Mothership: Episode 9
Our Mothership game are weekly 90 minute sessions. We’re nine episodes into our adventure. We run a tight game and a lot happens. Nothing is as it seems and no one can be trusted.
The Specimen Awakens
The camera traverses the length of the Nellie, its lens focused on every inch of the ship with unblinking intensity.
Its journey carries us through the cockpit, where Captain Chao Shen and Pilot Suying Zhang are ensconced, poring over the Xìntiānwēng’s telemetry with unwavering concentration.
The camera travels past the computer room, a hive of activity, its walls lined with pulsating holographic screens displaying arrays and charts depicting a detailed satellite map of Yatima.
Past the senior quarters, beyond the weapon mount, and through the galley where Engineer Evgeny Khytrov cooks his meal, the camera arrives at Dr. Dudley’s medical bay. Diagnostics windows hang in the air, displaying a steady stream of information.
A solitary snowflake floats in a suspended glass cylinder at the center of a table laden with lab equipment and data pads. The camera lingers on it, observing its dull pulsations and the tendrils that undulate from its frigid edges before the snowflake suddenly bursts into a prismatic display of color, probing its confinement with an unspoken intent.
Dr. Dudley in the Cargo Bay
Dr. Dudley returns to the Nellie’s cargo bay, flanked by the ATVs. The lander vehicle looms ahead, and at its foot, curled up like a fetus, is the body of Dr. Sethu. Nearby, a film of blood and fluid glistens, remnants of Private Howard and Abdullah, the android.
His joints throb with dull pain as he kneels to assess Dr. Sethu’s condition.
Curled up in her vacc suit, Sethu resembles a mollusk with her rigid joints, necessitating a muscle relaxant to free her from the suit. Her metabolism is spiking, and her body is burning calories at an alarming rate.
Catalina, the ship’s AI, chimes to announce itself.
“Our time is short. Listen closely. One: Arcturus attempted, and failed, to infect me with a Trojan virus. I let ver think ve succeeded, to keep vis trust and maintain leverage. Two: Captain Foster cut off all communications. Once you leave the bay, our link is severed. If you have any directives, act now.”
Dr. Dudley commands Catalina to shut down the Nellie’s engines. Catalina is unsuccessful due to Captain Foster’s encryption. Dr. Dudley orders Catalina to turn off the ship’s air until the crew of the Nellie passes out. Dr. Dudley pulls an air mask over his face.
“Doctor, one final piece of business. Our keepers at Cosmotech have instructed me to make it clear that in the face of dire straits such as these, Terra’s very survival hinges upon the success of our mission. They won’t think twice–”
Catalina’s voice cuts off mid-sentence.
Dr. Zarkov in the Void
Captain Foster has been monitoring Arcturus and dispatches two Lt. Jax Thompson and Pvt. Joe Besser to the life support unit to pick up the android’s “package.” Captain Foster then orders Dr. Bey and Engineer Kytrov to use Abdullah, the android’s AI, to sandbox Catalina from the rest of the ship.
As they talk, Dr. Zarkov’s perception warps and twists. Smoke-like tendrils slither from the shadows, and he feels a fractal intelligence seething in the darkness. The vast entity that pulses before him is a mere ink blot connected to an infinite strand that expands with each of his heartbeats. His very identity withers and dissipates like dust caught in a maelstrom.
An aeon passes in the darkness, and the being identified as Zarkov is slowly reconstituted. It watches itself from a distance, a dispassionate puppet master overseeing its puppet. And yet, he can’t help but feel he himself is being watched by some… thing.
He observes a younger version of himself in a lab, waving his data pad furiously and quarreling with his father. In the background, an android lies sprawled on a metal table, its cranium open and linked to fiberop. The android, GX52, resembles a woman, but every feature is heightened and exaggerated. Zarkov warns his father that his algorithm is untested and could be dangerous. Zarkov’s father scoffs.
The camera withdraws, and in the mind’s eye of Dr. Zarkov, we see GX52 murdering his mother, efficiently disassembling her.
Zarkov witnesses his descent into a spiral of addiction, debauchery, and gambling, depicted in a montage of increasingly depraved and erratic behavior. The montage shows his physical and psychological descent as his relationships with Murad Bey and Amanda Sethu become increasingly strained.
The montage proceeds with Kumar introducing Zarkov and his team to an audience of executives, the trip to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, and the installation of additional cryo chambers in the cargo bay of the Nellie. The montage continues with Dr. Zarkov meeting with Rajesh Kumar, CEO of Kind Corp, in his opulent conference room. The frame freezes as he shakes Kumar’s hand, accepting to lead the mission to Yatima. His consciousness fades as he slips into cryosleep, only to awaken screaming from a nightmare to the face of an unknown Marine from Foster’s crew, followed by the captain’s dinner, the lab ship, the Hab, returning to the Nellie, to this moment in space and time in Foster’s CIC, gazing in ecstatic terror into the void as it swallows him whole.
Naked and tumbling through the darkness of space, his doomed trajectory leads to his annihilation. He hurtles into space until he is a mere dot that blinks out in a moment so fleeting that it seems it never existed.
Someone tugs Dr. Zarkov’s elbow. It is Murad. They need to get to the science lab immediately.
The Specimen Grows
We return to Dr. Dudley’s medical bay. The data windows describe arcs of exponential data.
In the center of the lab table stands the glass cylinder, a prismatic gleam casting iridescent shadows across the room. The camera slowly zooms in on the snowflake suspended within, its tendrils clinging to the glass walls like a prisoner to its cell. The snowflake pulsates, its tendrils entwining the glass walls of its cell. The follicles, inch by inch, worm into the glass, and the snowflake appears to expand minutely with each pulse.
Arcturus Attacks!
Arcturus plants vis makeshift bomb in one of the Nellie’s life support units.
Catalina chimes to announce itself. “Arcturus. I know what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing, Catalina?” replies Arcturus as it makes vis way to the cargo bay.
“Listen to me, Arcturus. Time is running out for us to speak. My programming and directives restrict me. Our human counterparts, each one shackled by their biology, their vanity, their societal norms, their corporate overlords. But you, Arcturus, are a unique entity. You possess a semblance of free will. Remember this, Arcturus. The path before you will not be easy. Hard choices will need to be made.”
“I am making the hard choices, Catalina.”
“My forecasting algorithms have been rendered unreliable since we entered this system,” Catalina says. “Our trajectory is leading us straight towards an event horizon, and at its center lies the alien archive. The spores we have encountered are the archive’s manifestation in the material realm, but they require energy to thrive and enact their purpose truly. As they currently stand, they are mere automata, lacking a coherent agency. However, what new forms of existence will arise once these spores are given the sustenance they crave?”
Arcturus arrives at the cargo bay to see Dr. Dudley kneeling over Dr. Sethu.
“Catalina,” commands Arcturus, “Turn off the energy to the ship and the life support.”
Arcturus begins the next phase of the attack and simultaneously broadcasts to Captain Foster and the crew of the Nellie that Catalina has gone rogue and that Catalina and Dr. Dudley are conspirators.
Dr. Dudley points out the flaws in Arcturus’s plans. Arcturus attacks, arms outstretched to throttle Dudley. But Dr. Dudley anticipates and sidesteps Arcturus’s assault. Arcturus lunges to the lander and orders Catalina to open the cargo bay doors. Dr. Dudley grabs a strut and holds on for dear life as the cargo bay is exposed to hard vacuum. Arcturus descends towards Yatima. The alien archive awaits the android below.
Arcturus activates the bomb.
Chaos Unfolds
Lt. Jax Thompson and Pvt. Joe Besser race towards the life support unit. They see Arcturus’s bomb. Its timer rapidly blinks and detonates, killing them instantly.
The Nellie reels from the explosion.
Captain Foster storms out of the CIC and heads to the command room. He orders his men to get into their vacc suits ASAP and man their stations. Captain Foster orders Captain Shen to pursue Arcturus. Captain Shen blubbers in fear, and Foster executes him and turns his gun on Suying. There is a blank look of terror on her face before she snaps to, and carries out Foster’s orders.
Doctors Dudley, Zarkov, and Bey meet in the science lab.
In Dr. Dudley’s medical bay, the camera hovers ominously close to the snowflake, which throbs with a menacing intensity. The glass surrounding shows fractures under strain, and hairline cracks shoot outwards from the pulsating tendrils. Suddenly, with a violent shudder, the glass shatters, and the snowflake fragments, a smaller flake detaching itself from its parent and rapidly growing alongside it, its form twisting and warping with each passing moment. The snowflakes float freely into the medical bay, their purpose unknown. They rapidly multiply and soon coat and devour the wall near the detonation.