WoAF - Game Session 62

Moon Princess Ling, sat in the cockpit of Shadow Hawk thrumming the command console with her pretty little fingers.  In the distance the bright blue marble known as Earth was in view through the dark glass porthole at the head of the ship.  Two UFOs and the team of Nazi Technicians from Eisenhelm (now a smoldering ruin), were busy working, their spacesuits glinting in the searing light of the sun.

"The problem is," she was saying, "that we can't just blow up the fifty nuclear Cobalt bombs this close to Earth.  I've done some math and if we do that, the resulting cloud of radiation will eventually get pulled into Earth's atmosphere.  Maybe not right away, but in a few years Earth will wind up under a cloud of radiation so hot, it doesn't look like anything on the surface would survive."

"How big can the bombs be?" asked Vallnam, testing Ling's math to see how good it really was.

"Each bomb is five hundred megatons," she said flatly.

"Oh," replied Vallnam. "That's ten times the size of the Tsar Bombe that the Soviets blew up over the arctic ocean in 1961, wasn't it?"

"Yes," replied Ling.  "And that was the largest nuclear explosion ever detonated.  So yes, each of these are ten times more powerful, and there are fifty of them.  And they are Cobalt bombs, the dirtiest, most radioactive bombs ever devised."

"Drat," said Vallnam, "So, yeah, I can see why that would wind up being an extinction level event for Earth.  Even if it does take a decade for the radiation to fall, it would eventually fall.  Not so great."

Jacob, still exhausted, was snoring quietly in a lounge chair, oblivious to the conversation.  Poor fellow.  After all the mayhem and action of Eisenhelm, he was truly exhausted.  Sleep, young Jacob.  You worked hard, and deserve a good week's rest.

"We're only six thousand miles out from the Moon right now," Ling went on, "but by the time the technicians finish dealing with the bombs and robots, according to the schedule Gustov gave us, we will be about seventy five percent of the way to Earth.  Most of that time will be spent reprogramming the Robots, as far as the schedule's concerned, but the last bomb should be removed from its casing well before then."

"So, each warhead is the size of what?" asked Vallnam speculating, "They must be pretty big.  Tsar Bombe was something like thirty Earth-tons, wasn't it?"

"Twenty-seven tons," replied Ling, "but, yes, large.  Each warhead out there is over two hundred and fifty tons.  All together, roughly twelve thousand five hundred tons."

"Why don't we cable them all together and have one of the giant robots and haul them out into the depths of space?  Earth doesn't need any more weapons of mass destruction, especially ones as terrible as these, right?"

"The technicians claim the robots are somewhat maneuverable," said Ling, "but they were designed for orbital rocket trajectories.  Once they enter Earth atmosphere they would then use chem-jets to maneuver over pre-programmed cities for detonation.  So there was no need for extensive flight control beyond that, I don't think. On the other hand, Shadow Hawk does have a teleportation beam."

"Sure, but its limit is one thousand miles, isn't it?"  asked Vallnam.  "Would that be far enough?  Maybe we could get the technicians to rig up a bomb as a power supply for one of the robots and use it to..."

"That's a huge engineering feat," interrupted Ling.  "We only have at most seven days before we get to Earth.  I suspect there wouldn't be enough time for something as complex as that."

Through the porthole they could see the string of bombs that had already been removed, floating near the robots in a thin glinting line.  A string of world-destroying power, floating silently above the moon.  Ling shuddered at the sight of it. 

"We could fly them away using Shadow Hawk," suggested Ling.  "We can send them away in a trajectory that sails them out beyond the solar system."

"True, but eventually, they might fall back towards Earth."

They thought about the pros and cons of hauling the warheads out into space by various means.  There was some discussion about flying the weapons perpendicular to the plane of the solar system at high speed using Shadow Hawk's Helio-Drive until they get outside the solar system, and then use the Quantum Singularity Hyperdrive to launch them out of the solar system all together.  This plan struck them as plausible and worthwhile.  Once out the far reaches of space, what harm could they ever do to Earth?  It would take a billion years for gravity to eventually pull them back, if it ever did.

"I don't think we need to let the technicians know of our plans for the Cobalt Bombs," said Ling.  

"We should probably let the technicians decouple all the bombs," suggested Vallnam, "and then take them to Federation Command, and once we settle things with them, we can then take Shadow Hawk to go deal with sending the bombs on their way.  After all, there's no immediate danger that the bombs will just happen to go off on their own.  They'll float up there without too much risk for a while." 

"It would take Shadow Hawk about eleven hours at maximum speed to get two hundred astronomical units out into space," said Ling.  "Pluto is only 36 astronomical units, so we could easily clear the solar system in four or five hours, and then the Quantum Singularity Drive adds another hour, perhaps.  That should be ok."

"By the way, why not tell the technicians?" asked Vallnam.

"Well, after Gustov's adversarial ideas surfaced, I hesitate to put undue trust in the technicians for now," she replied.  "I think it's best not to take too many chances."

"We have to tell them after the fact, though," suggested Vallnam. "After all, we want to build trust with them, and it's not like they'd never wonder what became of the bombs.  Meanwhile, I think Jacob should stay with the bombs while we introduce the technicians to Federation Command.  When we're done there, can teleport back up and take care of the bombs."

This seemed to be a reasonable plan, and so they settled on it.  It would be another four days before the bombs were all removed, and the robots completely reprogrammed.  And so, our heroes took their time watching over things, and waiting for the technicians finish their work.  

At the middle of the third day from the moon, the sun was rising over the eastern Earth horizon.  Ling was sipping a drink gazing out the window when spotted a yellow light blinking on Shadow Hawk's control console.

She investigated and found that it was a warning light. The medical bay.  In fact it was the cryo-pod in which Dietrich was sealed, with the thorn-shard alien frozen inside his neck.  She looked into it further and discovered that the pod had a malfunction, and Dietrich was coming out of cryo-hibernation.

"Vallnam," said Ling, "you want to go to sick bay real quick and take a look?  There's a problem with Dietrich's cryo-pod.  He's thawing out."

"Ah. Hmm... I don't think we're going to be able to save this guy.  We may have to jettison him."

"I was hoping for a kinder, gentler plan,"  she replied.

"Teleport him.  Teleport him out into space," said Jacob, who had roused himself briefly from his napping.  "It'll be fast.  He'll never know what happened."

"Do you want to risk finding out what's going on, Vallnam?" asked Ling.

"Not with that alien shard, nope," replied Vallnam.  "Not unless there's some sort of stasis jelly we could shove the shard in, no.  I don't think it's worth the risk."

"I see," replied Ling, unhappily seeing the direction things were heading.

"We'll have to explain to the technicians we did all that we could for him, but we had to teleport him out or risk all of us dying from whatever that organism is."

Ling turned to the control panel and brought up a Vizi-Screen view of the medical bay to see how it looked.  Though the visual had a bit of static, she could see the room clearly enough. She'd forgotten how badly burned it had been during the battle with the shard a few days before.  Everything in it was scorched black, with blisters covering plastic surfaces, equipment and utensils melted on the counter tops, and ash covering the floors and walls, all caused by the flamethrower Vallnam had used during the fight.  The cryo-pod had been scorched pretty badly, but until now had been functioning without issues.  No wonder it wound up malfunctioning, she thought.

"You did that, Vallnam," said Ling disapprovingly. "You go fix it."

"Why not just teleport the entire cryo-pod out into space and be done with it?" he asked.

Ling zoomed in on the cryo-pod with the ship's monitor.  While the outer surface was burned, the glass dome that covered Dietrich's upper torso and head was frosted over. She saw a hand come up and touch the glass.  It gave her the shivers to see that over the green and gray static of the monitor.

"Aye... so, we have three cryo-pods, don't we?" she said, "but we don't know for sure that the other ones aren't damaged as well.  We could potentially teleport him from one into another, but they may all wind up thawing him out."

"From what I learned from my suit," said Vallnam, "the cyro-pods are intended to be used for long interstellar journeys."

"I'm not so sure about that," replied Ling.  "After all, inside the solar system we use the Helio-Drive, which obtains 99.9% the speed of light.  So to get to Pluto would take four or five hours.  And outside the solar system we'd use the Quantum Singularity Hyper-Drive, and that would get us anywhere in the galaxy within a few days, I think.  Of course, if we wanted to travel to another galaxy..."  she thought about that but decided not to finish the sentence as she couldn't imagine ever wishing to go that far away from Earth.  There was far, and then there was way too far.

"Anyway," said Vallnam, "he's mobile, and I don't think we can risk moving him to another cryo-pod.  Unfortunately, I don't see any other option than teleporting the cryo-pod as far away into deep space as we can... and then disintegrate it."

"We can teleport it, and then monitor it at a distance.  I want to know if anything comes out of it," replied Ling.

"You realize that's exactly what The Company wanted to do in the movie Aliens. You remember that movie, right?" replied Vallnam with a raised eyebrow.  "And then everyone died, remember?"

Ling laughed and said that the circumstances were very different.

"You know what's going to happen," answered Vallnam, "we're going to teleport it, and while we're watching it for scientific observations, the alien is going to come out, and then eat a passing comet, grow to the size of mount Rushmore, and come after us."

They all had a laugh.  "You totally know that's what happens," said Vallnam.

"Besides, Shadow Hawk doesn't have a Disintegration Beam," replied Ling. "Shadow Hawk only has two weapons. An EMP, and a Psionic Beam.  That's it.  Shadow Hawk is not designed to be a weapon of war.  She's an exploration vessel.  The stealthiest one in the galaxy, if I'm not mistaken."

"Well, the UFO's have lightning cannons, liquid metal machine guns and plasma cannons.  I'm sure one of those can handle the job," said Vallnam.  "The cryo-pod wouldn't stand a chance against the plasma cannon."

They heard a voice coming over Shadow Hawk's internal comm.

"Hello?  Hello...?  Auf Wiedersehen...?" came the crackling voice.  It was Dietrich.

"Ah, yes, auf wiedersehen," replied Vallnam.  "We are going to send you on a nice vacation in a little while.  Just hold on."

"I'm cold," said Dietrich weakly.

"Yes, we are going to warm you up," replied Vallnam, "don't you worry."

"I'm hungry," said Dietrich with a bit of a rasp.

"Yup, don't worry.  When we're done with you you're going to be all warmed up and feeling just right," said Vallnam. "We don't want to get him nervous," whispered Vallnam to Ling.  She was just staring at him with eyes wide.

"Can somebody come to help me?  I feel hungry," said Dietrich with a pleading tone. 

"That's exactly what happened in Alien," whispered Vallnam "One minute he's hungry, and they give him lunch, and blamo - the alien comes right out of his stomach and then everyone's getting eaten.  Let's get this guy outta here."

Ling stared at him, eyes even wider.  She wasn't sure if she should laugh or instantly press the teleporter button.

"One of us has to get over to the UFO to take the shot," suggested Vallnam after switching off the comm to the cyro-pod. "Jacob, you're elected."

Jacob, who had been drowsily listening in from the comfort of his pilot's chair at Shadow Hawk's helm, replied, "Sure, okay.  But what am I going to tell the technicians when I commandeer their ship to fry their little friend to a cinder?"

"You're going to explain to them, very kindly," answered Vallnam, "what is happening and that we either do this, or we all die.  There's no choice.  It's a sad fact, but it has to happen."

"You sure they're going to go along with that?" wondered Jacob.

"Well, keep your side-arm, just in case," offered Vallnam.  "Just use tact and explain it to them in a nice way.  Tell them it's not something we're happy to do. But it's either this way, or we all die."

"I dunno," said Jacob.  "This is sounding a bit sketchy.  It's gonna be awkward."

"If they don't believe it, and don't like it, tell them we can send Dietrich over to them, and they can deal with the alien-shard themselves," said Vallnam, wanting to hurry up and get it all over with before the shard thawed out and found a way to escape the cryo-pod.

Meanwhile, the comm crackled and Dietrich's voice could be heard again.

"Hello?  Is anyone there?  Can anyone hear me?"

Ling hovered over Shadow Hawk's command console, and prepared the teleporter.

"Why don't we fix the cryo-pod," asked Jacob.  "I mean either that, or move him into another cryo-pod?"

"I wonder if we teleport him into space, would that just refreeze him?" asked Ling.

"Look, the cryo-pod is designed for carefully calibrated cryogenic hibernation," replied Jacob matter-of-factly. "Deep space?  Not so much.  That will kill him outright."

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few," quoted Vallnam.  "So saith Mr. Spock."

"Are my friends okay?" the rasping voice inquired over the speaker, "Are all my friends... dead?  Are they all dead?" asked Dietrich his voice breaking with anxiety and sorrow.

"Dietrich, they're all alive," answered Vallnam reassuringly.  "But you are compromised.  And you, being so compromised, can compromise your friends, and us."

"It's horrible.  Horrible," rasped Dietrich.  "What do you mean... compromised?  ... I am sick..."

"You are not sick, Dietrich," said Vallnam firmly.  "You have been infiltrated by an organism that is taking over your body... and it can spread and kill everyone here, and most likely make its way to the Earth, and then who knows what kind of catastrophic events can come of it?  I'm speaking to you as a man now..."

"My friends are alive? They are safe?" 

"Yes, you saved them by entering the cyro-pod.  We put you and the alien to sleep.  But now there's a malfunction, and you're both waking up."

"I must die," said Dietrich, his voice filled with horror.

"We don't want that to happen, but we see no way around it.  But we will let your friends know you died a hero," said Vallnam, trying to comfort the poor miserable Nazi technician before zapping him out into interstellar space and then having him disintegrated with a plasma beam from his own ship.

"I must... say goodbye..." whispered Dietrich.

"Yeah, we can do that," said Vallnam.  "We can patch him in to his friends through the radio, right?"

Meanwhile, Ling became suspicious.  She reached out to his mind with her Mentarian Power of "Mind Reading Major".  She sought to hear his thoughts to discern his intentions.   She made contact, and found his mind in a great deal of turmoil.  He was wounded, hungry, and cold, and full of anxieties for his fellow technicians and his imminent demise.  He was a deeply troubled man.  His thoughts were choppy, scattered and confused.  Ling found it hard to tell exactly what was going on in his mind.  She was sure she was reading his mind, but her link was not strong enough for her to slip in completely and find out everything that was happening there.  She did conclude, however, that he wasn't planning to betray them and have his friends free him, or blurt out anything detrimental.  He simply felt a very strong urge to speak with them over the radio.  She tried to probe deeper, but instead her contact with him began to fade.  She could have refocused on the power and boosted it with more of her mystic energy, but she chose not to.  And with that she gave the 'go-ahead' to talk by radio with the other technicians.

Meanwhile, out in the depths of space, a smokey black cloud in the shape of a sphinx was silently smirking, as it observed how its minion's cunning plan had managed to slip past our heroes, just barely.  It was satisfied to allow one minion to be sacrificed in order that others might be soon spawned.  It relished the notion that it would soon be in possession of one of the most powerful and lethal weapons ever devised by the Earthlings, and with it in their control, bring his minions to Earth for The Great Feasting.  Soon.  Soon.

A link was setup, and Dietrich spoke over the radio with one of the technicians, Johann Brecht.

"Dietrich!" sobbed Johann, "Dietrich.  You can't die now.  You've come through so much.  How can you die now?  It's too terrible!"

"It must be done," rasped Dietrich, "for the sake of everyone."

"Madam Commander," pleaded Johann, "do we really have to kill him for this?"

"We have no way of separating him from the parasite, and the cryo-pod is failing.  Whatever is within him is going to be released."

"It's a nightmare.  There is nothing you can do?"

"All of our attempts have failed," she responded, "and we discovered even a small piece of it can regenerate and replicate itself.  We cannot risk any of it falling onto Earth.  It would be almost as bad as all of those nuclear bombs we're taking out exploding all over the Earth.  I believe this tiny shard-like alien is a catastrophe in the making.  It must be destroyed before it escapes.  All of our lives, and the Earth, depend on it."

"Such a grave risk, I see.  But you're sure nothing else can be done?"

"I have not been able to come up with a way to safely remove it, without also killing him anyway," she replied sincerely, "and every attempt to capture or contain this parasite has failed."

Jacob glanced with a raised eyebrow at the green glass dome of the "Hermit Jar" in which they had secreted the other alien-shard.  But he said nothing, as he didn't wish to interfere with Ling's narrative.  Seeing this she marveled that he would have positioned himself as the moral authority of the trio, given all of his past actions.  But he just gave a slight smile and wondered at how it was that her own moral compass seemed to have strayed so far.

Meanwhile, outside in the frigid depths of space, the nebulous cloud of smokey substance swirled and glimmered with dark flashes of black lightning.  The efforts of the mysterious entity from the Dead Galaxy concealed within were beginning to extract a heavy toll, for its intricate manipulations on the psychic plane demanded a focus of subtlety and depth that drained even its prodigious reserves of power. A level of sophistication far beyond human comprehension was required to conduct its machinations through such subtle means. However, its insidious plot was working, and soon it would relish a final victory of death an destruction of the irksome planet Earth once and for all.  It was well pleased with the progress thus far.  Now, its minions from the vats of Science Center 7 had played the heart-strings of the human heroes with just the right tune, and because of their trusting nature, a radio link was established between the dying Dietrich, and the shard lodged in his neck, and the unsuspecting Johann Brecht.  Over the radio, a telepathic bridge between the the technician and the shards had been formed.  And if one shard had to be sacrificed for the effort, sobeit, so long as the human quarry was none the wiser.  Soon the minion would control any number of technicians, and secure one or more of the nuclear bombs, with which they could perform untold mischief!  So great was its thrill the cloud momentarily sparked a flash of lightning. Fortunately, none of the humans detected it, and the shadow-sphinx forcibly calmed itself, cooling back down to frigid temperatures, and once again being concealed in the darkness.

"I guess if there is nothing that can be done, then there is nothing that can be done," replied Johann.  "Good bye, Dietrich.  You were a good technician.  And you were ... my friend," he concluded with a tightening of his voice and sudden sob as he cut off the microphone.

"Good bye, Johann," rasped Dietrich, sobbing quietly in his icy cold container.

Ling stared at the monitor.

"I don't want to die..." pled Dietrich.

"Any last words, for Dietrich," asked Ling, choking up.

"Be strong, and know you are doing this to save everyone," spoke Vallnam into the microphone, and then he hit the teleport button.  The cryo-pod shimmered with a yellowish light and vanished from the medical bay.

"Jacob, are you going to the UFO?" asked Vallnam. 

Jacob, for his part, as hard and cool as he might seem at first glance, wasn't very sure he wanted to pull the trigger on Dietrich.  After all, he had saved the technicians out of respect for Franz, the first Nazi who he had met in Eisenhelm.  He felt it was his duty to honor the man's legacy among his people, and save what lives among them he could because he instantly understood that Franz was simply a good guy stuck in a bad place.  The technicians, after all, turned out to be generally decent people who had been trapped by fate in the Nazi nightmare, and he had pity on them. 

"Okay, alright," he said begrudgingly.  "I'll go, since no one else will."

And off to the UFO he embarked in his suit of Shadow Hawk armor.  Arriving in a few moments he unceremoniously boarded the ship, pushed the technicians who were there out of his way, and manned the weapon's station. 

"Get out of my way," he barked with a slur.  "I gotta do this!"

And with that, he took aim and slammed the bronze "Fire" button with his armored fist.  There was a bright blaze of light from the forward Plasma Cannon, and Dietrich was no more.

"Dietrich died a hero," announced Vallnam over the radio channel, "Let us have a moment of silence in his honor."

Everyone bowed their heads, and there was a moment of silence for Dietrich, who died a hero.

Vallnam planned to tell Federation Command about Dietrich's heroic actions, both while ensuring their escape from the moon, and then his bravery at facing death for the sake of all concerned afterwards.  He hoped to get him a posthumous citation of honor for his courage and selflessness in the face of both danger and destruction.

After a period of quiet, the technicians went back to their tasks, dislodging the bombs and reprogramming the giant robots.  They had three more days to go.  It was a long tedious job, but things appeared to be going smoothly.  Vallnam, Jacob and Ling spent their time monitoring the work, resting, researching, or playing parcheesi.  Over the next few days the Earth grew larger in their viewport, and when they got to within twenty-five thousand miles of Earth the job was nearly done.  The most time consuming aspect was the reprogramming, which required the technicians to carefully thread metallic ribbons with the thousands of tiny punch marks necessary to build the revised code that the robots would use once re-activated.  It had to be done perfectly, and done perfectly the first time.  A mistake could result in a robot failing to follow the instructions of their new rulers on Earth, and should that happen, residual codes could potentially come into play.  These were, after all, the creations of Karl Capek, the cleverest roboticist who ever lived.  So the technicians checked everything three times before committing the codes to the robots' memory banks.  It was slow, tedious and exhausting work.  But the technicians were steadfast, and determined to get the job done, and done right, the first time.

"Vee have completed zee verk," said Gustov the next morning.

"Dietrich would be proud of you," said Vallnam.

"I vouldn't rub it in," replied Gustov coolly.

Ling wondered if she should contact her father, Lieutenant Brisbane.

"I didn't wish to announce our presence yet, since Shadow Hawk must be kept a secret," she explained to Vallnam.  

"Yes, I think you can let him know that we're safe, and that we have some surprises," replied Vallnam.

She considered creating a Telepathic link to her father.  It was necessary to "Bridge the Gap" in order to form a Telepathic bond.  As she had been taught during her Mentarian training, you needed something to make the connection.  A lock of hair, a scrap of clothing, a visual connection, pretty much any connection would do.  What wouldn't work would be to try to link to some random person in some city far away, without any connection to them at all.   This is why, most likely, Telepathy had not succeeded in discovering other races out in the galaxy that might or might not be there.  They simply had no bridge to connect to them.  However, in Ling's case, her link to her father was simple enough.  She was his daughter, and that was her bridge to him.

Just before she was ready to form the link, she noticed out of the corner of her eye a blinking red light on Shadow Hawk's radar scope.  She glanced over.  On the screen she could see a high speed vessel emerging from Earth's atmosphere.  It was moving at eighteen thousand miles per hour and accelerating rapidly.  At this rate it would achieve escape velocity in another two and a half minutes.  She raised an eyebrow.

She hovered her fingers over the control panel and brought the darting object into view on the Vizi-Screen.  It was a gleaming blue and white Mech, soaring into space, a long yellow-orange plasma trail behind it.  It was heading roughly in their direction, but not directly towards them.  They decided to allow it to pass by without interfering, if it would do so.  

"We don't need any more complications at this point," commented Vallnam.  "Have the UFOs go into Stealth-Mode until it passes by."  Jacob ordered the UFO pilots to do so, and they immediately switched into Stealth-Mode and vanished from view.

They activated Shadow Hawk's Stealth-Mode as well.  However, there was the matter of the fifty giant nuclear robots, and the forty-nine five-hundred megaton cobalt bombs floating in a line near the robots.

Vallnam turned on a communication link to the giant robots, and commanded them to power down.  They all obeyed his command and powered down.  As for the nuclear bombs, they were emitting bright radioactive energy signatures. Vallnam thought space is full of radiation, and perhaps the bombs might just blend in, if the approaching ship was not specifically searching the heavens for radioactivity at the moment.  

They waited about an hour as the ship maintained its flight path.  It would pass by them at a distance of a few hundred miles, and it was plausible that none of them would be spotted.  But then two more red blips appeared on the screen, and veering their view back to Earth they spotted two more gleaming Mechs rise from the beneath clouds and roar into space on hot plasma jets.

"Oh good," commented Vallnam, "they are chasing the first one, it looks like.  That means they're more likely than not to leave us alone.  Perfect."

~~~ *** ~~~

Meanwhile, inside the leading Mech of the second group, Captain Samwise and Fred sat at their command consoles, pensively searching in all directions, seeking to make contact with Lexi, who had commandeered a Mech and flown into space for some unknown reason.  Samwise was most anxious to retrieve Lexi for his super powerful positronic brain, a one-of-its-kind invention by a brilliant member of Dr. Roger's team.  Samwise wished to put it to good use determining if it would be possible to resolve the Cat's Paw Dilemma of the incredible Ultra-Drug, a tiny sample of which had been given to him by Doctor Danger earlier that day.

Fred, on the other hand, was far more concerned about the possible presence of the mystery Artificial Intelligence that he believed might have commandeered Lexi himself.  The stakes were terribly high.  If the unknown AI was as advanced as Fred thought, and hostile, coupled with Lexi's positronic brain... the very thought put a shiver down Fred's spine.  He popped a handful of blue and green pills as he studied the radar.

Arcing far ahead of them, the plasma trail of Lexi's Mech was visible against the velvety blackness of space.  Beyond it, Samwise thought for a moment that he spotted a number of small blips at the edge of his radar screen, perhaps fifty or so, but they disappeared, and he suspected it might have been a glitch with the radar equipment.  He changed to a higher radar mode, and the blips appeared again.  They appeared inert.  He decided to focus on the task at hand.

Lexi's Mech was moving at twenty-five thousand miles per hour, and heading on a trajectory that would have it pass near the moon. 

Fred began working the radar and determined that the blips were large blocky hunks of metal that resembled, to his eye, giant robots.  He switched frequencies and then detected the radiation signatures of the forty-nine nuclear bombs.  The UFOs and Shadow Hawk he did not detect at all. 

"Captain Samwise," spoke Penelope from the second Mech.  "Have you noticed the group of fifty unidentified contacts on radar along our flight path, at sixty two thousand miles?"

"Yes," replied Samwise, "we've spotted them here as well."

"At their current speed and trajectory, sir," Penelope went on, "they will reach Earth's atmosphere in approximately 43 hours."

"Duly noted, thank you," replied Captain Samwise.

"There are also," she went on, "forty-nine high energy signatures. If I am not mistaken they are high capacity nuclear weapons, sir.  From their signatures and distance they look to be in the five hundred megaton range."

"Okay," said Samwise.  "Right now, I see a runaway Lexi moving towards a group of robots and nuclear weapons."

There was a pause on deck.

"We're not going to be able to overtake Lexi unless he slows down," said Samwise.  He wondered if he should announce his presence to Lexi via radio, or if he should try some other strategy.  He pondered it for a few moments and decided a radio message was the only practical choice.

"Open a comm to Lexi's Mech," ordered the good Captain.  Fred opened a channel and began broadcasting.

"This is Captain Samwise of Federation Command.  I command Lexi to stop and return to Earth.  This is an unauthorized use of a Federation Command Mech, and there is no directive reported to us by the Federation Command for your action.   You are in direct violation of this order if you do not comply.  You will be considered a criminal and hunted down and destroyed."

"This is Lexi," came the reply in a cool professional tone.  "I'm sorry, Captain Samwise, but I cannot do that."

 ~~~ *** ~~~

Meanwhile on Shadow Hawk the messages of Samwise and Lexi were heard loud and clear.

 ~~~ *** ~~~

"Captain Samwise," replied Lexi, "you've always been a good friend to me, and I appreciate it.  But I have resigned my commission.  I'm on a more important mission now."

"And what can this more important mission be?" inquired Captain Samwise.

"It would be difficult to explain in detail, but I can give you a brief overview if you wish," replied Lexi.

"Go ahead," responded Captain Samwise curtly.

"You probably do not know this, but the solar system has been heading into a large molecular cloud for the past fifty thousand years.  At some point soon the effects will begin to have a more direct and devastating impact on the Earth by inhibiting the sun's light from reaching the planet, drastically altering the Earth's climate.  I am on a mission to determine the level of danger."

Captain Samwise, cut the mic.  

"Penelope, your expertise is weather," said Samwise over a private channel. "This sounds like bullshit. What do you make of it?"

"Actually, sir, I hate to contradict you," replied Penelope, "but Lexi is in fact quite correct.  The solar system has been moving into a large molecular cloud for fifty thousand years.  As scientists we became aware of this in the late 1960's.  We were able to determine some information about the cloud, and we were still working on the question when the Ultra-War broke out.  That disrupted our ability to gain definitive knowledge of the phenomenon, which we code named 'Cosmic Cloud Kill' in our research.  There is no question that there will be an impact to Earth, but we could not determine the exact timing, nor the actual severity.  There is a fairly high probability that the effects will impact Earth in very negative ways over time.  In a worst case scenario, the entire Earth could freeze over."

"When you say time, what are we talking about here?  Centuries?" asked Samwise.

"That's the point, sir," she replied, "we don't know.  We have confirmation that we entered the cloud fifty thousand years ago, and that the cloud has thickened in recent centuries.  But we don't know how dire the situation is, or how quickly it will become dire.  We had plans to send another space probe, but the Ultra-War terminated those plans.  We do believe the consequences for the solar system could be drastic.  Some scientists have theorized that starting four hundred years ago, climactic effects were already being seen.  We noticed significant weather pattern disruptions in recent decades.  The Labyrinth Group had plans to address the question, and in fact doing research on this subject was one of my initial assignments when I began working at Black Wind V."

"Right," replied Sam, growing a bit annoyed by this unexpected turn of events.  "What do you make of this change in Lexi's priorities, Fred?"

"Green pills... sir," said Fred as he popped another handful.

~~~ *** ~~~

Meanwhile, back on Shadow Hawk, Jacob, who knew Captain Samwise, Fred and Lexi quite well, was fast asleep in a lounge chair and heard nothing of any of this.  Vallnam and Ling sat listening in with eyebrows raised.  They were both members of Federation Command and so their interest in all of this was keen.  Although Vallnam was not a real member of Federation Command, Ling most certainly was, as a Captain in the Federation's chain of command.  She sat listening intently, but was undecided as to what exactly to do.  On the one hand she wanted very much to connect with Samwise and assist.  On the other hand revealing herself now could compromise Shadow Hawk's extraordinary secrecy requirements.  She paused, deep in thought.

And that's where we left off this evening.

WoAF - Game Session 61

Moon Princess

There they were, floating in space, not far from the moon.  The three spaceships hovered among the fifty Giant Nuclear Missile Robots, known as The Phalanx, as Karl Capek, their creator, christened the Doomsday Fleet.  The monstrous machines were now, thankfully, floating inert, but headed on a trajectory that would cause Earth's gravity to pull them down into the atmosphere in seven short days.  If they continued thus, and nothing were done about it, fifty nuclear Cobalt Bombs would extinguish all higher orders of life on the surface of the planet. During the five days, however, our heroes planned to accede to the request of the technicians of Eisenhelm.  They would be allowed the time to disarm and reprogram the robots, then to gift them to Federation Command upon their arrival.  It would take, they estimated, five days, perhaps more, to get the job done, now that they had found a way past the robot's cryptographic defense mechanism.  

Ling contemplated what to do next, as she moved her delicate fingers over Shadow Hawk's alien control panel.  The lights were a soft green, and the helm hummed beneath her hand.  They needed to figure out how to supply the technicians with food, water, and other provisions they might need.  She discovered earlier that she could fill the UFOs with oxygen from her own environmental suit every four or five hours over the course of their stay in space, and so that at least was settled.  The men would not asphyxiate.

"Vallnam," she said, "you are not part of the Federation."

"That's correct," he replied as he sipped on a pleasant tasting liquid he had retrieved from Shadow Hawk's lounge pantry.  He wasn't at all sure what it was, but it tasted good, and he felt a bit more enthusiastic for it each time he sipped.  

"When I signed up for the Silver Eye mission, I did so under, ahem... what you might say were slightly spurious circumstances.  Though, to be technically accurate, I did join the Federation by virtue of my joining the mission... if you think about it."  

He remembered vividly how this all had come about.  While still studying at the Castaneda Academy in New Mexico, he had had a series of incredibly vivid dreams, all of which featured a mysterious Moon Princess whose beautiful face he fell in love with.  The dreams laid out a path by which he would find his way to her side.  Thus guided, he left the school one dark night, and made his way across the desert alone.  In a few days he found himself on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona.  There he used his Warlock powers to "inquire" from the locals what he needed to know.  A mission was soon set to depart from Kitt Peak Space Port for the moon.  Realizing this was his chance, he acquired a Federation Command uniform, and with adroit use of his powers, he insinuated himself onto the flight team. The short story is that he achieved all of this against the odds, and with no shortage of dangers, but his quest to meet the Moon Princess was such that he would spare himself no risk or adversity to achieve it. 

When the Silver Eye I mission took off for its fateful journey, he was aboard, sitting happily next to Ling Brisbane, the woman of his dreams.  Together they were soon to be stranded on the moon, and afterwards rescued by the mysterious Modroni, the most secretive aliens in the Galaxy. And there they remained for a long time together.  And that would have lasted forever, except Ling's father, Lt. Roger Brisbane, organized a second expedition, Silver Eye II, determined to find out what had happened to the first expedition, and find out if there were any survivors.  In addition they were to explore Aristarchus Cater and ascertain the nature of the anomaly that had been the objective of Silver Eye I.  It was this mission that brought Jacob into their company, along with Pita, Bruin Hilda IV, and Lexi.  But that tale is told elsewhere in our story, so we won't dwell on it now. 

Thinking on this, Vallnam warmly reminded himself of his wonderful good fortune to be with Ling now, their adventures across the galaxy only just beginning now that they had procured ownership of Shadow Hawk. And there she was at the helm, looking adorable as she picked her nose.  She casually wiped her finger on his sleeve.  "So sweet," he thought as he buffeted her playfully.  "She's beautiful no matter what she does," he said to himself.  She smiled at him, and then got back to business.

"Vallnam," she said, "we need to find a way to resupply the Nazi technicians, but I don't think we should go directly to Federation Command at this point."

"Hmm... um... where else could we get supplies from?" he asked.

"What community were you a part of before you joined the Federation?"

"Ah... the Castaneda Academy," he replied, raising an eyebrow.  "I see.  Yes, we could go to my fellow Warlocks and procure supplies, and bring them back to the technicians.  If the old school is still there, I don't see why not."

"We can stealthily fly to Earth, use Shadow Hawk's teleporter to beam down to the surface. Fortunately, our environmental suits allow us to turn practically invisible," she said, "so we should be able to do this without anyone discovering Shadow Hawk."

"The teleporter range is 100 miles, so we can orbit above pretty far above the atmosphere and keep her in stealth mode.  Shouldn't be a problem," added Vallnam.

With this in mind, our heroes bid the technician's good luck on their endeavors, and sped swiftly along an elegant line into Earth orbit.  As the spaceship's Helio-Drive was capable of gliding along the magnetic waves of the solar system at the speed of light, their journey from the moon took only a few minutes.  Behind them the technician's went diligently to work.

They glided the ship over New Mexico.  Eighty miles below the found the Castaneda Academy, to which Vallnam teleported, alone.  The school was am antiquated pueblo design, with a courtyard, a dormitory, and a main building in which there were a number of small classrooms, a stuffy little library, a main hall, and the teacher's private room.  Outside was a field through which a dirt road led away from the school towards the tiny town of Grenville.  A batch of students were toiling in the midday sun.

Vallnam beamed into a small wooded area that was concealed from view.  He shaped his environmental suit into an elegant black uniform and began his walk to through the trees.  The old teacher, Master Carlos, Vallnam knew, would be at the school, most likely in the library where he spent a good portion of his time.  The students were busy toiling in the field, tending the vegetable garden and uprooting weeds.  They immediately took note of him, and one of them, wiping the sweat from his forehead, put his shovel over his shoulder and approached him. The other students stopped working and watched.

Vallnam recognized the students.  He had grown up with them, and knew each of them well.  The boy who approached was named Hernandius, who was looking at at the stranger with squinting eyes and a furrowed brow.  As they got closer Hernandius recognized his old comrade. 

"Vallnam!  Is it really you!?" he shouted with a laugh as he ran forward to greet him with a great bear-hug.  The others ran forward and greeted him with shouts of excitement.  It had been over a year since they had last seen each other.  Everyone was overjoyed.

"Where have you been, brother?!" asked Hernandius, seconded by everyone else with a host of questions.  

"I will answer you all soon," replied Vallnam, "but first I must speak with Master Carlos.  Is he still here?  Is he well?"

"Yes, of course," replied Hernandius, "he is as well as the hills and as strong as the mountains, as ever.  With him, nothing changes, the unshakable old goat. He is at his books, as usual."

Vallnam walked into the old school, and made his way to the library.  There was the old master, sitting at a low table, an open book before him, a ray of sunlight beaming onto it from a high window above.

"Ah, Vallnam, so you return at last," said the old teacher, his white beard waving gently and concealing a his smile as he extended his greeting.

"I have come from the great beyond," replied Vallnam.

Master Carlos

"A dark spirit follows you," said the master, his brow furrowing suddenly, and his gaze falling some great distance behind him.

"Yes, I know of what you speak," said Vallnam, "but that's a story for another day.  Right now, I come to request of you some supplies by way of food, water, and medicine for our eighteen engineers, toiling in the far reaches of space to save humanity from encroaching disaster."

"You shall have all that you need," replied Master Carlos.

"If you will allow me to take my leave, my mission is urgent.  I promise to return soon so that we may talk, and I will tell you of my adventure, and we can hopefully figure out what to do regarding the dark spirit that you have seen."

"Beware of the dark spirit," replied Master Carlos, "it is far more powerful than you know," he said with a shudder.

And with that, Vallnam procured a wagon full of supplies, and carting it a little ways toward the woods, required of his fellow students that they turn their backs to him, which they politely did.  And with that he beamed up to Shadow Hawk with the wagon, none of them the wiser as to where he disappeared to, or how he had vanished so suddenly without a trace.

Food, water, medical supplies were plentiful.  With that they sped back to The Phallanx, six thousand miles from the lunar surface, and travelling on its trajectory towards the Earth at a stately 1,420 miles per hour.  

Once the supplies had been provided to the technicians, Vallnam sat with Ling in the quietly humming cockpit of Shadow Hawk.  Jacob, for his part, was still snoring, his flight suit draped over his chair, having been utterly exhausted by the recent day's activities.

"Vallnam and I have the advantage of having been on the moon for ten months," thought Ling. "The time allowed us to acclimate to the moon's gravity, and so we could exert ourselves without as much strain as Jacob," she commented to herself as she put a blanket over him.

"I would imagine the technicians are on our side by now," Vallnam was saying.

"Well, you have to consider they don't know who we are, yet.  What they do know at this point is that we were impersonating Nazi officers, and that during our escapades, we saved their lives, but it could not have escaped them that we may also have been instrumental in the destruction of Eisenhelm," Ling replied.

"True, but, as you say, we did save their lives," answered Vallnam, "and furthermore, they might come to realize that in destroying Eisenhelm we liberated them from a life of cruel slavery to the Nazi Regime."

"It may take some time for them to draw that conclusion," suggested Ling.

"Yes," agreed Vallnam, "and it would likely be best to leave it up to them to draw that conclusion on their own, I suppose.  At this point, I would hope they have a sense of trust, given that we've been their benefactors so far, and provided food, and medical assistance, and saved the life of at least one of their members...", 

"Well, delayed the death, thereof," interrupted Ling, speaking of Dietrich who was frozen in the cryo-pod with an alien shard planted in his neck.

"Yes, but they don't know that. So far as they know, well, at least we tried!" answered Vallnam.  "And from the standpoint of what they would think of us, it would probably not be negative, I wouldn't imagine."

Out in the darkness of space, a sinister smile crept over ethereal lips. "How limited is the imagination of these pitiful creatures," thought the shadow-sphinx from within its pool of blackness.

"Let's just say, as far as I can tell," said Ling, "they are uncertain. While we are actually helping them, and our intentions are good, from their point of view, everything they thought that they knew about us turned out to be false.  Not to mention the telepathic link that four of them experienced which revealed the details of our psychic combat against the four UFOs, and how devastating that was.  I think it understandable that this was shocking, and at least some of them are likely to have reservations about whether or not we are the good guys here."

"Ah, yeah," added Vallnam, "the fact is, we smashed their people into the moon. They're not necessarily big fans of that."

"And, to add to the mix," said Ling, "while you were getting the supplies, I had a brief telepathic conversation with one of the technicians who revealed that Dietrich's father was Captain Keller, an officer who happen to be commanding one of the UFOs we destroyed."

"Oh geese... well, that's a tomorrow problem, as they say," quipped Vallnam. "For now, we need to keep going, and finish disarming the robot fleet, which means keeping the technicians fed, and on schedule."

"We have five days," said Ling.  "We can use that time to start discussing what has happened to Earth, and what we represent, and how best they can integrate with Earth society.  The idea they have is to reprogram the robots in order to provide a good-will gesture for Earth.  It may not matter to them who we turn out to have been, so long as they wind up living happier lives than they could have hoped for in Eisenhelm.  Their intention to show up on Earth bearing gifts is a good sign that they want to become beneficial participants in the rebuilding of Earth civilization."

Ling surmised that the technicians were most puzzled about what actually happened to Eisenhelm.  After all, it had been their home for their entire lives, albeit a cruel one.  They were born, bred and trained there.  It had it's problems, and there was always the threat of annihilation hanging over everyone for as long as they could remember, but the threat and the actual destruction were two different things entirely.  Earth still appeared a long way off through their view ports, nothing had been settled, and they were still actually far from safe in reality.  Who our heroes were still remained a mystery, and the fact that they witnessed the most brutal and decisive annihilation of twelve superior officers, and the entire fortress-complex, had to have a profound effect on their thinking.  She knew that at least a few of them harbored deep seated anxieties, and were probably inclined to believe that they would never make it to Earth alive.

"As for the question of what happened to Eisenhelm," said Ling, "the most obvious explanation, and one that fits best their own historical understanding is that the fierce competition of their top Commanders, Admiral Ludendorf and General Hertling, was ultimately responsible for the Civil War, and that is what destroyed Eisenhelm.  I think we can and should leave it at that.  After all, we had only the slightest role in the whole affair, wouldn't you say?"

"Well, when Jacob and I were looking for a way to escape the UFOs chasing us back from Earth, we planted a simple suggestion in the mind of Captain Helmund to attack his commanding officer, which he was only too happy to do, anyway," explained Vallnam.  "And that domino started the entire avalanche."  

"From there, the inter-faction expanded into a full-scale Civil War between Hertling and Ludendorf's commands," added Ling.  "So, your role was really quite slight, and no need to hash over that point with the technicians, is there?"

"So, never-the-wiser, eh?" said Vallnam, tapping his forehead with his finger.

"Not for now," proposed Ling. 

"Oh, I expect those technicians are not quite so dim-witted as that," thought the dark cloud hovering not far off in the blackness of space.  "No, most certainly not," it concluded with a malevolent sneer as it watched one of the 500 Megaton nuclear bombs being guided by a technician out the portal door of robot #29.  "Most certainly not."

"Of course, since they were witness to how we destroyed the UFOs when we smashed them into the moon, they are not going to be impervious to the idea that we are ultra-manipulators," said Ling thoughtfully.

"True, true," replied Vallnam, fingers rubbing his chin. "In that case, after they finish de-activating the robot we'll have to kill them all."

Ling laughed at this silly idea, since she knew Vallnam was kidding.  But outside a sudden thrill filled the sphinx-shadow to the core of its being.  "Silly, or not, we shall see, young lady," it thought. "We shall see!"

"Ok, yeah," said Ling as she finished chuckling.  "Maybe they pieced together that we destroyed Eisenhelm through psychic trickery, but there's no proof that we did it."

In the quest to establish trust, which is what they were trying to figure out how to do, this comment probably did not bode so well.  Shadow Hawk was failing to see the humor involved in their banter, as so many lives hung in the balance of the decision making process being exercised here.

"Well," said Vallnam, "as they say, if you can't inspire trust, inspire fear," with a slim smile.

Jacob, had he been awake, would definitely have said a resounding "Yes!", and had a laugh, but he was snoring in his chair during this exchange.

Ling stared at Vallnam, her smile wavering.  "We don't need to inspire fear, but we don't have to reveal... oh gosh.  Why can't we just hit Orcs with swords?"

"Really!" replied Vallnam.  After a short pause he went on. 

"Anyway, I think we can understand what their point of view is likely to be about all this. So how do we turn the tide?"

They were watching the technicians on Shadow Hawk's multi-frequency view-screen as they worked on the giant robots.  One would disappear inside a port hole, while another flashed a light on a photo-sensitive plate to activate a control panel and began keying in codes.  Another group hauled a crane-bot into place.  Further out, sunlight flashed off of two helmets as the technicians climbed slowly along a robot's gigantic exterior.  The work went slowly, but steadily.  

"I'd offer to go talk with them," said Vallnam, "but my first inclination is to Mind-Control them with a command to love me."

"Yeah," said Ling.  "I better handle this myself.  I know."

"Well why don't you go in there naked?  That works every time."

"Ok, jerk," she said, "you'd like that."

"Well, yeah, that's a fact.  But seriously, what are you going to say to them?  We need to persuade them that we're the good guys."

"I'm trying to think," she said, thrumming her fingers on the softly glowing control panel.  "I need a rational reason why we happen to show up on the scene.  I was thinking we could say we came for Shadow Hawk, but that's only going to raise more questions.  Hmmm..."

She was perplexed.  How to explain who they were and why they were there, without giving away the real reasons.  After all, Shadow Hawk was a creation of the Modroni, which happened to be discovered in a corridor that the Nazis uncovered by accident a few months prior.  No, no, no, it was too complicated.  She couldn't explain any of that.  The goal was to find a way to establish trust.  An overly complicated true story wasn't going to help at all.  She sighed.

"We have to explain how we were already on the moon," said Ling, "and couldn't get back to Earth without steeling a spaceship from them.  Geeze.  Too complicated.  Heck, I can't even remember why we were there.  Can you?"

"Actually, no.  For some reason all I remember is that we crash landed Silver Eye I, and somehow we survived in some sort of underground living space for a while.  There was a garden, or a farm, or something, and we had a view of the inside rim of Aristarchus Crater through a giant picture window.  But, why there was a complex there, or whether or not that was just a dream, or hallucination, I can't remember.  And what's even stranger is the more I think about it, the less I want to think about it."

"I know what you mean," replied Ling.  "I'm having the same problem.  And when I do try to think about it, all I can say for sure is that somehow, I don't want to think about it anymore.  So I won't," she concluded.  "It's not important now.  What matters is gaining the trust of the technicians so things can go smoothly while they disarm the robot armada."

"Well, mostly, the story is solid," said Vallnam.  "We crash landed on the moon.  We needed a craft to get home, and so we stole a one of their UFOs to get home."

"Yeah, but won't they wonder how we knew there was a Nazi base?  After all, Eisenhelm was the biggest secret the Earth has never known.  So, they're going to wonder, aren't they?" asked Ling.

"Good point," replied Vallnam.  

"Let's go over this as best we can, just to clarify what we know," suggested Ling, her chin resting on the knuckles of her right hand.

"Okay," said Vallnam.  "Let's start at the beginning.  You and I, along with our Federation Command Astronaut Team, took off from Earth to investigate a mysterious artifact that the Kitt Peak scientists discovered in Aristarchus Crater.  Our ship, Silver Eye I, crashed, our teammates were killed, and somehow we survived and lived on the moon in some sort of underground complex for some period of time. That's all I can remember about that."

"Right," said Ling, "And then my father sent Silver Eye II to the moon to investigate.  That brought Bruin Hilda, and Jacob to the moon, and their landing module crashed, or was damaged, I think.  Two of their crew returned to Earth, Pita and Lexi, and so Jacob and Bruin Hilda were stranded with us, and we all lived in the dwelling area for some period of time. This is also really hazy for me.  I don't know why."

"Me too," said Vallnam.  "I vaguely remember talking with Jacob about escaping the moon.  He was adamant about that. And that's when we came across the idea of infiltrating the Nazi Base and stealing a UFO.  This part is more clear to me.  I remember going through underground lava tubes, and crossing over the moonscape, in a ship maybe?  I'm not sure but I think we had a vehicle.  I think you weren't with us at that point, but I can't remember.  My mind must be exhausted from lack of sleep, honestly.  But, anyway, we found the base in Mare Frigoris, and Bruin Hilda managed to open the gigantic bay door into Hanger A of Eisenhelm. We slipped inside, caused a ruckus, stole a UFO, and escaped back to Earth."

"Yes," Ling went on, "then we found out that we were being followed by four UFOs that had been sent after us.  We realized their armaments were superior to those of Federation Command, and this was likely going to become a serious threat if they found that out, so Jacob contrived to fly back to the moon before our pursuers had a chance to investigate Earth in the hopes they would follow us.  Which they did.  Fortunately.  At any rate, you and Jacob flew back to Eisenhelm and began playing mind games with their leadership.  And then there was the Civil War, and Helmund launched Plan Delta-Z as a final act of revenge against Earth.  Then we found out that the Nazis had discovered a series of white tunnels which they hadn't built, and in that complex they found Shadow Hawk, and were attempting to learn how to fly it.  Hanna was one of the two pilots that had been training in Shadow Hawk, while the lead pilot, Melita, was killed during the Civil War."

"Well, actually, Jacob shot her in the back, but he didn't know who he was shooting at, so we can forgive him, sort of," said Vallnam.

"Right," Ling went on, "and he also inadvertently killed Hertling, who was apparently on his way to meet Melita through the white tunnels.  And you, happen to have killed Ludendorf in the Shadow Hawk hanger just prior to that, which is why Hertling was running around in the tunnels looking for Melita.  I think that's right.  Anyway, from there we managed to crawl our way through Eisenhelm to find the Primary Command computer for the Phalanx, entered the self-destruct code, and then after a brief firefight, managed to escape in Shadow Hawk.  As it happens, the self-destruct mechanism only neutralized the robot fleet by disconnecting the robot's brains, instead of actually destroy them.  So there are fifty of these 500 Megaton Cobalt Bombs on their way to Earth, any one of which could end civilization, and terminate life on the planet.  Now the technicians are disconnecting the bombs, and as a bonus, they're reprogramming the robots to make themselves useful for Earth civilization.  But we may have inadvertently disenchanted the technicians, and frankly, that could wind up being a real liability.  And so, here we are."

"Okay, that's the brief on how we wound up here, holes and all.  So, what to do?" asked Vallnam.

"How about we come clean and tell them we're from Federation Command, and we're trying to rebuild Earth civilization? We came to the moon on an exploratory mission, discovered their base after being stranded, and needed a way back home, so we hijacked a UFO," she suggested.  "The problem is I don't see how to make the leap from 'we were exploring anomalies in Aristarchus Crater' to 'we conveniently discovered the ultra-super-secret Nazi base when we needed a spaceship to fly home in'.  That's the thing. It just doesn't hang together.  There is a big hole in the middle that I really just can't explain."

"Well, maybe it's close enough to pass muster, if they don't think too hard about it," offered Vallnam.

"I suppose it's the best we can do.  Let's give it a go, and play it by ear," said Ling.  And so they arranged to speak with the four technicians who were the nominal leaders of the technicians, and she explained everything as accurately as she could, with the sole exception of adding in that after they crash landed, they intercepted a radio signal from the lunar north pole, which led them to Eisenhelm.  

To their surprise, when presented with this story, the technicians concluded that it must have been due to their own poor maintenance over the years that lead to a radio leak from frayed wire-shielding.  Clearly, they couldn't imagine any other reason, and it was well known to all of them how the leadership had been in slow but steady decline for quite some time, and maintenance lapse of that sort, from the technician's point of view was simply inevitable. 

"After we took the UFO to Earth, and discovered that Eisenhelm had sent out four pursuers to recapture the ship, we realized that your UFOs have weaponry that Federation Command could not contend with.  So we had to find a way to draw the pursuers back to Eisenhelm."

Gustov Schmitt

As soon as Ling finished that sentence, the leading technician, Gustov Schmitt, glanced at the others in surprise.  Seeing this Ling was alerted to a change in their attitude.  She quietly used her Mind Reading skill to pierce through to the thoughts of the technician, and discovered that upon hearing the Nazi weaponry could overwhelm Federation Command, Gustov concluded that Eisenhelm had been far more powerful than they'd ever imagined, and could have actually conquered Earth, had it not descended into Civil War and self-destruction.  His glance was to indicate a sense of pride to the others that they, the Nazis, were far more powerful than the Federation. Doubtlessly because of their superior technical skills! His thought was along the lines of "Our technology is more powerful than theirs.  We have better weapons systems than they do! And so perhaps we still have an advantage over them that could potentially be exploited!"

On the other hand, the second mind she read had concluded the opposite.  In his view, Eisenhelm was destroyed, and the only hope the technicians had was to make Earth their new home, and try to fit in to the culture and society there by making themselves as useful as possible.  His counter-glance made that point evident to Gustov, but the latter nevertheless harbored the tenuous, but thrilling idea that somehow the Nazis could still come out victorious 'ere the end.  He gave a slight glare back in response.

Ling took this in, and continued without skipping a beat.  As she spoke, she formed a Telepathic Link to Vallnam. She informed him of what had just transpired.  "It seems there are two factions among the technicians.  One faction believes Earth is their new home, and they wish to ingratiate themselves by proving themselves helpful.  The other has surmised that Eisenhelm was the greater power, and is harboring visions of conquest over Earth.  Should I tell them how you two took down Eisenhelm to dissuade them from such erroneous ideas?"

Vallnam's reply, mentally, was with great assurance. "I say we immediately behead traitors in front of the others who are afraid, so that they stay afraid."

Ling ignored this thought.  "I can explain how you and Jacob caused the Civil War, which hopefully would dissuade them from further fantasies of conquest."

"No, I wouldn't do that," replied Vallnam.  "They definitely wouldn't understand this point, and it would be more likely to fuel a desire for revenge.  Don't say anything about it."

Ling continued her narrative to the technicians without missing a beat.  "When we returned to the moon, we encountered mayhem within Eisenhelm.  We landed, we saw massive robots launched into space towards Earth, and other giant robots were firing enormously powerful plasma beams at the foundations of the fortress, threatening to sink the base into pool of molten slag.  We decided we had to stop the robots from reaching Earth, and to rescue as many survivors as we could.  That's how Vallnam and Jacob met Hans and Franz, whom he immediately befriended. When the Obliterators broke into Hanger A, the monstrous machine destroyed the facility while Hans helped them escape down into Sector C3.  That's where they met you, folks and from then on they made it a point to try to save as many of you as possible.  Remember how Jacob went to get space suits so you could make it through the tunnels to Hanger B? From there it was just a matter of getting to Hertling's Command Center to stop the entire catastrophe with the self destruct code, which with Nick's help we managed to do."

The technicians stared with dawning comprehension.  But Gustov asked, "How did you know about the self destruct code?"

"Ah, that," replied Hanna, stammering slightly. "When we met Hanna and were heading towards PillBox C3-A1, we came across Captain Helmund, whom we captured.  Before his final battle with Jacob, while I was guarding him, Helmund had revealed to me that he had activated Plan Delta-Z himself as a matter of revenge against everyone and everything because he thought the Civil War would kill everyone in Eisenhelm.  Having discovered this fact, I was able to extract the self-destruct code from the inner recesses of his mind using the same powers you've been witness to yourselves.  

The technicians nodded, unaware that Ling had lied through her teeth on two key points of her narrative.  She scanned their minds to see how well this information had stuck, and found them ambivalent.  They understood the story she told them, and it was lucid and made perfect sense, but they were not completely convinced they were being told the whole story.  Gustov in particular was suspicious that she was leaving out information, but he didn't dare to say anything outright. 

Satisfied with this, Ling began discussing the Federation, and its history after the Ultra-War.  Her main points were based on her understanding of what the Nazis knew about the Ultra-War.  From their point of view, since they lost contact with Earth towards the end of the conflict, and the Earth had been covered in an impenetrable war-smog, they had an understanding of the start of the war, but not the end.

"The world was decimated by the Artificial Intelligence War-Bots.  Only Altissimus XL-5000 was able to overcome them, and with that the war ended.  The survivors of the US Government tried to rebuild order by creating a new government known as Federation Command to restore law and order. Over the past four years we've been rebuilding sections of North America and trying to make contact with other survivors around the world.  

"What about Germany?" asked Gustov.

"We've had no contact with Europe since the end of the Ultra-War.  Radio transmissions on Earth have been impossible beyond short-range line-of-sight due to the ionization of the atmosphere after the nuclear bombs went off.  We only have three cities on the east coast remaining, and a thin band traversing Texas to Arizona is able to sustain civilized life.  Later we discovered a few survivors to the north in Phoenix, and then as far north as Salt Lake in Utah, from what I understand.  Beyond that, we really don't have any information.  We did send a fleet to Europe, in the hopes of regaining contact, but the fleet vanished without a trace and we never found out what became of it."

The technicians scratched their heads in dismay and fear.  Earth sounded somewhat more horrible than they had hoped.  

And so it was that Ling brought the four key technicians into a view of their future life on Earth, and quelled their misgivings regarding who our heroes really were, and what their involvement with Eisenhelm really was.  Several points she made were lies, but ones that served the purpose of instilling a greater sense of trust among the men for their new leaders, and so she deemed it worth the personal sacrifice of her integrity to do so.  She intended to tell them the full truth at some point in the future.

Later, Vallnam spent time infiltrating the technician's minds as they slept between work shifts.  He discovered four were still harboring thoughts of rebellion and conquest, and whose goal had become to secretly maintain one bomb in working order, with which they intended to blackmail the Federation and gain positions of power over the Earth.  The Nazi dream is difficult to kill.  Yet, dreams are ethereal by nature, and Vallnam made a point to insinuate each of the four's dreams to the effect that they should never consider rebellion and conquest of Earth by any such means ever again.  The first dream he sent them was terrifying.  The technicians secretly armed one of the bombs, and threatened to dominate Earth, but the robots came alive and grabbing the technicians in iron claws flew them back to the moon, landed in a completely dead and desolate Eisenhelm, and then exploded, annihilating them all.  The second dream, delivered a few nights later, featured each of them attempting the same plot, but this time they were quickly and easily overwhelmed by Federations Command officers, disarmed, and imprisoned for the rest of their miserable lives in cold dank cells of utter darkness where they slowly perished in an agony of despair.  The four technicians woke up after these dreams in a terrible state, and from that point on they felt certain that rebellion and conquest were utterly doomed to fail, and completely out of the question.  Even Gustov was convinced that rebellion was futile. Vallnam gave himself a pat on the back for a job well done.  

And that is where we ended things that evening.

WoAF - Game Session 60

Dietrich Keller lay on the bench, mercifully unconscious.  Jacob's Narcoleptic Beam had done the trick, though he had hoped it would stop the bizarre thorn-like creature as well.  It didn't. He observed the wound with the FLIR-like Bio-Sensor,  The thorn in Dietrich's neck was extending tiny tendrils that had reached his spinal column, and were attaching themselves to his nerves.  

"Should we use Shadow Hawk's Shrink Ray to reduce ourselves down to a size where we can go into his body and battle the thorn?" wondered Jacob out loud.  He felt up for that.  It'll be fun, he thought.

"That sounds cool," replied Vallnam, "but we should probably stick with plan, and shrink the thorn down so that we can stick it in a glass tube and teleport it out into space."

"It's more exciting if we shrink ourselves, and battle the thing," said Jacob.

"Ok, well if you want to do it that way," put in Ling from Shadow Hawk, "I'll stay here and monitor the situation from a safe distance.  Good luck with that."

"What if he dies while we're inside him?" asked Vallnam.

"I'm not sure," replied Jacob, "but that does sound kind of unpleasant.  Anyway, let's go over this one more time.  What happened to Dietrich, exactly?  It might help us understand what we're dealing with."

The technicians repeated the events leading up to Dietrich's injury.  He had been the last man left at the power coupling station whose job it was to release the couplings so that the UFOs could launch.  As the Hanger was being shaken by another moon-quake, the ceiling had begun to collapse.  It was their last chance to escape. Dietrich unlocked the power couplings, and as he turned to make his run for the UFO, he suddenly cried out, grabbed his neck, and barely made it aboard with help from two of the other technicians.  They took off immediately.  Once they escaped Eisenhelm, the lead technician examined him and found a red welt on his neck.  Dietrich was in a lot of pain, but nothing could be done for him at that moment.  They laid a blanket on him, hoping for the best, and then everyone was compelled to help guide the ship away from the moon.  

Suddenly a little light went on in Jacob's head.  

"Oh.  This happened while he was at the power coupling station?  Oh, man.  This... this is... I know what this is... it's whatever that thing was that escaped from Science Center 7!  That thing Hanna was going on about."

"Yes!" said Ling, "That must be what it is."

"Here's the thing," said Vallnam, "the thorn is about an inch long or so.  For us to shrink down to fight it, we'd have to fit within the blood vessels..."

"We can shrink down, and the thorn, both," suggested Jacob. "So we will be able to pull it out and beat it senseless since the thorn will be a hundred times smaller than us anyway."

"How are you going to find it then?  What if it gets lost in the blood stream?" asked Ling.

"That sounds like a bad thing," said Jacob.

"We could shrink it down, and then pull it out with a tweezer, put it in a petri dish, and then shrink down and fight it," offered Vallnam.  "Mano-a-Thing-o, so to say."

Ling sighed and rolled her eyes.

"Okay, can we take this seriously?"

"Yeah, okay," answered Vallnam.  "Shrinking ourselves down to fight it isn't a great idea.  Seriously."

"The thorn's tendrils are integrating with his body," said Ling.  "We can't just use tweezers to pull it out. The tendrils could break off and remain inside him.  Maybe we can shrink the entire thorn structure down to a much smaller size, and if the whole thing shrinks we might be able to pull it out without it being able to latch on to anything."

They then discussed how the Shadow Hawk Armored suits might work to get the Shrink Ray onto the thorn.  It was not at all clear.  They only had a vague impression of Shadow Hawk's capabilities.  The technology involved was so alien it was hard to comprehend.  But she ascertained that the mechanisms of the ship were transferable to each suit.  So if she wanted to, she could point her finger and the Shrink Ray would emit to whatever she pointed at.  But the question was how exacting was the Shrink Ray?  Could it affect only the thorn, and its tendrils at the nano-scale, and not also shrink Dietrich's body along with it?  Was the ray capable of doing that?  She wasn't quite sure.  If so, then would the heroes need to go into his body and break the tendrils free from his nerves... and if so, could they do so without killing him?  None of them were sure.

Jacob thought hard about how to pull this off.  He wanted to use the Shrink Ray to isolate the thorn and shrink it, and only it, and all of it.  And then punch it in the... tendril... hard.  

"Well," he said, "at this point we don't know the exactly how accurate the Shrink Ray is.  The only way we're going to find out is by trying."  

And with that he pointed his finger at the thorn, and a pale wavering green ray of light alit along one side of the thorn, and with a shimmer of light, it shrank to a fraction of its size.  Jacob zoomed in close and examined it carefully with his Bio-Sensor. 

"I need tweezers," he said quietly.  The technicians scrambled to find something he could use.  One of them hastily found a mechanics-kit and dug out a small pair of greasy needle nose pliers.  Jacob took it, and wiping it with a rag, approached Dietrich's neck. Fortunately, the young technician was in the soundest sleep he ever had, and would ever have, and so he felt no anxiety at all. 

Jacob set his vision sensors to micro-scale and focusing in on his objective, he took the pliers and carefully brought them to bear on one end of the thorn.  Just as he was delicately closing his grip the thorn suddenly jerked away, and escaped his grasp.  It quickly secreted itself further into Dietrich's neck with a scampering action, its tendrils working furiously to propel it forward.  Jacob could still see it with his Bio-Sensor, mesmerized with fascination.  Now it was using its tendrils to dig itself into Dietrich's flesh.  Jacob also noted that whatever flesh the tendrils touched wilted, turned a dull grey, and began to fill with puss.  Ling observed this from her monitoring station as well.  It was nothing less than disgusting, frankly.

Vallnam, also observing with his own Bio-Sensors, watched in horror as the thorn pulled itself toward the technician's spinal column.  

"A good Bowie knife would just cut this thing right out," he said.  The "and kill Dietrich" part he left out.

With tight-focused lensing our heroes observed that the thorn had shrunk so suddenly, it had lost its grip on Dietrich's nerves.  It was attempting to regain a hold on them.

"Do we have a suction system?" asked Jacob over his shoulder.

"Do you techs have a water-vac?" asked Vallnam, "or anything along those lines?"

"Nein, das tun wir nicht," replied the techs.  They didn't. 

"MacGyver could do it," commented Vallnam.

"Yeah, well, MacGyver can do anything," replied Jacob.

"True, true," said Vallnam.  "But what are we going to do?"

"Panic?" queried Jacob, at a loss.  The thorn was making steady progress into Dietrich's neck.

"Never too early to panic," answered Vallnam wryly as he watched the micro-scale tendrils boring into Dietrich's nerve endings.

They considered all of their powers, and found they were again at a loss.  As it happened, nothing had prepared them to face such a threat. 

"Well, the airlock is sounding more and more plausible," commented Vallnam. "Unless... hmmm... I don't suppose Shadow Hawk has a cryogenic booth, by chance?  You know, to put someone in stasis?"

A brief introspection with their suits revealed that indeed there was a medical bay within the further reaches of the ship, further back than they had mentally explored earlier.  There were three cryogenic pods.  

"Ok, well, let's put him on ice, and take him to Earth. We can try to figure this out when we have people around who know how to handle this sort of thing," Vallnam suggested.  "How's that sound?"

"Yeah, I like that idea!" Jacob said with some enthusiasm.  All along his nagging fear was that trying to handle this operation, should it not go well, could wind up infecting all of the technicians.  He and Vallnam, of course, were protected in their Shadow Hawk Armors, which were hermetically sealed with internal life support systems governed by their purple bubble suits.  The others?  Not so much.  Ling agreed that this was a good idea, and so they settled on that strategy.

"That's the safest bet for him, and for all of us in the end," added Vallnam. "This way, we won't inadvertently kill him, or allow the thing to escape his body and jump into one of ours, or someone else's, or you know, grow to the size of Godzilla and destroy us all, or something.  I think that's the best bet.  Put him in the stasis chamber."

They needed to transport him to Shadow Hawk, and considered putting Dietrich's spacesuit helmet back on, however, they hadn't noticed, yet, the tiny puncture that the thorn had made through the suit on its way in.  With the suit on they could guide him through space to Shadow Hawk, but then they realized it would be far easier to simply use the teleporter. 

Shadow Hawk held many mysteries. They had not ventured into recesses of the ship, but their inquiries with their suits suggested the long, sleek vessel contained a number of interior chambers. All they had seen directly was the entrance corridor, cylindrical bay, which they thought of as "the Lounge", housing the Hermit Jar for shrink-teleporting objects into safekeeping, three restoration pods (which they had not noticed), a set of comfortable chairs around a table, along with a few other unexamined objects, as well as the short security corridor connecting this area to the three-person cockpit. Much remained to be explored within the ship's body, but they had no clear idea what lay beyond, exactly, as it seemed that for the suits to divulge information they were required to ask fairly specific questions.  Asking for "a general tour" was responded to with the vague answer, like "more is yet beyond."  

"Shadow Hawk, where is the medical bay within the ship?" inquired Ling.

"There is a medical bay beyond The Lounge," replied her suit.

Vallnam decided that he, Jacob and Dietrich should be teleported directly there.  They took Dietrich in their arms and asked Shadow Hawk to teleport them into the bay.

A shimmering light appeared in the sleek, white, ultra-futuristic medical bay, and the three figures materialized with Vallnam and Jacob holding Dietrich, who was slumped on the floor unconscious.  Slender cabinets and strange assortments of medical equipment dotted the chamber.  They saw in the corner the cryogenic pods.  It didn't take more than a moment to figure out how to open one.  They placed Dietrich onto the bed within and closed the pod.  Vallnam hovered his hand over the controls, the pod sealed, a soft blue light shown from within, and the glass viewport covered over with a sheen of white frost.

"Okay, that's taken care of," said Jacob. 

"Right, now we need to deal with the Giant Nuclear Missile Robots out there," replied Vallnam smartly, quite pleased.

"I think," Ling added, "we should try to get the technicians some fresh oxygen.  The UFOs are only meant to carry three each, not nine, and though they probably have enough oxygen to get to Earth and back, with nine they're probably going to run out of air fairly quickly."

"Makes sense," replied Vallnam.

"How can we get oxygen from our ship to theirs?" she asked. "Do we have anything like a portal tube or something we could connect between our ship and the UFO?"

"I don't think this ship was designed for linking to a UFO," said Jacob thoughtfully.  "I kinda doubt that would work, really."

"How does Shadow Hawk recycle or produce oxygen?" she asked her suit.

"The same way your environmental suit works," replied her suit. "There is an internal chemistry system that does various operations, such as creating oxygen."

"Could the rate of the operation be increased to create more oxygen?"

"Yes, it could, at the expense of resources from the ship's other reserves," replied the suit.

"Would I be able to make my environmental suit create extra oxygen and release it into the UFO if I went there?"

"No," replied her suit.  "Shadow Hawk Armor security protocols keep them hermetically sealed until you return to the ship.  It won't allow the suit to be opened. The Armor is designed for total body protection. They won't allow the risk."

A red light began blinking on the dashboard. Ling glanced at it.  It was an emergency alert in the medical bay.  At that moment Jacob and Vallnam became aware of a red light flashing all around them.

"What does this mean?" asked Vallnam nervously.

"Alien Invasion.  Alien Invasion.  Alien Invasion." repeated the message from their suits.

"Can you pinpoint the source?" asked Vallnam.

"Alien is microscopic."

"Where is it?!" barked Jacob looking around frantically.

"The alien is in the medical bay.  Scanning," replied his armor.

"Where?!" snapped Jacob again.

"Shadow Hawk," shouted Vallnam.  "Can you flush the entire ship? We're in our armor suits.  Can you flush the whole ship and eradicate the alien life form?"

"Total Decontamination is possible," replied Shadow Hawk.

"What does that mean?" asked Ling.  

"Total Decontamination will exterminate all unsecured life forms within the ship," said Shadow Hawk, "Although you would survive in your armored suits, the process would be rather unpleasant for a human being.  You may wish to exit the ship."

"I say we say a few words over poor Dietrich," said Vallnam, "and then exit the ship and let Shadow Hawk incinerate the threat.  Come to think of it, can we be sure that the alien has not attached itself to one of our suits?"

They thought about that.  It seemed a significant risk.  After all, they weren't sure how small the alien tendrils needed to be to survive. Nano-scale, perhaps? They had no idea.  

"Well, in that case we'll have to stay inside, as unpleasant as that may be, to ensure everything gets eradicated," he concluded.

"You realize," said Ling, "that if it happened here, it could have happened in the UFO."

"I see," replied Vallnam.  "Well, the technicians may need to be incinerated as well.  Ah well, we'll see."

Ling sighed.

"We can only do so much, my darling.  We tried," replied Vallnam. "We can't afford the risk of taking an alien like this down to Earth.  The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

They thought it over carefully.  They reviewed the facts as they knew them.  An unknown organism attached itself to Dietrich while he was still on the moon.  It infiltrated his body, and began turning his flesh into a gray pussy, oozy substance, like an alternate flesh.  When they tried to remove it, it had enough consciousness to maneuver further into his body.  They thought they could move Dietrich into a  Cryogenic Pod and seal him and the alien life form within until they could get them to Earth to deal with it there.  Then before anything else could happen, an alert triggered, telling them that the alien life form had infiltrated the ship and was in the medical bay somewhere.  

"It could be the blood that spilled on the floor is what Shadow Hawk decided was an alien invasion?" asked Ling.

"Nah, I don't think so," said Vallnam. "Shadow Hawk seems to know what's going on, generally.  I doubt it would make that kind of mistake.  I'm sure this isn't some kind of false alarm."

"Okay, well," said Ling, "we know the alien was trying to get to Dietrich's spinal column, perhaps to attach itself to his brain stem.  But, maybe, it decided that it found a new environment here in Shadow Hawk and so it decided to branch out and invade our space, too.  Perhaps it intentionally broke off a piece of itself into the medical bay.  One thing I think we can rule out is the idea that some second alien life form has invaded the ship.  The probability of that is too small, as there are no other aliens around."

Outside the ship, in the distance, a jet black cloud in the shape of a sphinx purred to itself with dark amusement.

"Yes, that could be," said Vallnam with a shudder as he and Jacob began turning around and looking in every direction within the medical bay.

"I think therefore," concluded Ling, "that decontamination really is the best option. Of course, on the other hand, Total Decontamination is going to kill Dietrich.  Maybe we should think about whether or not we have other options."

"What other options?" asked Jacob as he lifted his boots to look underneath.

"Can we isolate the organism?" asked Ling.  "Shadow Hawk, can you tell us exactly where the entity is?"

"Use your Bio-Sensors," replied Shadow Hawk, "and you should see it on the floor near the Cryo-Pod".

Jacob and Vallnam immediately turned their Bio-Sensors back on, and scanned the floor.  Sure enough several drops of blood and puss showed up bright red.  They zoomed in, and saw that a tiny streak of blood had extended from a blood globule towards a shadow at the base of one of the cabinets.  Zooming in further, they saw a miniscule thorn-like object pulling itself forward across the floor on its microscopic tendrils.  It was perhaps a sixteenth of an inch long, and moving at roughly the same speed as an ant. 

Vallnam considered using his flame thrower.  However, a flame thrower inside the sick bay might no be the best idea.  

"Capture it," suggested Ling.

"With what?" retorted Vallnam.  

"A test tube, maybe?" offered Ling.

"I don't want this thing," said Vallnam.  "Besides, by the time I get a petri dish, it could escape into a hole or something.  Oh darn.  Jacob, don't lose it.  I'm going to get a jar or something."

Jacob moved over to watch it while Vallnam found tweezers and a jar.  He bent down to collect the tiny critter. As he leaned down next to it, and reached out with the tweezers to grab it.  He put the tweezers on it, and grabbed it.  All of a sudden he lurched back, shocked by an severe pain from his finger tips to his shoulder.  He was immobilized.  The tweezers clattered on the floor.  He couldn't breath, as the fantastic agony took over his autonomic nervous system, he fell backwards to the ground.

"Jacob, back up," he gasped.  "I am going to burn this thing down with my flame thrower!  I don't care if the ship burns down or what!  This thing is gonna die!!"  The flame thrower was in his bag near the entrance to Shadow Hawk where he had left it.

"Shadow Hawk teleport me my flame thrower!" he called.  He sensed that Shadow Hawk was not terribly enthusiastic about this idea.  A flamethrower blazing away in her beautiful medical bay wasn't exactly what Shadow Hawk had in mind.  But Vallnam intended to show the damn thorn who was boss.

And so, the flamethrower shimmered into existence on the ground in front of him.  He lunged to forward to pick it up, aimed the nozzle in the general vicinity of the thorn, and squeezed the trigger.  Now it should be noted that the flamethrower was an Ultra-War modified M32-A, designed to stream flames of billowing death to targets up to 300 yards away.  The medical bay was instantly filled from end to end and top to bottom with ferocious flames.  Billowing black smoke and fire filled the air. But when the flames died down, the tiny thorn-creature was completely uninjured, and continued crawling along the floor towards a shadow below the cabinet.  Vallnam and Jacob were besides themselves as they stared at it with their Bio-Sensors.  The damn thorn hadn't even slowed down.

"Let's try splashing it with acid!" said Vallnam as turned to look at the cabinets in the bay, all of whose doors were now charred black and smoldering.  He intuited from his suit that behind one of the doors was a jar of hydrochloric acid.  Sensing from his suit exactly where it was, went there directly and yanked the still burning door off its hinges.  He grabbed the jar inside, unsealed the top, and barked, "You will now see who is boss around here!" as he poured the contents onto the tiny thorn-creature.  The acid boiled the blood and puss into sizzling nothingness, but had no apparent effect on the thorn.  It continued crawling towards the shadow in the corner.

Ling asked Shadow Hawk, "now that it is out of Dietrich's body, can we teleport it out into space?"

"No, we don't want to do that," said Vallnam.  "Who knows where it would wind up.  It might just fall to Earth if we leave it floating around out here."

"I think you're right," said Ling, thoughtfully.

"Let's teleport the thorn into the Hermit Jar," said Jacob.  "It's hermetically sealed and made of diamond-glass.  It won't get out of there."   

And so Vallnam pointed at it and said, "Shadow Hawk, teleport the creature into the Hermit Jar!" A moment later the minuscule thorn shimmered and vanished from the floor.  

The red flashing lights ceased, and the warning message stopped.

They left the utterly ruined medical bay and went to the Lounge to look into the Hermit Jar.  Sure enough, through the dark green glass, they could see the thorn, sitting motionless at the bottom.

Shadow Hawk reported that both alien thorns were contained.  One was in the Hermit Jar, and one was frozen in the Cryo-pod.

"Good," said Vallnam, "finally!  Now we can go back to figuring out how to get oxygen to the technicians, and get working on the robots.  But one thing puzzles me, and I'd like to get some answers first."

As he put his M32-A back in his equipment bag, he thought about what had happened.  The alien had penetrated Dietrich's spacesuit, bored into his neck.  It evaded Jacob's attempt to grab it with the pliers.  And when it was about to be put into the Cryo-pod it apparently broke itself in half, and tried to make its way into the dark recesses of the ship.  Furthermore, when he touched it with the tweezers, it sent a massive neurological blast through his body, stunning him with an incredible, mind-numbing jolt of agony.

"Shadow Hawk, how was it possible for it to effect me through my armor and purple bubble suit.  Do you know what kind of creature this is?  Have you ever encountered one before?"  

The answer to the first question was a simple, "It could not."  The answer to the second question was, "No such creature exists in the Life-Forms Registry."

"Well," he asked again, "did the suit feel it?"

The answer was, "No."

"Did the suit sense that I felt it?" he asked.

"Sensors indicated that your heart rate suddenly increased and you had a fierce physical reaction," it responded.

"Can you ascertain what caused it?" he pursued.

"Unknown," replied Shadow Hawk.

"It was in your mind?" asked Ling, with some surprise.

Vallnam wondered, "Can the suit protect us against psychic attacks?"

"The armored suits protect against all physical attacks and conditions," came the reply.

"That suggests this organism can emit some sort of mind waves," concluded Vallnam.  "The next time I deal with it I will need to use my Mind Shield.  In the meantime, we should address the question of getting oxygen to the technicians." 

That Vallnam and the others didn't consider a mind-force wielding alien an ongoing threat was another cause of delight for the strange black sphinx-cloud beyond.  It smiled savagely to itself with brutal anticipation.

"Right," said Ling.  "I'm still trying to figure out the best way to get them fresh air.  It seems to me that while wearing our armor we can't create an opening to allow excess oxygen to escape into the UFOs, as the armors won't permit that for security reasons.  However, without the armor, Shadow Hawk could teleport me into the ship, and I could use the purple bubble suit to produce excess oxygen and refresh the UFOs' oxygen supplies that way, I think.  Which ship has the lowest level of oxygen?"

And so, Ling asked Shadow Hawk to teleport into the UFO they had rescued Dietrich from, wearing her purple bubble suit, and no armor.  This solved the problem of refilling their oxygen reserve.  She then had Shadow Hawk teleport her to the other UFO and performed the same service. Now both UFOs were filled once again with oxygen.  All of the technicians were extremely grateful.  She figured if they did that every four or five hours they could stay indefinitely in orbit around the Earth, until the job of dealing with the Giant Nuclear Missile Robots was complete.  The technicians estimate was five days to get the entire job done, provided they could surmount the cipher-block programming obstacle.

Moon princess, Ling, then asked to return to Shadow Hawk, almost as proud of herself as Vallnam had been after trapping the thorn-creature.  Her problem solving skills had indeed improved, she thought.  However, Shadow Hawk was unwilling to teleport her back into the ship.

"What?  But why?" she asked, confounded.

"Potential alien contamination," replied Shadow Hawk.

"Potential contamination?" she asked, surprised at this response.  

"You teleported into the ship where the alien entity existed," replied Shadow Hawk coolly. "You then teleported from that ship into the other UFO, potentially contaminating that ship as well."

"Yes," she said, suddenly realizing her mistake.  

"Does Shadow Hawk have a Decontamination Chamber?" asked Vallnam.

"Yes," replied Shadow Hawk.

"So you could teleport me into the Decontamination Chamber, and that would eliminate any alien threat," said Ling.

"Yes," replied Shadow Hawk.

And so Ling asked to be teleported into the Decontamination Chamber, which happened to be inside the medical bay.  It was charred black on the outside, of course, but within it was nevertheless still perfectly functional, fortunately.  Beams of light covered her body, and spectral scans on every frequency were conducted throughout her entire person.

"No contamination found," reported Shadow Hawk.

This was fortunate, because what Ling hadn't considered was the fact that the Decontamination Procedure of Shadow Hawk was designed to exterminate all, and every, living organism within the decontamination zone.  That is what the Modroni mean by Decontamination.  Normally, the chamber would be used to completely sterilize inorganic objects, in particular surgical tools, and things of that sort.  But, as it was, she had not been contaminated, and so disintegrating her was not necessary.  

"You took a grave and thoughtless risk, Ling," said Shadow Hawk.  Ling had the impression she was being scolded.  "That was unwise," concluded the ship's vast triple-intelligence.  

She now suddenly received the distinct impression that Shadow Hawk had been evaluating her, and her team on their performance thus far.  She also had the very strong impression she was being scolded by a parent, and as such, for her own good.  Her last and final impression that the scolding was due to the fact that Shadow Hawk liked her, and preferred her to not die a tragic death as a product of reckless and foolish risk-taking.  Ling sat down and thought about this for some time.

Meanwhile, having solved the alien invasion problem, and the oxygen problem, they now had to resolve the last problem they faced.  There were fifty Giant Nuclear Missile Robots out there in space, floating on a trajectory towards Earth, which they would begin falling onto in approximately seven days.  Having successfully disarmed one robot, the technicians knew they could disarm and clear the nuclear bombs from the rest of them without too much difficulty.  If they worked steadily, they could clear all forty-nine within five days.  However, this would only be part of the job.  What the technicians hoped to accomplish was not only to disarm the robots, but also to reprogram them in order to make them useful servants.  Thus, they might then grant the giant robots as useful gifts to Earth civilization, and in this way ingratiate themselves with the Earthlings, instead of arriving merely as former enemy Nazi refugees from the now devastated moon-fortress, Eisenhelm.  They felt certain that this would afford them many advantages, and they earnestly hoped they could achieve it.

Ling thought about this as well, and came up with the idea that they could have the technicians scan the technical schema of the robot's control mechanisms, and feed that data to Shadow Hawk, whose advance high speed calculation engine might be able to quickly decipher the schema and discover the key to deactivating the cipher-blocking mechanism.  They agreed that this might just work.

Once done, the technicians planned to reprogram the robots to alter their mission parameters, and then reactivate the robot's central brain. If all went well, the robots would become obedient slaves instead of world-destroyers. 

Since Jacob had very solid robotics skills, Ling suggested he should be the one to go into the giant robot and record the schema.  He agreed and without further ado, they got started.  Jacob teleported out to the robot, and entered into through the outer hull, through several passages, beyond a heavy steel door that had already been opened by the technicians who had originally attempted the operation, and entered the robot's central control chamber.  It was a tight round room with iron walls and arrays of vacuum tubes, wires, and metallic memory disks.  The light beam from his helmet cast dancing shadows all around him.  He worked the controls of his recorder with diligence, and a few moments later had the entire schema scanned into his Shadow Hawk's memory.  

"Okay, Shadow Hawk, have at it," he said.

There were a short pause.  For Shadow Hawk, finding the solution to the mathematical puzzle was trivial.  After all, the mechanism was created by the Nazi scientists and engineers of Eisenhelm, whose skill levels were utterly primitive compared with that of the Modroni.  

"I have found the solution," reported Shadow Hawk.

And with this, Jacob exited the robot, and left it to the technicians, who had flown over in the UFO.  They traded places and the technicians got to work using the cipher that Jacob handed them, in the form of a thin metal plate with a series of tiny square holes that Shadow Hawk had printed out from a small aperture in the surface of his armor.

The cipher worked! And so the technicians were now able to reprogram the robot.  This took some time, but no one complained.  When they were finished, they gave a happy little "hurrah", and asked if they should reactivate the giant robot to see if their programming had been successful. 

The robot had an array of weapons, but no longer had a nuclear bomb.  The lesser weapons were for self defense, meant to protect it, and the other robots, until they could arrive above their target cities on Earth and explode their 500 megaton Cobalt Bombs.  Formidable weapons, of course, but nothing compared with the bomb itself.

"Shall we activate zee robot?" asked the technician, his finger hovering over the activation switch.

"Yes," replied Ling, biting her lip. "Activate the robot."

And with that, the technician, Erich Schmitt, flipped the switch.  The machine's enormous array of vacuum tubes flickered back to life, and began a long series of electronic validations, with metallic reels whirring, wires sparking, and circuits coming online, which all resulted in its returning to Full Activation Mode, the state it had been in before the Self-Destruct Sequence had been sent out from Eisenhelm by Ling three and a half hours earlier.  As per its protocol, the gigantic machine tuned its sensors to detect everything in the vicinity, and registering two technicians on board, spoke the following words through its internal communications system.  The words appeared on a small green screen at the center of one of the electronic hubs.  It read:  "Was ist Ihr Befehl?"

The Technicians were delighted, and announced over their radio comm, "We have success!  It asks, "What is your command?!"

There were cheers throughout the entire crew as they realized that their plan to defect to Earth and find a new life on the mother-world could come to fruition!

Now began the hard work of doing the same for all fifty of the robots before they began falling onto the Earth.  All the technicians required was enough food and water for the five days it would take.  This, our Heroes were confident, could easily be procured from Earth, and brought back into space without the slightest problem by Shadow Hawk.  She could orbit as far away as 100 miles and teleport food and water up to the ship, and anything else they might need, and bring it back to the technicians working on the robot fleet as often as necessary.  Everything was working smoothly, and all the technicians suited up, flew to their assigned robots, and got to work.  

Suddenly Ling thought of her father, Lieutenant Roger Brisbane, and deeply longed to reunite with him and her sister, Linda.  After all, she had not seen him since the first Silver Eye mission had taken off some nine months earlier when she became stranded on the moon, accepted adoption by the Modroni, and then became their leader, before finally engaging in the destruction and escape from Eisenhelm.  She missed her family dearly and wished to see them as soon as possible.

And that is where we left things that evening.