Aniara - The Great Escape

What a weekend. First a reunion of the political science people (plus other people who are always fun to meet) After abstaining alcohol for over a year I first of all almost couldn't remember what I usually get to drink. And then I believe I almost drank to much cause I'm not used to that much alcohol anymore, I spent around 1-2 hours just trying to keep awake when we were out at the club. The night ends with four of us on a kitchen floor eating macaronis, chips and so on, one of us sleeping on the floor and the other two sending messages to other people. And I'm still awake and sobering up... WIN! Of course the next morning didn't feel that well since... well, hangover. Body aching all over, small headache, abrasion on my heels, but it was well worth it. Been a long time since I had that sort of fun. 

Next thing up was the DnD group, our Sci-Fi adventure in outer space. It was AWESOME! All begins somewhere around the 3:e millennia, the earth is dying and humanity have started colonized the Jupiter moon Titan and terraforming Mars as a last escape plan. In an apartment in the former Canadian territories of the United States, former military commander, now turned bounty-hunter Zachary Foxx (and yes, the name is taken from this show) is sitting in a chair, pointing his pump-action shotgun toward the door, smoking a cigarette. A knock is heard on the door and the military Sky-Marshal enters with a couple of soldiers offering a ticket to Sahara and 4 million credits for the job as security commander. Foxx's eyes gleams with greed as he hears the proposals and take the ticket and begins to prepare for the flight to Cairo in four hours.

Somewhere else a lottery is being held to pick 8000 people to fill the 18 000 people that are to be rescued from the earth (the other 10 000 people paid for their place on the ship). Three of the lucky few are computer technician expert Jack Smith from the UK, medical doctor Frances Grübber from the recreated Prussia and... gym-owner italian chick who's name escapes me. They all travel to Cairo and onward to the Saharan desert to witness earth final hope, the spaceship Aniara. All four of us are living in Sector 7G (yes, that's a Simpsons reference) for four days without trouble, then disaster strikes. A meteor hits the cockpit completely destroying it sending us of course without any means to steer it back. The impact knocks Jack to the floor, but he quickly links his computer bracelet directly to the ships AI Mima to get live status reports. Grübber begins to check for damaged people and set up a temporary hospital together with the italian chick. I join with the technician protecting him for the moment. Grübber and the chick meets up with the Sky-Marshal which me and Smith meets up with to organize rescue relief and stave of chaos. Smith hooks up at Mima's computer central in Sector 7 while I found the rest of the security guards in this sector.

While this was going on, we lost contact with sector 8 while sector 9 was put in isolation due to a chef and cooking personal going berserk and killing of the rest of the people in that sector (there being 1000 people in each sector with the cooking staff being around 100). Sector 6 was still open and we began coordinating the people and our resources. The deck below us we lost contact with and the same is probably true about those above us. Anyway, I positions groups of guards at the exits toward the hostile areas (a minimum of 2 guards in each group, preferably 3 or more) as well as patrols in the sectors to show them that there is an authority that will uphold order. Then the power is cut and where is the power source you might ask, well in sector 9 of course. Want to know something else, apparently the technician has figured out how to reroute the ships control so that we can steer it back on course, but the most optimal place is in... you guessed it, Sector 9. What a coincidence huh?

So we have to take back Sector 9 from the insane cooking personal (who by the way killed of the others in that sector with rat-poison and meat-cutters). So I assemble a strike team of 20 people (mostly hunters and other military trained people since I need my better trained men keeping the civilians safe), a couple of maintenance robots as well as Jack Smith to start up the power source and reconfigure the controls. So we head toward the ventilations, who somehow has been forced open from the Sector 9 side. Haven't time to think more about that we stealthily sneak in and localize the insane people in the dining hall and the kitchen. Without any heavy weaponry (the best we have is my shotgun and some hunting rifles while the ordinary security guards are wielding glock's) we take the gas tanks from the maintenance robots welding equipment and use as grenades, throwing it in from the vent and doors in the dining hall. A blast later and the room is silent when we walk in. 52 dead bodies we find, but I don't know how this happened, but when this went on people from the kitchen sneaked up on us and abducted 3 of my men. They even took the guy with the sonar equipment who was supposed to warn us if something like that was going on. We localize the kitchen, but are unsure how to proceed until Smith gets an idea. We find a garage (it is a huge ship), take one of the vehicles and empties the rest on fuel, putting the canisters on the transport. Then he builds a small detonator, places it in a puddle of petroleum and then start the machine up and runs for our lives when the car crashes into the kitchen at the same time as Mima closes the blast-doors in this sector to diminish the explosion (since the kitchen also contains gas-canisters for the ovens and such). A huge explosion occurs and the bastards are all dead.

Unfortunately for us the optimal place to reroute the ships control was caught in the explosion, but at least we were in control of the main power source that Smith started up. When that happened the doors to Sector 8 opened up. Now, this wasn't that good since we had no idea what the hell was going on in there since all the cameras in that sector had turned dark. All we could hear on the other hand is that the people there had turned their hope to the computer AI referring it to God, forming a cult around it and their chanting was now closing in around the doors and... this is when the session ended. Awesome is it not? A pity it will have to wait till sunday for its conclusion and then it's over. At least I have time to think out contingency plans and necessary steps to act preemptory in case of other crisis scenarios. Hopefully we only need plan A or B to contain the current primary threat of the cultist, cause otherwise it will be messy. And all this before the first week on the job. At least I was able to talk the Sky-Marshal into a raise since this wasn't in the job description.