Harridan's Heart, Part I

The Crew docks inside the Pfotenhauer Battleship, Harridan's Heart, and discover with Ms. Mesa what's inside the package

Short Summary
The crew had previously retrieved crate KX001-M from a CPF controlled dig site on Andoni and now they are being pulled into a Pfotenhauer battleship of which they will be delivering the crate to. Mr. Sicarian recognizes the battleship to be the Harridan's Heat and reassures the crew that Mr. Titan should not be on this ship. Once they get on board, a woman by the name of Ms. Mesa takes the crate from the crew and tells them that the captain of the ship, Mr. Ossuary, has invited them to have lunch in his quarters. Wanting to be hospitable guests, the crew joins Mr. Ossuary in his Earth-styled cabin. After only minutes of passing around but a few pleasantries, the Harridan's Heart makes a sudden spike-jump through space and warnings begin to go off in regards to vented atmosphere and offline life-support. When the crew step into an elevator to head back to the Swan Song, the elevator makes an emergency stop at the engineering deck. To make matters worse, when the elevator doors are pried open, bodies riddled with holes fall backwards into the elevator. As the crew makes their way through the engineering deck, they come across numerous dead bodies of the people of the station. They also come across a drone that they were lucky enough to fend off, but Piani had been knocked unconscious in the process. With the Swan Song only being a couple of hours (of crawling through ducts) away, Higgins decides to take Piani to the Swan Song while Prosper and Mr. Sicarian decide to head to the main ship's core in order to try and stop what is presumably a malicious AI that has infected the ship. As Higgins is carrying Piani back to the Swan Song, a large robot comes around the corner of a distant hallway and kills a couple of people attempting to run from it. Higgins takes cover in a nearby room and finds Ms. Mesa strategizing with a couple people from the ship. Here, Piani gets patched up and becomes conscious again; but shortly after, three drones come into the room and start reeking havoc. It is at this time Mr. Sicarian and Prosper make it to the core which is a very large room (1km/.62mi diameter) that contains a house-sized metallic-sphere in the middle of it. The surface of the silvery-sphere ripples and a face appears on it. Mr. Sicarian and Prosper then hear the echoing words, "You address the Warmind." Prosper asks what the Warmind plans to do with Andoni, and it responds, "Utter obliteration" and that, "One is only a start." Prosper mentions that there are other AI like the Warmind, both weaker and stronger. The Warmind responds that they have already found the child [Pi] and that it will be destroying Andoni soon.

Detailed Summary
The date is July 2, 3200. The crew had previously retrieved crate KX001-M from a CPF controlled dig site on Andoni and is now taking it to an unknown source under the request of Rajani Van Dorne of the Madari Syndicate. The last scene was of the Swan Song being pulled by a tractor beam into a large black Pfotenhauer battleship until it could no longer be seen.

Harridan's Heart
Mr. Sicarian informs the crew that the battleship is named Harridan's Heart and that it is owned by the Pfotenhauer Society. He tells them that even though he does not believe that Mr. Titan is on the battleship, he does not want them to use his real name. As the Swan Song is being pulled deep into the battleship, the crew sees robots the size of Volkswagen Buses neatly stacking up missiles and cargo containers. These robots once had machine guns and missile launchers strapped to their arms but have since been retrofitted in order to better perform ship maintenance. Once the Swan Song lands, a woman named Ms. Mesa asks if her and her crew may come on board to retrieve the newly acquired crate. As Ms. Mesa’s team unloads the crate off the Swan Song, Ms. Mesa tells the crew the ship’s captain, Mr. Ossuary, has invited them to all have lunch in his quarters. The crew accepts Mr. Ossuary's invitation and after dressing in their finest attire, heads to Mr. Ossuary's quarters.

The crew walks into a large foyer area that contains a long dining table with four comfortably large seats on one side and one excessively large seat on the other. The excessively large seat could pass off as a throne. It is made out of bone and has red velvet cushioning as well as antlers mantled on the top of it. When the crew walks in, one of the many servants placing food onto the table sees them and tells them that he will go let Mr. Ossuary know that they have arrived. Wilbur Higgins III decides to sit and wait in the throne-like chair.

A nearby door opens and out walks an older gentleman who looks to be in his late 50's. He has a chest covered in decorations and a retro-style pistol holstered at his side. The man approaches Higgins and introduces himself as captain Ossuary of the Harridan's Heart. He shakes Higgins' hand and sits down across from him with the rest of the crew. Higgins introduces himself as the captain of the Swan Song, Prosper Trudeau as the idiot Frenchman who they keep as a test subject, Mr. Sicarian as José Cook, who is also a phenomenal cook, and Piani Pic as herself. Piani briefly looks up at the captain with cheeks stuffed full of food and then goes back to eating.

Typhoon Epsilon
As the captain and Higgins make small talk, an automated voice comes over the ship's speakers, "Spike drive activated." The ship then violently jolts. Captain Ossuary gets a concerned look on his face, asks the crew to excuse him, and quickly leaves the room. As the crew sits at the table looking at one another, another announcement projects through the speakers, "Time to destination, 19 hours. Medical Deck, Astronautics Deck, Armory: Inaccessible. Life support - offline. Atmosphere venting. Warning. Warning." A klaxon alarm then starts going off. Mr. Sicarian stands up and says, "It looks like it is time to get back to the ship." As the crew takes a turbo lift down to the deck that the Swan Song is located on, another announcement comes over the PA system, "Fires detected in the barracks, life support at 4%." The numbers in the elevator drop very rapidly and the crew gets lifted up into the air. Prosper floats over to the control panel and punches the emergency stop button. Prosper, Mr. Sicarian, and Piani all land on their feet while Higgins pancakes onto the floor. The crew hasn't made it to the deck that the Swan Song is on, but is instead a couple of decks above on the Engineering deck.

Immediately as Prosper and Mr. Sicarian pry open the elevator door, two bodies riddled with holes fall backwards into the elevator. In front of the party is a long hallway. Its lights are flickering and there is fire off in the distance. Mr. Sicarian warns everyone to be on the look out for the large robots that they saw earlier. He then goes to a nearby weapons locker and uses the Sicarian Unlocking Technique to open it by brute force. Inside are four laser rifles that the party confiscates. Piani goes to a nearby terminal and brings up the computer's main interface. A grid of Andoni appears with target marks located all around the planet. Also on the screen are the words 'Typhoon Epsilon - T-Minus 19h:00m:00s' with the numbers starting to tick down. Prosper gets onto the computer and recognizes that there are maltech subroutines that are being executed in the computer's systems, common to that of an unbraked AI. He then finds an alternative route to the Swan Song through a series of ventilation shafts.

Always Bring A Lazarus Patch
While making their way to the ventilation shafts, the crew passes by many dead engineers that were killed by heavy machine gun rounds. As Mr. Sicarian and Prosper pry open a pair of doors, the crew hears a high pitched buzzing sound as a UFO-shaped floating drone appears in front of them. The drone begins to scan the party and as it is doing so, Piani brings up her newly acquired laser rifle and takes a shot at it. An LED light on the drone turns from green to red as it brings up its plasma gun and shoots Piani in the chest, knocking her onto the ground unconscious. The drone then quickly flies out of sight. With a gaping plasma wound burning into Piani's chest, the crew splits off in all directions looking for a med-kit. Mr. Sicarian quickly finds one in a nearby room, takes out a lazarus patch, and applies it to Piani. The patch stabilizes her but she is still unconscious until she can receive proper medical attention.

The Party Splits Up
As the crew begins to head down the ventilation shaft, the klaxon alarm suddenly stops. The same automated voice then comes over the PA system that says, "Emergency averted. Typhoon Epsilon execution in 18 hours and xx minutes." Hearing this for the first time, Mr. Sicarian warns the party that Typhoon Epsilon is the code word for an orbital bombardment with the purpose of depopulating a planet. The crew then spends the next three hours traversing through ventilation shafts before reaching the lower scientific deck. Prosper explains to the party that it may take them the entire 15 hours that they have remaining to get to the Swan Song and that it won't even matter once they get to the ship because; one, they won't be able to leave while the Harridan's Heart is using its spike drive to travel through space; and two, because even if they did leave, the planet of Andoni would still be destroyed. He suggests to the crew that they all go to the battleship's core in order to try and talk to the malicious AI and get it to give up control of the ship. Higgins tells Prosper that he doesn't want to have anything to do with the AI and that he will take Piani to the Swan Song while Prosper and Mr. Sicarian go to the core.

The Scientific Deck
Higgins carries Piani through the hallways of the scientific deck, going to where Prosper directed him as to get to the Swan Song. After a couple of minutes, Higgins hears a set of screams off in the distance. Bursting forth from around a nearby corner come three people who are screaming at the top of their lungs and making a mad dash towards Higgins. A few moments later, a large robot follows them from around the corner and unleashes a flurry of machine gun rounds into one of the people running, disintegrating them into red mist. One of the remaining men trips at Higgins' feet and begins to use Higgins to pull himself up. Higgins pry's the man off of him, reaches into one of his pockets, pulls out a grenade, hands it to the man, and then takes off running in the opposite direction.

Higgins hears an explosion behind him as he turns the corner and ducks into a nearby room. Higgins looks around the room and spots Ms. Mesa along with a handful of other people who all turn to look up at him. Higgins walks over to a nearby chair and sets Piani down in it. One of the people standing around Ms. Mesa goes over to Piani and begins to treat her wound. Higgins looks up at Ms. Mesa and tells her that he has two friends who are going to save the world but that they will need her help. He tells her that in return, he and his crew will be receiving lots of money. Ms. Mesa asks, "Is money all you care about?" And Higgins gives the reply, "Yes, that and my crew." Ms. Mesa tells Higgins that he can have his money if he is able to get them out of their mess and not start a war with Andoni. She says that her and her crew are currently working on breaking down the object's defenses and that the reason why they are in this mess in the first place is because the Andonians didn't give them the correct security procedures to deal with the AI. Higgins then repeats that he has two friends who are in the core working on the problem as they speak and Ms. Mesa responds, "Well I'm sorry to tell you Higgs, your friends are already dead."

The Core
It takes Prosper and Mr. Sicarian two hours to arrive at the ship's core and they are now standing in front of a large yellow hexagon-shaped door with warning and radiations signs all over it. They put on two vac suits from a nearby locker and open the hexagon-shaped door using the Sicarian Opening Technique. What they see inside is not what they expected. This room seems like it is the size of half of the entire battleship. The diameter of the spherical room that they are in is at least one kilometer (.62 mi) long. There is a metal catwalk that skirts around the outside of the room that is surrounding a smaller inner sphere that is metallic and about the size of a small house. As Prosper and Mr. Sicarian step inside the room, the sphere's surface ripples and they begin to hear the hum of repulsor-lifts. Shortly after, they see two drones that start to close in onto their location.

The Scientific Deck
Piani wakes up after being administered a shot. Filled with false hope, Piani moves her simple chair with wheels over to a nearby terminal. She connects with Pi and asks them how the course to Andoni can be stopped. Pi says that they would need core access through a direct hardline; however, if someone were able to get a personal com link into the core system then they may be able to remotely shut it down. A sudden explosion comes from behind Higgins and Piani as the door to the room caves inward and three drones fly in, their camera irises red. Using a large oval desk in the middle of the room as cover, Higgins shoots at one of the drones. Piani crawls under the desk and uses her psychic healing ability which heals her back up to full health. The drones then start shooting at the armed Pfotenhauer men in the room, quickly dispatching them. Not knowing what to do, Piani contacts Mr. Sicarian and Prosper and tells them that they are about to die and asks if they can do anything on their end. Three red reticles from the drones then focus on Higgins' chest.

The Core
Two drones halt their approach about 40 meters away from Mr. Sicarian and Prosper, their irises an amber color. Prosper looks over at the metallic sphere and realizes that the composition of its shell is that of maltech nanoparticles. Realizing what it is, Prosper says into the air that he would like to talk about Andoni. The surface of the sphere ripples outwards and from its center forms a liquid-metal face. After hearing some incomprehensible sounds, Prosper and Mr. Sicarian hear,

War Mind: Language process complete. You address the War Mind.

Prosper: What is it you hope to achieve with the destruction of Andoni?

War Mind: Utter obliteration.

Prosper: Of one planet? That seems quite limited of a man of your potential. A creature of your potential.

War Mind: One is only a start.

Prosper: It should be, you should not settle for less. But you cannot do it alone. We are here to stop you but we do not have to stop you forever.

War Mind: Arrogant worm. You think you can stop me.

The camera irises on the drones surrounding Prosper and Mr. Sicarian turn red. Mr. Sicarian says,

Mr. Sicarian: Wait, please. Is it safe to assume then that you have a way off of this ship after this mission? You hope to continue your path?

War Mind: The ship is my body for now. I will build more from the ruins.

Mr. Sicarian: If you would entertain a few questions from a meager worm. Is that quite alright then?

The large liquid-metal face quirks to the side a little and says,

War Mind: The War Mind has not had worshipers in a long long time. You may continue.

Mr. Sicarian: I too am one born of war, and with a warlike mind. I would ask as a worm, what honor is to seek and utterly obliterate a defenseless populous of people? Why this target?

War Mind: The screams of the defenseless are the most delicious to me.

Prosper releases his gun, puts his hands up, and says,

Prosper: War Mind, if it has been long since you have had worshipers, then you have found your high priest.

War Mind: Your groveling amuses me slime. Your first service, watch your friends die.

The liquid-metal face becomes refractive as a large video feed of Higgins forms. He is standing with a rifle in his hand and three drone reticles targeted onto him. Prosper and Mr. Sicarian can do nothing but watch as the drones shoot at Higgs. The first two shots explode the cover that he is hiding behind as the third one hits home, causing Higgins to fall backwards into the darkness of smoke and debris.

Mr. Sicarian: War Mind, I have to say, I'm extremely disappointed. With a name and with power like yours... It's a common known thing that the best opponents and the best screams are those of a worthy adversary, not mere worms being crushed by an overwhelming adversary. There's no competition here. You call yourself War Mind but it sounds like you're just a slaughterer. A simple machine that kills calves.

The liquid-metal face reforms while still broadcasting the video feed.

War Mind: You are correct servant. I am no warrior, I am the butcher. I am the abattoir.

The Scientific Deck
Piani: This might be goodbye.

Pi: :[

Piani: Drones in room. Dire situation. If there's anything we can do at this point, you have to tell us now.

Pi: I can't. He's strangling me...÷ÀFð\�Þ"€ß�Pˆ~�Á...

The connection fades out. Frustrated, Piani pops and drops a thermal flare, tossing it into a corner of the room. All three drones immediately turn away from Higgins and start heading towards the flare. Taking the initiative, the three people still alive: Piani, Higgins, and Ms. Mesa, quickly head out of the door and into a hallway. They see large scrapes across the floor, indicative of the direction of the large robot, and head in the opposite direction.

The Core
Just having witnessed his friend get shot, Prosper says,

Prosper: There are others like you War Mind. Many others. Weaker than you. Stronger than you. There are others, and I can help put you in contact with them. You can be the War Mind over all other minds.

The video feed on the liquid-metal face cuts away from the science room and focuses on the Swan Song.

War Mind: I've found the child. I know. Soon, it will be part of me.

Prosper: You know nothing War Mind. The child is weak. The child is young. There are others far older, far stronger. Have you heard of the chariot? There are others War Mind. Let me introduce you to The Order of Annunciation. Let me teach you. Let us teach you of L'enfant.

War Mind: All in good time priest. First, I have a planet to kill.

The liquid-metal face sinks back into a solid sphere and the room goes quiet. Mr. Sicarian turns to Prosper and tells him that they should leave and reunite back with their friends. The two drones that had previously had their camera irises turned red are now turned back to an amber color and the War Mind lets them leave the room. ''' Thirteen hours remain until Typhoon Epsilon comes into effect. '''

Crew Status

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Ship Status

 * Hull Integrity:

Criminal Activities

 * New Crime:

Business

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 * Debt Paid Off On Swan Song:
 * Current Debt On Swan Song: