Superhero Adventures, UK Style

Back at the Reception Centre Akira asked again whether Daedalus was around, only to be told that he still wasn’t back. Apparently it wasn’t unusual for him to lose track of days, especially when he was working at the Robot Forge; the Preserver-built, automated assembly factory responsible for both building and programming the city’s hordes of maintenance and repair droids. The robots were to be found everywhere in Starhaven, reactivating, repairing and rebuilding the necessary infrastructure needed to house and sustain the city’s ever-expanding population.

As they left to head over to the district of Draffsnarl at the southern terminus of the causeway in order to meet with Peter, Mary and Akira again noticed several posters plastered on the walls offering a substantial reward for any information about the series of high tech thefts that had occurred over the last month.

It seemed that Starhaven wasn’t the paradise everybody initially assumed it would be after all. The thefts appeared to consist primarily of Ancient technology stolen from across the whole of the city, but most had been from a particular region of the city, Draffsnarl.

They had now solved the case that they had been sent to investigate by Mr. Smith and they had the answers to what was happening to his refugees and officers, but now they had no way of getting home. They hoped that if they could meet up with Daedalus, that he might find a solution to that particular problem, though neither of them knew how much they should  tell Mr Smith about Starhaven when they finally got home.

They had taken some time out to explore the city and Akira had got especially enamoured with investigating Decentralised Park. Strange ecosystems defined the whole region the residents referred to as The West Wing; the most prominent was the region under the dome known as Decentralised Park. This massively overgrown artificial forest resembled the primordial rain forests of Earth’s Pacific Northwest with mile after mile covered in titanic trees stretching up nearly 100 metres and supporting unique ecosystems in the branches. A wide variety of Earth animals and strange hybrids stalked the canopy, far more than the ecosystem should naturally be able to support. The park’s more aggressive plants and creatures had spread to the surrounding towers as well, making the whole region dangerous for scavengers and a target for poachers seeking the exotic.

Rumours even suggested that the growth concealed the crash site of a legendary pirate starship somewhere within its depths. Akira liked the idea of looking for the starship as a possible way of getting home. Even if it was a crashed ship, surely with their magic and technology skills they should be able to get it working again?

Meanwhile, they were temporarily staying in an apartment to the west of Preserver Hall but would need to move out after a couple of months and Akira seriously considered basing themselves in one of the abandoned apartment blocks next to Decentralised Park, if they could clear out its current alien arboreal inhabitants.

They arrived at the causeway where they met up with Peter returning from his day job as a construction worker. Peter immediately asked if there was any update on the Khanate Destroyer they’d encountered in-system as he was expecting them to discover Starhaven and want its Preserver artefacts for themselves.

Its presence in the system was the reason the Starport was currently closed and they were not allowing any more ships to dock, nor was it allowing any ships to leave the base as the entire city was in lockdown until it felt safer for its residents.

What were they doing in the solar system anyway? Were they searching for the Sphere device, whatever it might be? The current theory was that this device had to be located somewhere within the Earth’s solar system. After all, the system had been at the epicentre of the Sphere and of course, they’d “heard all about Earth’s mightiest heroes, such as Paragon” muttered Akira.

As far as the mission was considered they had solved the mystery but they were now trapped here until such time as they were either able to leave or make contact with G.R.E.E.T. back in Earth. Meanwhile, they’d had to find employment for themselves. In the end, it found them when they were approached by one of the senior guards who offered them contractual work investigating the thefts. He explained that he recognised Akira and he needed people who were not known to the local criminal fraternity, to go where his staff couldn’t, at least not without being immediately recognised.

Meanwhile, Peter had found work in the reconstruction industry during the day but was happy to work with Akira and Banshee, moonlighting as a security consultant in the evenings as they searched for clues as to who was responsible for the tech thefts. That was how the team came to be ‘Working for the Man.’ As Akira put it.

Their searches and investigations had taken then to the Draffsnarl area, near the Starport. If watching episodes of Scooby-doo had taught them anything, it was to never split up the party. Was it the caretaker committing the thefts? According to Scooby-doo, it was always the caretaker who was responsible for all the ghastly going on’s. Unfortunately there wasn’t a caretaker they could arrest.

They walked together heading back towards Peter’s building site and a nearby warehouse they wanted to check out.

The building they were watching was nondescript, almost invisible compared to the noisy reconstruction sites nearby. Whoever had been stealing Preserver tech from the Wings had been great at covering their tracks so far, but every clue from the last few days pointed to this warehouse as their latest potential target.

They suspected that it might be being used to store illegal goods of some sort. In part because Peter had been working nearby on one of the other buildings during the daytime and he had noticed that the warehouse was kept locked up with no one approaching it during the day, yet there had been lights constantly moving around inside the building despite it apparently being unoccupied.

As they approached the warehouse, they could again see lights moving around inside then all the lights suddenly vanished. Nothing suspicious about that was there.

Paragon was of the opinion that they needed to break-in and checkout the warehouse. He was especially concerned when he noticed that the usual chains and locks that barred the doors had been removed, but by who?

Paragon claimed that usually the doors were chained up with very heavy locks with no one going in and out of the building. Then today, throughout the day, there had been no lights on inside and now the chains had been removed from the door. Could it be a trap?

The big lights in the street outside were also off, why? “You always have the street lights on for health and safety reasons,” muttered Paragon as they moved through the darkness towards the doors.

Banshee immediately turned both insubstantial and invisible and then entered by flowing through the shut door. Akira grabbed hold of Paragon’s hand and turned them both invisible as well before they pulled the door open slightly and entered.

Dust and debris filled the space between the winding shelves leading to a corridor from which spilt a distant pale blue light.  As soon as they stepped inside, the dust on the floor revealed the outline of their footsteps. They immediately levitated hoping that the clouds of dust in the air wouldn’t divulge their outlines.

They moved into the main part of the storehouse. The cabin in front of them spilled out a pale blue light illuminating an alien figure who could be seen moving around directing a group of white robed figures to stack crates on a hover-sled in the loading bay at the opposite end of the warehouse. He held a weird looking staff in one of his four hands and wore glowing armour pieces with a white cape. His followers moved through the racks of boxes and dragged the crates of stolen goods over to the loading bay.

The tall figure cast cautious glances around the warehouse as he addressed his minions. “Supplicants, chosen Children of the Chrysalis, load these holy artefacts quickly but carefully and you shall taste of the bountiful blessings of the Chrysalis.”

They could now see that the leader was a tall humanoid with a powerful torso and lanky limbs. His slimy skin was a pale lavender in colour, which glowed with cryptic pale blue sigils under the regal white cape and light body armour he wore. Two chitinous tendrils dangled from his stomach walls, seemingly moving as though they had a mind of their own.

The others appeared to have not been there too long as the moved crate after crate to the far end of the warehouse where a partially stacked grav-sled was waiting.

Suddenly there was gunfire coming from one of the containers as its doors swung open. Inside were several armoured troopers, including a mentat that they could see, but they were sure there would be others elsewhere in the warehouse.

They looked to be Khanate or Imperial troopers except their armour was old and scruffy-looking, battered and in places sections of armour plate had been replaced and patched. Every other trooper from either side they had seen so far, their armour had been kept in pristine condition. Regardless they were shooting at the others with ruthless abandon.

Nearby were indications that the troopers had been camping out in the warehouse for several days, possibly in anticipation of this theft.

There were a number of signs on their container written in several different alphabets and languages including English, stating that it belonged to someone called Tamira-Van.

Shots rang out from elsewhere in the warehouse as two other assault teams appeared and began shooting indiscriminately at the Children of the Chrysalis.

Their cultists seemed to hail from a dozen different races with no two exactly alike though many shared racial similarities, as though each had been mutated in some way.

They all shared one thing in particular, they all had apparent bizarre generic transformations, some even appeared to be capable of developing new features in response to the danger and emotions around them however, they all looked unnatural and, for want of a better description, unbalanced.

One of the cultists had three legs, another multiple arms coming out of different parts of their anatomy. There were tentacles, claws, and hooks all emerging from their bodies underneath which were human legs. In one case, it looked like someone had squished an alien squid on top of a human being, with various body parts seemingly added haphazardly.

These monstrosities, seemingly immune to their attackers weapons, were attacking the soldiers that had tried to ambush them.

It was like something from the island of Doctor Moreau thought Akira, suddenly thinking about Annie and her father.

The rest of the cultists were caught in the crossfire. It was a slaughter. Several of them had hand blasters, which they fired back while the rest of the cultists kept trying to load the crates onto the sled. It seemed that stealing whatever was in the crates was more important than their own survival.

Shots were being fired from both sides. Initially the team elected to stand back and see what happened considering they were not visible. The plan was that as soon as they saw someone trying to leave with the crates they would run over, jump in and grab it.

Then a blaster shot almost hit Akira. Even invisible it looked as though there was a good chance that they were going to get  caught in the crossfire If they were not careful.

Paragon was forced to grab hold of Akira as he switched his powers from levitating to put his shield up. “Paragon, don’t let go of me,” Akira whispered over their Commdots. Paragon responded by flying them both up higher, towards the roof of the warehouse.

Despite both of them still being invisible, Paragon was forced to dodge various blaster shots, one of which skimmed his arm though thankfully, it did little damage.

On the ground, things were starting to look ugly as the three squads of troopers started to surround the remaining cultists. One of the troopers fired at one of the unarmed women and a large hole appeared in his target’s chest as she dropped to the ground, dead.

The cultist leader’s staff fired blasts that seemed to transform whomever it hit. It seemed to have the ability to rewrite genetic code mid-combat and he was using it on both follower and attacker alike. When he used the staff on one of his followers, it appeared to give them additional physical changes, granting them superhuman strength, durability or just a tonne of tentacles. When he used it on an enemy it appeared to devolve them instantly into a puddle of primordial soup. In addition, his insect arms were deceptively strong and he was pinning his victims in place while he transformed them or used the extra limbs to slice through their armour.

“Don’t bloody let go of me,” screamed Akira, “remember I’m not levitating anymore!” as he maintained the shield, hoping the cultist’s leader wouldn’t find them and turn his staff on them.

What was in the crates, wondered Akira? Whatever it was, it was seemingly worth people dying for. They watched as the leaders staff blasted at several of the troopers, one of whom was transformed instantly into a pile of mucus-like goo, spilling out of the armour.

They assumed that the armoured attackers below were Khanate troopers but it was impossible to confirm as several on both sides of the conflict collapsed, dead or injured under the crossfire. It was clear that the thieves we’re going to be slaughtered if the three of them didn’t get involved in the fight.

Two more groups of troopers had appeared on top of the containers, firing down upon the thieves. Banshee and Akira were now sure they were dealing with Khanate troops, given that they had been the only interstellar representatives that Earth had seen in the last few years, other than refugees.

The Vilani Imperium had been cut off completely from access to the Earth by the Khanate blockade and the Khanate conquered systems. Only the Ziru Sirkan embassy on Earth still had Vilani troopers in the system.

They noticed that the new arrivals also had badly maintained armour. What was going on they wondered. Who else might be wearing power armour if it wasn’t the Khanates or the Imperium?

One of the monstrosities was striking out wildly at the newly arrived reinforcements but, despite this, it was clear that the followers would be massacred if they didn’t interfere.

Banshee in particular was not comfortable watching this slaughter. It wasn’t clear who they should be targeting first with non-lethal attacks however. There were just too many Shades of Grey to know. It was not clear cut. There were no nice people for them to rescue or save but as they did have one group being slaughtered, the debate was over. They had done enough talking, now was a time for action.

Akira broke cover first. He turned visible and targeted with his mystical blast six of the remaining troopers as well as the mentalist. Akira unleashed a powerful mental blast at the psi first, which struck him leaving him stunned.

The next part of Akira’s blitzkrieg was to target the troopers. The next attempt at a mental blast failed but he continued to unleash his mystical blast again, and again, and again. The next shot also missed, but then the third trooper collapsed, no longer able to fight. The rest of the troopers targeted were also hit and left stunned.

Banshee unleashed a Wail that left one of the troopers staggering back against one of the crates, while another collapsed unconscious under the onslaught. Paragon immediately responded by flying down intending to hit the mentalist while trying to knock him into one of the other troopers, all while continuing to still hold Akira in his arms. As he landed, his intended target ran away to hide in the container so Paragon unleashed his Shockwave attack instead. The ‘storm’ generated hit the mentalist from behind as well as a couple of the troopers leaving the ‘hound’ unconscious and the troopers hurling into the side of the container.

Meanwhile, the Children of the Chrysalis were still busily loading the remaining crates onto the grav-sled, clearly intending to flee with their prizes leaving The Balance to fight their attackers alone. The leader of the Chrysalis crew aimed at Akira with his staff; the same staff that altered the genetic structure of its victims. Realising what was happening Akira successfully twisted his body out of the way at the last second and dodged the attack, which also narrowly missed hitting Paragon who still holding onto Akira.

Both Akira and Paragon were now fully visible though Banshee was still able to stay hidden. A shot from one of the cultists hand blaster hit Paragon but failed to do any real damage, it didn’t even singe his chest hairs.

Another shot skimmed past Akira’s ear even as one of the alien cultists tried to grab hold of him. Another shot passed through Banshee who, thankfully, was still insubstantial. Akira was still focused on attacking the troopers. He unleashed a series of mental blasts missing the first two troopers he targeted but hit and accidentally killed the third trooper.

Akira was in shock at the fact that he was now a murderer but in the chaos of such a battle as this, things happen that he was not going to be comfortable with later. A blast from one of the troopers rifles flew passed his ear and disabled the grav-sled bringing Akira back to the here and now.

Most of the chrysalis cultists were either still attacking the troopers or trying to flee.

Banshee flew behind the leader of the cultists, turned substantial and visible, pulled the staff out of his hand just before she turned insubstantial again. Their leader tried to hold onto the staff but wasn’t able to. Now disarmed, the cultists leader could no longer convert anyone into mucus.

In the chaos, shots were raining everywhere, only the monstrosities seemed immune to their effects.

Paragon flew straight up to the top of the warehouse then headed straight towards one of the remaining cultist monstrosities. One of the creatures that had been altered by the staff. Supposedly, apparently.

He slammed into it with all his force while hitting out wildly, knocking it, him unconscious and incapable of fighting back. Meanwhile, their leader was busy wildly swiping away with all four of his limbs at the air around him, trying to attack and damage the once more invisible Banshee. He was clearly unhappy at losing his staff and he knew his attacker had to be somewhere nearby, but where?

Unsuccessful and aware that the battle was lost, he tried to flee but Paragon grabbed hold of him, pulled him into the air, and held him in a strong lock even as he hit him gently on the cheek. Unable to run, unable to fight back, he squirmed in his grip.

One of the remaining troopers fired his rifle at Paragon in the air. It hit, but the shot failed to do any real damage as he sucked up the pain. Meanwhile one of the cultists had a go at Akira firing his blaster pistol at him, but failed to hit.

Akira asked Banshee to deal with the last remaining monstrosity while he dealt with anyone else who was still able to fire. His first mental attack missed. His next shot was more successful and knocked the cultist unconscious. The remaining cultists were also hit and knocked unconscious by the attack.

The Cultist leader kept on struggling and trying to fight Paragon who responded with a punch that immediately stunned him.

The Remaining trooper pulled a grenade from his belt. Tear gas apparently, he threw it and it exploded in the air. The tear gas immediately start to affect all those on the ground but didn’t rise high into the air, so the team were safe from its effects though Paragon elected to stay close to the  ceiling of the warehouse with his captive only for the trooper to unleash his blaster at him. For a second, he considered using his hostage as a shield but instead let the shot hit him. Once more, the blast hurt but didn’t damage him seriously.

Banshee responded by unleashing an aura of fear on those remaining on the ground. The monstrosity was rendered unconscious but her attack failed to seriously affect the others.

Once those remaining were dealt with It was clear that Banshee would need to play the bad cop and Akira the good cop when it came to interrogating the leader. He was already stunned and crying his eyes out, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.

Paragon prepared to eye blast the last surviving soldier but to his surprise, he felt his eyes sting and he could see and feel electricity sparking between his fingertips. That took him by surprise as Paragon realised that perhaps he had inherited more than he thought he had from Icarus. “You’re discharging”, shouted Akira as Paragon lent into the electricity flowing through his body and focused it like he would his eye beam. The electricity was harder to control than his eye blasts. He pointed his finger at his target and to his surprise a lightning bolt flew across the room and struck the remaining soldier. Thankfully, the lightning blast only shocked him and didn’t fry him from the inside out. Not bad for a first attempt trying to use what was to him a new power, thought Paragon though now he knew he could do this he would need to practice. He only realised that the figure in his arms had also been accidentally tasered by his attack when his captive screamed and stopped struggling as he collapsed unconscious in his grip.

The last remaining trooper turned, fired his rifle at Akira but the shot missed. He then turned and ran. Akira unleashed one final blast at him then let him go.

Akira knew that he should go after him but there was too much to do here for those either injured, unconscious or dead, not least to awaken the cult leader and interrogate him. It took them to stabilise the injured then several more minutes to resuscitate the leader. Banshee turned temporarily into Mary just long enough to partially heal him then she reverted to Banshee and her role as Bad Cop as they started to question him.

It didn’t take long to get some answers. He explained that he had once been a normal human called Damaris Geral but that he had taken the identity of Pupil after his exaltation and enhancement by the great Chrysalis. He was once a Lor Archaeologist that had specialised in reverse engineering Preserver technology. Then he’d found the one true way and he’d found his God, right here in Starhaven. While investigating the Green he’d found a Preserver laboratory and met Chrysalis, a surviving Intelligence from the time of the Preservers.

Chrysalis changed him from being a mere human into the powerful creature that now stood before them. Akira muttered to the others, “He’s just another religious nut, isn’t he?”

Their prisoner ignored his comment as he continued, “I became his pupil, I became Pupil, under his benevolent gaze and he gave me the task of persuading others to evolve, to become a chosen child of Chrysalis. To be further exalted. Changed and altered in their genetic structure.”

Banshee asked, “Who or what is Chrysalis? Is it an Ancient, a Preserver?”

No, Chrysalis is a child of their intelligence, devoid of flesh and its failings but imprisoned, trapped but still it attempted to improve the races that had been previously uplifted by the Preservers. That and I was to seek out the artefacts that had belonged to the Preservers, the Ancients, artefacts that really belonged to the Chrysalis as their inheritor; tools that it could use to become more powerful and escape its bondage and allow it the power to exalt the organics who worshipped him to glory.”

Akira asked. “Where is Chrysalis being bonded? Where is he being kept imprisoned?”

Pupil refused to say, other than to mention that it was somewhere in the Green Zone. “The Green Zone?” Pupil stated that he referred to the forested area outside the city but still within the domes.

Banshee quietly asked, “So, you’re stealing all this stuff to try and reverse engineer a way to what?”

“His prime directive is to modify beings, to improve them, to purify them. To make them better. More suitable for enlightenment.”

Akira realised they weren’t going to get any more sense out of him and the best thing to do was to take him and hand him and his followers over to the authorities. They didn’t need any more of these acolytes running around the city and anyway that staff of his was way too powerful to leave in the hands of religious fanatics, even if their ‘god’ was apparently real. Something to investigate further when they had the time.

They elected to take him to Preserver Hall and hand them over to Starhaven’s authorities but first they wanted to use a tin opener on the soldiers and find out who they were.

Taking their helmets off, they realised that they were not all Zultasian. They apparently came from various humanoid species though none of them were non-human, just from different planets and different societies. Many were either older or younger than they had expected, and many had badly healed battle scars. Mercenaries perhaps or something else? It would account for the armour being patched at least. Perhaps the armour had been taken from the bodies of those they had attacked?

Was it too late to go after the one that hobbled away? In the end, Akira decided to let him go but they decided to wake up and question one of the troopers. They picked the youngest, merely a teen, as the most likely to talk.

Akira wanted to know who they were working for. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” he asked, “What would your parents think?”

“They sold me into slavery when I was nine,” he said. “What?” screamed paragon, “It’s no surprise then that he became a mercenary, if that’s what happened to him when he was younger.”

“Mercenary? I am an oath-bound BloodRavager, we are named after Kona the BloodRavager, daughter of the Star Khan himself, though admittedly she is supposedly the offspring of one of his many by-blow couplings. She’s here to prove her worth to her father by taking over this Preserver outpost for him.”

He was clearly angry at being called a mercenary and Akira played on his pride. “And this Kona, she’s in Starhaven now?”

“Her warship is still somewhere in orbit. I and my fellow troopers were sent down to reconnoitre the city and prepare for her arrival.”

“Well that went well,” said Akira, “didn’t it?”

“This wasn’t part of the original mission, we were doing this as a favour, as part-payment to Xern who we needed to open the way for us to take control of this outpost.”

“And who is this Xern?”

“I don’t know, it’s above my paygrade.” he replied. “I just know the name.” When asked, he began to describe a large white-skinned creature one that immediately reminded them of the land shark biped that travelled to Starhaven with them.

Unaware of their thoughts, the soldier continued to explain that this Xern was the reason that Kona was able to locate this place; his race were able to sense and track electro-magnetic energy signatures even through sensor shielding and he could telepathically transmit that information to his short-lived clones, one of whom had remained onboard Kona’s ship as a hostage.

Could it be their fellow passenger?

The soldier continued, ”Kona had grown up hearing legends about an intact, functional Preserver outpost deep with the Sphere from her slave mother and wanted to find it as a prize to present to her father the Star Khan to gain his approval, recognition and respect.

When she reached maturity she fled the harem, obtained a fleet of warships and formed her own ‘regiment’ of freedmen and women, which she named BloodRavagers and set about raiding and ravaging her way across the Sphere region.

As she battled deeper and deeper into the Sphere, she sought out legends about the Preservers presence in the region. Many of the legends led her to this system but she wasn’t ready to try and take on the horrors of Terra just yet. then in one of the Muan Gwi systems she raided she heard tell tales confirming the presence of an intact Preserver city built on a moon orbiting around a gas giant with a giant ‘red eye’ located at the centre of the Sphere.

A covert trip into this system identified the gas giant as the one you call Jupiter but it has 79 moons orbiting it and the outpost was both concealed and shielded making it impossible to find, until she chanced on Xern, a legendary bounty hunter who offered to find the city for her for a price.

No, I don’t know what that price was or how he found the city only that he arrived here a few days ago and somehow transmitted that information to his clone that the city was concealed on this moon. In return, she would make sure his family was kept safe and he would be rewarded for his services.

When we arrived on the surface of this moon by shuttle, Xern found us in the icy wilds and guided us to this city. Once here we were told we had to stop these mutants from stealing from this warehouse and his family. Something to do with a debt he owed, before he would contact Kona and guide her to the city.”

Banshee wondered what would happen once Xern realised that the troopers had been captured.

“You have one ship that came down to the surface in, a shuttle yes? Your task was to confirm that the base existed and find some way to signal the ship so the rest of your troopers could become down and take over the base, is that right?”

The youth nodded.

“So what then? The capture of this outpost would gain you, this Kona, what? Prestige and status with the Star Khan? I assume you think this is where the technology that created the Sphere is located as only the Preservers could have been powerful enough to create something like the Sphere and as this is the best ‘preserved’ of their settlements to be found anywhere in this galaxy, at least so far, that the device has to be located here?”

Just then, one of the other troopers began to regain consciousness. The youth looked over, saw him and refused to answer any more questions.

Akira tried to persuade him that he had to be wrong, that this was couldn’t be the site of the Sphere device. He wasn’t sure he was that convincing, though.

“Your ship, the one you came down in, the shuttle does it require more than one person to fly it?”

He remained silent.

Their shuttle had to be located out on the surface of Europa, in the cold somewhere beyond the domes. He wondered if the guy who’d hobbled away, would be able to fly it away on his own. Potentially yes.

They put their prisoners weapons into the container, which Paragon ‘sealed’ then those that had survived the battle were marched through the streets, helmetless, their heads covered in cloth bags back to Preserver Hall and the prison, the fight wiped out of them.

Paragon wondered. If that’s where they would find Daedalus this time or if he was still at the Robot Forge wherever that was. They also needed to meet their contact from G.R.E.E.T. who’d assigned them this job. After all, they had their fees to get for solving the mystery of the stolen tech.

Located directly behind Central Processing, Preserver Hall was a visual oasis in the stark industrial landscape of the Central district. Its palatial domes loomed over its colourless neighbours like a supervisor overseeing their employees. Politicians, agents and bureaucrats weaved through the fountains and twisted metal sculptures lining the grounds. A grand staircase dozens of metres across ascended up to walls of windows that served as the entrance to the hall. It’s one Spire, in the very centre of the domes was the tallest structure in Starhaven. The utilitarian design extended to the interior. Simple couches, tables, and directories were the extent of the furnishings except for a receptionist’s desk.

The receptionist was looking frustrated as he tried to figure out what to do now. It was not every day that someone marched into the building with dozens of prisoners in tow, some of whom were apparently part of an invading force.

Security rushed in and grabbed up the soldiers as well as the cultists. The team tried to explain that the troopers were from a ship orbiting somewhere just off-planet but were told they really had to talk to Governor Tamara-Van directly. She was currently indisposed, talking to one of the loyalist party but would speak with them as soon as she could.

Tamara-Van had been the name written on the side of the container hadn’t it? Wonder what that meant.

Akira whispered to Paragon, “For goodness sake, Paragon whatever you do please don’t try and chat her up; she’s the governor after all.” Paragon looked embarrassed and muttered, “I have told you before, I’m a wall flower when it comes to interacting with the opposite sex.”

They gave the officers the location of the warehouse and left them to collect the dead for reclamation. As soon as security had taken away the prisoners, they were told to head up towards an office on the third floor.

As they were just about to enter the outer office, a human woman rushed out bumping into them. She immediately excused herself and rushed off muttering in English that she had another meeting to get to. As soon as she was out of earshot, Akira suggested that they check their pockets just in case. Thankfully, nothing had been stolen from them.

Governor Tamara-Van came out and immediately offered her apologies, mentioning that meetings with loyalists like Vay-La, her bosses and their supporters was always hard work. The woman leaving, Vay-La, was the latest assistant to that old Loyalist blowhard, Sun-Ren.

“Loyalist? Traitor more like but it takes all sorts I suppose. At least this time it was primarily about Daedalus and not capitulating without a fight to the Khanates.”

She held her door open and ushered them in, asking if they encountered the Loyalist party yet and explaining that their agenda was to contact the Khanates and trade the riches of Starhaven for total indemnity for the citizens rather than remain in hiding.  Vay-La was just the latest arrival to arrive at Starhaven and plead with the City Councillor to reveal the city to the Khanates before they found it for themselves and treated them as hostiles.

Tamara went on to explain, “Vay-La had come to tell me that Ren was exceedingly concerned about the malfunctions his people have seen in the robot workforce. She wanted me to send word to Daedalus – I would if Daedalus was anywhere to be found! Now to business. You think the prisoners you brought in are part of an invading force?

I’ll make sure security rounds them all up immediately. Are you sure they were Khanate Troopers and not just local crooks using their armour? If Khanate troops are in Starhaven, perhaps the Loyalists are right after all. Damn it!”

She immediately arranged for G.R.E.E.T. officers and the local militia to be put on alert and to begin searching for any more intruders, Khanate or otherwise. That was when Paragon realised they had left the warehouse without checking out what was in the crates, damn!

Akira pointed out to the Governor that her container was still safely at the warehouse but it had been used as temporary accommodation by one of the troops.

“My container?” Akira explained that they had found some of the Khanate troopers in a shipping container with her name on it.

“And you want to know why my name was on the container? That is a very good question, I wish I had an answer, but to put it simply since assuming leadership of Starhaven a lot of containers around the city have my name on them. I send a lot of manifests for supplies and equipment. Containers don’t always have their manifests properly cleared before heading off to the next destination. I can only assume it’s probably a clerical error originating from the Starport.”

“These were being stolen by the cultists we brought in, presumably valuable artefacts.”

Tamara went and checked her computer terminal and seemed momentarily lost in thought.

“Its location in DraffSnark and the fact that you found shady items inside, I’d have to guess the warehouse and crates would be the property of Mama Kaiger. If it doesn’t belong to her, she’ll know who does own it. In the meantime we’ll allocate officers to check it out after they have ensured there are no more intruders in the city.”

Akira mentioned they might want to keep an eye open for a Dantaran called Xern who was in cahoots with the soldiers. Tamara looked surprised, “Mama Kaiger’s  a Dantaran. She may be many things but a supporter of the Khanates isn’t one of them.”

“Then perhaps the male’s gone behind her back?” said Paragon and Akira simultaneously. Tamara shook her head in confusion then opened a comm-channel and told her receptionist to put out an arrest warrant for this Xern as he was wanted for questioning.

She turned back to the team, “All of our officers are going to be involved in investigating this mess you’ve gifted us, we really need to find out what’s going on. I would ask Daedalus but unfortunately, he’s been missing for couple of days now. We’ve got this problem over at the Robot Forge.”

Akira mentioned that to add to her problems, that the cultists had mentioned about a Chrysalis being a potential threat. That led to a conversation about who or what this Chrysalis was to which they had no real answers. “A problem for another day then, assuming it turns out to be real,” stated Tamara. They reminded her that the trooper had claimed that there was a presumably hostile warship somewhere in orbit around Europa searching for the thankfully concealed outpost and were they in contact with the destroyer they’d encountered inbound?

Tamara-Van was a silent for several seconds composing her thoughts then said, “Thank you for all your help. We’re struggling here at the moment, it’s bad enough we have got so many of the robots malfunctioning, especially with Daedalus missing for a couple of days now. He went off to check on what was happening with the robots and never came back, the one person who might be able to help the most.”

Paragon suggested that they went looking for Daedalus. Tamara looked relieved, “The last place we know he went to was the Robot Forge. Since the robots started malfunctioning throughout the city there has been chaos. They’ve even set up roadblocks all around the Forge and started to demolish and then repair functional buildings, seemingly at random, making it impossible for our people to investigate.”

Paragon stated they could get in but it would be ‘helpful’ if they were able to get paid. Tamara smiled and agreed “within reason.”

She handed the matter over to her receptionist to work out the details and immediately went back to coordinating the search for any other infiltrators.

Outside, the receptionist explained that they had received reports of service ‘bots going inert around the city. The affected drones stop in place and will not reactivate for up to 30 minutes. Some citizens have claimed they can hear them making a high-pitched noise during those shutdowns but most of us can’t hear anything. Eventually the bots start up and go back to work as though nothing has happened. Daedalus went off to fix the problem but he hadn’t been back since and no one has heard from him, which was really unusual.

He explained that the Robot Forge, in the East Wing of the city would be the best place to start. That’s where Daedalus had been headed a couple of days ago.

As they journeyed towards the East Wing and the Robot Forge it became clear that the construction robots in particular had locked down the district, refusing to allow anyone access as they demolished buildings and repaired others. Communication outside the district was out while the maintenance droids tried to fix VIRA and the public fibre-optic commlinks. The timing was definitely suspicious.

They encountered several giant cyclopean construction robots that had blocked the Forge itself off preventing anyone from getting inside. They had constricted a series of street level barricades on all of the surrounding roads all the way around the Forge. Apparently, the robots at the barricades claimed there was a toxic radiation leak at the factory and they were working to fix it, that all organics were advised to remain behind the barriers for their own safety and they would enforce that order with force if necessary. Starhaven’s security forces, stretched thin as they were, had taken a position of observation or trying to come up with a means of bypassing the rogue robots without escalating the situation.

The Balance again turned invisible (and in Banshee’s case, also insubstantial) and flew over the roadblocks, only to see multiple robots patrolling the roof of the Forge.

They reviewed what the receptionist had told them about the Robot Forge. Daedalus’ Most recent project in Starhaven’s reconstruction had been to help restore the so-called Robot Forge, an automated factory that produced and controlled the maintenance robots that helped sustain the city. These mechanical aids had speeded up the reconstruction effort in the city tenfold and could operate in parts that were too cold, hot or irradiated for other residents to endure. It didn’t help that most of the maintenance access ports and tunnels within the city hadn’t been designed for sentient’s to use anyway and were poorly designed from a health and safety prospective, lacking safety rails or any form of bypass mechanisms, making the use of robots to carry out repairs essential.

While individual robots had basic artificial intelligence capability to enable them to search out and repair problems, they relied primarily on the Forge’s central computers to coordinate efforts.

Some City Councillors were rumoured to be debating amongst themselves whether to try to repossess the Forge and use it to produce war drones and star fighters. Arguing that restoring the city wouldn’t benefit anyone if the Khanate’s burnt it to ash.

As they flew over the roadblocks, they could now see the Robot Forge up ahead. Squads of robots stood watching at the front door, maintaining the radiation leak story to any organics that they could see approaching. A few also patrolled the rooftop to prevent aerial access to the roof. It felt as though they were waiting for something – or someone? Them?

It felt as though the lunatics had taken over the asylum or in this case, the robots the Forge. Were they making friends for themselves inside, more advanced robots, or possibly constantly upgrading themselves?

It seemed likely that Daedalus was inside and if so Paragon felt he was honour bound to try and rescue his ‘father’, ‘grandfather’, or whatever he was to him via his progenitor – biologically he was family and as such he had to try and rescue him, assuming he needed rescuing of course.

Banshee phased through the roof leaving Akira and Paragon to sneak inside without the Sentry Bots noticing.

Once inside, the sound of the whirling and clanging machinery was almost unbearable. Flying sparks were the only light aside for a flickering bulb in the floor to ceiling windows of the office overlooking the production floor. One of the windows was shattered and the wall marred with tell-tale scorch marks from laser weapons. Two conveyor belts formed the assembly line on both sides of the forge. Each was full of robots in various stages of completion. Daedalus’ trademark helmet lay discarded in the centre of the floor.

Akira looked to see if there was any way to switch off the mains but before he could start searching Paragon had pulled free and headed towards the office. He pulled the door open and inside they could see Daedalus’ Famous power armour scattered across the office floor. “You ready to behold your naked grandfather?” whispered Akira as they began to look around for an explanation.

Readouts on a nearly drained portable terminal showed that the Forge had been running nonstop for several days resulting in the production of thousands of more robots, but why. It was running far into the red as a result and was at risk of malfunctioning. The unit that controlled the robots primary functions, that enabled them to be shutdown, had been totally destroyed, apparently by laser fire.

Daedalus would have had a backup master control panel, probably attached to his suits controller, which was built into the console bracelet he always wore. They looked around but it wasn’t with the rest of his armour. They did find a note partially concealed beneath the desk written in beautiful and very distinctive cursive penmanship, which mentioned that the writer had set up a backup workshop located in the Facetwild, whatever that might be. The author did describe it as a ‘natural wonder’.

An alarm blared throughout the Forge as several tinny robotic voices filled the air speaking simultaneously in Lor, Vilani and Zultasian, “Rejoice. This outpost is now under the protection of the Star Khan and the Khanate Imperium. Resist at your own peril. So says Kona BloodRavager, daughter of the great Khan himself, all praise his name and holy bloodline.”

Outside they could hear a series of distant explosions, then the screech of fighter ship’s thruster engines from the direction of the Starport followed by screams from across the city, both of terror and of jubilation. This couldn’t be good. As they looked out the office skylight they could see a large starship hovering above the domes, its hull bristling with guns. Though smaller than the destroyer they’d encountered on their flight to Starhaven, it had to be capable of accommodating hundreds of troopers and it was targeting the city.

Interlude

In the BASEment, Wessex, back on Earth

Android Annie walked over and bent down to give Jeeves a peck on the cheek then walked to the room off the side of the lounge and, opening the concealed door, walked inside to pat Frankie’s primary display monitor. “Missed you” she whispered before wandering back to the lounge to stand by Young Sam’s side, their arms wrapped around each other’s waists.

“Okay, so what’s the problem that you want us to help with?” asked Sam as he bulked out into his Dragonkin persona.

Jeeves cleared his throat before explaining. “They’ve gone missing again, all three of them this time. It was supposed to be an infiltration mission to find some people smugglers for G.R.E.E.T. but they’ve been gone for over two weeks and G.R.E.E.T. don’t appear to know where they are. Even Frankie’s been unable to trace them – she thinks they are no longer on Earth.

Last time this happened he had to form a temporary team, a Balance 2.0 if you will. I think we need to do the same this time, at least until they find their way home or we can rescue them from wherever they have gone this time.

Bethany’s offered to pay your fees for as long as is necessary Sam and between Frankie and Tinks’ ‘Holo Ghost’ impersonation of Banshee we used last time and Seven’s mystical abilities to compensate for Akira’s disappearance I think we have those two covered. What’s missing is Paragon’s contribution to the team as the heavy hitter and defender and that’s where you two come in – brain’s and brawn combined into a single package. We need you two to provide the heavy lifting.

In fact, we need to form up now, a Balance 3.0, as a certain member of Banshee’s family is causing issues again and you’re our best chance of stopping her… What do you say?”

Young Sam shivered. When he talked about Banshee’s family, he was meaning Dementia wasn’t he? Damn, he really hated the cold.

Jeeves smiled an apologetic curving of his lips as he confirmed that yes Dementia was back and they needed the team to stop her. He looked over at Annie’s luscious red hair and commented, “Apparently she’s elected to stop dyeing her hair. Turns out she’s not a natural redhead after all and has reverted to her natural auburn colour but her ambition hasn’t changed.”

“But, but Dementia, the horrible, mind-chilling agony and bone-chilling cold..?” howled Sam as even the thought of her meta-abilities made him shiver.

Jeeves continued, “I was going to ask Banshee’s grand-niece to come back onto the team with her Illustrious armour, but her team is fully deployed dealing with a major terrorist threat to Dublin and they need ol’ Ironsides there. So, what do you think? You willing to rejoin the Balance until we can find out what has happened to the others?”

Back on Starhaven

In the distance, they could see that the invading warship was hovering above the Starport and its cannons were blasting away with devastating effect.

On the outer walls of the Forge, they could now see that a series of flashing lights had activated. Wires had been strung between what looked like makeshift bombs all around the inside of the factory. It looked as though the building had been booby-trapped and someone had just activated them. Clearly, this was to ensure no one was able to use the Forge against the attackers either now or later. Wonder what else they’d booby-trapped, wondered Akira? Presumably, whoever had captured Daedalus had set this up as a negotiation tactic? Given the rest of his armour was here they had obviously taken him and his master control bracelet with them.

When they had met him previously back on Earth he’d been wearing normal clothes, but he’d still had his bracelet with him. It was known to be his primary controller for all things Daedalus after all and it would be unlikely that he wouldn’t have set it to override the Forge or any other facility he had been working on.

They stepped outside in time to see the robots leaving the barricades and the Forge and joining up with the invading troopers in their mismatched and battered Imperial armour, in attacking the citizens. Their numbers were being added to as their now completed mechanical companions, moistly consisting of cyclopean construction bots, stepped off the assembly line and joining them. Thankfully, the automated Forge had been running at excess capacity for several days now and safety mechanisms elected to temporarily switch-off the production line to allow the Forge to carry out essential repairs.

Akira stepped back inside and approached the string of bombs. It was a fairly simple design, intended to be set off remotely and then explode the bombs one after the other in a daisy chain. If he disabled the receiver, then it would seem as though the trap was still set as each of the explosives would still appear active but someone would need to be willing to commit suicide to set them off manually.

He set to work on disabling the receiver by yanking the comms chip and bypassing its circuitry so that to all intents and purposes it looked to still be active. He then proceeded to head around the outer wall disconnecting the explosives while maintaining the circuit. Anyone checking would see the string of blinking red lights and hopefully not realise, unless they looked real close, that the explosives were no longer rigged to sequentially go boom.

Outside the newly activated bots were heading towards the nearest residencies, many of which were still occupied as the citizens of Starhaven elected to try to hide in their homes rather than risk taking to the streets. Unfortunately any Asimov inhibitions the robots should have had programmed into them, either hadn’t been or had been overwritten as they proceeded to demolish the occupied buildings nearby.

If only they had Daedalus’ control bracelet they should be able to reset their programming!

Having completed his big bang bypass, Akira tried using his ability to view the past to see if they could figure out what had happened to both the bracelet and Daedalus. He forced himself to go into a trace and allow the events of the last few days to rewind and play itself out for him. Mostly it was just the forge doing what its creators had intended it to do, but there was one moment in time when violence had left an indelible stain. He focused on that event and felt his mind ‘see’ what had occurred less than 24 hours before.  

He ‘saw’ troopers, similar to the one’s they’d encountered in the warehouse earlier that night enter the Forge catching Daedalus by surprise. Some sort of inhibitor device shut down his armour, trapping him inside it. They removed his bracelet then removed his armour, tossing his helmet out the door into the factory floor even as they beat him up and physically forced him to his knees. The bracelet was handed over to a tall, slim female, not quite human figure hidden in the shadows. Akira realised that the figure had to be a psychic as she had blocked everyone’s memory of what she had looked like as well as disrupting the psychic recording as naturally as breathing.

‘Powerful she is’, thought Akira as he tried to get some form of identity from the shadow disturbance that she generated around her. Was this Kona, their leader, he wondered? Whoever she was, the troopers clearly deferred to her orders as she reprogrammed all of the robots using a program wafer and the control bracelet as the troopers proceeded to set up the explosives around the base of the factory even as she stepped outside, taking the control bracelet with her and vanished into the psychic noise of the street. Daedalus stripped near naked and in restraints was dragged outside, loaded into an unmarked grav-van and flown away. That was it; nothing he could do would rip the ‘shadows’ that surrounded the female figure away or see what had happened to Daedalus after that.

As he emerged from his trance, he whispered to the others, “Cherchez la femme, look for the woman.” Then explained what he had seen.

‘Stuff Scooby Do and his team don’ts’, thought Paragon. He was anxious about the warship and wanted to ‘bash it on the nose.’ He considered trying to take out its rear engines but that wasn’t what was holding it stationary over the port. He immediately left the other two to deal with the rampaging robots and rescuing the residents on their own, while he headed straight towards the Starport, the ship and a date with destiny.

Paragon flew at top speed straight towards the hovering warship unleashing death and destruction on all below, the furious ‘red eye’ of Jupiter’s perpetual storm unblinking behind him. The ships’ forward cannons desperately tried to get a lock on him as he passed them by and collided with the transplastisteel viewports of the bridge.

They cracked but held. Paragon could see the fear in the eyes of the crew on the other side of the windows at his seemingly impossible feat. Paragon pulled back his fist once more and slammed it against the windows for a second time, with such force that they instantly caved in and the kinetic force of the blow sent most of the crew inside flying. Paragon flew through and landed on the bridge, casually strafing the workstations and control panels with his eye blasts.

Unsure how much major damage he was actually inflicting, he knew that he’d at least temporarily rendered the ship unspaceworthy and it therefore would be unable to leave orbit and contact or rendezvous with the Khanate Destroyer they previously encountered until the damage was repaired. Europa’s interference with comms signals meant that they wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone until they had left Europa’s orbit and their signals was no longer blocked.

That only left them with Kona’s troops and a whole city full of ‘brainwashed’ robots to deal with. Paragon smiled to himself. He liked those odds. On the lower deck, one of the ship’s fighter craft took off and headed towards him, its guns blazing.

Akira and Banshee meanwhile had headed towards the nearest building being deconstructed from the ground up by a trio of the repurposed construction bots. Nearby the smaller maintenance ‘bots were rounding up anyone and everyone that tried to flee. The latter at least didn’t seem intent on actually hurting anyone but had apparently been programmed to round people up and then herd then towards Preserver Hall and the Central Plaza.

Life and limb took precedence over liberty at that point in time. The programming of the construction robots in particular seemed to be poorly assembled, without any obvious safety parameters programmed in for the safety of organics. Banshee unleashed a shattering shriek on the three colossal robots. Two of them staggered under her cry, one of them clearly had its legs affected while the other seemed dazed and confused as it tried to reboot itself.

Akira immediately followed it with a series of mystical blasts, aiming first at the bot, which was struggling to get its shattered legs to function properly. The blast caused it to explode in a rather spectacular manner. Akira immediately refocused his attack on the robot trying to reboot its programming. The blast took out its knee and it was forced to try to balance itself on a single limb as he switched his attack to the last, currently undamaged bot and shattered it into bits, even as he saw the building they’d been attacking start to collapse. Akira began to weave together all the various mental and physical components required to hastily summon forth the First Wheel of Weyan to repair and reconstruct the building. He ‘heard’ the clanking of the cosmic clockwork overwhelm his mind even as reality began to be reset and the damage began to be undone.

The hobbling robot forced itself to try to hit Akira; its fist impacted with his chest, dazing him and knocking him to the ground. He rolled out of the way as he maintained the repair to reality, though he was concerned that he might not be powerful enough when one of the landings collapsed, only for it to restore itself a few seconds later.

He continued to focus and was glad to see that the residents were now able to flee their apartments but instead of heading out into the street and face the risk of being rounded up by the maintenance bots, they were heading down into the basement. One of the children, a little blue-skinned girl of six or seven paused and signalled for him to follow. He headed over and she quickly explained that the basement led to a maze of tunnels that led all over the city before running towards an open hatch to be with her mum, but not before insisting on giving the embarrassed Akira a quick embrace. “Why do little girls insist on giving me hugs?” he wondered as he headed back to Banshee.

Outside, the remaining construction bot managed to hit Banshee but only bruised her. She responded with a corrupting touch to its head. It immediately stopped dead, frozen in mid-movement. As she prepared to join Akira and head down the maintenance tunnels, she spotted a transport craft being fired on by one of the enemy fighter craft. Smoke billowed from its underbelly as several blasts hit the craft and it suddenly started to drop towards the ground as its anti-grav modules failed. Its trajectory meant an impact with the Forge was likely. The fighter must have assumed its crash was inevitable as it banked and flew back towards the Starport.

Back on the warship, a couple members of the crew wearing armour were firing at Paragon even as the rest of them fled the bridge as Europa’s thin atmosphere and intense cold flowed in behind him. The first of the soldier’s shots bounced painfully off Paragon’s chest as he continued to render all of the controls into liquid slag with his eye beams. The other soldier also fired and the blast hit Paragon in the arm but again failed to pierce his skin. One of them muttered something in Zultasian about him being a ‘Terran mutie-monster’, which Paragon elected to ignore; sticks and stones and all that.

Paragon watched as the deck crew were evacuated only to be replaced by more and more armoured soldiers carrying large blaster rifles. He decided to unleash a shockwave by clapping his hands together. The atmospheric displacement knocked the soldiers down while ripping several burning control panels and components loose. They could probably repair it but not quickly. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t crash though it was clearly no longer space worthy. “My work here is done,” he said as he flew back through the shattered window and away from the squad of soldiers determined to kill him. He stopped midway between the two cannons that supposedly protected the bridge hoping they might end up firing on each other but when nothing happened, he flew away dodging the incoming fighter as he headed back to the Forge. Below in the Starport, fighting was still ongoing but it was clear that the invaders had the upper hand for now at least as all of the robots turned on the people.

Back at the Forge, it was now clear that the damaged shuttle was going to crash. Akira gestured and unleashed his TK to try to slow it down while hoping to cushion its impact when it collided with the ground. The shuttle shuddered as Akira surrounded the ship and decelerated it. Banshee turned insubstantial and flew towards the ship. She phased herself into the ship only to see five people, including the pilot, onboard. There was insufficient time to rescue one or two at a time. “Time to play barrel of monkeys. Link hands everyone and hold on tight.” Confused, the passengers and pilot linked arms with each other, then Banshee grabbed the pilot and turned them all insubstantial. The stress of trying to turn so many insubstantial almost caused her to go unconscious. She headed over towards the door, warning her ‘passengers’ to hold on tight no matter what and stepped through the door and floated them down to the ground, though faster than she would have liked. Below them, Akira wondered if they vomited in this state, would it remain insubstantial? He doubted it somehow. Meanwhile he had to focus on stopping the ship from crashing as he maintained his TK envelope beneath it, slowing it down and trying to reduce its impact when it hit.

Paragon, flying at top speed, suddenly appeared underneath it and guided it in before dropping it in the middle of the road. The pilot now back on the ground himself having “flown Air Banshee” as Akira put it, thanked them and said he was on his way to join the other pilots in trying to prevent the warship from leaving orbit and betraying the outpost’s location to the Khanate Empire.

Paragon walked over saying, “We need to head over to the Starport and help with the defence.” Akira asked Paragon for an update and everyone was glad to hear that the warship wouldn’t be heading out of orbit anytime soon but admitted that the fight on the ground clearly wasn’t going well, largely due to the robot rebellion swelling their attacker’s forces. With all the robots turning and fighting with the invaders, the local forces were vastly outnumbered and outgunned by what appeared to be Khanate troops though the pilot also thought that might not be totally accurate description.

A quick estimate of what they’d seen so far possibly put their dedicated ground troops at less than 200 troopers in total but add in the thousands of reprogrammed robots and the battle was already lost before it had even begun. They just had to make sure that they didn’t lose the war.

Akira asked Paragon if he’d “seen a woman onboard the ship – tall, slim, psychic?” “Sorry, I was too busy destroying everything I could see and being shot at to notice.”

The pilot butted in, “If they ARE Zultasian, then they will generally rely on their slaves and prisoners to carry out the majority of the technical aspects of running their ships. They consider themselves warriors and fighters and as such, technical work is considered unworthy for them to carry out. It is a major weakness in their society that a soldier is considered more important than an engineer or craftsman.”

“So they’re like the ancient Spartan’s then?” The pilot muttered, “If you say so I do not know of this Sparta system. We will take our leave of you and head for the Starport to meet up with the rest of our fighter squadron, what about you?”

“We need to find the woman who took Daedalus’s control bracelet if we can. Best move. It looks as though the troopers are starting to advance on this district and we need to find a way to turn the robots to our side if possible,” said Akira.

Reluctantly Paragon was forced to agree as he noticed a group of Lor nobles being escorted by several small Dantarans, identical with the mini-me creatures they’d seen around the gigantic Dantaran female land-shark that had met Xern, when they’d first arrived at Starhaven. Unfortunately, the squad of troopers coming around the corner had also seen them and were getting ready to fire. They had to protect them if they could.

The pilot and his friends immediately headed off towards the Starport while the three of them prepared for battle. They signalled to the group of civilians and mini-me’s to head towards the basement in the building behind them while they intercepted the troopers.

There were a dozen troopers and two psi-hounds advancing on them. Before they could respond to the change in target, Akira attacked. He focused his mystical blasts on one of the hounds and the troopers escorting her.

He blasted the hound and to his surprize she collapsed under his mental assault. He felt the life leave her as, somehow, his assault was magnified tenfold in her and she just stopped breathing as though his attack had triggered some sort of autonomous suicide response. What the..? As much as he wanted to grieve the horrendous murder he’d accidentally just committed, this was a war and he had innocents to protect. He continued to unleash his blasts but this time on the soldiers that had been accompanying her. He was still in shock and failed to affect his initial target. He forced himself to focus. The next two troopers he targeted collapsed, incapacitated as Akira put them into a coma. He tried to attack another trooper but failed to affect him. Finally, he tried to blast the remaining mentalist and caused him to stagger back under the strength of his onslaught.

The trooper he’d failed to affect fired at him while another targeted a still insubstantial Banshee, the one trooper firing at Akira failed to hit his target though the other would swear that he’d shot the scary female between the eyes but somehow she was unaffected by the blast. He felt the terror building up at the realisation that this elderly female might, just might, be one of those Terrans his people spoke about in whispers when they wanted to scare their young.

Banshee responded at the same time by unleashing a Wail. The sonic attack washed over their attackers incapacitating the remaining hound, left two in such terror that their flight or fright response rendered them unable to do anything except cower while two more looked to be dazed and confused as to what to do in response.

Paragon smiled and slammed his fists hard into the ground creating a massive shockwave that knocked every one of those still standing to the ground, staggering some and incapacitating others. Those that managed to get back to their feet returned fire but they were so shocked that none of their blasts hit. “Thank God they don’t provide their soldiers with access to free eye tests,” muttered Akira as they watched the mini-me’s and the families they were escorting, escape into the maintenance tunnels. Now they just had to ensure none of the invaders were able to follow them.

Akira responded first by unleashing a mental attack on the remaining conscious troopers. He immediately incapacitated three of them. He failed to affect the next but stunned the next one he focused on even as Banshee backed him up with another Wail that knocked the remaining troopers unconscious.

They immediately headed towards the entrance to the maintenance tunnels where one of Mama Kaiger’s ‘clone daughters’ stood waiting. She thanked them for their intervention and offered to guide them to a safehouse if they wanted to travel with them. Banshee knew a request for further protection disguised as an offer of help when she heard one. It might be useful to meet up with this Mama Kaiger as she obviously knew the city and its inhabitants as well as anyone.

Paragon felt they should be heading to the Port instead and helping with its defence but was persuaded by Akira and Banshee that the best way to end this invasion was to disarm the robots and they wouldn’t be able to do that if they were caught up in a siege. If they were being honest, the invasion had been mostly successful, as the ‘Havenites had been caught unprepared, especially by the robot’s involvement in the battle. The majority of citizens had no access to weapons to fight back; they had trusted their robot workers and hadn’t expected treachery. As Paragon put it, they needed to fight smarter.

Banshee tried to interrogate one of the still conscious troopers. She put on her ‘scary face’ and asked them about who was their leader. He explained that Kona BloodRavager, who claimed to be one of the daughters of the Star Khan himself, led them. Banshee asked where she was now only to be told she would be in the midst of the fighting somewhere. She wasn’t one to leave her fists unbloodied he boasted. After several attempts to question him, she realised that wasn’t going to get any information that would prove useful so she allowed Akira to render him unconscious.

As they were about to leave the surface they could see the violence quieten as the final pockets of resistance retreated off the streets. Jupiter loomed in the sky, its red, unfeeling eye staring down. The Dome crackled with blue light as a hologram was projected across its surface. On it a single black and red ship streaked towards Preserver Hall, coming to hover just outside the skyward observation window. Its door opened with a hiss and it dropped a ramp that shattered the window. Two dozen BloodRavagers descended followed by a muscular woman with light blue and purple skin, Outfitted in light combat clothing and mechanical gauntlets and wearing a very familiar control bracelet on her forearm, she dragged a battered and bruised Tamira-Van and Daedalus in chains and gags behind her. Her voice echoed throughout the city, projected by speakers in her ship. “New citizens of the Imperium, rejoice for you are saved. I am Kona BloodRavager and you all will make a suitable gift for my father, the Star Khan.” She paused as she raised Daedalus one-handed off the ground by the throat. “This fight is now over; we have control of the Starport, the city’s electrical grid as well as the Propylaea atmosphere generator. If you do not surrender immediately I will destroy them and present this city to my father as a graveyard.”

The projection ended. Well at least they now knew where Daedalus was being held and who Kona was. One thing was certain, she was definitely a different female to the shadowy figure Akira had ‘seen’ when he had viewed the past at the Forge.

There was no more they could do there. Mama’s ‘daughter’ was getting anxious and wanted to leave so they followed her into the tunnels. Half an hour later they resurfaced in a large hangar close to the edge of the dome’s edge, hidden deep within the Green, The building had seemingly been used to store rusting mining equipment that had once been used to build and maintain the network of underground maintenance tunnels. It was clearly not been maintained or properly sealed and was venting both heat and atmosphere onto the icy surface beyond the dome.

It housed a thriving community but was clearly not a public part of the outpost itself and was unknown to the authorities. Open stalls selling everything from food and drink to stolen goods were openly on display. This ‘hive of scum and villainy’ was Drekport they were told, ruled over by Mama Kaiger with an iron fist inside a plastisteel gauntlet and was clearly home to criminals, smugglers, illegal technicians and muscle.

“Now this feels like a place where we might belong,” laughed Akira.

First, they needed to meet with Mama Kaiger. Several minutes later, after one of her clone ‘daughters’ provided the introduction they needed, they met the towering Dantaran in her bar. She looked them up and down as she walked across the room towards them. She thanked them for saving her clients but “didn’t your Mama never teach you it’s not polite to go rooting around in a ladies business without making introductions, at least? What were you doing in my warehouse?  I’ve half a mind to have a couple of my daughter’s toss you and your friends here out of the Green Zone and watch you freeze, but I reckon we don’t have to let things be unpleasant between us. What did you want? Were you involved with these scum?”

Akira and Banshee argued that, no they had tried to protect the place.

“It’s not really my stuff that was being stolen; I’d rented it out to another. I’m not usually in the business of revealing my client’s names, but I suppose in this case I can make an exception. My daughters do most of the running of my businesses, but that particular spot had been overseen by one of my non-family associates, a young Jereid named Bran Cardon.

He’s an exceptional hacker and usually downright incredulous about people coming or going from his place, he must have known those fellas were hiding out there though.

If I were you, I’d see if I could track down Bran’s place and ask him all these enlightening questions you’ve been asking me. I don’t know where it is exactly, but it’s somewhere on the promenade. You do what you feel is right, I always say there’s more than one way to skin a fleurspraket. Meanwhile I think we need to set up a resistance movement if we want to hold onto this place. At the end of the day, profit is Queen and we will not see any if that no-good, profit-squeezing, Terran lemon-sucking Star Khan retains control of this place we’ll all be as good as dead.

Allegedly, I am a crook, but what if I am? I am at home here and no Star Khan or his troops are going to move me. He took one home for me and my daughters. I would die before I let him taking another. I owe you a favour I suppose. Ask if you need help.”

Banshee asked if the maintenance tunnels reached as far as Preserver Hall? She was assured that they did though they might want to talk with ‘Pete’ first. She pointed over at a tall cylindrical plant-like alien his tendril-like manipulator limb wrapped round a deep red drink, which it was absorbing. Did Mama say he was called Pete or Peat? They smiled as they approached the alien. He replied in Vilani, “Yeah, I know the route that leads to the cells below Preserver Hall and yes I could tell you how to get there, but I would appreciate another drink first.” It signalled the barman, “Another Bloody Mary, they’re paying. Heavy on the blood, hold the Mary.”

Peat explained as the barman came across with his drink, “The cells are in the sub-basement, below ground so easily reached by the tunnels but it’s also where outpost security are based. I can get you there but you’ll need to figure out how to bypass the guards.”

What if they could free the prisoners and launch a counter attack? What about this Bran that Mama mentioned, would there be any benefit it tracking him down? Peat knew of him, a skilled hacker if someone who didn’t mix well with others. He had a reputation for achieving the impossible hacks.

Akira thought if they could track him down, he might be able to help deprogram the robots and turn them to their side. Peat took a deep drink then replied, “Assuming he wasn’t responsible for programming them in the first place. He’s the only one I can think of with the skills to carry out such a radical override of their basic programming.”

“Do you know where he is?” asked Akira. He admitted he didn’t but knew where he usually hung out if that would help, for another drink of course.

Several drinks later, Peat guided them through the labyrinth of maintenance tunnels across the outpost after negotiating for payment in good quality fertiliser, for his ‘unsprouted seeds’ of course.

He initially headed to the warehouse but Banshee persuaded him to head to his other haunts instead. Half an hour later, the four of them stood outside a rundown apartment building that Peat assured them was the next most likely place to find Bran, however he refused to leave the maintenance tunnels.

Out in the streets, they found themselves standing in a ramshackle alley. At first glance. The only interesting thing about this rundown building was a graffitied image of a cartoon alligator wearing a bicorn hat on its alley sidewall. However, it only took a minute to notice the premises were not as dilapidated as appearances might suggest. The windows were blocked with thick metal plates and a concealed camera was located above the reinforced green door. The glow of an electronic security pad illuminated several padlocks, keeping the door secure. Clearly, someone didn’t want anyone poking around this place.

Surprisingly if this was Bran’s place, he relied on traditional locks and physical security measures not computerised locks. Banshee phased them through, completely bypassing all of the security restrictions.

Inside, a reptilian body sat slumped in a chair bathed in the dim glow of a half dozen monitors. He was dead and his killer was nowhere to be seen. Each of the screens flickered with static, and the only noise was the strained, whirling fans of a couple of smashed computers. A dozen humanoid robots dressed in what looked like pirate costumes lay slumped around the room. It was the computers and the body that interested them most.

Paragon found one of the computers was still functional and asked Akira to have a look. It was different to all the others, which had clearly all of the same type with similar homemade adaptations. This computer had been produced by a different manufacturer and was a commercial model, a lot less powerful than the others and it hadn’t been altered in any way. It was also newer and had less dust on its surface than any of the others. He looked at the connections on the back and found a concealed back up drive that whoever had done the search had missed. He plugged it in and realised that someone had set up a program to delete its contents. He immediately pulled it loose and gathered it up intending to check it later.

Banshee meanwhile was busy looking at the body. It had clearly died of strangulation, all the signs were consistent with a crushed throat but there was something that didn’t feel right about the murder, especially of a crocodilian lifeform. It felt ‘staged’ somehow. She wasn’t convinced this had been a real sentient.

He told Akira of his suspicions and he reached over to the corpse and touched him gently, entering into a trance as he tried to read the corpse’s recent past while paragon and Banshee looked around the premises. This confirmed that this was a fake made up to look like Bran but there was so little emotion attached to the decoy dummy that he was unable to see more.

Banshee felt sure that this was a trap, but was it one set by Bran or someone else? Was he running from someone? Worse, had their presence activated anything or was she just being paranoid?

While the others searched the room and examined the robotic chassis, Akira called forth the Wheel of Weyan again, this time to recover the information that had already been deleted off the hard drive.

It was Banshee who found the hand-drawn map amongst the chaos showing what looked to be a crevasse marked (surprisingly in English) ‘Facetwild’. It appeared to show somewhere out on the surface, beyond the city itself. That’s when Paragon noticed that a set of blinking red lights had activated around the room, getting faster even as he watched; it immediately reminded them of the booby-trap at the Forge.

Suddenly all the monitors but one switched off and the channel changed on the remaining screen reviewing the imperial symbol of the Khanate. A moderated voice crackled through the speakers in stilted Vilani. “If you’re hearing this and you have stumbled into machinations beyond your meagre understanding, Starhaven is already ours. Is too bad you could not survive to see the reign of the glorious Star Khan. Rejoice, your death is nigh. “

The team reacted like a well-oiled machine. Banshee grabbed the other two and insubstantialised the three of them even as Paragon hit turbo mode and flew them out of the apartment and into the alley.

Inside the screen blacked out and a chorus of robotic voices shouted something that sounded like “Ahoy” as their bodies all exploded and the safe house was consumed in an inferno.

They had the map and the restored hard disk and now knew that Bran had sold out to the Khanates. Not sure what to make of this information, they headed over to the nearest maintenance tunnel and headed back down into the dusky abyss below.  

Akira did wonder about the map; where was this place anyway and how did they get to it? Was it important? The note they’d found in the warehouse office mentioned a ‘back-up workshop located in the ‘Facetwild’ and referred to it as a ‘natural wonder’. It had to be connected, didn’t it? Mama Kaiger or Peat might know.

Meanwhile they headed back to Mama Kaiger with the hard drive. There they borrowed a computer and asked Peat to bypass the delete program and try to unencrypt the data. What he managed to reveal was that Bran had been contracted several months before back on Earth, at Camp E.T. by a female agent who wanted him to help find and conquer the hidden Preserver outpost. He had travelled back and forth several times to Starhaven but didn’t know the base’s precise location, only that it was on a moon orbiting the gas giant that the Terrans called Jupiter. She employed him to find a way to help conquer the outpost by disrupting their robot systems on behalf of the Khanate Empire (as well as offering to pay him several thousand credits) once she was able to find out where it was located. He then travelled back to Starhaven himself and initiated his part of the plan to help Kona’s troops infiltrate the base and constructed a computer virus that would subvert the robot horde as well as a fall back plan to destroy the environmental controls at the Propylaea if all else failed.

The Propylaea was the city’s air reservoir, producing much of the breathable atmosphere by cracking ice into breathable oxygen, while storing hydrogen and trace gases for use by the city’s industries.

It appeared Bran had never met his employer in person and it was clear that he was becoming more and more paranoid. In the end he had begun to work on an anti-virus program, to counter his own program, just in case he needed it and had moved his preliminary work to ‘D’s FW’ site to keep it safe. Unfortunately, there were no other notes on it on the drive.

One of Mama’s daughters informed them that facetwild was the name given to a deep crevasse located 60 kilometres outside the domes but, as far as she knew, it was unexplored. She’d heard about it and its crystalline phenomena but didn’t know anyone who’d actually been there as it meant crossing the deadly icy surface of Europa. Banshee and Akira at least would require life support and environmental suits with radiation shielding if they were to survive the journey. The temperature on the surface, beyond the dome was -171 degrees Celsius and the moon’s gravity was just strong enough to retain a thin, too thin, atmosphere. If they wanted to go then she suggested that Mama Kaiger might be able to help with environment suits.

They approached her and she confirmed that she could supply them with space suits but given the current situation, she wondered why. Meanwhile she was trying to figure out how to break Daedalus and the Governor, Tamira-Van from their prison.

“We could do that first,” uttered a slightly embarrassed Akira who’d clearly forgotten about the need for a jailbreak. Meanwhile Mama Kaiger was willing to try to start forming a resistance movement, starting with gathering all the technicians in the city to the relative safety of Drekport to prevent the technophobic Ravagers from repairing the damage Paragon had inflicted on their warship’s bridge.

It took them several hours of planning and then traversing the tunnels with a couple of volunteers before they arrived underneath Preserver Hall having used a roundabout route to get there. Through a grid high up in the wall in a sub-basement several levels beneath street level, they could see a bruised Daedalus and Tamira-Van in the cells with the Children of Chrysalis and a couple of civilian families the Ravagers had captured earlier. Several BloodRavagers watched over them and it was too easy for them to set off the alarm if they tried to ambush them.

In the end, the decision was taken to leave the concealed grid in place and for Banshee to carry out the jailbreak. She turned insubstantial and invisible and phased through the walls. She then traversed the room to the cell and phased through the bars. She turned substantial when she was standing next to Daedalus. Quickly she turned both them and some of the imprisoned citizens insubstantial with her as well as invisible and quickly helped transport them out of the basement and into the tunnel. It was only a few seconds before the guards overheard the Children of Chrysalis shouting and screaming in shock, demanding that they be rescued as well. The guards raised the alarm when they saw that their two major prizes had disappeared from their locked cell as well as some of the civilians and their children. They knew if they couldn’t find Daedalus and Tamira-Van and quickly that their own lives would be forfeit. They started to fire into the cells in panic, hitting and injuring some of the cultists.

Akira tried to stop them with a series of mental blasts but couldn’t see the guards properly through the grid. Paragon smashed his way through the wall. He grabbed one of the guards and spun him around so that his blasts took out the others before he knocked him unconscious by tossing him into the wall. They would soon realise how they had escaped and of course, the guards were still alive if incapacitated.

They elected to free the cultists and some agreed to join the resistance. Secretly, Banshee was glad that their priest Pupil, hadn’t been amongst those they’d liberated. Paragon replaced the grill but It meant that the secret of their using the maintenance tunnels to travel about would soon be revealed. If nothing else, the invaders would fit sensors and alarms on all of the tunnels that led to anywhere important.

Paragon carried the two injured escapees as they fled back as fast as they could back down the tunnels towards Drekport and relative safety. As they traversed the tunnels, Daedalus explained that he personally lacked the skills to bypass the robot’s reprogramming and they needed to find the hacker that had worked on the robots, if possible.

Back at Mama’s, having taken an earful for possibly revealing how they had managed to carry out their jailbreak, Daedalus, Akira and Peat finally managed to unencrypt more of the information on the retrieved hard disk. In particular, Daedalus found several notes he’d encrypted himself on his own computer about the location in Facetwild of his other workshop. He did point out that this location was responsible for the communications interference that blanketed most of the moon – a natural phenomenon apparently.

He also uncovered Bran’s last post where he theorised that his Khanate boss, codenamed Veil, might be the loyalist party leader Sun-Ren and that he suspected the politician knew that he knew this, hence he’d moved to Daedalus’ workshop in Facetwild.

That had to be their next destination but it was clear that the torture that Daedalus and the Governor had suffered at Kona’s hands meant they were unable to join them on the expedition.

Mama, admittedly reluctantly, showed them the smuggler route out of the dome. On the surface, they turned insubstantial and invisible to ensure the warship couldn’t track them and flew close to the ground thankfully avoiding exploding ice geysers that instantly froze when exposed to the atmosphere and doing their best to cope with the cold until they arrived at the scar in the ice that was their destination.

The ice crust dropped off suddenly, revealing a deep chasm. Multi-coloured crystalline structures, some as tall as trees, jutted out from the sheer cliff face and ledges below. They could see that a series of artificial handholds had been carved into the cliff wall heading down. They also noticed a series of red lights pulse, presumably from a beacon, a few hundred metres down.

They started to fly down, passed the tall crystalline structures that edged the crevasse. Suddenly the crystals began to glow and sparkle before a blast of electricity arced towards them, forcing Paragon to drop quicker into the darkness below. Clearly, these crystal growths were piezoelectric and this was a response to their passage. This energy burst began to cascade across several metres of crystalline structures. It also activated several ambulatory crystal structures (or were they ‘living’ creatures?), which began to scuttle about on the walls of the crevasse as though they were alive. Banshee was fascinated and very grateful for the fact that they were flying rather than having to climb down the cliff face.

Then Paragon and Akira began to feel weak as though something was interfering with their powers. Had someone set up meta inhibitors nearby? Paragon was forced to let the others go as a wave of weakness washed over him. The need to concentrate meant Akira turned visible again and Banshee elected to do so since it was pointless for her to do so when the others weren’t anymore. Thankfully they were still able to fly.

 A couple of robots and weapon turrets below them activated until Banshee again grabbed them and turned them all insubstantial again. It worked. No longer showing up on their sensors, the robots and turrets deactivated and they continued their drop down the cliff face, avoiding the skittering crystal beasties that could either see or sense them.

Then they saw a bronzed steel door set flush against the cavern wall. Lights flickered on a security pad beside it and noise of whirring machinery emanated from within. The door separated with a hiss and the looked on the face of a frightened Jereid wrapped in a parka and wearing a respirator. He stepped aside and allowed them to enter.

As soon as they had entered he resealed the door, removed his jacket and mask revealing a reptilian chest covered in gold pendants and a very guilty face. “Let me guess,” His voice unexpectedly thin and nervous. “The Khanates have invaded and used my robot virus. We’ve a lot to talk about…”

To be continued…