The crew reports their recent progress to their UI handlers, and are directed towards an edge-of-belt station for a rendezvous and resupply. The martians disembark with a nod and a firm handshake, hopefully not too upset with our detours given the circumstances.

We meet with Eva’s UN handler and debrief, giving them all the data and samples we found. They update us that Mars purchased all rights to the Crocodile 6 days after it left Phoebe, so they have a fair bit of intel gleaned from it. We’re thus to leave as soon as possible to make the most of the limited time lead we have, by physically being closer to Phoebe than either faction’s reinforcements. Lani goes to the UN battleship’s top notch medbay to hopefully figure out more about the blue infection, and thankfully they have our data so may actually be able to do something about it. Froon barely flies the the ship into their repair dock, which the UN spymaster insists will get top priority work.

With our briefest of replenishments complete, we fly hard to Phoebe, with a UN battleship a much closer 2 hours behind us. The mining site shows a dozen prefab buildings and scattered heavy equipment, still but not obviously damaged, so we land and enter their airlock. The whole base is having power issues, but we manually cycle the doors.

Its a similar situation to the previous E-corp station: a few dead infected, but no movement. Eva shoots a few holes into the walls to vent the atmosphere, which triggers a few bulkheads we have to then slowly cut through, but throughout our travels we don’t encounter anything alive. Recalling that the station also had power issues, we check out the base’s utility room, and its full of some plant-like growth of blue pulsating phosphorescence – we very carefully take a sample.

vents the station Lani: Oh my god we didn’t think to check if there were any survivors first Froon: Oh no, I thought about it Bankman wouldn’t care

Our final stop is Sample Storage, so we cut outside and start cutting into it, when we notice a small shuttle parked beside our ship! We fire ship guns at it, and remote fly the ship close to us, but don’t see any intruders on ship cameras. The comms interference seems to be getting worse, we’re probably being jammed, so Froon bravely flees boards while the others find their sample. With the interference, the party is struggling to coordinate, and half the party notices footsteps past the sample storage’s bulkhead door. A loud boom flings Bankman across the sample room into a wall of blue growth, and Lani up and out of the base’s roof. Out of the smoke emerges two past problems: a now-one-armed Power Armor corpo with a vengence, delayed by a blue armored thing freed by the boom.

Over direct laser comms, Roger helps Froon aim the ship’s guns, and multiple PDC volleys eventually wound the suit and cut a bigger exit hole in the ceiling for Bankman to climb out.

Can we get ejector seats for the shame basement?

Previous Chapter: Shattering the Shambling Station

Dramatis Personae

• B - Froon Blagmare, Belter-weeb, intrepid pilot, and definitely “captain”
• R - Sam Bankman, jacked quartermaster turned “captain”
• M - Eva, “spy” but not the hacking or sneaking type
• M - Roger Roger, Military-weeb, conspiracy theorist
• S - Lani, thin wrenchmaster, on lifetime anti-blue-infection meds