Sargasso of Souls – Between Sessions

The events described here occurred concurrently with Sessions 7 and 8 – the Rescue of Denise, which I missed due to being away on holiday. We had engineered it so that explaining Ramona’s absence wasn’t a problem because she was down on the planet surface while all the other player characters remained on Bharat Station. What happened during the mission was concocted by me, based on an Email exchange I had with Tim.

The day after the ambush there was an electronic attack on the Salvation’s computer core. Somehow a virus, that transmitted resident data and then erased it, was put aboard. Fortunately it was neutralised before much damage could be done. It was further evidence of the risk of corporate espionage that we were facing.

I could not afford to be distracted from my preparations however. They continued without interruption. There was too much to be done.

Over the next couple of days I gathered together the mission team ready for the second descent to the planet. In his own unique fashion Randall Locke proved invaluable. I never once regretted selecting him as my second in command.

And so it was that, early on the morning of the 14th July 2106, eighteen souls boarded the Salvation and left Bharat station heading for the planet Storm.

A few hours later we were once again plummeting through the forbidding clouds that shrouded the planet’s surface. I gritted my teeth as we bounced through the turbulence. The shuttle shuddered and rocked violently. This time Nessence Transit’s number-two pilot, Logan Brodie, was at the helm. I hoped he was as good as Ramsay. Lightning crackled against the hull and the wind shear slammed us sideways. It seemed to take an eternity to breach the fury of the dark maelstrom. Every moment your heart was in your mouth waiting to feel a catastrophic impact with the jagged mountains below. Fortunately it never came. Once again we erupted from the raging tempest to streak across the rocky plain towards the canyon. A few minutes later we were safely on the ground. If anything Brodie had made a better job of it than Ramsay had on the first mission, something he was quietly pleased about. I made a point of congratulating him on a job well done.

Mission Summary

Day 1 [14.07.2106]

· After another hair-raising descent, Brodie landed the Salvation in the canyon near to where the first mission came down.

· Having completed a scan with the ship’s sensors, I went out with the security team to ensure the area immediately around the Salvation was clear. Visibility was extremely poor but the sweep was completed without any particular difficulty.

· With a three-man security team providing protection, Cooper and Weiss then deployed the charge dissipation gear.

· Satisfied that all was secure around the Salvation (or at least as secure as it could be) I then sent out two teams to scout up and down the canyon. I deliberately took command of the team scouting further into the canyon in the direction of the Ancient complex, as I didn’t want someone else stumbling across it. As an additional precaution I took Pietersen and Bell with me, since they were on the original mission and already knew of its existence. Jurgens, Butler and Johansson made up the second team.

· While we were out conducting the reconnaissance, Bell began complaining of hearing strange “whispering” over the comms. I was pretty sure it was just his imagination. The weird atmospherics were playing havoc with our radios and we were continually bombarded with an ululating wine of static. It was tempting simply to turn them off but, with the lack of visibility, it was imperative that we stayed in contact with one another. All in all it wasn’t much fun out there.

· Both recon teams returned after a couple of hours. We were already feeling fatigued and most of us had developed headaches. Even once you were back on the shuttle you continued to hear the incessant drone of static, resonating in your skull. It took a fair while for it to subside. What with that and the swirling dust and lightning punctuated darkness reducing visibility to less than forty metres, it had become increasingly claustrophobic in the suits. Our time outside the ship had been arduous to say the least. There had been no complaints however. Locke had picked a good team. They were all trained professionals and simply got on with it.

· For the benefit of Belson and his team I reported that there was limited scope for base development further into the canyon. Only a relatively short distance away the path was blocked by a large growth of electrostatic lichen that we had encountered during the first mission and there was little shelter in that direction other than a few caves, which were too high up to be of use. The second team’s report was far more promising however. They had sighted a number of cave entrances that had potential. Further exploration was required.

· During the debriefing Bell brought up the whispering voices again and Pietersen and Johansson both said they might have heard something themselves. I dunno maybe I had too but, after an hour or so of having constant static in your ear, you get so you can’t be sure. To put minds at rest I asked the Flight Crew to scan the comms channels and see if they could pick anything up. I wasn’t expecting them to find anything though.

· Keen to make the most of our time on-planet I gave security a couple of hours to recover from the earlier patrols and then took another team out to investigate the caves more thoroughly. The sweep proved to be uneventful and we returned to the Salvation having established that there were no immediate alien hazards lurking in the dark recesses of the caverns.

· Satisfied with the progress we had made on the first day, I set a watch and then told everyone to get some kip.

· Before retiring I checked on the status of the crew. Everyone was OK

· A restless night followed. From the comments that were made the next morning, I wasn’t the only one who found it difficult to sleep. When I did eventually drift off my dreams were strange and unsettling.

Day 2 [15.07.2106]

· The next day I put together a larger team and went out to investigate the most promising of the caves in more detail. This time, in addition to security, I took the base construction expert, Kent Belson, one of the two construction engineers and the medic, Maya Zakowski. Maya was on the team, under the pretext of taking some bio-readings in the cave’s vicinity, because she had begged me to allow her to go. It was her second time on the surface and she had yet to leave the shuttle. She wanted a chance to prove herself pretty badly so I let her come. I liked her and I thought she deserved it, but to be honest, I suspected that the arduous conditions outside would prove too much for her to handle. To her credit however, she more than pulled her weight. She was gutsy. She earned my respect.

· Maybe it was just me but, as the day dragged on, it seemed to be harder and harder to ignore the wail of the comms. There were even times when I thought I heard faint whispers, such as Bell had described, but I dismissed such thoughts from my mind, putting it down to fatigue. Everyone on the team was becoming edgy. Bell’s nervousness was getting to us all.

· I took the team out a couple of times, rotating as many of the security personnel as I could. Pietersen, Johansson and I spent the most time outside. When we were through we had been able to narrow the choice of base site down to a couple of locations that had potential. The most promising of which was secure but slightly smaller than was ideal. Belson seemed satisfied that it would be adequate however, and indicated that it would provide shelter for around twenty if required.

· Having returned to the Salvation, I took the added precaution of getting Jess Griffin and Maya to give everyone on the security team a once over. I had growing concerns about the effect that prolonged exposure to the conditions might have. However the results indicated that everyone was merely fatigued with a slight imbalance in body chemistry, which, on the previous mission, Veldin had put down to the unusually intense electromagnetic forces. It seemed we were OK.

· Doing my nightly circuit of the crew, I found that Michael Weiss had recorded some audio of the comms channels and had managed to “enhance” it so that it sounded more like whispering alien voices. I listened to his efforts with scepticism and he willingly admitted that it was hard to tell whether he was making the audio clearer or just twisting it into what we thought might be there. I told him to make sure he had some recordings to take back with us and then went to talk with Kent Belson about what we could achieve over the next couple of days. I didn’t really want to stay any longer than I had to.

· Another restless night followed.

Day 3 [16.07.2106]

· The next day we assembled the gear that the construction team needed and began transporting it to the cave. As we did so Belson and his men were able to commence work.

· Day three was the hardest time for the security team. There were only eight of us, myself and Bauman included, and we were stretched to the very limit trying to provide protection for the Salvation, the base site and any groups travelling between the two locations. I implemented a shift system, and made sure that no one worked harder than I did, but all of us had to do long hours outside and, in the conditions, I didn’t rate our chances of keeping it going for very long. However, once again, the team demonstrated their quality, and with grit and determination and everyone pulling together, we made it through the day.

· And yet, despite the camaraderie that we shared, we couldn’t ignore the growing sense of unease that had spread throughout our ranks. It’s difficult to explain where it came from exactly. There wasn’t any one single thing that triggered it. I guess the incessant “whispering” over the comms was partly to blame and the poor visibility, which made us edgy all the time. After long hours of vigilance our nerves were understandably getting frayed. Fatigue was a consequence of the relentless tension. And yet it was more than that. There was something else. Something about the planet itself. Somehow it always seemed to be there on the periphery… waiting.

· There were a couple of scares with the larger, multi-legged creatures with gaping maws and occasionally “tumbleweed” creatures would roll in and attach themselves to the shuttle or some construction equipment but nothing too problematic. Ironically the lack of incident made it all the more difficult to stay alert.

· At one point during the day Butler and I came across Bell staring intently at the cave wall. When I asked him what he was doing he looked slightly puzzled and asked if I could make out any faint symbols on the weathered rock face. Neither Butler nor I could see anything so Bell shrugged and went back to his post.

· It was at the end of the day that my concern for the team increased still further. On the way back to the Salvation, Pietersen opened fire on something that nobody else saw. When I spoke to him afterwards he pretty much confessed that he was no longer certain that there had been anything there. I considered Pietersen to be rock-solid so I played it down and told him that in the poor visibility it was “Better to be safe than sorry” but it troubled me more than I let on. We were all getting very punchy.

· That evening, after talking to Cooper and Farrell about rumours of ghosts and strange knocking noises on the hull that they had been spreading, I had the medical team check everyone again. It became a daily ritual. And yet Jess Griffin continued to report that there was nothing major wrong with anyone. Her main concerns were the general level of fatigue and the fact that the security team were popping growing numbers of pills to keep going, mostly stimulants and mild painkillers. I myself was one of the guilty ones.

· That night I hung out with John Pietersen, Chad Butler, Katalina Johansson and Maya Zakowski for a while before retiring to my bunk. I got on well with them and found it a relief to put my mission commander ‘hat’ away and be one of the grunts again for a while. I think it was also good for morale.

· An intense dust storm raged outside, greater than anything we had encountered on the planet thus far. The resulting creaks and groans of the hull and occasional bangs of larger particles did not ease our troubled sleep.

Day 4 [17.07.2106]

· Most of the crew were still a little ragged after another restless night. Though the sky boiled above us and lightning ripped down through the darkness, the dust storm had subsided back to its normal level of ferocity.

· Despite the growing fatigue the crew returned to work. I wanted to get another full day in before we left and, having sealed the cave entrance against the outside the day before, the small cave where the base was being constructed was a far more secure and hospitable working environment. Life support and bio scrubbers would be necessary to make it habitable without suits, and these would not arrive until the next mission, but at least the buffeting wind was held in check and it was well lit inside so visibility was not a problem. Consequently I was able to reduce the security requirement, leaving only two men with the construction team and two on watch at the Salvation. The extra downtime was a welcome relief for the over-worked security team.

· And yet incidents of people seeing shadows or hearing ghostly voices over the comms continued. Bell’s behaviour was of increasing concern to me. Despite his assurances that he was OK, he was acting more and more strangely. I couldn’t afford to carry him though, so I was forced to go on using him in the shift system. It wasn’t as though he was the only one. All of us were being worn down. There had been times when I had seen things; odd glimpses of shadows moving on the periphery of my vision or strange silhouettes in the clouds of dust that constantly billowed across the planet’s surface. Pietersen and Johansson had spoken of it also. I would be glad to get things finished and get back to Bharat Station.

· During the day, as work on the base continued, we noted a couple of minor tremors, though Belson was confident of the integrity of the cave and its immediate area.

· That evening Belson announced that he would only need a few hours the next day to finish things off. The feeling of relief amongst the crew was evident. We would all be able to leave soon.

Day 5 [18.07.2106]

· However, that night, troubled dreams were interrupted when Locke called me in my quarters. He informed me that Bell had gone AWOL. Bauman, who was on watch, had been alerted to the airlock cycling and had seen a suited figure heading down the canyon towards the base camp. A quick check had revealed that Bell was unaccounted for.

· Cursing, I rapidly roused Pietersen, Butler, Johansson and Zakowski and went out after him. I had no idea what his intentions might be. Even though he had been acting strangely, why would he leave the ship? We headed out into the darkness and swirling dust clouds.

· As we neared the base camp there was a loud rumbling noise and, when we arrived, we found that some of the construction tools had been used to collapse a section of the rear wall. It seemed that there was a narrow shaft behind it, just large enough for someone in a suit to squeeze through. It was hard to tell whether the shaft was natural or unnatural and, assuming that Bell was the one who had collapsed it, it was a mystery how he had known it was there.

· I didn’t like it one little bit but it looked as though we would have to go in after him. I looked into the faces of the others to make certain that everyone was up for it. I needn’t have worried. “Let’s get it over with”, piped up Butler in an effort to lighten the mood.

· Reluctantly we went in. If the claustrophobia of being in the suits hadn’t been bad enough, the darkness and the confined space of the shaft made it many times worse.

· We had only gone a short distance however when there was a sudden tremor and part of the floor fell away, dropping sideways into a chasm that opened up beneath us. Zakowski and I were pitched into the gap and tumbled down a steep incline before arriving tightly wedged in a tangled heap at the bottom. Moments later, a large slab from the far wall toppled across the opening above us and sealed us in. It didn’t look good.

· Maya had a broken leg and, to make matters worse, while we were trapped down in the cold and darkness, we realised that air was escaping from a tear in her suit. She remained calm while I found it and patched it but, wedged in the bottom of the shaft as we were, it was difficult and by the time I had finished she had lost too much oxygen. What was left would not have supported her for long.

· Consequently I decided to link our tanks together so we could share the remaining oxygen between us. Maya was grateful but said that I shouldn’t have done it because I stood a better chance of surviving if I had not. It was true, but then I wouldn’t have had her die on me. I liked her company too much.

· As time ticked by and death grew to be an ever more likely outcome, Maya and I effectively spent our last moments together. We got to know each other pretty well. You can’t experience something like that without strong bonds forming between you.

· Unbeknownst to us, after the tremor had subsided, Pietersen, Johansson and Butler had all been fine. Seeing that we were buried under rubble they had experimented with the radio and had been able to pick up an extremely faint radio signal, which they had taken to mean that at least one of us was still alive. However they rapidly concluded that there was no way they could reach us, so Butler and Johansson had set off back to the Salvation for help. Pietersen remained behind on watch, up above.

· They tell me it took a little under four hours for the construction team to dig us out. By that time we were both starved of oxygen and bordering on unconscious. Maya in fact had already passed out. Given what had happened we were lucky to have survived. If nothing else, it was surprising that we had got away with only one suit breach.

· Since everyone’s air was running short and there was no sign of Bell, Locke, the leader of the rescue team, made the decision to get everyone back to the Salvation. The fact that Maya had been exposed to the atmosphere was a real concern.

· Bell had not returned and by the time they got back to the shuttle his oxygen would have been spent. There was no longer anything to be done so, under Griffin’s guidance, they took what precautions they could to maintain a quarantine of Maya and myself and immediately prepped for launch.

· A short while later we left the surface and set course for Bharat Station.