((Still waiting on Deuce's action. Also, Merry Christmas!))
Moravia Orbital Colony, Ulysses | 237d/3008AD | Von Hapsburg System
Moravia Lobby Alpha, Floor 3
Heated Combat! (All initiative rolls default to a [1])
Megacity Time: 6:50((I'm not sure if I remember what Atlos was supposed to be doing, but I think it was something like this.))
It had been wise to make an exit earlier, and there were probably more pressing things to attend to, but Atlos simply could not pass up the opportunity to observe alien civil unrest firsthand.
[5] It appears to be a food riot. As it stands, you are not entirely sure what humans
like to eat, although you are familiar with the biology, which is rather similar among most oxygen-breathers (in other words, most races, human or alien). The occasional ammonia-based organism will usually have some bizarre anatomy or something, but for the most part simple sugars are pretty universally edible, although the more complex carbohydrates tend to vary.
Anyhow, you've done your research, and it turns out that most human stations use genetically modified strains of Spirulina algae. HUman corporations tend to market their own brands and flavors of the stuff, but they generally resemble the natural stuff although they typically have some means of reducing the amount of nucleic acid contained, and they also come in lots of different flavors including bubble gum, cotton candy, and MSG.
SpaceInc only has this one megacity, and most corporations like to think they can charge SpaceInc extra for being a large corporation. SpaceInc, therefore, is unable to acquire a license at economical rates, so they use a homebrew of Spirulina and another bacteria that eats away the nucleic acid. This stuff is the basis for most of the cheaply available dishes here, with imported foods being highly valued. SpaceInc subsidizes luxury foods, but notably leaves out medium-priced staple foods such as fish and pasta, and thus merchants usually take those goods elsewhere. Most of the local population is unable to afford luxury food, so for the most part they eat Spirulina. Which most humans get bored of after a while it seems.
The riot came from the Alpha Lobby. in the distance you see crowds of protestors, some recently joining the protests, others being handed signs by seasoned protestors who've just retrieved their backlog that they've stored for this day. Someone, it seems, has managed to get across to the public that they are being manipulated. You wonder who this individual is.
In the mall, the protestors mostly walk down the center aisles, clustering around restaurants and food stores in particular.
After several minutes of protest, Riot officers appear, although no looting occurs just yet. The Riot officers are unable to justify use of force in order to end the protest.
While the mob is mostly anonymous and composed of working-class citizens, one human male appears to be making himself known publically. He calls himself the Aggressor, and claims to have a history of fighting for the rights of the disadvantaged on this station. You are not entirely sure why humans are so concerned with such things as to travel around, but it seems that his methods are working, and citizens routinely rally behind his presence. The man was jailed multiple times for speaking out, or so he claims, and has become widely known among the public.
Organics are always protesting about one thing or another. I can't even fathom how they tolerate it.
Listen in on the protesting humans.
There is not much to listen to. All you hear is canned phrases along the lines of "You can't arrest us all" and "We won't support this mess" and other stuff. Profanities are hurled both ways between the populace and Security, the latter of which have their numbers increasing by the minute. Eventually, they bring out the riot robots.
[6/1] One robot, in particular, catches your eye. A sleek, muscular spider-frame wrapped in layers of powerful artificial muscle and impenetrable graphene plate-wrap. You skitter in excitement as you watch to see whether or not this machine will be brought to bear on the rioters.
The robot starts moving into the crowd. Its legs are padded with wrestling mats ductaped on in order to minimize risk of injury. The machine is armed with quite a dazzling arsenal of crowd-dispersion tools, ranging from microwave beams and sonic emitters to streams of glittering confetti and expanding goo blobs. One of the blobs lands on your leg, and expands to form a rigid, but porous ball attached to the surface. Supposedly, a human can still breath through one thanks to the porosity. It does not attach well to metal or glass, so you chip it off and continue watching.
The line of Riot officers assembles into a phalanx, and begins to try and shove the protestors out of the mall, slowly and rather ineffectively.
Moravia Lab
High Security (-1 Stealth)
Nerin sifts through the data Valrak relays. "What spectrums of camera have recordings? Even a snapshot of the target in a few other spectrums should be be enough to locate the target. My Paired's sensors are sufficient to scan large portions of the station provided he has enough energy. Nerin does have to question why all the controllers were replaced simultaneously though, I would think staggering the replacements would be safer. He also asks if there's any way of checking out the CO2 cans. Also cameras. Are there cameras? If you know when he or she left the cafeteria enroute to atmos and who accessed atmos, should lower the potentials to a small few. And if you have the one identified already, Nerin and I can just scan until we locate him or her."
"We do stagger the door controllers, non-sensitive areas first. However, the Specimen is a shapeshifter. By the time we realized the breach it already got out into the unsecured areas like the cafeteria and we couldn't lock those down. By then our perpetrator was long-gone and the slime was on its way out. Kind of sucks to work in a lab where all our maintenance workers are angsty teenagers.""The business people think it's a good idea to create jobs whenever possible. We think it's ridiculous, but they're our only funding, so we have to deal with it.""We caught the Specimen, though, with the milliwave scanner at the gate of the store. The AI we use for sensitive body scans is excellent at finding these sorts of things and it's easily programmed, so that's a plus.""What about the cameras?""Yeah... about that..." the scientist seems embarrassed.
[3]
"We checked the cameras after we discovered the breach. They were all erased, and disabled. We're not sure if it's the same person, but we've assembled a list of suspects based on questionings of our staff and doctors in the cafeteria. We've no way to find out who it is, though."A male doctor walks in, the chest of his lab coat stained with grease.
"The Specimen lost some mass""Security gave it quite a beating. Ask this guy.", the doctor who spoke to Valrak answers, pointing at Valrak.
"That's not just it. The Specimen is missing half of its mass.""It was the same size, though!""That's the other thing. It's density was halved as well. It split off, somewhere, and it could be anywhere among us. We've observed this behavior before.""Crap, that's what I was worried about. Well at least it's got the brains not to infect one of our personnel. If there is a serious outbreak we can vent the atmosphere from the lab and store. Gonna have to get out of here though.""It will be difficult to find. That thing very much scares me with how well it can mimic a human's heat signature.""You sure it didn't just lose mass because it was doing that? Burning carbs for heat? Just to throw us off?""We have ruled that out, it could not have metabolized that much in such a short time."
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Topic: 3008 AD: The Guild Chronicles Mission Thread - GAME OVER! See first post. (Read 49758 times)