08 - Royal Jelly
The research vessel RVS Atwood orbits Callisto, one of Jupiter's moons. Aboard, the only living humans are the members of the AA Team and Captain Thorne of the Crispy Wolf. Their mag-boots hold them to the floor of the ship's supply module, which makes up part of the fuselage and, like the rest of the ship, lacks breathable air or gravity. Reprogrammed to serve the AA Team and attack all else, Fluffy, the killer 'mealhead' robot follows its human masters.
After the party fought a pair of insect-like blatarians, Faux Hawk brought her arm into contact with some corrosive gunk floating in the cramped storage space. The party doesn't have much time to save her before the acid eats a hole in the suit's fabric.
The team doubles back to the room with the Atwood crewman who killed himself by disconnecting his own oxygen supply. Mazen forces the dead crewman out of the suit and pulls the suit's arm off. Using some heavy insulating tape he finds in the storage module, he gets the sleeve over Faux's arm and seals it, just as the corrosive gunk eats through the underlying layer. The quick replacement will hold long enough for the party to get the Atwood's valuable supply of royal jelly and escape.
Before he and his team mates try their luck beyond the airlock at the end of the supply module, Terry checks his motion scanner. There are some faint pings dead ahead, but their vagueness suggests the section beyond the door should be safe. That reading turns out true only in part. When the party opens the airlock, they see a similar portal at the end of the room and another to their right. However, in the middle is a sprawling computer mainframe sprouting ruptured cables which lash and writhe in the zero-g environment, spitting angry sparks. Floating motionless around this electrical hazard are four more of the blatarian creatures. With a bit of luck, the insectoid monsters are as dead as they look.
The AA Team decides the reading from Barry's motion sensor means trouble beyond the airlock dead ahead. The team members edge towards the door on the right, hugging the wall to avoid the cables. Barry the butler-bot is not nimble enough to dodge one wild cable, which rakes across his space suit, shocking him enough to cause damage to his circuitry.
Beyond the airlock leading out from the computer and its lethal, roaming cables, the party needs to cross one of the linking umbilicals to the Atwood's surrounding modules. In happier times, these rotate relative to the fuselage to provide a sense of gravity in deep space. However, like the rest of the hulk, they are now dead still. The AA Team opens the hatch to the new module and finds a new hazard.
The team first notices the two long cultivation beds stretching from one end of the bay to the other. These are packed with colonies of a giant plant whose single-lobed leaves are covered with hairs tipped with a globule of clear, viscous fluid. Then the crew spot the towering pitcher-plant-like organisms standing, as if waiting for visitors to their module. The plants' root masses have stubby appendages which both anchor them to the floor and give them slow but steady mobility.
Fluffy's the killbot's program is simple: identify enemies and engage. It charges for one of the giant pitcher plants, but the glistening plants growing in the static beds are between Fluffy and its target. Fluffy claws and slashes its dangerous, articulated limbs at the plants, but the bot is not made for this task. The plants curl their dewy leaves around Fluffy, two grabbing and gumming up the flailing bot for each Fluffy manages to shred.
The pitcher plants have sensed the party and crawl towards the intruders. Mazen and Terry open fire with their energy weapons whilst Faux channels her psychic abilities, rupturing the plants at the cellular level. Whilst the rest of the AA Team battles the pitcher plant monstrosities, Terry tries to lasso and free Fluffy from the sticky growth in the static beds, but to no avail. Barry's streak of bad luck continues: one of the pitcher plants nearest him lashes a tongue-like proboscis across the visor of the butler bot's space suit. The plexi-glass fogs up, reducing Barry's visibility. Similar to the gunk that ate into Faux Hawk's suit, the residue from the pitcher plant starts to corrode the butler bot's visor. He breaks off from the combat to brave the mainframe module's cables and get back to the dead crewman whose suit the party cannibalised earlier, to take the suit's visor, as well.
After he and his team-mates have dealt with the pitcher plants, Mazen checks out the module beyond the botanical lab's second airlock. It's hazy inside, and Mazen finds his visibility reduced. He opens a unit near the module's airlock and finds a bed of bioluminescent fungus, which explains the haze in the module - it's a spore cloud. He pokes around a little more and finds a chamber in whose four corners are large cylindrical containers, standing floor to ceiling. Mazen suspects the metal casing around the cylinders is shielding of a sort which retracts to give access to whatever is stored inside. The rest of the party catches up and Barry uses his earlier hack of the Atwood's computer to access the fungal lab module's terminal. The butler bot discovers that the scientists aboard the Atwood stored the royal jelly they milked from the queen blatarian in the four cannisters Mazen found. The AA Team dials the containers' shielding open and see that the clear vessels are each about one-third full of a silvery, pearlescent fluid. Jackpot.
Now all the party needs is a way to get this gungy booty back onto the Cookie Cutter. Its members search the fungal lab, but there's nothing large or secure enough into which to siphon the royal jelly. The team decides to scavenge some portable containers from the supply module, which means braving the chamber with the mainframe and its live, flailing cables.
However, a return to the supply module also means passing through the botanical lab again. More of the blatarian queen's drones are waiting for them. These look different, however. One drone's heads seems thicker, more armoured above its eyes, shielding its brain, perhaps. The AA Team lay down heavy fire, but Faux Hawk finds her psychic attacks are less effective against the creature with the bulkier carapace section. One of the blatarians blunders into the dew-covered plants crowding the growing beds. The leaves curl around the insectoid creature, pinning it into place, as they had grabbed the party's killbot, Fluffy, earlier. Now that it has to worry about fewer blatarians closing and bringing their claws to bear, the party deals death with its eclectic mix of weapons and combat techniques, finishing the bugs off and clearing the way to the storage module.
The storage module is split into several layers and contains all manner of goods. The party finds a set of 25-litre portable plastic fluid tanks. There are more than they need, so each party member takes one, including Cass Thorne of the Crispy Wolf.
Back in the fungal lab module, the party begins siphoning the precious royal jelly into its plastic tanks. Even full, in the zero-g environment, the cans are easy to carry. However, as the valuable goop oozes into the cans, the party members start seeing disturbing visions. Faux Hawk is reminded of the psychic attack the blatarian queen sent her way during the first encounter with the insectoid drones in the storage module. Is the queen able to sense the theft of her royal jelly? Either way, most of the party are able to ride out the mental assault and make off with 75 litres of the pearlescent fluid.
Seeing no more reason to spend time on the doomed Atwood, the party wastes no time in getting back to the Cookie Cutter with its haul and breaking free of the ghost ship. Mazen turns the weapons of the AA Team's ship on the Atwood, blasting it in such a way that the vessel begins a terminal dive to the surface of Callisto. The Atwood crash lands, breaking up on impact and hiding the scene of the robbery forever.