Notes taken by Alastair and Samantha Beadle.
Status: Space station force field down; Acanti heading for the sun; air rushing out into space; swarms of Brood advancing; self destruct countdown almost complete... I love it when a plan comes together!
In a small hollow space in the flesh of the Acanti are John Doe and Truth. Truth sensed a brief burst of acceleration from the Acanti but no more. She continues trying to mind control the willing Acanti to continue diving into the Sun.
Blitz, Noesis, Servo and Void, plus Flux, are all outside Project Safeguard. About 100 security robots are left (from 150) and 900 or so attacking Brood (from 1000). This does not look terribly hopeful.
Blitz turns from the fight and heads for the space shuttle Endeavour, docked on the station. As he flies he radios a request to Commander Perrallta to release the shuttle. Unfortunately Commander Perrallta turns this down. "God, I hate petty officials," mutters Blitz in German.
Servo blows away some more Brood as he continues to make for the 'exit' (i.e. the mouth of the Acanti) using the rocket thrusters on his armour. Noesis also continues to accelerate towards the mouth, ignoring the advancing Brood. Void, caught up in bands from a Brood attack, spins towards the exit. He is not wearing a space suit but does, from previous experience, appear to be impervious to hard vacuum. The escaping air is carrying them along.
Inside the Acanti there is another faint sensation of acceleration, apparently as Truth overrides the Brood commands for a moment and gets the ship one more step towards the fiery end it desires. John Doe continues to munch away at the Acanti from the inside.
Noesis, looking back at Project Safeguard, sees one of the cell arms explode and Smother, in gaseous form, appears (from the files, Smother is known to be resistant to Vacuum). Servo also sees this and takes a pot-shot at her with his modified Brood blaster. Several Brood and security robots also shoot at her. A lot of shots hit her, but none of them seem to have any apparent effect. Smother is heard to laugh and announce something in an Eastern European language which none of us understand. She raises her hand and lets out a swathe of noxious gasses that engulfs a large number of Brood. Servo returns to shooting Brood.
Noesis, falling behind Servo's flight, telekinetically grabs Void as he passes and drags him along towards the mouth. Noesis dodges his way spaceward, jinking Void around too and effectively avoiding most of the Brood's fire power (Noesis is also subtly using Void as a human shield but this is not obvious to anyone else).
Blitz reaches the space shuttle and tries to get in. Unfortunately it seems to be locked and sealed. He tears of a fingernail trying to prise open one of the shuttle's airlocks open. This convinces him to try a different approach, so he goes around to the front of the shuttle and blows a hole twice the size of himself in the space shuttle's cockpit window, slagging some consoles in the process.
He enters and makes a frantic search for a space suit and/or escape bubble (the drill before launch included use of these). He finds both, stuffs a space suit into a rescue ball, climbs in himself, closes it up and starts to manoeuvre it out of the shuttle with his own flight power.
Noesis, Void and Servo fly out through the mouth of the Acanti and into space. The sun glares down on them - about ten times the diameter it should be! Servo's radiation alarms indicate a danger level and his anti flash goggles activate to shut out the intense light. Noesis' optical systems also self-protect for the same reason. Void appears to be coping with the conditions.
Servo looks back into the mouth. Various Brood are attempting to stop themselves being sucked into space, but are not having a lot of luck; they seem to exploding as they decompress. He flies up away from the Acanti's mouth and loops down to head back along the upper surface of its body.
Project Safeguard Countdown: 26, 25, 24...
Inside the emergency ball, Blitz sees the whole, several hundred metre-sized mass of Project Safeguard get spat towards the mouth by the Acanti (under orders from Truth). A number of Brood are projected in the same direction as a side effect of this.
The cloud that Smother created dissipates. The Brood that were inside drift lifelessly towards the Acanti's open mouth.
Outside, Servo considers cracking open one of the Brood bubble-cities implanted into the Acanti. He flies up to one, seeing inside the same sort of organic-looking, silvery metal towers with hive-like holes in them that we have seen in other Brood cities. Servo places a grenade on one of the domes, but when it goes off it only smudges the glass. However, the Brood inside seem to notice him when the grenade goes off, and gesture at him from inside the dome. They do look a little concerned (as far as he can tell - Brood facial expressions are somewhat different to human).
Blitz flies his emergency rescue bubble towards the Acanti's mouth, jinking nimbly to avoid Brood fire.
Truth, happy with progress so far (though she has no real feedback on what is going on she feels things are going roughly according to plan), considers what other havoc she can wreak. She mind controls the Acanti to 'Eject All Matter'. From it's body, that is. Silvery gas floods from her into it. She hopes this may evacuate all the Brood cities and other places where they are.
Project Safeguard Countdown: 17, 16, 15...
Servo is now punching the dome covering the Brood bubble-city. His first, with his armour boosted to maximum and time to wind up the hit, stars the two-foot-thick crystal of the dome. The Brood inside make distinct moves away from the point of impact.
His second hit spreads cracks across the surface of the dome. He flies backwards to watch the effect. Inside the Brood flee - but the dome explodes outwards a fraction of a second later (shards bounce off Servo's armour, causing minor damage). Air, debris and Brood fly off in all directions into space.
Noesis, hovering with Void just outside the Acanti's mouth, spots Blitz's flying rescue sphere. He communicates telepathically with him and directs him so that they can meet.
Project Safeguard Countdown: 14, 13, 12...
The air rushing out of the dome Servo smashed cuts off.
Noesis communicates telepathically with Flux and, receiving permission, telekinetically grabs hold of him from the surface of Project Safeguard (where he is still firing at the Brood) and flings him into space towards the Acanti's mouth.
Smother swoops around Project Safeguard, blasting away at Brood. Noesis keeps an eye on her. Blaster bolts are hitting her at a high rate. She does not appear to make much attempt to evade them, but they appear to have little observable effect. The other escaped prisoners are not known for their intelligence - possibly one reason why they are showing no sign of leaving Project Safeguard!
Project Safeguard Countdown: 11, 10, 9...
Blitz reaches Noesis. They exchange thoughts. Blitz is very concerned about how they will get back home. Noesis is very concerned with stopping any escapees getting out of Project Safeguard.
Noesis gives Flux another telekinetic boost away from Project safeguard.
Servo reaches another bubble-city and boosted-strength haymakers the dome of this one, too. As before the crystal of the dome stars into a pattern of cracks. His second punch penetrates the dome this time (rather than causing cracks to spread and giving Servo time to get a safe distance away), causing it to 'go off in his face'. A long, thin shard of crystal penetrates his armour this time, passing right through his arm to cause a deep flesh wound.
As air rushes out into space from the dome, carrying with it Brood that explode in the vacuum, he extracts the shard, heals his wound and patches up his armour.
By the time he has done this the out-rushing air cuts off again. Servo considers trying to smash open whatever has stopped the air flow, but the buildings and other structures inside make it not at all clear where the air was coming from in the first place, so he gives up on that idea.
Noesis asks Commander Perrallta what a safe distance from Project Safeguard's self-destruct device is.
"About fifteen kilometres," Commander Perrallta replies. Damn.
Noesis and Blitz start powering away, up over the back of the Acanti in roughly the same direction as Servo. Noesis is still carrying Void with him. They are all linked by Noesis's telekinesis. They are trying to put the Acanti and as many miles as possible between themselves and Project Safeguard.
Truth and John Doe, completely unaware of the Project Safeguard self-destruct sequence, are still working on the Acanti from the inside.
John Doe is now burrowing back towards the mouth to see what is going on there, in a very long, thin form so his tail is still where Truth is. He punches out of the roof of the Acanti's mouth into its mouth cavity and begins to pick up radio broadcasts again.
"Er, Truth," he says. "There seems to be some sort of countdown going on! It's currently at eight!"
On Truth's advice he shrinks back towards her (leaving his tail in place) and when he is small enough they both go desolid.
"OK, we are trapped on a giant, exploding space fish!" comments Truth.
Project Safeguard Countdown: 8, 7, 6...
Those of us who are outside see the space shuttle Endeavour zoom out of the Acanti's mouth on full burn. Servo uses his radio to contact the shuttle. "Who is that?" he asks.
"Who are you?" comes the reply.
"Servo," Servo tells them.
Click. The radio cuts off. Servo takes this to mean whoever is on the shuttle are not our friends, and blasts at it. He is reasonably sure that he hit it but it disappears off into space anyway, apparently intact.
Project Safeguard Countdown: 5, 4, 3...
Truth moves out of the cavity she was in towards where she hopes the Acanti's brain is.
Servo takes cover behind a shard of dome and takes a firm grip on the Acanti's skin.
Noesis and Blitz accelerate away from the Acanti's mouth down its back, their force fields fully on.
Project Safeguard Countdown: 2, 1...
A blast of static comes over everyone's radios before they shut down. All of Noesis' and Servo's systems shut down. Blitz feels a surge of radiation pass through him, and his force shield brightens a little. The Acanti convulses, throwing Servo off of it and into space.
Very quickly, holes burn out through its flesh and a blindingly bright light spears out through the gaps. Truth feels the light pass through her, burning and inflicting pain, even though she is desolid.
The light quickly fades. Most of the front end of the Acanti is now gone, leaving a huge roughly spherical hole with charred edges. Its manta ray-like body and tail are largely intact, though.
Noesis and Servo concentrate on rebooting their systems. They both come back on line, with, it appears, no permanent damage caused.
The Acanti's corpse is now tumbling slowly, and Truth finds herself in the vacuum of space, the effects of which she quickly begins to feel. John Doe quickly shifts into rocket form around her to protect her and rockets back towards the Acanti to find some air before he falls unconscious.
Flux appears unaffected by the explosion. Blitz has actually benefited (at least in the short term) from it!
The rest of us see the John Doe-rocket heading towards the tail of the Acanti's corpse.
Noesis uses his telepathy to communicate with those parts of the team he can see. "Er... Hello, is anybody still alive?"
Servo and Truth reply in the affirmative and relay their situations.
A large debris field is spreading out from the Acanti's corpse. Some of it is identifiable as bits of Project Safeguard.
Through a window in the John Doe-rocket Truth spots a figure drifting, trailing gas, where the Acanti's head used to be - Smother? She also spots a tiny blue-green star with a tiny white companion - the Earth and the Moon!
John Doe races for a Brood dome at the rear of the Acanti's body.
We discuss the situation. Servo performs some calculations. From the relative size of the sun, he estimates we are about sixteen million kilometres away from it - well inside the orbit of Mercury and years away from Earth by our own propulsion methods!
Our only hope appears to be finding a FTL ship inside the Acanti.
John Doe is brought inside the Acanti by Truth, desolid, and collapses unconscious. Truth finds an air pocket and sticks John Doe into it. As he breathes the air he starts to recover. Once John Doe comes around, he and Truth reconnoitre the Acanti's corpse.
As far as Truth, in communication with those outside, can tell all of the external dome-cities are destroyed or smashed. A few Brood are alive inside the vast corpse, but many more are dead. Searching inside while avoiding the live Brood, Truth finds one of the space octopus creatures we encountered on Broodworld, in something that looks like a hangar bay carved from the Acanti's flesh. Like the one we encountered before it seems to have cybernetic controls and so forth implanted into it, and if fluorescent pink. Truth desolidifies into it and controls its mind. John Doe joins her and they take the octopus out of the Acanti's corpse and into space.
Once outside they communicate with the rest of us and we all head Octopus-wards.
We rendezvous with the Octopus and climb aboard. As soon as we enter the octopus Servo cuts Void free from his bands. The bands seem to have squeezed him into unconsciousness, but when released he recovers quite quickly. Void wibbles a bit at this giant lurid pink space octopus, and then gets a grip on himself. There is a brief discussion about what damage the Acanti will do to the Sun if it falls in - for example, does it have black hole-powered star drives? John Doe thinks not, just organic ones!
That being the case, we think it won't even be noticed by the Sun when and if it hits.
We think about searching for the space shuttle, but we have no idea where it went and like us on our own it will take years to get back to the Earth.
Servo starts to put together a tight beam communicator to inform Earth of our situation. Truth has the giant pink space Octopus head towards Earth.
By this point Truth is feeling quite bad - nauseous and feverish. She is probably suffering from radiation damage. Servo places a healing pack on her, which helps. Noesis suggests a blood transfusion. John Doe offers to assist ("I have your genetic makeup," he says) but given John Doe's lack of success with such things in the past Truth turns down this kind offer for now.
After about an hour of flight we receive an incoming radio message. "Hello?" says a Californian-accented female voice. "Is there anybody out there?"
We conclude that this comes from the space shuttle. "I thought you didn't want to talk to us?" asks Servo.
"We didn't then, but we do now," replies the voice.
"Who are you?" inquires Servo.
"I am the Red Lotus," says the woman. From the prisoner records we - well, John Doe, anyway - recall that the Red Lotus (real name Fan Huilang) is a Mage of some kind who worked with the Triads in Los Angeles. "Who are you?"
"We are the London Knights, and some others," says Noesis.
"Crap!" exclaims another female voice in the background; this one has an accent of the deep south of the USA.
"We are The Red Lotus, The Reckoner and Ultraman," says the Red Lotus. We recognise the names as being of three American supervillains. "We can't help thinking that we ought to co-operate in order to survive. We do not want to turn ourselves in again, though."
Negotiations ensue.
Have they been infected by the Brood, we ask? They say not.
They say they have supplies and air. We have more speed. However, from the acceleration of the octopus Servo calculates that we are roughly two weeks from Earth with less than two weeks of air inside it; already Truth can tell that the air is getting slightly worse.
We claim that we do not need their assistance but that, on humanitarian grounds, we want to rescue them. However, we are concerned that they will use their powers against us. They offer to fly in convoy with us and "throw air cylinders and what-not to each other out of the air locks."
At this stage Servo is well on the way to producing his narrow band communicator.
Truth takes another healing pack. She is getting better, but is not fully healed yet.
The negotiations continue. The Red Lotus asks if they can dock with the octopus. We note that Noesis's telekinesis would not cope with towing them but also that the other space octopus was attached to a shark ship when we were on Broodworld.
The Red Lotus states that it would not be honourable to betray us if we save them. From the files she has a reputation for being honourable. John Doe notes in passing that Ultraman is a Neo-Nazi racist and The Reckoner was a very good bank robber with some minor powers. The Red Lotus was to serve another 20 years, Ultraman another 12 years and The Reckoner another 18 years. Blitz is not happy about Ultraman's presence, but has to live with it.
After a while an agreement is reached. We will attach the octopus to the space shuttle and take it with us. Once on the surface of the Earth all bets are off - they may attempt to escape and we may attempt to stop them.
The Red Lotus swears on her honour that they will not harm us, or hinder our survival, whilst we are in space. Truth swears that we will transfer them to Earth. Everyone agrees to this.
We wonder how the octopus will do without the Acanti. John Doe notes that it is carnivorous and independent from the Acanti - not a parasite on it or anything.
The octopus is directed to attach itself to the shuttle; it does not have suckers on its tentacles but does seem to have sticky patches and smaller sub-tentacles. This it does, and we head off Earthwards. Oxygen cylinders are passed across from the shuttle. Each of the shuttle occupants shows themselves at the windows (in a spacesuit) so that Noesis can see them and judge whether they have been infected by the Brood. All three have only one mind each, fortunately.
While doing so, Noesis also attempts to read their surface thoughts. The two females (the Red Lotus and The Reckoner) are unreadable. The man (Ultraman) is pleased to be alive. His mind feels a bit muzzy around the edges.
With that sorted out, Servo carries on building his narrow band communicator; he has to cannibalise parts from his armour to do this. He also has to request some components from the shuttle to help with building the communicator and also to boost the air recycling system on the octopus. He directs the villains on what to do and what to provide, and they comply.
After another couple of hours Servo finishes building the communicator and we attempt to contact STOP. After two hours of transmitting we get a reply, though very faint and full of static. We inform them of everything and ask their advice. The 12 minute time delay due to the limitations of light speed (six minutes to Earth, six minutes back) makes this a long and awkward process. "Bloody Hell!" is the first thing we get back from STOP. It is Chief Inspector Hetherington.
"We will inform the higher authorities," he says. "And get back to you on a landing zone for you."
We travel on.
En route John Doe spends much time bouncing around excitedly, and irritatingly; at times he is absolutely insufferable. The single inhabitable doughnut-shaped space inside the Octopus is very small and thus very cramped. Flux soon decides to spend the rest of the flight outside. John Doe spends most of the time small for the same reason.
After a while Chief Inspector Hetherington calls us back. He tells us that Ascension Island, in the middle of the South Atlantic, has been chosen as the landing site. No further details are provided for security reasons.
One week into the journey the claustrophobic situation gets too much for Blitz who does not like confined spaces at the best of time. He panics and the others have to intervene to control him. He is booted out of the octopus for a while (in a space suit) to recover.
Over the rest of the journey Noesis practises aversion therapy each time Blitz complains about the situation, by inflicting mild mental attacks on him. Oh well, one way to build up one's mental defences...
Servo also learns how to control the octopus using the cybernetic controls which have been implanted into it, so Truth does not have to be constantly mind-controlling it.
The three supervillains keep themselves very much to themselves, and communicate with us only when absolutely necessary.
As we fly on, the radio time lag gets shorter and shorted. We are kept updated with Earth news as we come in towards the Earth. Various news items are included, such as:
Void and Flux pass the time talking shop about space-related things. At one point Flux mentions that he gained his powers and current form in a solar radiation storm.
One week later and we enter Earth orbit. By now the air in the space octopus has become very 'strong', as the recycling is not working at one hundred percent efficiency. Also, the sanitation facilities on the octopus are minimal, to say the least.
We head for a landing on Ascension Island, floating gently down under the octopus' biological anti-grav with the space shuttle and supervillains in the octopus' clutches. A radio call to the shuttle to put the gear down gets no response. Noesis flies outside to investigate, entering the shuttle through the hole Blitz blasted in its window. The shuttle is empty. A hole has been torn into the nose wheel bay, the nose wheel forced down and they have escaped! Damn.
Noesis manually lowers the undercarriage under direction from Servo and returns to the octopus.
We land on Ascension Island. There is a large cleared space at one end of the airport there. The Guardians G-Jet is there along with a lot of soldiers cordoning off the end away from the hangars and other airport facilities. Armed helicopters are also circling.
Truth has the octopus gently put down the shuttle. When the octopus lets it go the shuttle's nose wheel collapses and the body of the shuttle crunches onto the runway. Then she has the octopus land nearby. We exit the space octopus and head towards the soldiers and the Guardians (Magus, Strike, Shade, Amaryllis, Jaeger, Proteus, Tigress and Salamander) who are standing off to one side, watching.
However, before we get far, Truth expresses concern about the octopus. She has Noesis read its mind to find what it wants. It wants food and freedom (it is only an animal). John Doe produces some food for it out of his own body mass. A big discussion ensues on the fate of the octopus. Truth does not want it to come to any harm, while Noesis thinks that we need to know how it works so we can generate anti-gravity ourselves, as well as protect ourselves from it and other Brood living ships. He wants to vivisect it for the good of science. In the end we decide to see how it likes the Earth's environment. Servo says he is going to take it to the water to see what it thinks about living there. He and Noesis stay on board the octopus; everyone else disembarks.
John Doe goes over to the Guardians and starts having a shapeshifting contest with Proteus.
Servo guides the octopus into the air then into the water. It seems to like it. They come back. Noesis contacts STOP to see what they think should be done with it. They umm and ah, so we let it go into the ocean and it swims off. However, Servo has left a tracking beacon on board it in case we need to find it again...
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