Meeting at Megiddo: A Science Fiction Colony Builder

Chemical Shortage

Well, Kapitan, good news and bad news. The good news is that the operation is successful. Full inoculation achieved in a matter of weeks, no side effects other than intermittent diarrhea. We can't do anything about that Kapitan, that's just the gut bacteria duking it out. Everyone will simply have to stomach the stomachaches and wet shits. It's not fatal, just drink a lot of water, which we have with our recyclers. After a year or so, our gut bacteria will settle in, no sweat.

(Full Manpower returned. 25% chance of losing one Manpower until Turn 5.)

Amalgate Ambassador

"Here," Lt. General Mark Sayid waves a hand over Boneyard Mirrorwhite, where out of service jets and drones lie on the sand like dead birds. "Our leavings."

The Kapitan looks over the fenced in zone, windbreaks on the eastern side. "Impressive." There must be upwards of fifty benched planes here. "I hadn't known that the first two colonization waves placed so much emphasis on aerospace."

"They didn't," the Lt. General replies, grabbing the mimic-lizard. It had launched itself at the Kapitan, after considering the Replicant for a while. "Semesky, you cheeky shit. Stay here, in my pocket. My apologies, Kapitan. But as I was saying, they didn't. It was a tactical necessity. Who the fuck wants to hump across the Sands? They'll toast to death. We try to make our footpads heli-mobile, and, well, you already know, it's hard to try to force a Kozko landing if you don't have interceptors. You know tribals here use the nights for hot-season raids?"

"They raid when it's hot?" That doesn't sound right to the Kapitan. They had retired to the camping table under a parasol, the other Replicants and cameobacks buzzing around, handling the transition.

"Sure. Cool season's for work." The Kapitan is not all at home with the ugly tone of condescension in the General's voice. Like he was talking about the shit on his boot. "They scratch in the dirt, do their caravan runs. Hot season is when there's nothing else to do but sit and sleep away from the sun. So, the tribal braves mount raids when the other guys are toasted out of their minds."

"You're not telling me this because you're trying to wrangle a security job out of us, are you?" The question was made as a joke, a smile to go along with it. Lt. General Sayid also finds it funny. After that comes the first offer, which haggling naturally follows, at length and at speed.

Personal Orders: Select a Small scale project to begin for your own use. Beginning any requires the activation of the 0Z Mechanized Factory (- Industrial 1, Manpower 1, Academics 2)
[]- Cargo Bombers: Begin construction on a set of ariel frieghter planes that will allow you to begin to contest Kozkolvagrad freight. (+Revenue (?) +Moving things around)
[]- Eye in the Sky: Begin construction on a set of cheap drones that can monitor the area around your landed ark and routes to the boneyard and the riverbed village.
[]- The Wolfpack: Begin construction on a squad of interceptors/bombers that will allow you to protect the airspace around your ark. (+Interdiction, +Bombing, +Air Superiority.)
[]- None: You do not want to begin construction now.

Boneyard Orders: Select a job you'll do for the Amalgated Army. (-2 Manpower for any choice except for None)
[]- Salvaged Engines: Real, cutting edge jet engines are hard to build. Especially if they were for continent crossing superbombers. Without their flying fortresses, the Amalgated Army would have a harder time enforcing their demands and taxes to the groundlings, who provide them their military rations and labour.
(Bring TU-160R to DAMAGED Condition, was INOPERABLE. Purpose: Bombing (++++) Countervalue Strikes (++++) Reconnaissance (++) Incompatible with Cargo Bombers Personal Order.)
[]- Aerospace Metamaterials: The corpses still have meat on their bones. Not the standard stuff, the carbon-fibre metamaterials shipped from Earth. Without these materials, the striking arm of the Army would deterioate, losing revenue from aircraft taxation and perhaps some territory on the edges.
(Bring CY-33M Multirole Fighter Squadron no.8 to WORKING Condition, was DAMAGED. Purpose: Interdiction (+++), Bombing (++), Air Superiority(+++), Recon (++) Incompatible with the Wolfpack Personal Order)
[]- Radar Repurposing: There might still be high value radar systems of use in the boneyard's derlicits. With some repairs, they can still be useful to the Army's surveillance systems, which patrol thousands of kilometers with increasingly worn out sensor systems.
(Bring AGM-3 Border Drone Squadron to WORKING condition, was DAMAGED. Purpose: Reconnaissance (++++) Bombing (++). Incompatible with Eye in the Sky Personal Order.)
[]- None: You are unable or unwilling to complete any jobs for the Amalgates at this point.

Payment: Choose any combination of Resources, totalling up to 3, to receive as payment from the Amalgated Army. Incompatible with the None boneyard order.
[]- Write In

Kozkolvagrad Commission

Dasha doesn't know how he got here but he's willing to play along.

Set the scene.

Kozkolvagrad follows the law of the market, and the law of the market is that somewhere, someone gets handed the short stick. Companies go bust. Families lose their fortunes. Losers throw themselves into the ocean and slit their throats. Districts with rock solid reputations of sterling industrial work turn into slums and then into ghost towns, where no one is around to collect rent, having sent breaker boys to strip every ounce of copper and glass from the factories and the apartments. So here, in this isolated sector of Kozkolvagrad, the lights are on this season.

Trucks and motor carriers line the streets. Teamsters shake the sand from their boots and lean back with mugs of something, Dasha's not sure. He's caught up in the flow, the tired, determined, stimulant fueled energy of the night. It picked him up and sat him down in a courtyard, flowering plants poking out of the rock (that's another thing, there's no asphalt around. Everything's either made with some kind of concrete and most of the engines are electric or hydrogen), where a ring of truckers talked about this and that in front of a fire pit, where they baked algae patties over a hot stone. This was the food of choice. He saw chicken but no one wanted to kill any.

He couldn't find a place to work himself and the 0Z colony into the conversation. They were loud and buzzed on some sort of stimulant, fungal derivative, and also discussing the recent issue of the border guards stopping and shooting some guys out in the hinterlands.

"It's a bad time," seemed to be the common refrain. "I told them, these guys care now, because the new Director had an OD in her family."

"Huh?" Another one, she put the guitar down. "That's not what I heard, it's because she needed something to feed the proles."

"Whatever, it's all the same. Who's that guy?"

Shit. "I just came here to get some food," Dasha says. "Honest."

"Uh-huh. Well, you're going to have to beat feet. Vamoose. This is our thing now, ag."

Ag has the same cadence as pigs. A memory rises from his neurons, one of the high stress profiles. Paranoia. The pigs are watching them from the sky. Then one day, one night, a sudden heat. Then, reap him. He's got some use.

Violence is imminent. Ag sent pulses of fight through the crowd. 'He's a Replicant,' someone whispered. 'They can build brains for them.' 'You're right. He could be writing down names right now.'

Aw, hell, Dasha thinks. This was it, he guessed.

And then, his savior. "Siddown," a voice, aged like a wine, says. "You're making me feel like some kind of king. Who's the golem?"

"It's an ag, boss."

"He is?" The boss steps closer to Dasha. The truckers part in front of him like a wave. "And I told you to sit down. Seriously. Boy, you from Koz?" He shook his head. "You gonna rat?" Again. "See? Here, have some of this." A square of paper. Soaked in some black juice. From a plastic baggie from the Boss's pocket. The threat is implicit.

"Can I know what's in it?"

"Mushroom juice. The cannibal cap."
The boss's face is friendly. Lined and weatherworn. It's a face that belongs on a street somewhere, whiling away the pension and waiting for death to come around. "Uh, I mean the effect."

"Oh. It's an upper, some hallucination if you take an overdose. First hit's free." His smile is mild as milk. So Dasha places it on his tongue. "Welcome, brother. Siddown." And the world swirls around them. His lips stretch in a grin. Whatever this cannibal cap this is it's strong. Already he feels ready to embrace the world in harmony. Everyone else is doing the cap too. Wearing it. Haha. The shadows are softer. The lights are more welcoming. The sky dissolves into a haze, a pre-creation equalness that feels soft and warm and welcoming. As if the autowomb never squirted out a Replicant named Dasha to begin with.

I'm tripping hard.

Where'd you come from, brother?

0Z.

What?

Third colonial wave. Sponsored by the JCEP. Landed all after this.

There is a long limbed walker amongst them. It is a 2 dimensional figure on the ground.

Huh. You missed the big war by… sixty something years.

Scuttling, scurrying. It provokes an disgust reflex, and then a fear reflex. And everyone keeps talking, because to say that it exists is to be plucked away by the Lady.

That's ten after the first one. Cigar light. Smell of something funky. Something is moving in the Chaos. They started that fast? Yeah. I remember. My grandfather was from Egypt. Joined to sabotage the Polars. And the Polars, they had guys to sabotage the Russians. And everyone knew.

Hahaha. That's wild. What's back home like? Well. Blown up. Huh? You heard me. There were AI called the Pesedjet. Who called them that? Who knows. They catalyzed a black hole on Earth. And then everyone went the way of the Dodo.

The Lady is among them. It is the Divine Spirit as a fungi. It doesn't leave much room for anything else. It is terror and wonder. The fear reflex, pinging in their systems, is lubricant for conversation.

What's the dodo?

The Lady is now a dodo.

See.

From what I heard Earth wasn't doing too hot. But at least it was home. And at least the animals didn't die because they ate something Megiddo. Sure. Where's 0Z?

A list of coordinates. Meant nothing. Until an oldhead remembers the Russian notation system. Oh, that place. Why, though?

It rises. Oh, it rises. Now it is real, it can do them harm. All know this in their bones.

Solar power. What's the deal with Kozkolvagrad. Well. They're bastards. They're pigs. They live here, full on fish and shit, and they still leave us hinter bastards to starve. What the hell, how do they even have poor people around? It's a shame, by Jesus and the Saints. Yeah. Cargo glider crashed in our colony, chased by the AA-

A bigger bunch of bastards. But they pay in bullets and shit. Yeah. That deal for the bullets really saved our bacon. -so one of us is testing the AA and I'm here in Kozko.

It fades into the black. And all let go of a breath they didn't know they were holding.

Hey, you're saying Kozko. You'll be like us soon. You're even trying to get a paycheck from both sides. Who do you think we are? You? Family. La Familia.

Hahaha. Nice pun. Yeah, we're a family. And apparently what we run is against the law, here in whatever they call civilization. And most of us were kicked out of our old homes. We live in the sand and scrub now. Neither fish nor fowl nor flying bird. We are of Our Lady, and Our Lady is of Us. Rough life. Ain't so bad. Skies are blue. God in his heaven. All's alright with the world. Hey, buddy, can we meet your guys?

I'm not sure if I should do it buzzed.

We're all buzzed. Equal playing ground. Booze or death cap or the lady it's all the same.

Alright.

When Dasha woke up the next morning, he remembered everything. And his tongue felt like it was full of spiders. When he walked back to his hummer he avoided the shadows.

"Test, test. This is Dasha. I've… well, I've made contact with the mafia. Not the mafia. Kind of the mafia. They're caravaneers, nomadic. Call themselves… they don't call themselves at all, I'll just use the Family from now. From what I remember, they're sort of outcasts, probably made a bad decision somewhere. I know, I know, hardly a good point of contact, but they let me into their manifests. They move a lot of stuff, anything that can fit onto one of their rugged twelve-wheelers. Lots of dry goods, food, dry fish, vitamins, electronics, that kind of stuff. Percolates from Kozkolvagrad to the desert communities. Probably the cargo gliders are the ones that handle real cross-continental trades.

"And yeah, they do business with the AA, too. I cannot confirm the existence of any other militarized faction, although I guess most of the truckers here are. Lot of them have guns in their trucks. One of them's even got a mortar in the back. You know the army pays in bullets?

"We closed a deal. I'll put it down in writing. We shaked and spat on it, but I don't think that's a very, uh legal? way to do things. I'll go back tomorrow, see if things are a-ok.

"Kozkolvagrad works on a board of directors model. They mentioned that to me, the new one's a real firecracker. Cutting down on illegal stuff, drugs, cannibal caps, shit like that. By summarily executing the packers. Which… brings me to my next point, which I am going to find very hard to explain. Which is, the people I've made contact with are a smuggling ring that deals in a mood altering hallucinogenic they call the cannibal cap. Which is banned. Reference summary execution.
"Uh, they're pretty big, though. I counted like, anywhere from a dozen to a dozen dozen associated caravans, working off of markings. I'm going to walk around the city some more, get a solid grasp on things. And then I'm going to head home. With the Family, after they finish their business here." Click.

"Where I'm going to get my ass kicked by the Kapitan."

He did, indeed, get his ass kicked by the Kapitan.

"Are you an idiot?" It seems mad. "Are you a brainless motherfucker. What brick from heaven fell and smashed your thick fucking idiot skull and spilled out all your syrupy idiot brains on these sands? What the fuck."

"I was unable to, Kapitan."

"Yeah, I'd live with that, except now you brought the mafiya to our fucking doorstep."

"That's a little too much, I told you that we're meeting in their caravan, right?"

The Kapitan snorts. "Whatever. I ought to dump-" It stops. Some reflex from some memory in his neurons must have overridden it for a moment. "No, I won't. In any case, it's… usable, I suppose. We would get one foot in the door and not be entirely locked into Kozkolvagrad's network. I'll go talk to them, I suppose." It glances at the waiting gangsters? Traders? Who knew? "Beggars, choosers," it mutters under its breath.

Select One
[]- Trader Joe's: Just business. They take our resources, or shuttle mechanics around, and in return we get our cut. A simple, commercial endeavor, without much in the way of fuss and muss. (Gain option to fund the Family at the start of the turn with Resources and Capacities, with random rewards given at the start of the next turn.)
[]- Black Society: Romance has swept the 0Z's, overpowered their common sense. There were arguments drawing from half-implanted literature regarding the role of criminal sub-societies as semi-vital parasites on society, but mostly, it was good to be a gangster. (Gain option to fund the Family with Resources or Capacities to influence or gain information on Kozkolvagrad.)
[]- None: Good talk, sorry, but nothing you have interests us. Happy trails.

Down By The River

Its brain always twitches after a session with the mind doctors.

The heat didn't help. It told the Kapitan, one week staying out of bright lights. The Kapitan told it to stop complaining, that's for baselines and you know we're augged for heat res and body cooling. Here's some mineral water and deal. And it could have dealt, really. It could have dealt with the mild aching if its job didn't involve going verbal knife to knife with an old priest that knew his audience better than he knew his own asshole. And this fucking buzzing in its ears, nothing like a mosquito, more like putting an ear to a microwave, sapped his attention. Sometimes it faded, sometimes it surged.

Ovochok waits for Father Piotr to finish his speech and sips his water. It's a good one. There's nothing about tradition, there's nothing about the good way of living, because to say that here, in an auditorium carved from red rock, half in and half out of the earth, is to spit in the eye of everyone watching. No, it's all about hate. Hate down to the bones. This will never happen, because if we do this, we'll be fucked day in and day out by a pair of army boots. We might as well lock ourselves in irons, right here, right now, and march to Kozkolvagrad to die in one of their mines.

Good argument. You can't outargue outrage, you can't play fuck fuck logic games with hatred. It might win points in collegiate debate but in real life if you don't get stabbed the other guy will just portray you as an out of touch egghead.

So his game plan is rock solid. Lay out the benefits. Keep expounding on them. Pound on them again and again and ignore all the shit Piotr throws at him. Vladimir's in, and so are roughly four out of every ten in the crowd. It's simple, Ovochok says. More people equals more things, food if nothing else. More food equals more people. It's a virtuous cycle, once a critical mass of warm bodies shows up, you're good for the month.

Aha, Father Piotr sneered. You just want our land. If it was different, you'd come in with guns and put a bullet in our skulls out in the desert.

Seriously, it's like chewing on a dry bone with him. Ovochok prepares to launch its next verbal assault. Some meaningless natter about respect and you'll make so much money holy shit do you want to die here?

By the time it's over, the sun's creeping down the horizon and the temperature has shifted from a balmy thirty six in the shade to a freezing seventeen. At least, Ovochok thinks, its pretty sure it did what it needed to.

Result: The gulch town has allowed the construction of a landing strip and a parking lot outside of the city's limits. Father Piotr has sworn to oppose construction by any means he can, personally.

Housekeeping Items

The hot season is coming up. Chemical sources still haven't been located. We're running very low on metals. Anything you want to do, write it here. Example votes are provided.

[]- Entreport Construction: Finally. (Requires activation of 0Z Mechanized Factory. Incompatible with any personal orders in the Boneyard.)

[]- Create Facility: Build a copy of any existing facility. (Requires 3 Manpower, 1 Industrial, 1 Power, 3 Academics, 2 Metallics)

[]- Desert Delving: Send out the Explatory Platoon to see what's up with the surrounding areas. (Chance to gain Resource extraction spots, local entities, and other miscellaneous items.)

[]- Write in: Your choice.

Capacities:

• Manpower: 3/5
• Academic: 4/10
• Industrial: 3/3
• Power: 5/6

Resources:

• Metallics: 1
• Chemicals: 0
• Nuclears: 3
• Biologicals: 3

Air Freight

The Kapitan has found out that it is a fan of red tea, not the minty Megiddo stuff that the Family rep, Eddie, packs in bushels for his private use. Lt. General Mark Sayid of the Amalgated Army is a fan of it though, so for now the Kapitan holds its tongue. Behind them, Boneyard Mirrorwhite shines in the midday sun. The machines of war lie quiesient in the sand, their attendant priests driven away from their charges by the heat.

The conversation was tense, but as the day dragged on the chest beating, the snide comments, the near outbreak of a fistfight, they had settled on haggling out the beginnings of an trade deal. This is mildly to moderately hampered by the fact that Lt. General Mark Sayid ignores everything Eddie has to say, so on pure balance the Kapitan gravitates towards Eddie's arguments and proposals. The Lt. General is pushing hard for the 0Z new cargo planes to serve as an inter-base contractor, jetting around thousands of tons of Amalgate material- jeeps, rounds, parts, and fuel- between their bases. In fact, he claims, most of their bases are already situated on stragetic points in the megadesert, there's lots of people who travel there to get their hydrocarbons, bullets, surplus ration packs. Three more of those would be a great help.

In contrast, Eddie proposes a much more daring plan. To the east, he says, is the Botany Bay. Vast distances, on top of a full on mountain range cutting them off from the Sands means that their land based routes only manage a trickle of trade. If you can get a planeload of Bay goods- pharms, supersoldier drugs, scrubber bac cultures- once a year, you'd pull off a commercial coup.

The choice is the Kapitans. From what it can tell, the Lt. General is more than a little desperate to smooth out the logistics of his army. His uncle was a quartermaster, wasn't he? It might not just be professional, it could be personal. On the other hand, the Kapitan thinks that introducing a third power between Kozkolvagrad and the Army would be beneficial for their situation, give them more options between running to jumped up thugs or actual factual slavers. Unless, it thinks, the powers of the Bay practice advanced hyperslavery or some horse piss like that.

Dedicate Your Fleet To…
[]- The Bay: With a boutique of finished industrial goods and Eddie, who claims to have contact with the Bay, on board, the 0Zs will initiate diplomatic and economic contact with Botany Bay. (-1 Manpower, -2 Power, -1 Industrial)
[]- The Army: You'll provide a contractor service for the Army in their logistical tail. Your three cargo planes will do a tour and the Army will recoup costs and then some. (-1 Manpower, 0Z Cargo Bombers, lasts until Turn 4.)

Fleet Stats:
Cargo Fleet
Purpose: Transportation (++) Bombing (+)
Condition: Working
Three repurposed bombers with all but their engines and absolute vital electronics stripped out for increased cargo space. Able to make the cross-continent flight if not with ease, then with only some difficulty.

Inexorable Capitalism

"Now that we're settled in, we've got some idea of the human landscape of our surroundings. Let's discuss some smaller scale trades we can do with the local tribes, clans, co-ops, whatever they're called. First on the agenda is the possibility of a resource-resource trade."

"I can't say that I think it's a smart move. I mean, what the hell do we stand to get? Their standard diet is algal slime and mushrooms, plus whatever roadkill they run over. They live on the margins, we cannot get anything but their services."

"Call it charity. We can send some guys out on a tour with them. Fix their rides. These guys are after all, the vital arteries of the Sands trade. Hell, we do good with them, maybe they can start to ship our stuff gratis and we don't even need to pay their electricity bill."
"Goodwill's nice, but are we running a charity? Round three of the colonization mission was supposed to modernize Megiddo's infrastructure and human talent pool, but we came to see everyone's lost their goddamn minds. We have to be more discerning with these things, we've been too friendly with the Army. We can do our jobs over in Kozko."

"First of all, you remember they're slavers, right? And we're delivering a bunch of fresh, knowledgeable brains over there. You know they'll just clap collars on them and make them their personal wrench monkeys to the end of days."

"Okay, so what do we get out of the other guys? Huh?"
"Nothing. Except hey, more warm bodies, more guys doing our jobs and maybe Father Piotr can stop calling us the slaves of the devil all the goddamn time."

"Alright, let's put an end on this. What else do we have that we could be lighter on?"

"We have a pile of fissile material that we won't need unless we're planning to build a nuke."

"Don't even joke."

[]- Student Exchange: It's eventually decided that a team of technicians will accompany the Family on their next trip to the seaboard, with the intention to find entities there that are amenable to further contact. (-2 Manpower, -2 Academics, ??? Reward)
[]- Handyman: Teams of techs will do rounds around the Desert, fixing the little things that needed fixing, as a measure of engendering goodwill and not so subtly gaining more negotiating leverage over the army. (-2 Manpower, -2 Academics, ??? Reward)
[]- Peanuts: Spread some feedstock around, iron, some potatoes, biological materials around the wandering tribes and see what that nets you. (-2 Biologicals, ??? Reward)
[]- Responsible State: Do we really need all this enriched fissiles sitting around? Pawn them off to whoever asks (definitely the Army) and get a killing out of it. (-1 Nuclear, +5 ???)

Gulchville Blues

"AND WE, MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF CHRIST, SHOULD NOT BE COZENED BY MAMMON, WHO COMES UNTO US BEARING GIFTS OF HONEY AND BREAD."

Mid-morning. The first team had just arrived, beginning preliminary land surveying, geological studies, and outlining the beginnings of a plan before the real industry starts. No sooner had they arrived then Father Piotr started his sermons.

"Excellent voice control, fantastic subject matter." June shakes their head. "Nevertheless, I am forced, on balance, to give him a four out of ten for being gratuitously hurtful for his comments to the people bringing him new lease on this speck of sand. Do they even know what honey is?"
"Mmm."

"Lubin, sometimes I think that you really don't care about our little outings."

"Congradulations. I don't." The Replicant called Lubin shakes his factory bald head, while Father Piotr sermonizes with real fervor on his sandstone podium some distance away. Paradoxically, the priest's sermons are more popular with the Replicants than those of this nameless village. The Replicants were starved of entertainment, and most of the villagers, well, they were out figuring how to scam the Replicants. Some of them were pretty successful, most of the Replicants got real wise to an offer of the local sap-liquor after they woke up head throbbing, stripped down to nothing but their undershirts.

"THESE VOID BORN LIARS, WHO COME TO ENSLAVE US TO THE BEAST OF WAR, SHOULD NOT BE WELCOMED TO OUR BREAST."

Lubin remembers. The Kapitan, speaking for the mission, from the computers, had taken him and a couple others like him- Replicants tooled to function under severe stress, conflict solving protocols in their wetware, and skillsofts built from wetworks personnel- and told them they might need to plug Father Piotr if he goes on like this.

(You don't think that by making these plans you're making it more likely? Lubin remembers asking.

Better safe than sorry, the Kapitan shrugs.)

Poor guy, Lubin thinks. Pressing against the wheels of progress, he's going to be flattened one day. The priest stretches his arms out, the necklace of skulls, written with scripture, clattering against each other.

He thinks that this is probably what the English thought after stacking up bodies in India.

"Yo," another one of their workers calls to them. "Break times over. I get to watch Skulls now."

BEGIN CONSTRUCTION?
[]- Yes.
Scale: Medium
Costs: 0Z Factory (Industrial 1, Manpower 1, Academics 2), Manpower 2, Power 1, Biologicals 1
Benefit: The construction of an airstrip with attached storage, leisure, and radar facilities nearby.
Time: 3 Turns
[]- No. (Ducks still need to get in a row.)

The Flowers Under the Glen

"Good find," Pere nods. It is the squad lead of the Exploratory Platoon, and it is glad to be out in the sun, roaming about. The Sands are beautiful, best appreciated by doing ninety klicks an hour at dusk, watching the sun dip below the horizon in a blur of bruised colors. Not holed up doing the last weld jobs, or fixing the hydroponics, or whatever ten thousand little things needed doing. On Day 14, 2300, Zed caught something on the drone net, circling above their heads and seeing for hundreds of klicks around them. A ridge of mountains had risen up suddenly to their east, and evidence of spillage- like an alluvial fan, industrial residue when they were blasting the hell out of the mountain was clear as day on the feed.

So they pointed their hummers east and raced each other there. They got there just as the sun was creeping up the horizons, and at that point they might as well start scaling it.

0900, they discovered a rusted metal seal halfway up the ridge. Jabowski and its sappers rigged up some thermite and cut it off, exposing one musty old tunnel cut into the mountain. Too level, too polished, to be anything but manmade.

So back to Pere's present.

"Good find," the replicant squad leader nods. It lacks real memory of horror, fictional horror, of ghosts and shadow dwelling demons, but at the end of the day it and everyone else is an overengineered monkey, and the rational monkey brain is politely stating that you don't know what's in there, there could be alien leopards that could eat your face, you should bug out lighting quick. Well, screw those instincts. "Bring up the lights, let's figure this puppy out."

Handheld torches turn on, washing the darkness with beams of light. Megiddo Mid Latitudes Megadesert Uranium/Copper/Iron Extraction Facility. Plain English.

"Cooo-ee." Jabowski whistles. "What a find. Lead, the Geiger's reading normal, at least for this level. Permission to nip on down and fetch some suits, just in case?"

Pere laughs. "Sure. Bring me my teakettle too, let's have lunch here." Laughter spreads, but Jabowski still fucks off with his team.

"I get bad vibes from this, boss," Perem says. He's the closest Pere has to a brother, latched onto him the moment they were ejected to the autowomb. The rest of the platoon venture forward into the tunnel. It seems to be a service one, a residential/HQ sector. Plastic doesn't rot, and the floodlights flick over office chairs and rusted fixtures of things that could be anything from bedsprings to table legs.

"Why? Scared of ghosts?"

"I just said I didn't like the vibe. Where the fuck is the life?"

Perem's right, Pere realizes. There should be roaches, there should be rats or rat analogues, scuttling around, making creepy noises. Here, the only noise is the sound of the boots, the constant beeps of the radio of search parties checking in, saying they found what appears to be a common area, they found a bunch of old things that look like laundry bins.

"Who knows? You know, the bio-softs say that Megiddo might be in an earlier stage of biological development. All the rats, all the roaches, they're all shelled invertebrates in the ocean. We could be feasting on shellfish."

"Blegh. Prison food."

Pere shakes his head. Radios in. "And someone figure out what's making that clicking noise, I'll rip their arse out for wasting bandwidth!"

"Staircase," one of the other two that's with them points. "Doesn't look heavy duty."

"That it is, that it is." They started down and then…

Well, the fourth member, a Replicant on loan from Near 0Z Ops, stumbled and fell into Perem, who maintained its stance. "What the fuck, wake up, brother," Perem exclaims, turning and righting Flutek. "Brother?" A light shone into its eyes, and this was a powerful five hundred lumen lamp. Flutek didn't do anything but snore.

Pere felt powerful bad vibes.

"Here, let's get Flutek upstairs, near some light. Squad 1 to All, we have a man down. Sleeping, if you believe it. We're heading upstairs, near the entryway. We have found a staircase, can someone do that for us? And for God's sake, will someone do something about that fucking clicking?"

"Squad 3 here. We'll take the shot. Bored as shit with dorms, anyway."

"Jabowski here. Might be Morse."

"Could be. In any case, you had better get the suits up here. Don't waste time deciphering it until we've mapped out the first two floors."

"Aw, hell. Jabowski, out."

They laid him down near the sunlight. One of the platoon members had medical training, not a skillsoft, but a textbook and training with the 0Z clinic. "I don't think it's enemy action," they decided. "No puncture marks, if it was some toxin, like aerosols, you'd all be sleeping. Still, I'd suggest you all rock masks. Get Squad 3 on the line, Squad 3, are you here?"

"Yes. Fuck all that. Motherfuck all that. You want to get down here, you want to see this for yourself, right now."

They sound shaken as hell. Pere and the others beat feet downstairs, where they found the lead for Squad 3 staring at a tableau.

In the central atrium, leading to each hallway radiating outwards, are several dry as dust mummies all lying in a circle. Their ochre skin wrapped around their bones, and their mildewed crew overalls wrapped around them. Sightless eyes stared at hundreds of meters of rock. Hands clasped over their hearts. Around their necks, a second mouth opens. Each of them had their throats slit before death.

Of course, if there was a corpse, this could happen, a part of Pere's mind says. It's a very dry environment. The seal up there would halt all outside contaminants. Dry them out into cannibal jerky.

Another part of it doesn't want to think about what went down. What mania. What contagious, collective depression, that could drive these people to collective suicide.

"Did you check the other rooms?" Pere asks.

Yes, was the reply. More like these, mummies, three or four to a room. Packed like sardines.

"Well, have you checked for an access elevator?"

No, we just found these and called you.

"Grand," Pere nods. "Let's get the fuck out and have a stomach settling lunch before we decide what to do."

Great plan.

1040 found them sitting in the shadow of the world's biggest tomb discovered so far, sipping the local tea and eating calorie bricks. "I deciphered the Morse, by the way," Jabowski says, lying under one of the hummers. "It was in French, that's why it gave me so much trouble."

"Huh." Pere sips at his cup.

"Here." It passes Pere a slip of paper.

Death is not worth doing
Life is not worth living
ONE DAY WE WILL
RETURN TO YOUR SIDE
Repeat message.

"Hey, Jabowski. Why's it that you capitalized these two lines?"

"I don't know. Just seemed right."

Pere looks at Jabowski. Really looks at him. No, Pere thinks, Jabowski hasn't done anything wrong. It shouldn't consider an artistic flourish as mental subversion. "Right. I think, we should take a nap, and then we cart out all the bodies, nice burial, make a complete inventory of what's left in there, and then we fuck off, and we fuck off far." Pere's suggestion is widely popular.

When the sun goes down, they have most of the mummies buried in the sand, a piece of sheet metal cut into the cross serving as a collective gravestone. A suggestion of a prayer is passed around, but no one remembered the words, so they stood there and bowed their heads in silence.

The good news is that a lot of the elevators down to the mines work. They radio'd in the coordinates to the Ark and left the moment they pronounced that it still had some juice.

Results

• Gain Facility: 0Z Mountain Mine

0Z Mountain Mine
Requirements: Manpower 3, Power 3, Industrial 1
Benefits: +2 to Metallics OR +1 to Metallics and Nuclears
Condition: Working
A tunnel mine cut into a mountain, some three hundred kilometers distance from the Dandelion Ark.

Housekeeping (Choose 2)

[]- Fund the Family: Write In Capacity/Resources to be lent.

[]- Activate A Facility: Write In any combination of Facilities you wish to activate.

Capacities:

• Manpower: 5/5
• Academic: 10/10
• Industrial: 3/3
• Power: 6/6

Resources:

• Metallics: 2
• Chemicals: 2
• Nuclears: 3
• Biologicals: 3