The card contained a video file. It showed the opening of a space station, which looked a lot like the one we were currently on. A number of scientists were present, and Gurgeh was able to recognise one of them - a Professor Darim. Based on the data on the card, Darim was also the name of the man we had found. Perhaps a younger relative, looking for his lost family member?
Our Darim had been drugged into unconsciousness. Lila and Karim took him back to the Aliya and Professor Wana, while the rest of us continued our search of the station. The med bay was our next stop. Here we found more control panels, and decided to have another shot at getting information from them. Gurgeh and Sayah worked together to get enough power into the computers to be able to download some information.
We found some notes from one of the scientists who had worked here. They told of self-sustaining gardens, where the boundary between animals and plants no longer existed. Beautiful oases where travellers could find oxygen. She planned to use DNA manipulation to recreate these gardens, and based on what we'd seen on the space station, it looked like she had found some success.
There was also a passage from the writings of a prophet, describing how the flowers of light could be corrupted. What did it mean? We weren't sure, but it was certainly ominous.
Another eyeless child appeared. Sayah joined Alqadi searching the med bay for drugs to distract herself from it, but Gurgeh noticed it did not seem to be particularly hostile. It reached out a hand towards him. He took it. For a little while they held hands.
The next new arrival was significantly less disturbing. A woman, with clothes and all the normal body parts. Her name was Wahina, and she was pleased with how we hadn't murdered the creepy children. She wanted us to come up to the bio-dome, as mentioned in the notes we'd found earlier. She also looked suspiciously like a younger version of one of the scientists in the video file.
Tahir wanted to have a look at the engineering section of the station before we went anywhere else, but as we approached it we found it was significantly overgrown with plants. Getting through would involve hacking our way through the plants, and that didn't seem like a great idea right now. We made our way to the lift shaft instead. More eyeless children appeared, accompanied by baboon dogs.
The shaft was crowded with creepers. Gurgeh put a hand on one, and when he took his hand away there was an eye looking back at him. While Sayah quietly freaked out, he got the lift working again. We all huddled in the middle of the open platform, and the creepers moved out of the way as we ascended.
The bio-dome was a mass of plant life and feathered monkeys, but we also had something else to worry about. A message from Suleiman, telling us that a light battlecruiser was approaching the station. The Legion were here.
Wahina lead us to what she called the heart of the station, which turned out to be a plant with a face. Wahina's face. She wanted our help. Not with the seeding of the asteroid belt with the seeds of life to create the gardens, which apparently she could do quite well by herself, but to stop the team of Legion soldiers from blowing up the entire space station with a bomb.
Sayah: "They've got three soldiers and a demolitions expert. We've got two soldiers and two nerds."
Gurgeh: "But we are great nerds."
Sayah: "The best nerds."
After a trip to the armory to pick up some supplies, we approached the area where the legionaries were setting up the bomb. At the end of a long corridor, an auto gun had been set up. The two nerds worked together to deactivate it, and then sent in Gurgeh's drone for recon. Tahir used the feed from the drone to identify the closest target, fly down the corridor past the auto gun, shoot the target and take cover behind a makeshift barricade made of gym equipment.
Alqadi ran in, firing on full auto. He was followed by Sayah, who took cover behind a riot shield and fired a single shot, only to discover she'd forgotten to reload after the previous fight. Gurgeh held back, to try to communicate with the plants and get us some backup.
Gurgeh: "Send in the baboons!"
Despite the hail of ammunition flying in both directions, we weren't making much headway and Tahir was close to dropping. But then Tahir managed to stun the legion commander, Gurgeh took control of the auto gun and turned it on the legionaries, and Sayah's reloaded carbine took out the bomb setter. We had won.
Even with the opposing forces all dead and being assimilated into the plant life along with a couple of baboon casualties, there was still the matter of the bomb to deal with. Gurgeh and Sayah got to work. Gurgeh offered a prayer to the Faceless as he opened up the casing, and when faced with the electronics inside, Sayah prayed for the luck of the Gambler. The bomb was defused.
We cleared up a few remaining breaching charges and collected up the auto gun and other legion tech. It was time to go. Had we done the right thing? Wahina had shown genuine remorse at the deaths of the scientists on the station, and her motivations seemed good, but who could know what the consequences of unleashing this entity upon the Rimward Reach would be?
Still, it wasn't like it was the first time we'd unwittingly released something upon the universe without knowing the consequences.
Wahina made us an offer. To implant each of us with a seed that would bring some benefit to us. Gurgeh agreed at once, in the spirit of scientific enquiry, and was keen to gain powers of regeneration. Sayah chose the same, reluctant to take such a risk with her own body but feeling it was the will of the Gambler. Tahir and Alqadi both wanted to be better looking.
And so we went on our way, a cloud of plant matter concealing us from the legion battlecruiser as a path through the micro black holes opened up ahead of us. We could see the space station breaking up behind us, with plants drifting off in all directions. Wahina was seeding herself.
Questions still remained. What were the corrupted flowers that the prophet warned of? What was the real purpose of the Loom of Heaven and the flower-adorned nodes that seemed to control it? What had happened to Lavim? And would we ever catch up with the Fatima's Bounty and avenge our soft furnishings?
Crew of the Aliya is now on hold, so the GM can play for a bit, but may return...
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