The Sentinel team is rounded up by the Black Moth mercenary escort in a farm-truck with hidden modifications. Dave and Sandy stay hidden with chameleon armor and hitch rides on the underside and back of the farm-truck while Stan, Jak, Zak, Dr. Bernal, Asa and basically everyone else BUT Ganos follow in the camouflaged APC of Stan’s.
Approaching the “Homestead” Sandy notices the bright ultra-spectrum light of Tetrahertz wavelength light surrounding the complex and realizes that her camouflage armor will not conceal her from the defenses of the facilty and she drops off out of range of the ultra-spectrum light and hides among the terrain.
Dave stays strapped on to the underside of the farm-truck and rides unseen into the compound and all the way into the motorpool/bunker concealed within/under the “Barn”. Under the watchful eye of a LandMate Battlesuit escort the team disembarks from the vehicles and undergoes a security scan to load them into the system and protect them from the automated computer defenses of the facility. James drools a bit over the late model attack drones the Black Moth crew have racked and ready in the hangar.
Black Moth Attack Drones (Chimera Corporation Model)
Dave notes the presence of more attack vehicles in the motorpool and while the rest of the team head into the house escorted by Col. Hap Hapablap, Dave stays behind in the motorpool to infiltrate and sabotage.
Black Moth ATLAS APC
Black Moth Comet Attack Cycle
The team are brought through the armored airlock into the “farmhouse” and to the extremely high-tech elevator leading down into the true facility below. The team notes the incredible array of deathtrap sterilization mechanisms crammed into the elevator compartment walls with their enhanced senses and Async powers.
Trancom’s “Black” Lab
Leaving the elevator the posh corporate lobby of the secret lab opens before the team. revealing the internal corporate security desk and registration station.
Trancom Lab Lobby
The team are all processed and provided with access to Karl, the facility AGI and the “Docent” program. An augmented reality escort for the facility that answers questions and takes you to whatever you want to see while guiding your tour. Once again, the team pass through a security checkpoint (and microwave, high density scan) as they are given their Mesh ‘Visitors passes’.
Trancom Lab Scanner and Temporary ID station
As Ganos continues his ruse of being the Trancom executive Markus Rockfort, Jak the swarmcat sleeved runaway cruises down the hall searching for clues, like a feline Scooby-Doo, finding the observation hall for the Technarium.
Trancom Lab Overlook Hallway
She quickly Tac-Nets visuals of what she sees through the window to the rest of the team. Alerting them to the amazing and dangerous research taking place in the facility below. Revealing the presence of TITAN war technology and a xeno-artifact.
Trancom Lab Multi-Research Technarium
The team, under the direction of the Docent program, make their way down to the Technarium to get a closer look at the research. Discovering to their horror the threats to Martian transhumanity that lie here. Wonder and horror spread through the group as the scope of the threat and the audacity of the research sink in. The first study they encounter is titan “Assimilator” robot under research by the eminent genius Argonaut, Dr. Tenma.
Doctor Tenma, TITAN Argonaut
Dr. Tenma turns out to be completely unimpressed by Ganos’ Markus Rockfort persona, apparently knowing the man well enough to be aware of his standing within the corporation and regarding him as a criminal and low-life, but necessary evil that Trancom must employ for certain ‘business considerations’. However he has no time or patience for this nuisance.
While Ganos dances verbally with Tenma, Asa heads directly over to the weirdly glowing blue gold object in the xeno-artifact containment area. Finding it to be held under the highest technological security, from a nano-fabricated diamond containment cylinder 5 inches thick to a antimatter-reactor powered magnetic containment field that absolutely blocks all RF signal coming into or out of the containment area. Housed below the artifact dias is a thrumming, colony-grade antimatter-reactor capable of powering three small cities. The dias itself is completely armored, both with a mind for keeping the object contained within and for keeping accidents well insulated outside of the vessel. All in all, it is a fairly impregnable cell for the artifact. While in the containment facility, the alien object seems to subtly change each time it is looked at, while seemingly maintaining three dimensional shape when it is being directly observed. It is also emitting a ‘color out of space’, an alien wavelength of radiation detrimental to the human psyche. For this reason. facility augmented reality placed a “visual shield” over the object if stared at for more than 3 seconds. This is a prudent employee safety measure.
Trancorp Lab Artifact containment Dias
Encountering Dr. Light and her research staff of four technologists and scientists, Asa begins a gruff dialog with her, immediately alerting the genius doctor of his intention of taking the alien artifact from the facility.
Doctor Light, Xeno-Artifact Argonaut
The doctor takes the evidence of this ‘obvious industrial espionage operation’ stoically. asking if there is any chance she will remain alive in the aftermath of this operation. Asa assures her that in fact, he does not need to kill her at all, seeming to prefer not to, in fact. However, during this exchnage the rest of the research team catch on the gravity of the situation and, being possessed of a lesser degree of intestinal fortitude, slightly panic like hostages in a bank robbery, and begin alerting everyone in the facility, including ‘Karl’ the HAL-like AGI of the facility to the present danger. This causes a pandemic of terror and the predictable response. Dr. Feeble McWussington (assigned designation) even opens the Xeno-Artifact containment chamber in a desperate attempt to save his own life, hoping to distract Asa long enough to make his escape.
In this escalating mayhem several things happen, Johann cops to the fact that the jig is up and just instantly sprints out of the lab toward the facility exit, to the astonishment of all assembled who have not yet figured out that a snow-balling clusterfuck avalanche is roaring toward them.
Dr. Tenma, curses the entire crew of Sentinels and mesh-commands the TITAN Assimilator robot research table to restore it’s incredibly advanced fusion power core to it and release all fail-safes and containments. Immediately causing it to begin to arise from the table, assimilate all the table’s formidable armatures and devices and scan the area for all transhuman biomorphs, synthmorphs and human-created devices, to begin systematically categorizing and killing them immediately. Thereafter, Dr. Tenma picks up a readily-at-hand screwdriver and jams it through his own eye into his brain, killing himself instantly.
Awakened TITAN spider deathbot pre-disassembler swarm integration
Karl, the facility AGI observes that all security protocols are compromised, that Dr. Tenma is dead (and within seconds, Asa reconfigures his gameplan, iajutsu-draws his hyper-vibrational, mono-molecular sword and carves out Dr. Light’s cortical stack in an irregular slab of meat and bone, killing her instantly) and unleashes the Trancom Covert Research Facility’s failsafe. A magnetically contained TITAN centibot disassembler swarm of enormous mass roughly the size of a modern Semi Truck. ( approximately two metric tons ) A centibot is a centimeter-scale (as opposed to nano-scale) robot that can perform even more functions than a nanoscale construct of the same purpose. Allowing for greater processing power for it’s AI, and greater ability to tackle typically indestructible substances. They are however, even more susceptible to Electromagnetic Pulse than regular nano-swarms. It begins eating it’s way through the facility, converting ferrous material into more centibots for it;s swarm and quickly emerges from it’s subterranean prison into the research Technarium. This causes it and the TITAN Assimilator to become aware of each other. They communicate briefly and after a speedy exchange decide to merge into a greater whole, thus giving birth to a complete horror and monstrosity that can only be described as a “Underground Black Lab Swarm-truck Death Ray Killbot” The time that it takes the two of them to fully integrate themselves into a coherent whole under the control of the Assimilator robot’s processor, allows the team to run for their lives out of the Technarium.
But that is not all that happens in those few seconds. After carving out Dr. Light’s cortical stack, and seeing the ongoing maelstrom of events, Asa grabs the alien headdress like a football and breaks into a charge, rushing for the door to the Technarium as it begins to close with the finality of a nuclear bunker. Deciding that merely carrying the artifact is slowing him down too much, the then opts to PUT IT ON HIS FUCKING HEAD!!!!! (this is an ill-advised move when dealing with any alien artifact) and psychological hullabaloo ensues as nanotendrils immediately extend from the object, boring through his scalp, skull and directly into his brain. The object then re-configures itself for a human head-anatomy, like Bio-Booster Guyver armor (look it up) and forcibly converts Asa to a new religion while wiping his current motivations from his psyche with alien psychosurgery and implanting a new set of imperative directives for him to pursue. These are:
1. Go to Venus and the Aerostat known as Etemenanki (Sunward p.37)
2. Find an old central-African man there that is identified only by a psychic image of his physical appearance with no other details.
3. Return to the planet Earth and the region historically known as Nubia and the Pandora Gate that is hidden there.
The “Nebt-Het” Alien Artifact after Asa assimilation
All of that was rather a personal epiphany for Asa alone that happened inside his head in a blur of pain, shocking imagery, hallucinations and disorientation. When he came-to he was running toward the facility entrance to escape the TITAN deathbot.
Meanwhile the other, more adroit Sentinels, had sprinted their wat to the ONE SINGLE EGRESS from this science-bunker. The Elevator up the 1000 meter shaft to the Martian surface. Naturally, Karl had completely cut power to the elevator and it was an inert impediment to their upward mobility. Dr. Bernal immediately sets-to on the elevator car’s ceiling with his covert operations tool, cutting a hole slowly with the welding torch. James Morgan, being of a slightly more military bent, heaves-to with a plasma rifle, dangerously overheating the unit and completely depleting the energy core in the process of plasma-cutting a manhole in the ceiling of the elevator car.
Dr. Bernal triggers an Async chi sleight which in this adrenaline-shocked moment of panic causing him to go DEVO , all “Altered States”-style, and regress to his root primate consciousness, resulting in him monkey-leaping up out through the hole in the elevator car’s ceiling and rapidly brachiating halfway up the shaft’s utility ladder before coming back to his senses.
Zak the uplift raven pilot is the last to escape the Technarium and in his flight, he looks back and sees the TITAN Deathbot peel through the blast dorr, now closed, to the Lab win three seconds where ti would have taken transhumans with cutting torches, four hours! He also witnesses the power of an awesome and terrible weapon the thing has created of its assimilated parts. Having dug up the super-antimatter-reacotr from beneath the Laboratory floor, (which also bought the team time in which to encounter the elevator and work around that problem, the TITAN monster has used it in conjunction with Dr. Tenma’s experimental atomic dis-unifier to create a searchlight deathbeam of projected puedo-antimater. A true “Disintegration Ray” of science-fiction legend. It plays the beam across the facility, instantly turning to nothingness everything it touches. Zak, redoubles his effort so flee and comes upon the scene at the elevator at top speed, bursts through the opening in the ceiling in a tightly banked power-climb and flies in a desperate dash to the top of the shaft.
Stan throws his friend and fellow fugitive Jak up through the manhole and inthe the utility shaft and she immediately begins rapidly climbing the utility ladder with her enhanced claws and prehensile tail in a fairly disturbing manner to observe, but with good speed.
The rest of the team hear the oncoming TITAN juggernaut roaring ever-closer and having seen the Tac-Net sending of Zak revealing the awesome nature of their techno-shuggoth pursuer, desperatley swarm up through the hole and begin climbing the ladder and a smartrope affixed by Zak up toward the far-away reaches of the shaft’s apex.
NATURALLY the hideous TITAN abominog reaches the elevator car just moments behind them and consumes it in a swirl of centibots, nanites and less definable technologies, forming a roiling black nano-vortex at the bottom of the elevator shaft ads the core TITAN Assimilator robot tries to figure out a new physical configuration for it’s ever-swirling mass that will be able to climb this exceedingly sheer surface toward the top of the shaft and freedom. The team flees up the ladder like men possessed upon seeing the peril at their feet and looks on in terror and despair as the Killbot re-configures its roiling mass to align the Disintegration Ray up the elevator shaft. Then is a savage, sizzling burst of annihilation the beam sears upward like a lightsaber in a ventilation shaft and ends the existence of oxygen, the top of the elevator shaft and the roof of the ‘Farm House’ facade, and takes out a three foot section of the utility ladder cause a section of it to fall across the elevator shaft at a roughly 72 degree angle leaving two od the team dangling perilously about a deadly fall into the Killbot body-mass.
There the session ends.
