come for Earth. Fish cakes? You good? So if we take back or incapacitate the bridge, that means that's the best way to push back against everything talking to each other on the ship? At this point, they have commanded the ship, and they've isolated it in the command bridge.

We have other ideas, and we're getting everybody together on the slideball court in about 10 minutes, and we'll figure out what we're going to do next. I think it's going to be important to know what the point of no return is, because at some point, GSEC is going to want to hit that button, and we need to figure out what we're going to be. We can get done before they make a choice they can't take back. Ms. Davis, I agree with you.

But there's also part of me as a soldier that has to acknowledge that maybe it is on us to make that choice. You guys, I don't know if you're low on gear or if you need anything for whatever we're going to do next. Yeah, I was at a party. Yeah, please. We have got clothes and other things. Feel free to change. Andre, can I talk to you for a second? Yeah.

We all heard the announcement. You're the one with the locator? Mm-hmm. Unfortunately, yes. I think Dr. Calder might have something. He might be able to zap you, little EMP, or something like that, if you're open to that. Oh, good. You want me to come with you?

Yes, please. Mm-hmm. He points you guys up towards the Med Bay, as Nate stands with you, Andre. Andre has, during this time, his eyes tilt down after seeing all of the men. the Martian ships hanging in space. There's just been one kick to the gut after another, after another, after another. And this final realization, this wasn't a terrorist attack. It wasn't a heist. It was a military asset grab. And now realizing that this appears to be a full military push, meaning we're not being taken back to Mars where only our fate hangs in the

balance, but actually the fate of our entire planet hangs in the balance. Andre has gone deep within himself, and his eyes dart back and forth like he's reading a manual hanging in space in the middle distance, thousand yards stairs, eyes darting over something that only he can see. I understand it's a lot. Are you doing all right? We're going to need you, ma'am. Talk to me about what the plan is. We've been communicating with tubes a bit, and I understand that solar radiation has overcharged the electromagnetic sources or steels.

I don't know what you call them in the TRC. If we could release those in some way, would knock out most of, or at least a substantial amount of the fleet. Yeah, it's true. This is something we are hoping for because it rely on a technology that we presume Mars does not have access to. Makes sense. If Mars has this technology, why are they going to come steal it?

They cannot be better at us than literally everything. So they come for this. At some point, I mean, they're tech. I mean, this, at least from our understanding of the war, if they haven't made it. substantial jumps. A large amount of electromagnetic energy being pushed out would disrupt in some great way their systems. Right now I'm looking at a big knot of tangled wire. It's very dangerous. Don't have the ability to shut reactor off. We're going to have to operate with everything live. Nate, hear my question for you. You Mars, right? You're going to come steal this thing and you're going to

come with a full fleet because you have some way to use this without needing to break it down, without needing to study it, without needing ability to build one of your own. They're not going to drag us back to Mars to cut us up. They're just going to do it all right now, right? So the question is, how come you so sure that Earth not going to blow up your prize? You have to think that way, right? You Mars, you're not stupid. They're going to shoot it out of the sky.

So why are all these ships? Why are they so sure? Earth not going to destroy this? I mean, I don't think that's what they're after. I mean, I don't think the arc line is the prize. I think Earth is the prize. Yeah, but why are they going to need this to steal Earth? I think someone in GSEC let Mars know

we'd built something that could fucking hold its own against all their technological bullshit everything they fucking all the ways in which they fucked themselves and put plugs in their head they knew we finally had something that could maybe hold its own and I think they realized that if they neutralized this they neutralized us.

Yeah. And I think that someone talked. And that's why I have to ask you, do you trust those two? Because the last thing I need is to share the one thought, the one idea I have that might get us out of this and have them relay it to some fucking red goon

and fucking take our legs out from under us. Do I trust them? I meet them today. No, I don't trust them. But their behavior don't make a ton of sense to me. Don't make a ton of sense for them to, I don't know, not keep me imprisoned. They know that I'm one of chief engineers. They're not going to grab me and ship me up to Command Bridge to explain how to take this over quicker.

Seemed like a screwy plan to me. No, Nate, I don't trust them, but I don't know how many choices we're going to have. I'd be dead if they're not. Help me get here. No! I'll do it myself! I said, I'll do it myself. Don't you touch me?

You hear it screams from up above. All right. Well, let's head back up and figure out what we're going to do next. Just outside the Med Bay, you see that Kiki and Fish Cakes, you stand just outside the Med Bay, where a, you know, a bald man with a goatee, gentle green eyes is just holding a wand over you. And I'm holding my razor in one hand and sort of circling with him crab-like.

All right. I just want to be clear. Hand it over. She's killed several people today. Okay. Keep it slow. Understood. Fish cakes.

What's doing? I just... This person wants to help you. But he's... What if he's... One of them, what if he's trying to get it back? I'm just tamper with my body. This is just x-ray tech.

This is just so I can see what it is we're trying to deactivate. Yeah, you've seen wands like that before, yeah? Yeah. Do you want to get a closer look? Yeah. You don't have to put your weapons away. Can I just get them below your rib cage? Are we sure she can't put the weapons away?

All right, all right. Below the rib cage. Okay. Get a closer look, get comfortable. Okay. Can I pat your shoulder? Yeah, I like that. And I'm going to walk over, and I think you feel the room get a little heavier as I get closer.

And I'm actually going to cast heroism on you. Because I think there is something, there's like a weird, neutral, like, there's a sense of distance in sitting in Kiki right now. She's slowly going through. a bit of an ego death thing. But for right now, she understands where you're coming from, what you're capable of, and what needs to happen in order to make everyone a little safer. So I think, yeah, this is just,

until the power ends, you're immune to being frightened and you gain temporary hit points, you get five temporary hit points. Yay, thank you. It's almost like heavy blanket. Like, I'm not going to, like, full, like, hug box. But just a little like, hey, you're not as unmoored as you feel right now. Get heavy.

Go back to the rational part of you that can work through this. Okay. Now's good? Let fishcakes tell you when. Okay, understood. Thank you. What's your name? Dr. Calder, but you can call me Troy.

Hi, Troy. I'm Kiki. Nice to meet you. All right. You see he begins to scan the, the, advice over you. Kiki, give me an inside check. Ooh. What are you rolling?

I got two. The doctor is doing his work. Yeah. I think after this point, Kiki's not even looking at the two of you anymore. She's just at a point on the wall, unspooling inside her own head. The doctor is acting like the doctors who have kind of checked you up before, scans over your body. Oh, uh, or, um, Hmm. Wow.

Uh, okay. Um, well, I, the, I think the device we're looking for is in the, uh, the base of your neck. Um, just a, uh, here. It's, it's what? It's, uh, the device. It's some sort of, uh, location.

It's, um, there is some sort of signal emitting from the, the base of your neck. It seems some kind of chip. or tracking device. Okay. Do I know about all of us? You would not. Yeah.

You've had experiences where when you got into fights with other kids, you beat them thoroughly. When you can run faster than other kids, you're stronger than other kids. This is unique, this kind of like some sort of chip or device being inside of you. It's not something that's ever been acknowledged or spoken about, But I think, give me, uh, give me history, uh, lore or, or investigation.

Uh, 12 investigation. There is part of you that can imagine that this device has not been needed or been used until today. Okay. A location tracker. All right. How do we disable it or get rid of it? Um, we, we have devices like this in GSec. I'm just going to give you a minor.

What are you going to do? Give you a minor localized shock to the area to just disrupt the signal. Okay. I'm doing an insight kick on him. That's a five on the dice. All right. Unincidable man. The doctor just seems to be, has a calm, very congenial demeanor.

Perfect, perfect manner. Reminds me of... You know, the doctor, the pediatrician I had back on Mars and the good time. So, okay, do what you got to do. All right. He steps back into the med bay and returns with like a small, almost like a, it looks a little bit like a taser. It's that shape, like two prongs at the end. All right.

This is going to just sting a little bit. Kiki, Kiki, if anything happens to me, I need you to take care of this man. I'll kill him. Thank you. And then you. Okay, good. All righty. You feel a light zap, you feel the muscles in your neck contract, and then all done.

Huh. All right. How's it going now? You see he produces the x-ray one. Signal seems to be disrupted. Thank you. That's good enough. Thank you very much, doctor.

You said you were from bars? Yes. You have a number of augmentation. What did you say? A perfectly normal word. From Mars? You said I was like the good doctors on Mars. I think we watched...

I'm going to pull a pen out and like click it and like end over end. I'm aiming for your eye. Just to prove a point. I catch it. Two hands, clap. Yeah. Okay. Well, that would make a lot of sense, I suppose, in retrospect.

Yeah. Traumatized orphans don't do that. They get one less eye. Well, I've never met any other traumatized orphans. That's not true. Yeah, didn't you come here with several? Well, I just assumed that I was more traumatized than most, and that led to being stronger and faster.

Uh, what, I, you are stronger. You, there are, um, it's quite elegant, actually, a number of, uh, metal arts. augmentations on your muscle fibers, which, I don't, do you, do you remember those being given to you? No. Oh, everything's kind of a little hazy before, you know. So I've got Martian augmentation. Okay.

All right. Well, this is, well, I suppose this is a good opportunity to use them. Then? That's good. And you, you don't feel them, do you? I flex my hands and sort of wave, wave them around, including the hand that has, has the razor. Yeah. Yeah, no, I don't, this is, I just assumed that that was what everybody else had. What does this mean? Oh, it's, it's, uh, it's magnificent. I mean, cybernetic implants.

I mean, we're on earth, we're unable to give cybernetic implants to children because of, you, you're growing, and thus the implant would have to constantly change. But you've had these for some time, I'm assuming. Well, I kind of hit a growth spurt earlier on, and never really, never really, it kind of stopped after that. Well, this is not the time, but you are quite special. Isn't the question how special? they mentioned you on the intercom

well okay thank you are we done here oh yes great thank you do you have any

sort of sweets or anything that I may have no you threaten you threaten you don't get candy from the man you threaten that's very fair I have a mint oh

troll I take it I snatched it out of his hand I want to walk in I want to walk in with Nate everyone seems to be like as you come back up with Nate as this kind of interaction ends, people seem to be slowly feeding towards the slideball court

on the second floor of the center pillar. I'm going to walk towards the slideball court. And I'm going to look over to fish cakes. What was the name they say on the speaker for you? Vera. You like fish cakes more? Well, it's just kind of always what I've been called. So you can call me whichever one.

I appreciate you asking, though. No, that's not helpful to me. Which one you like to be called? I like fish cakes. Fish cakes, thank you. Yeah. I'm walking in, I'm looking back over my shoulder towards the habit, as you walk into the slideball court.

What exactly they say when they call out for you? Why do they call out for you? Well, you see, it turns out that I have, when I look over at Kiki, might as well. I have cybernetic augmentations that are the intellectual and physical property of the Martian government, and they want those back, so I also, I guess, am an asset. Yeah, doesn't make any fucking sense. I'm just rubbing my eyebrows, splitting headache and started my whole family is about to get destroyed by G-SAC. So this, okay, they in the middle, they're holding the weapon. They have the hammer, in their hand that they're going to smash Earth with.

And they say, hey, maybe we're going to kill two birds with one stone. Maybe we win the war against Earth. And while we hear, we make a quick stop by to get our old intellectual property mutant back. I don't make any fucking sense. It makes more sense if I'm going to say something that will be vaguely unpleasant, but know that I care about you. I will keep that in mind. How'd you get away?

Did you do it on your own? My parents... My parents shoved me into a ship. You think that was an act of love? Oh. Or were you deployed? If I remember back... Mm-hmm.

What do I remember about all of that? Because I think it was all very hazy. And all I can kind of scrape together. is happy times, good times, there was a really bad night, then drifting in space and eating mostly fish cakes, and then the orphanage. But I don't remember a ton of specifics, just more feelings. Yeah.

Go ahead and give me a Lord check with advantage. Twelve. You were a child, and I think that what you are able to remember of that time is the faces of your parents, the tenor of their voices, as they discussed, getting you to the ship that you were loaded on, that they were not. I think the actual details of it, I think, are quite far from you. Well, I could be a pawn in some sort of sinister military political plot, but all I remember is being a child on Mars and then suddenly not being.

a child anymore. When I was asked onto this ship by Bogo, do I know who contacted Bogo about bringing me aboard? Vice-Counselor Quill. Do you were a specific guest of the vice counselor to come and be recognized on this trip around the sun? Well, I don't remember anything about being, I mean, perhaps it's true. I am some military political asset. But all I do know is that Bogo asked me to come here, and Bogo was asked directly by Big Man Quill. Yeah, and here's the vaguely unkind thing. I've sent a lot of drones out back in my day. It helps me find better asteroids to keep mining.

The benefit of a good drone is not its intelligence. You were a kid, but all you needed to do was be a homing beacon. I think we know who our G-Sek-Mole is. Oh, I'm saying our... Fuck, I'm on your team. I'm gonna die. Yeah, but we knew that already. No, I could have very well gotten to command and sold you all out.

No, no. By one day, you're gonna die. Sure. I'm gonna look over at Nate. Can I... I want to cast frequency scan. Mm-hmm. And I just want to look at any of the transmission

taking off or leaving the ship. There's two questions that are bigger than what I have the magic to be able to answer, but I'd love to make an investigation check to see if I can confirm one of two hunches before this slide ball game starts. All of this is like a machine, and it's not coming together right.

You know, I think Andre, back in the day, loved to like build flat pack furniture with his family back in Nairobi without consulting the thing where he's like the parts tell you what to build right if something is well designed you presume that it is not wasteful there's not going to be a random arm that you can't use and he wanted his kids to stop thinking about following instructions and start thinking about what is this telling you that it wants to be and i think there's two things that this hinges on for him one is a hunch that the Icaron, rather, Nate is saying that this is a peri lunge. That, in other words, Mars is knocking the Icaron to the side like it was a weapon to get

to Earth. And I think Andre can't help but wonder, like, if they had the overwhelming force to get Earth, to invade Earth, they didn't have it a week ago? They didn't have it three weeks ago. They didn't have it two months ago. Like, why the timing? If they had the ability to take on Earth in a fair fight, wouldn't you rush to do that before the thing could be built?

Are they parrying the Icaron or are they disarming and using the Icaron? Is this a weapon that they want to use right now? And that's why they had to wait till today, right? That's the number one thing is, is this a parry and then a lunge? Or, no, this is a seizure of a super weapon. And they're counting on the Icaron to make whatever's going to happen happen. That's hunch number one. And then hunch number two is, is Vera just a homing beacon?

Or does Vera have some other role to play? Because why the fuck are you wasting the precious minutes of readying your Martian Armada looking for this kid in the bowels of this station if she's already fulfilled her purpose of being an air tag? Damn. Justice for Vera. Great. I love it. I'm going to modify your power a little bit. Cool. Your frequency scan is kind of like a read.

Detect, detect thoughts. Yeah. I want, you are using it in general. I think in this moment as you approach the slideball court, you are taking in tons of transmissions, kind of reading through missives that have just passed through Nate Sharp's desk. Nate Sharp is the security commander for this vessel. He was in charge of securing it up into the point where it would have become official GSEC vessel and been deployed militaristically. So he has seen countless number of

missives and information. So I think in this moment you're going to be taking in a lot. Ask me those. Give me your two hunches. The order of priority is essentially, like, is GSEC's determination if they can to destroy the Icaron a really good idea? Meaning like, oh yeah, that is the super weapon that Mars is depending on to make this attack on Earth work or an attack on the moon. You know, We see the Armada out here. They're taking something, right? And is the Icaron essential to Martian plans because of its capabilities or is neutralizing its capabilities necessary for the Martian plans?

Do they need us or not, right? Do they need us active or is us inactive? Fine. That's the first step. The second hunch is, does Vera have a larger role to play in this than just being a locator? The third thing flying around in my mind is just about Quill, but I almost think that's clean up, right? Like, we need to save our lives. And if quill's a rat, we can get into that afterwards, right?

Those are my two hunches. Great. Go ahead and give me investigation on the first hunch. On, is the Icaron essential to Martian plans? Or is it a, as you said, the Perry before the lunch? I wish I could help you with everything in my heart. I'm going to look to Kiki and think about Nate's question, do you trust this person?

I'm going to look at Kiki and go, Do you wish you had not been here today? It's a complicated answer. I've lived a long life. This is the most interesting thing that's happened in a while. There's a version of me that I killed maybe 10 minutes ago. I would have tried very hard to sell you all out and survive. That person wishes...

She had made any other choice than to be courted by Earth. But who I am now is curious about how today is going to go. Why do you have? In one way or another, everyone in my family has devoted themselves to have a greater portion of their life's effort go to everybody and not themselves. My son, he represented workers on the moon. My daughter, she work for GSEC.

My other daughter, she work here on the ship. And I think now about trust. My thought is that with Cray Space, that maybe you don't really care who win between Earth or Mars. And it makes it hard to trust someone. if all of the hours of the life you missed with the people you cared about, getting poured into something that's going to outlive you. Hard to trust someone if you think that don't matter to them.

Gray space works a little different. There's so many big powers with big, big old grudges. No, I didn't. I didn't care about the fight happening between Earth and Mars before I got caught in the middle of it. I came here to make the best deal for my people, but neither your people nor her people did anything to make sure I wasn't in harm's way. So I'm still looking out for myself right now. And my best chance to go see the people I care about again. is to make sure we all walk away from this. I don't want to tell you to trust me,

because I don't think you would believe it, and that's why I like you. Don't trust you, but I know that you have to take care of yourself. I want to talk to you about how Martians think. That I can help with. I'd like to get Kiki's help on these investigation checks. Yeah.

Yes. Let's go. Hey, DC 15, I give you some. Oh, God. DC 18, I give you a lot. You roll over 20, I give you the whole damn thing. You got this dog? You got this dog?

11 on the die is the higher of the two rolls. Plus nine is 20. Yeah! Perfect. Perfect. Thank fucking God. Something we discussed when you were talking about Andre. is that you were somewhat invested or at least interested in Mars as it was developing and growing.

Mars sucks. Mars is an awful place. It has been terraformed by these billionaires, perhaps now trillionaires, to make life there manageable at all. As you're scanning through Nate's documents, looking through missives, emails he's received, discussions. I think the thing that keeps coming up is this discussion around hope and around the idea that Dr. Cortez spoke to in her speech, that this thing would protect Earth, that it would inspire Earth to continue to have hope that space was something that could be explored, that was still filled with discovery and not something simply to fear. I think as you and Kiki discuss how Martians think, what this all could. be about. It is the Perry and the lunge. They want to remove this so they can take Earth. And above all, they don't want a war. They don't want to fight on Earth because they want Earth back. They don't

want to live on Mars. They want to take back the Earth. I think in putting this all together, there's part of you that believes that the Martian's goal in taking this weapon and bringing it back to Earth's space is that it will lead Earth to simply roll over and accept Martian rule, thus preserving a planet worth habiting, not one ruined by the scars of war. It's a haymaker. You throw it all in one punch, but if you miss, you're not going to keep fighting. overwhelming show of force. Do I have any sense about Vera, about fish cakes?

Kiki is helpful here. Martians are prideful. They want credit for their work. I mean, a huge part of what led to the war in the first place. I think in things that you were able to understand on your end and your experiences in gray space was this level of thanklessness or expectation that was, around the nature of Martian tech that was being used to keep Earth habitable and alive. I think that Vera is a geotag.

It is the ability to find where the Icaron is in space. But above all, I think it's that somebody worked very hard on Vera, and they don't like the idea that someone else gets to have their work. It's theirs. In some way, there's Pharaoh Allen, whoever he was, wants. returns on his investment, and he's not happy to just see it out in the world living. Talking with Kiki through various, like, communications that Nate has received or been involved in, the Ikron is being taken as a captured hostage to Earthspace.

I'm going to look out and go, pride. All come back to pride. They don't want fish cakes crawling around in the vent. because does not make them look good. These are men who call themselves Pharaoh. And they want ship captured, but it is to make a shell. Maybe if Earth don't roll over right away, they blow us up to make show of their incredible force, huh? But that's the difference between Earth and Mars.

Earth is a place of plenty. You can make more soldiers. You can make more stuff. Mars doesn't have the endless resources of Earth. They don't waste. I heard food grows on trees and Earth. Is that true? That's the saddest thing I've ever heard.

Fishkeg, that's true. But I want to tell you something. Earth was not always a place of plenty. Oh? It took a nuclear war and almost the destruction of the planet for us to change. ourselves so that that fruit that grew on those trees was fairly distributed. But there were a lot of people who didn't like that we change Earth into a place of plenty.

Do you know what they did? Oh, they went and built pyramids on Mars. That's exactly what they fucking did. Yeah. And now, we're going to give their haymaker some more hay to make. No, I'm going to let that happen. I'm going to let that. Don't know.

You guys walk on to the slideball court. Stretching 30 meters long, 20 wide with walls rising just under three meters before capping off in a smooth overhang. The floor is gently concave, the center dipping to encourage the strange ballet of slideball. Today the court is cleared. No netting, no paddles, just a hollow table at the near end with tactical overlays of the station and schematics. The small crew that is here is clustered around and is spruce. speaking quietly as you approach. On the wall, a warned banner reads ghost servals.

Clearly, it's hanging interrupted by the invasion that is now occurring. Nate looks over at you as you guys approach. You good? Yeah, I'm good. Let's do this. He stands next to the overlay. Based on the current trajectory and velocity of the Icaron, we will be in Earth space by morning

and likely within striking distance of our own. Earth by noon. Our ship has been taken. Martians currently control the command deck and the ship itself. We have got to stop it from reaching Earth and in my opinion do as much damage to this Martian fleet as possible. We are locked out of the system-wide commands. However, we can affect systems locally. The way I see it, we have two options. We make a run at the command bridge. you see he begins to indicate on the schematics. We have strike teams moving up these service tunnels, probably another strike team here in the meridians trying to distract,

maybe a foe escape to pull the forces in separate directions, making a run at the command bridge. Someone gets there. Someone is able to overcome whatever force is present there, and we take back the ship. However, there's a lot of unknowns in that plan. That's why I feel obligated to present another. Having conferred with tubes,

there is the reality in which we could overload the TRC with raw electromagnetic energy without converting it into plasma, whatever that means, until it explodes. Discharging the energy through the ship and surrounding area, this would greatly affect the Martian craft, likely the Martian soldiers on the ship as well. but it would mean also the loss of...

We all die. You got it? Yeah. I know you're wrestling with it, but you did it. Good job. The level of catastrophic malfunctions, compounding, the meltdown would likely take out the ship in any of its life support systems. However, the fleet would be impacted. Is there any chance that we could do that,

closer to Earth to threaten Earth too? I'm sorry? I mean, they want your planet back. Pristine, if we threaten to blow it up too. I think that's an even better deterrent than blowing up 1,000 of their coffins when they can make 10,000 more. Sorry, I know we don't want to die. Everyone's families are up here and we're very sad about it. If we're going to talk about blowing ourselves up, let's maybe,

be the bigger stick of you don't get good Earth either. It's just Mars too. Got it. Did I say that badly? Everyone's looking at me crazy. No one's going to blow up Earth, Kiki. I mean, I'm just saying threaten to do it.

You see everyone gets really quiet. I feel like everyone's looking at me weird, but I'm saying things that we're all thinking. Maybe we're not thinking it. You should be thinking this. That is how not Parsons negotiate. It's true. Thank you.

I'm going to look at Nate and I want to, I want to do like a technology something. I want to see if there's any ability to dive into his understanding of exploding the ship, which is obviously, it's very easy. You have to do a lot of work to keep things from not exploding, right? But I'm wondering if there's something that's possible that has more finessellible, that has more finessell. nest for us to do because he, I know that he's been talking to tubes, but I also, you know, his other plan of storming up and taking back the bridge of the ship, I think I'll go, I'm going to look over on the slideball court, and I'm going to get down on the floor of the court and just start

writing an equation out with some dry erase markers and just start trying. I feel like that's just as weird as what I was doing or saying, no, you're going to make it, okay, because you're going to put it through. No, if he's raw plasma, yeah, raw plasma, going to tear through the reactor. Mr. Adolka, are you calculating how to blow us up? No, trivially easy to blow us up. Yeah. A lot of good people have to work very hard to keep us from blowing up.

No, I'm thinking of something that's actually going to be a hard to do. Okay, we're going to go up, we strike team, we're going to take the bridge. Great, we take the bridge, and then what happened? We're surrounded by Martian vessel. Yep. So Martian vessel going to say, no, our plan failed. Well, let's blow up this thing. and go back home and we shake hands.

We say, yeah, it's a good try. We're not going to take the bridge back and survive until we back in Earth space regardless. This thing you say, striking distance. Now, if we have a way to bring Martian vessels to Earth space and then disable them without harming Earth itself, I look at Kiki Kiki's just gesticulating wildly but silently

You very much say to Earth is a different plan Give me Would you like Tech or Investigation With Advantage I'll take investigation I feel like we were saying

The same thing That is a 27 Shut up 27 The D.C. was 25 Let's go! Okay This is

me attempting to do science, which I'm not good at, but I'm going to do my best. You listen to Nate talk. This is a soldier's plan. Nate is a soldier. Nate is eager to die in glorious combat and sacrifice all for Earth. You're not that. You're an engineer. You're a dad. You want to keep everybody safe and save the day. And I I think as you are doing these calculations, Nate's plan is good, right? It answers the question of how do we deal with the fact that we have this fleet here, like as well as this ship.

And something comes to mind. Coolant. Sweet, glorious coolant. If you were to intentionally trigger a high-intensity electromagnetic pulse using the ship's TRC and redirecting plasma flow to a kind of electromagnetic overload state, you might, exhausting the entirety of the ship's coolant reserve, be able to harden key structural and thermal pathways, allowing the station itself to survive the discharge.

The TRC is normally designed to channel plasma, and specifically electromagnetic magnetic. energy across the ship systems, it is very possible that you can use the electromagnetic energy coursing through the TRC right now to turn it into a massive EM capacitor and use the station's coolant network to shape the event thermally, essentially creating frozen zones that contain the energy and route it safely and directly at the fleet of ships posing the imminent threat to Earth. I'm going to turn to Nate. These both very good plans. Plan to take bridge? Very heroic. Plan for us all to die. Very brave. Very selfless. It does job, right? It stop the destruction of Earth.

But the issue again is it's a systemic problem. The problem here is Mars. They go home again. They stop us from Ikoran again. They don't know who the rat is. We have to have a system. We have to... We have to freeze the zones. We have to use... Okay. You're going to fry the coolant?

Look. Good, fast, cheap. This is not going to be cheap. This is going to fry the coolant. This is a... What? It's going to be... Oh, come on, man.

Listen, okay, it's the only way, tubes. You can get more coolant. Yeah, but it's expensive. Well, not really. And it's going to... It's expensive. That's the problem. We are talking like a couple billion dollars.

How much does the whole thing cost? Like three-trill? I mean, I think that's before the fixings. And that's before the fixings. And it's not including labor hours. I think it's a bargain. If we're able to rush the coolant, right? You're going to take the TRC is going to overload.

But instead, we're going to put it out through as EMP output. What we're going to do is in the moment before the EMP wave go out, we're going to rush the coolant to every main computing. life support, we're going to do navigation systems, and we're going to short circuit, because what's going to happen is it's going to be a hard reset. All those computer systems are going to fry when the coolant come through

and do a hard shutdown, not going to be active, going to have a few nanoseconds before the EMP come out. And if one of those fails, we're all going to die anyway, yeah? Hey, listen, you want to make an egg, you have to scramble omelet. So...

I think my nose is bleeding. We're going to have the EMP, Go out. Nate, we can do this when we have access, but we're going to have to, because of how the compartments work, not everything tucked together until it don't. So we're going to need the ability to go through and do this semi-manually. But we could do it early.

We're going to fry all the Martian ships, and maybe we reboot faster than they reboot, and we fly away back to Earth. Or, if we time this right, we're going to freeze the Martian Armada when they and us are in striking distance of Earth. You really think we could do it? You're just going to do what they wanted to do to you.

Hit them hard enough one time that they're not going to want to keep fighting. And to get this close to their prize and to be so thoroughly robbed of it, Maybe they go back to building their little pyramids. One thing I know about the private world, they're greedy. Let's make them pay if they want it so bad. All right. Andre, you let us know what we need to do.

We'll get to it. A map of the fence. We want a map of the fence. Kid, you want a map of the vents? You got it. You see a large scroll is put in your hands. Oh. How have you ever considered public speaking?

Um, I have, and I do not care for it. I think maybe you should reconsider, because the closer we get to Earth, the more I'm going to want you to get very loud about being from Mars and exactly whose side you're on. Oh. Hit him in the pride. Oh.

If they're foolish enough to try to announce you over the PA, then they're going to be foolish enough to try to grab you to make the victory perfect. Well, they're not going to grab me. No one can grab me. But they're going to try. But they won't. Like emotionally grab you.

No, I'm saying physically. No, I can. Okay. Okay. And I'm saying this good. I unroll the blueprints and start looking at the vents. I'm going to look out to the assembled team here. Everybody, today, the day, all of you have very,

a very important first flight of the Icaron. Today, the day we're going to save Earth. Hands up. Who here was really excited to do the go rush the command and die? I have a backup plan. You see the two men. Cool. Come with me. Nah. You see they walk towards you. I just want the ones that are excited to go rush the command center.

We need to do something. So Mars thinks our plan is to rush the command center. Great. This is going to take more time and we need them to not be curious what we're up to. So you essentially want to create a strike team that seems to be doing the bullish kind of desperate thing. They know that we have to do one last chance to save the Icaron. We can't prove them wrong here. Fantastic.

On the look over to everybody with these equations on the floor, we need small teams of engineer to run coolant manually because of security measures, if it is done sent, we can rush the coolant from a central source, but not without Martians at command knowing. So to do it secret means to do it manual. However, Kiki is right. If any of us are spending this whole time quiet on the deerhab, Martians know something's up.

Everybody know everybody else smart. So they know if we quiet, it means we're doing something sneaky. We want to be loud. We're loud and brave. We buy them time. I like it. Tubbs points over at your vent map that you have unfurled in front of you, fish cakes, and goes, I mean, we could use these to, this is exactly what we need.

People moving through the vents, dropping, making sure that the cooling is exactly where we needed to be when the chain reaction starts. There is safety in the hole. Okay. Great. Okay, yeah, for sure. A hundred percent. We love the hole. Um, sorry, fish cake's really rome.

rattled me in there. Okay, but you want to have people putting coolant in the necessary places for when the chain reaction starts. Yeah. And tubes. We're going to have team rushing the bridge to buy us time. We're going to have team going through vents to manually set the override for coolant. And we're going to have to put together the engineering language because we're not going to be able to dodge needing. central command. It's just that we're going to need everything primed and ready to go.

By the time that central command comes through, they're not going to have any time to react to it. But for timing reasons, we got to have one killstroke. Everything got to go off at the same time. So you and me are going to be making killstroke. It has to be perfectly timed for when we get in within strike distance of Earth, when the Martian Armada can be hit by long-range Earth weapons. and hopefully we have a comms set up to go out at the last possible second explaining to earth what has been done so that they know not to hit us to. Yeah. We can do that.

We can do that. Can I say one difficult thing for you now, Andre? Sure. In the event that we get a little desinked on time. And our cover gets rocked early. And you hear over the intercom, a demand to surrender, or hostages start to get shot. I know your daughter's up there.

I will put my life on the line, but I need you to promise me that no matter what, you finish the mission. The Martians came in attack. Tranquility. My son was there. When you were parent on Earth, You know that dying is going to be kinder than going where they want to take you.

I'm not going to hesitate. Please do everything you can to keep her safe. This is so sick. We're doing it. You all set to your work. It's probably about four and a half to five hours before morning and kind of your entrance into the edges of Earth space. So there is not a second to lose.

Andre, where do you see yourselves? You head it back to the TRC. Yeah, I'm going to finish where I started. I'm going to be at the TRC. This is where we're going to have to make the code. Going to have to trust that everybody else is doing their part. You see that a number of members of the crew head up with you, members, the overseer of the Nadir Hav, communications executives,

kind of some of the more intellectually minded folks. I think journey with you and tubes, back up to the TRC, where you see that waiting for you are Arjun and Lewis, who look down as you enter. Mr. Dalca, is everything all right? No, not really, guys. Circle up. You see that Arjun and Lewis come down, and you begin to administer details and explanations.

Listen up, the beauty of this plan is its complexity. Everything needs to go right, or... no part of the plan work. Right. Totally, man. Sounds good. Everyone circles up and begins that work. Kiki, you, Nate, and these two large men, wide men, both incredibly stout.

Two identical twins, Mohawks, tattoos on the side of their heads. You'd think they were spacers, if not, for the fact that they are led by Nate Sharp. He walks up to you. This is Vogue and Vad. Valkin' van. All right.

Sounds like we're the ones getting loud. I love getting loud. I'm going to grab the vent map once. I waited till Fishcakes was done with it. And I'm comfortable jury rigging a lot of stuff in space.

So when you improvise, you improvise with sound. So I've carved the loudest but safest path to get to command. That's just going to throw up a bunch of sound. Kiki's whole thing is just getting them gassed up to fight and be willing to die to make sure we win. Give me an inside check. That's a 19. Nate Sharp presented two plans in which he likely died whichever way you go. So you see kind of a determination and acceptance,

I think in the eyes of these three men as you talk about the loudest, most violent past. back up to the command bridge. You actually see that Nate goes, actually, if we go through Central Intelligence here, I think they'll really think we're trying to fuck with him. Let's fucking go. And I think at this point, Kiki, who already had her black jumpsuit on under her formal wear,

she's rolled up her arm, like her right arm sleeve, up to the elbow. And there's just a really long tattoo of like a spindle and, like, stylized spindle and rope. And she's just going to take a little knife out. at where the like rope tattoo ends and just cuts her arm there. Lachesis, disposer of lots. We don't get to know all of us when our time's over.

We just get to decide what we do with our destiny. Let's go make some fucking noise, boys. Fishcakes, you see that a number of personnel kind of walk up to you. So we're placing the coolant? I let them up and down with my arms crossed. Are these vent-ready people? Not at all. Okay.

I have a better idea. And then can we jump to be popping out of the vent in, you know, where the kids are? Kid. Okay. Give us the vent children back. Because while everybody else is like prepping and stuff, maybe I just like go solo into the vents. Let's roll about it, dude. Okay.

So you see these personnel who stand up. They're all adults, most of them wearing kind of formal wear from the party or, slide ball gear from the game that was about to happen. So we're supposed to be climbing through the vents? Oh, no, I don't think that you're suitable for that. Oh. I have a better idea. Fishcakes, you take off.

You have the schematics of the ship. Where is fish cakes headed? I'm headed back to the area where Bogo and the children are. Fantastic. You see also in this moment, as you guys are planning, Tubes walks around with the communication callers that they use when they're in the TRC. And he goes, these are on a different frequency from the station. So we should be able to talk directly without interference.

So all of you have these different communication callers that allow you to hear each other by switching between different channels. As you take off, you have the schematics. You are able to start climbing through ventilation shafts up toward the top of the ship. You hear a click on your communication caller. Hey, get this, tubes. Where are you headed? I'm headed back to get my strike team.

All right. Well, let me give you some help. You feel, in a second, gravity switch, and your ability to climb the ship, you're leaping and bounding 30 feet at a time. Let's go. Through the different ventilation, chaps. You just let me know when you need me to flip it back down.

Thank you. You bound up the ship through wiring and rigging, eventually popping out in a similar place to where Andre came out when he slipped into the vent earlier. You are back at the top. What's your AC? 15. On a Nat 1.

Talia, misplace shot. Coney Protocol, everyone. And all the kids... We're hitting the vets? Yeah, that's right. You see Bogo goes, now are we sure that's a good idea, fish game? Reverse the gravity! You see all the kids sprinting away as you backing the vents.

A gentle flow of gravity. as you are pulled slowly back down toward the Nidir ham. Your teams are assembled. Your goals are clear. And all that's left to do is save the Icaron. That was Erica Ishii as Vera Fishkeaks Land. Abria 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. For even more stories like this, join us on our Patreon. We'll see you there.