WoAF - Game Session 59

Dr. Capek

Having defeated the four Nazi UFOs, our heroes had begun their journey back to Earth.  Not far behind them were the eighteen Nazi technicians manning the two UFOs that they had managed to repair before escaping the smoldering ruins of the super-secret Nazi Moon-Fortress, Eisenhelm.  Far below them, a thin cloud of gray smoke slowly wafted over the moon's surface from the burning wreckage of that once mighty Moon-Bastion of Nazi Totalitarianism, the first and last of its kind... and good riddance, thought our heroes as they sped away.   

It should be noted that the last UFO that Team Purple hurtled into Eisenhelm's Hanger C caused a massive explosion, killing many Nazi soldiers who had been preparing their next assault on another Nazi faction from that location.  Yet, the explosion failed to eliminate Hanna Schiller, who was a bit too far underground on Level C3, having taken refuge with a certain Doctor Karel Capek, the chief Roboticist of General Hertling's military command hierarchy.  But our story leaves her and Capek to their fate, and follows our heroes on their journey back to Earth.

Not far from the moon, Shadow Hawk and the two UFOs trailing behind her, encountered the derelict space armada known as the "The Phalanx", floating towards Earth.  The armada was composed of fifty Giant Nuclear Missile Robots, each of which had been programmed to fly to a major Earth capital and explode its 500 megaton cobalt bomb.  Due to the incredible power, and extremely lethal radioactive footprint of this type of bomb, this event would have certainly exterminated all life on the surface of the planet.  

Fortunately, at the last, Ling, Vallnam and Jacab had managed to disable The Phalanx during the Eisenhelm Civil War that they had so craftily caused.  And so, now they had arrived at The Phalanx, its fifty monstrous robot emissaries of doom completely inert.  Not a light blinked, nor gear moved among the great fifty.  The robots were immobile, free floating, and entirely harmless.  However, they also happened to be on a trajectory towards Earth and it didn't take the three more than a few moments to realize that left to their current course, the robots would continue on to Earth, and one at a time, fall through the atmosphere and hit whatever was before them.  There was a reasonable probability that the impact alone would cause little harm, however they also conjectured that such an impact could detonate the nuclear weapons inside.  Perhaps not all of them, but even a few of the fifty exploded, it would bring incredible destructive force to their already badly wounded world.  They still faced a potential extinction level event. They decided to act.  

The technicians they rescued from Eisenhelm were eager to help.  After all, they were on a one way trip to The Mother World, and they felt it incumbent upon them not to see it destroyed.  They proposed removing the bombs, detonating them in space, and then reprogramming the robots to convert them into useful powerhouses of machinery, capable of taking orders and performing fantastic feats of strength and construction.  An ideal gift for the bustling new civilization of Earth, indeed.  They hoped to bequeath them to the new Earth Government, so that their arrival would prove beneficial to Earth, and give them a chance to present themselves as something other than mere lunar refuges, and potential enemies.  This idea struck a chord with Ling and the others, and so they agreed.  Vallnam directed them to try one robot, and if that worked, they could proceed with the others, provided the first one didn't take so long that the total time needed exceeded the time it would take for the robots to begin falling into Earth's atmosphere.  That gave them seven days.  The technicians were optimistic they could do it.  They got to work on the first one, flying their UFO to it, depositing two of their best on the giant machine, with the remainder flying off to a safe distance of about eight hundred miles along side Shadow Hawk and the other UFO.   

The two technicians got busy.  After grueling, diligent effort they were able to delicately disengage the bomb, and floated it outside the robot into space.  However, as it turned out, removing the bomb was the easy part.  The greater challenge was in the reprogramming of the robot's computer core.  In fact, it was protected by an impenetrable cypher-encryption mechanism that if tampered with incorrectly would cause an enormous amount of trouble.  If they didn't get this right, once re-activated, the Robot was capable of taking actions that could revive the entire armada, and put them all back on their original mission plan.  That would be a terrible outcome, of course, so they were being very careful.  They tried delicately three times, and each time they had to back away.  The tinkering with the cypher-block was simply beyond their skill.  And so the two technicians gave up on this attempt and had their UFO come pick them up.  Once together with their team, they began serious deliberations on how to overcome the blocking encryption.  

"If only Nick had made it with us!  He could have disarmed it without a second thought!" they bemoaned.

Meanwhile, as the technicians brought all their mental powers to bear on the discussion, in the rear of their UFO one member, a certain Dietrich Keller, son of the late Captain Keller, was suffering with some unknown ailment.  They had been so busy, the technicians had all but forgotten about him.  But now, it became evident that his suffering was something they could no longer ignore, and so they alerted Team Purple as to the situation.  Inquiries were made.  

It seemed that he had been injured as the technicians had fled Eisenhelm.  As one of the technicians described to Vallnam, Keller had been the last one aboard.  It had been his responsibility to disconnect the power couplings from the UFOs before takeoff.  He had been operating the Power Coupling Station on the western wall of Hanger B when everyone clambered aboard the UFO.  At the last moment, as soon as the ship had as fully charged its power banks as time would allow, he de-coupled the power cable, and turned to make his run for the UFO.  As he disabled the power coupling and turned to run, however, he suddenly lurched, cried out, and staggered forward clutching his neck.  With no time to spare, several technicians ran out and grabbed him, hustling him into the ship. They took off right behind the first UFO just before an explosion rocked Hanger B, and brought the rocky ceiling down.

Keller was not doing well.  He was suffering from a nasty looking red welt on his neck, they said, and explained that they had laid him down on a bench with a blanket, and then went to work flying the UFO, which was difficult in those cramped conditions, given that none of them had any actual piloting experience.  The two UFOs wobbled their way behind Shadow Hawk, and soon everyone had more or less forgotten about technician Keller, being busy manning the ship, and helping to guide it into space.

Ling thought it best that they take a look at Keller.  She asked Vallnam and Jacob to suit up in their Shadow Hawk armors and go to the UFO to see what could be done for the poor fellow.  And so the two heroes found themselves once again flying on the magnetic waves towards the Nazi UFO.

The UFOs are very bizarre ships, by the way.  On the outside they look like what you would think of as a "normal" flying saucer, with a burnished silvery exterior, domed top, and three distinctive small domes on the lower belly of the vessel.  The three domes comprised its weapons array.  On the inside, however, they were quite strikingly different than any ships found on Earth.  They were filled with glowing vacuum tubes, shiny bronze controls, bronze-plated meter dials of various sizes and a slick metallic monitoring screen on the dome.  They had three (rather uncomfortable) chairs, each facing one of the small thickly-glassed port holes.  The air was filled with crackling and buzzing noises at all times.  At the center of the vessel was the engine, encased in a bell shaped device known as "Die Glocke," which contained the top secret Red-Mercury Vortex Engine, that was responsible for creating the anti-gravity field, and maintaining the Stasis-Field within the ship's confines.  The ship could move at a maximum of 30,000 miles per hour, and could, at lower speeds, within the Earth's atmosphere, make hairpin turns without significantly effecting the crew.  Each came with a battery of three weapons:  The Lightning Cannon, Plasma Beam, and the Liquid-Metal Cannon.  The armor of the ship was an alloy created by Science Center 5, known as Titanhaltbar-236, sufficient to repel most forms of kinetic attack.  Vallnam and Jacob sailed to the ship, and attained the airlock.

Once inside, they found the huddled technicians, trying to find a space to stand, or crouch, or lay down.  Three of them were in the Command-Chairs at their regular stations:  Pilot, Navigator and Weapons.  The rest had to make due as best they could.  The UFOs were really designed for a three man crew, so nine in each ship was a terrible squeeze. The air was stifling, while lack of space and protruding electronics hindered their movements, and the noise incessant. Nevertheless, they made do, and were earnestly pursuing their deliberations regarding the cypher-block.  Vallnam and Jacob went to the rear and examined Keller.

Jacob had some medical training, and so made a careful examination.  Keller lay on the bench wrapped in a woolen blanket, now stained with blood and thin streaks of grey puss.  He was staring, his eyes glaring as they tried to see through his chin to his neck.  He was breathing heavily, his face a mask of agony.  He could only manage to move his lips, but not speak.  Jacob drew closer and examined the wound.  What had been described to him as a red welt was no longer merely that.  It had apparently transformed into an open wound, from which protruded a small thorn like object, perhaps a quarter inch in length, dark red, and bristling with thin branches that appeared to extend into the flesh of his neck.  Jacob turned on the bio-scanner of his suit, and with careful tuning was able to trace the tendrils from the thorn using its FLIR-like imagery system.  The tendrils became microscopic, and penetrated all the way into Keller's nervous system.  And it appeared they were growing.  Jacob noted that the flesh around the tendrils was being affected as well, turning from normal tissue into a kind of puss-filled lumpy gray mass.  It was pretty disgusting, actually, but a true veteran, he managed to control his gag reflex.

Jacob urgently reported his findings back to Ling and Jacob via their telepathic link.  The thing in his neck appeared to be extending tiny tendrils into the poor man's nervous system.  He decided to cast a Narcoleptic Beam on the thing to see if it might inhibit its growth.  The effect was to put Keller into a deep dreamless sleep, which was a mercy, but it had no effect on the thorn at all.

"Whatever is afflicting Keller, it is not normal.  At all.  Very far from it," said Jacob.

They had to do something, and quickly.  The three heroes began to discuss their options, and sought for advice and capabilities that might be latent within Shadow Hawk, the Modroni spaceship that had already provided them with so many amazing surprises.  What their inquiries revealed on this occasion was that the ship had been equipped with a Short Range Teleporter, and more interestingly, a Shrink/Grow Ray.  These could be used in conjunction with each other to deposit large specimens, or equipment, at tiny sizes into a specially constructed "Container Jar", which sat in a hidden alcove somewhere further back in the ship.  But exactly what do do with it, if anything, under these circumstances was something to be debated.  And so they did. 

Meanwhile, a certain dark amorphous dog-like cloud hovered somewhere near UFO-T1, observing from a distance with keen anticipation...