Play@YSDC

“So why’d he come and bother us? Damn it!” Nicole curses as Moses twists out of her grip. So instead, she jumps back and tries to get her stun baton out of her rucksack before Moses can get back to his feet.

Str 55 roll: 37 fail. DEX 70 roll: 17

Moses slowly slides backwards across the orange snow, his feet scraping gouges in the soft methane. He jerkily, mechanically, gets to his feet, standing a few metres from the airlock, immobile, invisible behind the iced-up helmet, the continuous hiss of vapour dwindling to a trickle.



As Moses staggers to his feet, Nicole manages to retrieve the stun baton from her bag.

Nicole can go first, then Sam.

Nicole spins round and points the stun baton at Moses, she activated it.

Stun baton roll: 44

Nicole has been a Colonial Marshal for some time. She's used to fighting in low gravity, and with her years of Brazilian jiu-jitsu training she knows how to bring down an opponent, even in unwieldy surface suits. With the stun baton in one hand she reaches forward with the other and grabs Moses's suit, kicking out with her leg to take him down to the ground. In the gentle gravity of Titan he drifts forwards towards the surface and Nicole twists away to deliver a shock from the baton to Moses's suit, just below the helmet where it meets the body. It discharges and crackles but Moses's rigid body doesn't move, he just lies face down in the orange snow.

“Take that you, you perambulating dead person!” Nicole shouts.

Moses treats the jibe with the contempt it deserves. Or, at least, he's not moving or saying anything.

"Let's get moving with him while he's stunned," says Sam, helping to finish binding Moses, grateful that at least the low gravity will make it easier to carry him.

Sam and Nicole each grab one of Moses's arms in order to tie him up. Even through the surface suits the two loud cracks are audible, accompanied by the matching sensation of the arms snapping off at the shoulder, inside his suit. They look at each other, each holding a flapping, disarticulated limb.

SAN check 0/1

"Good thing I'm not a biologist," says Sam. "Otherwise I'd know this is impossible."

Sanity roll (current level 51) for Moses's severed arms moving:
d%

“I think his body might be frozen, brittle. Pretty grim but at least he’s dead and can’t feel it.” Nicole helps Sam drag the body towards the pit.

Sanity:55 roll:27

It's difficult to be sure through the suit but the body does seem very solid, like it's frozen. The arms remain immobile but disarticulated at the shoulder. Sam and Nicole haul Moses towards the pit, dragging him through the orange snow, suit stretching at the top of the arms where they are no longer attached to the body. He doesn't move or say anything.

"He's not responding any more," says Sam. "I think he's dead for keeps this time. We should give him a decent burial."

“Well there’s a big enough hole for him. You can say a few words when we throw him over. And then we really must find Kiara.” Nicole tries not to shudder at the thought of what’s inside the suit as she shifts it towards the edge of the hole.

Isabella follows the other two and peers over the edge of the pit. 'If Jojo's down there do we want to dump Moses on him?' She shields her eyes and looks back and forth, 'I can't see shit down there.'

"Jojo, are you down there?!" calls Sam.

Looking over the edge and shouting into her radio, Sam struggles to see anything but an eerie blue glow that suffuses the very rock itself and seems to blur and distort the base of the pit, perhaps illuminating some kind of vapour. All that she can make out is a rectangular area in the centre of the pit, just visible through being brighter than the surrounding rock. There is no reply from Jojo.

"Should we try going down there?" asks Sam.

Nicole remembers her earlier visions. “Well, we haven’t found Kiara up here. And something doesn’t want us to go down there so... perhaps we should. We can dump Moses over and then find a slower way down for ourselves. Come on, help me with the body.”

"If we just drop him, he could damage whatever's down there," says Sam, "and I think we broke him enough. I could set up a pulley system quick and lower him - and ourselves for that matter."