Avery/GM: Welcome to episode 18 of Beyond the Furthest Stars.

(Intro music plays for 30 seconds, then fades down, ambience fades in)

Avery/GM: So this chamber is sealed completely, but inside you see a woman with bright silver hair. She is either sleeping or unconscious, but she is wearing a vac suit, and it appears that this chamber is self-powered.

Bee/Polaris: Oh shit. Let's pop this bad boy open.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. . No touchies and can I, is there a way to like read, I don't know if there's vitals on the thing or this tablet that I nicely snagged. Can I read it slash Is there a way for me to read it and see if I can find whoever's in this pod? Question Mark?

Avery/GM: It is… So the data pad is currently written in that strange language.

Jenine/Marty: Mm.

Avery/GM: But Navi is still in your chat, so she might have some answers for you depending on how you, you know, what you ask.

Jenine/Marty: So now this is something that I forget that I do have this foci cause I have, I I talkie talk. Are we friendly with, with the Navi?

Avery/GM: I'd say so they're, they're hopeful that you can help them complete their mission.

Jenine/Marty: Amazing.

Bee/Polaris: Which is to blow up

Jenine/Marty: So what…

Avery/GM: Yes, Which at this point would be the blow.

Jenine/Marty: What, what is the NPCs uh, moral score? I asked this for the folk high on page 20. That's called authority, which I took. This is, this is, this is me asking, um,

Avery/GM: okay. Authority…

Chris/Ollie: Is that the one where you get like a whole squad of NPCS?

Jenine/Marty: Maybe?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah

Jenine/Marty: I don't know about, I (inaudible),

Bee/Polaris: but does that, does that work with Rob bits.

Jenine/Marty: That's what that's

Bee/Polaris: with AI bits.

Jenine/Marty: Well, it's npc.

Avery/GM: Yeah,

Bee/Polaris: it does say npc. It doesn't specify if, if Robit or Nobit.

Jenine/Marty: It's my only non squishy thing.

Avery/GM: your level for that foci is just level one.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yes. I would say that it, it will work as long as it is not outside of what her programming will allow.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Amazing. Amazing. So this is, this is your request. I'm gonna. So hi again… just wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about the, as as a medical profe…. prof professional…. I am a medical prof professional. I'm trying to say that with confidence. I am. I, I just got my license, so I am a professional. Anyways, that's me backtracking anyways. So could you tell me a little bit more about the, uh, cap… navigation captain?

Navigation captain? Uh, yes. Um, can you tell us a little bit more on about the medical state that I can also assist in that way, if possible? That is all typed out. That, that she does.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Go ahead and roll your charisma Lead check.

Jenine/Marty: Amazing. Look at me go! No, that’s charisma.

Caden/Bruce: When Marty's doing this, Can Bruce see if the pod is like movable or is it like in place?

Avery/GM: It is bolted to the ground.

Bee/Polaris: That's one laser blade that can solve the problem. That's a, that's a problem solvable by laser blade.

Jenine/Marty: Now that is an eight

Avery/GM: Okay. I put their morale score at a six, so that's perfectly fine. Yeah. So Navi says Certainly there are no classified restrictions on this information. This is the pre-cognition navigation chamber and it is sealed and will not open until power is fully restored to the vessel. It is currently being maintained with an independent power cell that will last for approximately 300 years. The person inside is in Cryos stasis until they can be recovered.

Jenine/Marty: Rec recovered by like their injuries or

Bee/Polaris: turn, turn on.

Jenine/Marty: I, I see, I see, I see.

Bee/Polaris: Like, yeah,

Jenine/Marty: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Taken out of cryo sleep.

Jenine/Marty: So, so there's no injur, no injuries? Question mark?

Avery/GM: They are unharmed… for now.

Jenine/Marty: For, for now.

Bee/Polaris: Ummmmm

Jenine/Marty: for now.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. The, the mission, the mission is to blow up.

Avery/GM: Once this ship self-destructs, they will perish but… that is our mission at this point.

Bee/Polaris: Once the ship self-destructs, they will be super harmed.

Chris/Ollie: But that is a price I'm willing to pay.

Avery/GM: They will be extremely harmed.

Caden/Bruce: I think hearing this, Bruce is gonna like, I don't know if Polaris said it out loud or not, but take out his little mini, um, knife. Like slicer, laser blade and like…

Bee/Polaris: sorry, whatever I say, goofy shit. P Polaris isn't saying it

Caden/Bruce: that's what, that's what I figured. But Bruce is just like gonna try. If he can like weld off these bolts to get this thing floating.

Bee/Polaris: Uh, Polaris's visor does a little sparkly eyes that Ollie did, caught like the same, the exact same one just in Polaris's blue And uh, he's gonna grab both his laser blades and he is gonna help Bruce.

Avery/GM: Uh, sure. That's not even a roll. You sever the bolts from, uh, from the, the mount and you see it, you see the pod kind of float up, and then you see like underneath the mount that there's like a string of like wires attached to… going into this mount and up to the bottom of the pod that are kind of. The power cell or, or feeding this pod from whatever power source that's powering it.

Bee/Polaris: Wait, is the power source in the mount.

Avery/GM: No, the power source is somewhere underneath the floor of the bridge.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris is gonna cut like a square into the hole. He's like doing the thing where like his tug is sticking out and he's like trying to, he's using both hands, trying to try and carve a hole into the floor.

Avery/GM: Roll a dexterity, stab check.

Bee/Polaris: Uh uh uh. Okay. Well away from He's doing it. He's doing it away from the...

Avery/GM: Yeah, totally. I'm just, I mean, there's a chance that you hit something so

Chris/Ollie: I mean, there's plenty of other stuff down there. It might not be the thing we're going for.

Bee/Polaris: That's true. Is anyone gonna stop Polaris from doing this stupid, stupid thing?

Caden/Bruce: Nope. Because Bruce doesn't know. Like Bruce just assumes this is a good idea. Bruce Trust’s Polaris

Jenine/Marty: Now do I… Do I know how to like get one of these out safely or because this is an alien ship. I don't know.

Avery/GM: I'm sorry. Yeah. It's this, like you've seen pre-cognition chambers before but this is a different design than you've seen

Chris/Ollie: Oh, also, yeah. By the way, also Ollie's on the way out to, uh, assist Zahn seeing that e everything's under control here.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, shit. Right.

Caden/Bruce: Everything's under control. Yup!

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Yeah

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. And now that there's no threat between us and him.

Jenine/Marty: True.

Avery/GM: Okay. You, you, so you wanna start heading towards the engine room with Zahn?

Chris/Ollie: Being the, the other fix boy on the team

Avery/GM: Oh wait, you've just… okay. Yeah, no, that's fine. Because yeah, you've destroyed the, the turrets.

Chris/Ollie: I'm gonna bring all my drones with me too. Take my drones. Go home.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Polaris, go ahead and roll your stab check.

Bee/Polaris: I, I'm conflicted because now that Ollie is leaving, Polaris might follow. Now that we know that we get, like if we see the wire going into the floor, like we know this person's gonna be okay, but Zahn did, like, is is not here.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bee/Polaris: and Polaris was shot. So he's assuming that Zahn has also probably been shot within the timeframe.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Zahn has not reported having been shot so you have no reason to assume that.

Bee/Polaris: Exactly. But Polaris doesn't have like a normal line of thinking. So Polaris is just like, there are guns in this room, which means there are guns in every room and statistically Zahn has probably been shot.

Jenine/Marty: That's fair. That's, that's a fair point.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: No, but I also need you guys to stay there cause if I turn the engine. Somebody needs to be directly like with the AI to potentially stop it from self-destructing.

Jenine/Marty: This is true.

Bee/Polaris: Oll.. I mean, Ollie would be the best one to do that cause he hacks good and he's leaving.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, I could probably talk, I could talk to the AI from anywhere

Jenine/Marty: We're all talking. We got a group chat.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you're all fine.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Where, where would the self-destruct like override be?

Jenine/Marty: is it 1 of 5 buttons?

Avery/GM: It would pro…

(laughter)

Bee/Polaris: Every ship has five buttons.

Jenine/Marty: Sorry. Continue.

Avery/GM: Real… realistically, even though this is an alien ship, Ollie, you probably know that given if you were fast enough, you could probably hack into a nearby terminal and disable it.

Chris/Ollie: Hmm. But I would have to do it after power is restored.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Would it have to be up here?

Avery/GM: Not necessarily. There, there are consoles all.

Chris/Ollie: Then, yeah. I'm gonna, uh, head over to the engine room, but have, having seen the, actually were you streaming your helmetCam Zahn?

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. After seeing, uh, the stuff that he had looked over, but, uh, didn't stop like the armory and whatnot, Ali's going to, uh, stop by, take a look.

Bee/Polaris: Just out of curiosity is, does every, is everyone that has like a helmet cam streaming?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Ollie is like 24 7 i r l.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, okay. P… cause Polaris always has his Twitch chat open. , Polaris always, always has his twitch open. Um, okay cool. So we know what all of us are doing. So Polaris would see Ollie leaving and then also probably doesn't, has not been shot So he's like holding up his laser blade, getting ready to stab into the floor and. Stand like sitting there for like a good minute or so, and then he just kind of like looks over to Marty and Bruce and then over his shoulder at Wally and then back to the other two.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will look at him and just be like, I don't mind staying here if anything goes sideways, I'm pretty confident that I would be strong enough to cut these wires and push this pod into our ship. So if you two wanna go, that's fine by me.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will give Bruce his gun and then follow Ollie.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce looks at the gun like he doesn't know what it is.

Avery/GM:. Marty, what do you do?

Jenine/Marty: Could I try and transmit another thought? Can I try and do a, what is it? Transmit thought level one. Just, just what's up? What can I throw into a little conversation? Or am I only getting a little drowning image?

Avery/GM: You're mostly getting drowning images. You do see in this next image of a person drowning, you do see like an extended hand grabbing towards this person, and then a second image of a hand pointing forward, almost like pointing at you.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, we haven't tried just opening it.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Wake this person up.

Bee/Polaris: We could laser blaze it. We, uh, Bruce could laser blade it open.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Could I, is there, this is okay. I think, is she gonna ask for permission? No, she's, is there a latch to open?

Avery/GM: There is. Navi did mention that it is sealed and will not open until…

Jenine/Marty: Okay.

Avery/GM: …Power is restored.

Jenine/Marty: Cool. Okay. Good, good. Great. I think I'll just like, cause I can also do… current thoughts… Uh, there's something about language and language does not impede me from like speaking with this being…

Avery/GM: correct.

Jenine/Marty: So I'll just, Saying we're here to help in like little images, maybe like, like an image of like handing flowers of like importance of like, oh, these are flowers. That means good. Something like that.

Avery/GM: Yeah

Jenine/Marty: And like saying it back and like different images of helping.

Avery/GM: Are you still looking inside the pod or no?

Jenine/Marty: Yes.

Avery/GM: You see this person's face kind of like scrunch, like they're kind of thinking, you know, Like their forehead kind of furrows. And then you actually get words in your head. The words just say, I don't want to die here, please help me.

Jenine/Marty: Oh. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then I'll try and just communicate back. Is there anything, if we turn this ship on, will we have time to like get us all out quickly enough to get you out and to get the crew out? Well… my crew out.

Avery/GM: The voice comes ba… or not the voice, but the words come into your head and it says, activate all artificial intelligence except Segin. S-E-G-I-N.

Jenine/Marty: Okay so I, I immediately like, send that message out to everybody in, in the crew. Hashtag crew, um, group chat. Don't turn on this AI.

Bee/Polaris: Thumbs up emoji.

Chris/Ollie: So with the ais, are those activated with the core or do we have to activate them all individually?

Avery/GM: I was actually just gonna get to that. So…

Bee/Polaris: Sweet.

Jenine/Marty: Sick.

Avery/GM: Flashing back to Zahn real quick. Zahn, you come into the engine room here, you see several like power transformers that are dormant, obviously. And then there is a central reactor core basically here that is quiet and cold and dead and around the other side of this core, there is a computer system that has a faint amount of power that is flashing reboot question mark, Y/N. And it says it in that language that you don't, that you know

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Ah-huh .

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: I'm going to look over the core because, uh, Navi had designated that there were. Four of five wires not plugged in.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Um, looking over it more clear or more closely, you see there are four not wires. Like these are pretty like thick cables and you can see that four of them have been severed just through like some like shrapnel kind of hitting them. You know, a couple floor panels have kind of like, from the crash have kinda like stuck up from the ground and kind of sliced through a couple of these things. And so there are just some severed wires that given the right parts you could probably fix those Fairly quickly.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Gotcha. Am I able to tell what these wires specific or these cables specifically go to?

Avery/GM: Not specifically. You do see that they kind of like lead into the walls of this room and just sort of look like they branch out to different sections of the ship.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Gotcha. Then I will go to, The computer and hit y, enter.

Avery/GM: Okay. You start the reboot process and, you see, five names pop up on the screen and they read Archid, Schedar, Caph, Ruchbah and Segin. And that's when you get the message from Marty that says, don't activate Segin.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Noted!

Avery/GM: So It's a, it's, it's a good thing Marty asked those questions, huh?

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Right? So you get in the group chat noted. Dot, dot, dot .

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Right? As like you send a screenshot of your finger holding right above the activate Segin, like Good Timing!

Bee/Polaris: I mean it's being streamed . We're seeing all of this.

Avery/GM: And then you do get one other message from Navi in the chat with her that says, please reactivate Sagan immediately so that this ship can self destruct.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Yeah, we don't want that. Zahn says verbally as he starts activating the others, but not Sagan.

Avery/GM: Sure. So you activate our kid and you hear, actually nothing happens yet, but you do…

Bee/Polaris: hey real quick,

Avery/GM: yes.

Bee/Polaris: How do, how do you spell all these AI names?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: I'm sorry. I, I apologize.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Just like, I don't know if you have 'em written down in front of you, just copy paste ‘em into the chat or something.

Avery/GM: Yep. I will. Oops. Yeah, my bad.

Bee/Polaris: It's all good. I, I heard them all the first. Is like, wow, these are really cool names. I wish I knew how to spell 'em

Avery/GM: They are the star names for the Constellation Cassiopeia actually.

Jenine/Marty: That's why they sound so familiar.

Chris/Ollie: Nice

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Makes sense.

Bee/Polaris: My brain is thinking some thoughts.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: So wait…

Avery/GM: No… No.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Who’s Navi, if its not one of these five?

Avery/GM: Navi is another star in Cassiopeia.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Oh, okay.

Avery/GM: it's a nickname, but yeah, it's the nickname for the Star Gamma Cassiopeia.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Got it. That's cool.

Bee/Polaris: My brain is thinking thoughts.

Avery/GM: I don't know why

Bee/Polaris: I think you know why.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: I don't know why.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, you wouldn't know why, but I know why, and Avery knows why.

Avery/GM: After activating these AIs, You see a message that says nodes reactivated, awaiting power supply. After each one that you reactivate, and as you finish activating the one before Segin, in walks, Ollie.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: how did Ollie get past the hangar bay?

Jenine/Marty: We yeeted those.

Bee/Polaris: Remember? Hermes?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah Hermes Yeeted them

Avery/GM: Hermes came in and blasted them.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Oh.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, also,

Avery/GM: oh, you wanted to check out the Armory too, huh?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I also probably should check on the ship too, considering the ship almost got yeeted.

Bee/Polaris: Oh Yeah, yeah that’s true.

Avery/GM: this is true.

Chris/Ollie: So yeah,

Avery/GM: I'll, I'll, uh, so yeah, we can, we can back up a few things, a few paces real quick.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I'll put those detours in there.

Avery/GM: So, Ollie, you come into the Hangar Bay and you see there are quite a few scorch marks on the ship formerly known as the Minos. There's no hull breaches that you can see from here, but it is definitely seen better days.

Bee/Polaris: haven't we All ?

Caden/Bruce: Oh God. Zahn's gonna have a field day once he gets inside.

Chris/Ollie: Is there any, any like emergency repairs that we need to do?

Avery/GM: Not currently. Hermes would've communicated that if there was

Chris/Ollie: Ollie like…

Avery/GM: It doesn’t look great though.

Chris/Ollie: It's just, uh, oh my boy. Look how they massacred my boy. But he's gonna ask, uh, ask if everything's good and seeing as there was no, no message or anything, it's gonna be like, all right, that's fine and move on to the armory. Give a thumbs up to the, to Hermes in the ship.

Avery/GM: Hermes sends a, like a, a middle thumb, like , eh,

Bee/Polaris: what? Oh, oh.

Avery/GM: like, you know. Not a thumbs up. Not a thumbs down.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like neutral.

Avery/GM: Sorry.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Yeah.

Avery/GM: I could have worded that better.

Chris/Ollie: I thought it was a middle finger. You were saying at first.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, me too. Me too.I was just like, when did Hermes learn how to cuss?

Chris/Ollie: We're gonna have to have a chat with you young man.

Bee/Polaris: My son, my boy!

Chris/Ollie: Who taught you to say that!

Avery/GM: But yeah, coming into the next room and you pass by the armory. Something shiny kind of catches your eye, poke your head in. You see kind of like stocked in here. You see like a rack of like six, like automatic rifles of some kind. A second rack of like laser pistols and then some armored vac suits as well. There's about eight of each item here.

Jenine/Marty: Ooo Snazzy

Avery/GM: Probably, probably some like standard issue for like crew. I will say on the bridge you did not see any bodies.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. And like none the entire way back here.

Avery/GM: Right. Just the bodies that have been in the sleep pods.

Chris/Ollie: Mm-hmm. All right.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: I mean, it has been three months. They could have been vacced into space.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Pirates could have saved ‘em.

Avery/GM: I just forgot to say that earlier. So,

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: ah

Chris/Ollie: and these are projectile weapons I’m guessing?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. So Ollie's going to put some dollar signs in the, in the chat, he's gonna load up on, he's gonna take a combat or their, what'd you say? Auto rifles?

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Combat rifle.

Avery/GM: Yes.

Chris/Ollie: Okay. Ollie's gonna take one for himself and equip his bots. I'm gonna take the thermal pistol and the laser pistol out of the… his drones Equip them with that and as much ammo as I can carry.

Avery/GM: Okay. Sure.

Chris/Ollie: I don't really think I got much inventory space for all this stuff, so I'll, I’ll let it…

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: well, you do have a couple extra cavities now, ?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I do. I do.

Bee/Polaris: Gross!

Chris/Ollie: but I…

Avery/GM: oh no. Oh goodness.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: In his chest. Geeze louis!

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I know. I'm just being a stinker.

Chris/Ollie: I mean, I don't know. We never said where he got shot.

Avery/GM: Shot in the buttocks.

Bee/Polaris: Why, out of curiosity, why would the hegemony, why would the hegemony employ robots that have a fat dumper?

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Esp, especially for janitorial purposes.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. He, he's a janitor bot. He's got the dump truck coming through.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my God.

Chris/Ollie: So, yeah. Ollie’s gonna leave the equipment for, uh, anyone to come claim if they want it. And he is gonna move on to the, uh, that laboratory.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, Polaris. Isn't Polaris followed Ollie

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Oh, okay.

Bee/Polaris: so he's like . He's been lurking in the shadows.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Uh, so Polaris, you're also seeing these same, same things that, that Ollie is seeing as well. .

Bee/Polaris: Sorry, I'm still stuck on it. I'm still stuck on Ollie having a fat dumpy

Avery/GM: Yeah. Yeah. Same. Its distracting.

Bee/Polaris: this crew has more cake in more ways than one

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. We've had cake from day one.

Caden/Bruce: cake has always been here.

Chris/Ollie: This cake ain't no lie

Bee/Polaris: Bruce wasn't the first one to bring the cake.

Avery/GM: Oh gosh. Cool. Uh, so anyway, coming into this advanced lab, oie, you see the same thing that Zahn saw a lot of papers. Uh, documents and stuff kind of sprawled around here. Actual physical documents, not like data pads.

Chris/Ollie: Hmm.

You also see tools that are kind of hard to clearly identify what they are. Like there's some that are like pretty universal, you know, screwdrivers or screwdriver, stuff like that. But like there are some tools that look like they probably do some very specific task that you're not quite sure of, but yeah, there's not much here. I will say in the workshop, one thing that you two do notice is a, a little tin can Looking robot

Bee/Polaris: Polaris picks him up.

Avery/GM: Get back to that section.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I'm picking, give me my new son, give us our, our new child Hermes is gonna have a sibling.

Avery/GM: Uh, it is currently unpowered, but it's pretty light and pretty, like, it feels like it's almost made out of like Tin or Aluminum or something. Like it's, it's very, it feels very fragile when you pick it up.

Bee/Polaris: Oh my gosh. I can crush this thing in my hands, but I'm not going to.

Avery/GM: Yeah, it's probably like a foot and a half tall and. Eight inches wide. It's very, it's a very tiny robot.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris holds him up Triumphantly towards Ollie. Like, look!

Chris/Ollie: Ollie's gonna get some, uh, like little heart eyes looking at him. I'm a assuming it's like a, an A-powered cell for him. Or is all this like technology kind of foreign?

Avery/GM: It's all kind of foreign.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Dang. We'll have to power him up somehow.

Chris/Ollie: And everything else is de powered like the terminals in here. So I can't download anything for right now. Yeah. All right. Well I guess Allie is just going to like start looking through the documents.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Chris/Ollie: He can't read any of 'em, but he's imaging them.

Bee/Polaris: Just scan 'em for later

Chris/Ollie: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Marty, Bruce, you are still back on the bridge. What are you two doing?

Caden/Bruce: It's a good question.

Jenine/Marty: Excellent question. , is there anything else in this room?

Avery/GM: Not currently With everything powered down

Caden/Bruce: that didn't sound ominous at all.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Yeah. No, I just, sorry, I just mean like there is nothing of note because everything is powered down.

Jenine/Marty: Okay. Cool Cool Cool.

Avery/GM: Once power is restored, you might find something useful, but

Bee/Polaris: like more guns, more turrets.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, I love that. Thanks.

Bee/Polaris: Me too!

Jenine/Marty: Is there a way for me to try and get this thing trans, like the, the, the tablet translated If, if, if Hermes was able to give translation to AI, Can that translation be done in digital? In like, like if I put Google Translate glasses on, is Google translate glasses allowed?

Avery/GM: Yeah. So you don't have a helmet, do you?

Jenine/Marty: I have eyes.

Bee/Polaris: You have a watch?

Jenine/Marty: I do have a watch.

Bee/Polaris: But

Avery/GM: if you…

Bee/Polaris: my only concern would be if it's like not from this general Galaxy, would this like program put in place by this galaxy have any way to Extraterrestrial languages like that, you know?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. No, no, no. I get you. I get you. I'm just, I was just wondering if it is, is there Is there?

Avery/GM: so I will say that, um, if Hermes could Sweet talk Navi. And so Hermes taught Navi the local language here.

Jenine/Marty: Mm-hmm.

Avery/GM: if Hermes could somehow sweet talk Navi into teaching him her language. Then yes, that would be possible.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, okay.

Bee/Polaris: Make Hermes this rule to flirt.

Jenine/Marty: Wait, no, no, no. I got this.

Avery/GM: But I will say that for you to get Hermes to translate this document, uh, you would need to be somewhere where Hermes could look at it in some way.

Jenine/Marty: So I'm gonna, I'm just gonna message hers real quick. So her is, this is your lesson in flirting

Avery/GM: Oh God.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: I didn't know, uh, Marty was such a player to be able to give classes.

Jenine/Marty: Marty isn't Marty's just charismatic? And it's like, okay, wait, let's back up. Not flirting, but talking to someone nicely in a way that they can be friends if you want it to flirt, I don't know, added a little bit of sauce. That's what people tell me.

Bee/Polaris: add a little bit of massage. Hermes is gonna take that. Literally.

Jenine/Marty: Marty. Essentially just was like, okay, so could we trot, I know that you taught Navi how to speak our language. Do you think you can ask her if she can teach you how to speak her language so we can get a little bit more about their wonderful language question mark?

Avery/GM: Certainly, I will be happy to ask.

Jenine/Marty: Amazing. Let me know if you need any help. I have some really good ways of talk. I've, I, I learned a lot about talking to people. It sounds like I might not be good at it, but I promise I'm good at it. You got this buddy.

Avery/GM: Hermes just says, Navi, I would like to speak your language as well. It would be easier to communicate than using a language you are still familiarizing yourself with.

Avery/GM: And Navi responds back and says: oh, certainly I'll be happy to teach you. And you see like in the chat, like you see like a little like transfer bar, Like status bar going across

Avery/GM: and Hermes just says, Marty, I should have this language transferred to my memory very shortly. What do you need me to know this language for?

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: What is very shortly to Hermes?

Jenine/Marty: Excellent question. Um, but oh, I just, there's this little tablet that has like, I think it has the medical, I mean I found it in the Med Bay or what I think is in the equivalent of Med Bay, so might have the medical records of the people that are on this ship or the beings And maybe want to learn a little bit more. And if there's other documents that we find throughout here, it'd be nice to have the translation.

Avery/GM: Excellent. If you bring what you need translated onto the ship, I should be able to translate them.

Jenine/Marty: Amazing. We're gonna head there after everything gets set up because we do not wanna leave our friend here. Oh, I also then I'm like, oh shit. I rule number one, you gotta learn names. Um, and I just got like to our friend that's in the little pod and I'm like, I'm Marty, what is your name? Completely, completely changes conversation.

Avery/GM: conversation. You get a picture in your mind, a boat rowing, and you get the impression that her name is Rho.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, I thought it was gonna be Rowan

Avery/GM: R-H-O.

Jenine/Marty: R-H… Ooo cute. Amazing. . Oh, this is fun. Thank you.

Bee/Polaris: How do you, how do you image project the name Marty?

Chris/Ollie: Back to the future?

Jenine/Marty: No, I… You do like a, like a store? Like a little, not a big store, but like a little store… a Mart. and then, um, Oh shoot.

Bee/Polaris: I guess you, I guess you could get like smarties the candy and just tear off the S.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Smarties.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah, that's it. Just like a little Mart.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Smarty, arty.

Avery/GM: Sure.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Put together

Caden/Bruce: As this is happening, Bruce has gone back into the other room cuz he feels bad about his cake and he's trying to clean up the mess, but it's going poorly because he's floating.

Bee/Polaris: Aw,

Avery/GM: sure. Yeah. You float back into, how far do you float?

Caden/Bruce: I, where the tart was, I guess, where my cake smashed up against the wall.

Avery/GM: Oh yeah. No, that's, that's the same room that Marty's in.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Cause you were on that was on the bridge.

Caden/Bruce: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: Marty came. Yeah, Marty came in to, yeah,

Jenine/Marty: to do the heal heal.

Avery/GM: Bruce, as you're sitting here kind of mourning your cake, you get a private message on your little communicator. Watch it just, We need to talk smiley face, cat emoji. And then it says go into the next room and then through the med bay, take a left down the hallway and go past the kitchen. Or your friends won't make it out of here.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will read that message. Uh, look up to Marty and be like, I'm going to go and see if there's anything I can, um, borrow from this kitchen that would make our kitchen better… and head that way.

Jenine/Marty: Uh oh. I'll be here. Okay.

Caden/Bruce: And Bruce will swim. . also, he is using his tail as like, like a crocodile, I guess does in the way.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I was just about to say, I imagine Bruce like swimming through the air. Like a, a gator.

Caden/Bruce: Yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Oh, that's cute!

Avery/GM: So, yeah, Bruce, you come into this kitchen and you do see like a trail of spice containers leading into this next room , and there's like some really rare spices. There's like some saffron here and you know, some like gold boon and stuff like that. Like, there's like some, like, that's not a spice, but you know what I mean. Like there's just, there's like some like fancy cook stuff like floating here, like leading you into this next room.

Bee/Polaris: That's pretty hilarious that they're Hanseling and Greteling you.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is probably just sweeping this up with his tail though as well on the way, just like kicking it out to his hands and like as he's swimming along, you just see like Everest soft and like a spice jar just being added to the collection as he's starting to hold.

Avery/GM: Very good. Yeah, so you come into this room past the kitchen. it is clearly a vehicle storage room of some kind. There are a bunch of like floating vehicles here. You see some hover bikes and some Atmos fliers and some gravtanks. There's like two of each of these things in here, like you're kind of wondering like why Zahn hasn't checked this room out, cuz this is going to make his day. But as you come into this, Uh, you hear over your personal intercom that no one else can hear, and this voice just says, “took you long enough. I really thought the spices would've drawn you in sooner.”

Caden/Bruce: I don't particularly like the sound of where this is going. Um, can I help you?

Avery/GM: It's not a question of can you help me? The question's already answered. You will if you don't want your friends to meet the fate they deserve.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: We don't deserve that.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. It deserves a strong word.

Avery/GM: This is not the GM casting judgment on y'all. This is.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I know, I know, I know.

Caden/Bruce: That's a pretty big threat coming from someone who's not even showing their face.

Avery/GM: You hear a, a soft chuckle and you see floating from behind one of these grab tanks. A dark blue tiger. And they have in one hand a laser pistol trained on you. And in the other hand they have a data pad of some kind and they say, you are a clever little Scaph, aren't you, Bruce? I mean, I know how to hide. I know how to make my ship disappear from radar and you know, ghost stealth but to blend in, in plain sight. That is something that few can do well.

Caden/Bruce: I mean… I am only a chef. I, if you're impressed by that, you really should try my cooking. that's much more impressive really.

Avery/GM: Oh, we will get to that. Don't you worry? But you and your friends have made some powerful enemies, haven't you? Namely the Winston family. My Family. And while they may not know your face or your names yet, your ship is well known and it's only a matter of time until they track you down. You know that, right?

Caden/Bruce: So you have not come to track us down and kill us. I mean, that seems to be where my logic is going. But yet you have a gun on me and you’ve not yet tried to shoot. I mean, I am a pretty big target

Avery/GM: to miss. Oh yes. If I want you dead, I, I will take care of that when the time comes. But for now, we actually might have a common interest, well, not common interest, but a common goal that we can work towards. If you want to keep your friends safe, I have need of your little blending in skills that you so gloriously showed off on Bragos. And I can't give you all the details until you agree, but let's just say this. If you come with me, you do the missions that me and my employers need you to do, and in return, I don't hit transmit on this data pad and send all of your names and faces to my cousin Violet.

Caden/Bruce: It sounds like you need me a fair bit, so I'll make you a counter offer. I'll come with you, but you'll hand me the data pad first.

Avery/GM: Go ahead and roll a charisma connect check.

Caden/Bruce: That's a 12.

Jenine/Marty: Let's go!

Avery/GM: They shrug. And float the data pad over to you and they're like, you're gonna come with me one way or another. Why not?

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is gonna take it and, uh, when he's able to delete all the information and replace it with fake shit.

Avery/GM: sure, you probably won't be able to do that right in front of them, but…

Caden/Bruce: No, I, I, I'm just, that, that eventually will happen. Like Bruce is smart enough not to just break the tablet like over his knee or something like, but he just is just like, okay, this information, if it goes out, is gonna be completely wrong.

Avery/GM: Brilliant… and they say, okay, we've got a deal. And they kind of gesture with their, their pistol towards the, the very large teleportation pad that's in this room on the floor. They just say, Stand there for a minute. We'll beam back over to my ship.

Caden/Bruce: All right? Just, um, just know that if this ends poorly for me, it can also end poorly for you. And Bruce will do that.

Avery/GM: They just smile at you and they, they still have their pistol trained on you, and they kneel down and they pull out like a power cell that has like some like wires and stuff attached to it and it looks a little kind of complicated and they attach it to this teleportation pad and like fiddle with a few wires and you see the pad light up for a moment and then they look up at you and say, have you ever teleported before?

Caden/Bruce: I don't believe so. But before they go, Bruce will like subtly drop one of the spices to the floor.

Avery/GM: Very good. They say, okay, well just know that it can be very disorienting and you might throw up, and then they hit a button on this little jury rigged power cell and the teleportation pad flashes and you both disappear from this ship…. back over to Zahn.

Bee/Polaris: No! No Bruce! I knew it was gonna happen, but it still hurts.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Not even the chance to say goodbye.

Bee/Polaris: I know. Just with nothing. Nothing left to say goodbye except for one spice.

Avery/GM: Out of curiosity, which spice?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. What's,

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Is it? What's kind of spice?

Caden/Bruce: I think it's like a bay leaf.

Bee/Polaris: No, the most universal spice.

Avery/GM: So Zahn, You're here. Ollie and Polaris… Are you still in the workshop area or are you coming back down to the engine room?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, if I've gleaned. All the info I can, I'm gonna head down

Bee/Polaris: Polaris. Polaris is going to, nah, Polaris isn't smart. Polaris is gonna follow Ollie.

Avery/GM: Sure. Okay. . I think Polaris is very bright.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, he's okay. He's bright, but not in the like logic way of like, oh, this makes sense to do and this is a good idea. Let me do this. But more a, let me do this out of the box thing.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. If we need a ship drifted, we know who to go to.

Bee/Polaris: I got you. I'm your guy.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: You know, we have yet to drift a ship

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I know. I'm so mad about that.

Chris/Ollie: Wait, we didn't do any drifting in that race? No.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: No!

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, we could. I mean, there wasn't much drifting opportunities.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I don't think Hermes would've, uh, I've done the drifting too well, too.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. how do you, I was gonna say, how do you roll a, uh, like the shuttle in space, if you try to drift? I don't think there's any negative, you know, consequences to attempting to drift in space.

Avery/GM: No, you just swing really far. .

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Zahn, You have activated these, uh, AI nodes or you've, you've reactivated them, but they don't have power. And Ollie comes in as you read the last one that says, please provide power source, or power source required.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: So I take it, it's uh, just a matter of reconnecting these, uh, big old cables so that they can get powered. They're distributed throughout the ship, whatever, right?

Avery/GM: Yeah. And in walk Polaris and Ollie.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: as he turns around from the computer and sees, uh, , the two of you come in, he's like, he claps his hands together and like rubs 'em together. And he is like, and then finger guns, both of you. He's like, perfect.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris holds out his Tin Can son and says, look.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will…

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Oh, nice. He may make, he'll make good, uh, spare parts to get this thing working.

Bee/Polaris: No! Polaris holds him away from… Holds him away from Zahn and like a mad emoji comes onto to the visor.

Avery/GM: Zahn. You will note that probably just some electrical tape. And like some good firm, like, like holding these two cables together and like some electrical tape will probably get the job done.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Oh, I know

Avery/GM: Oh, okay. Zahn was just being funny… I see.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Yes, even though he said that completely deadpan , it was like somewhat reaching out for your robot as you extended it to him. , you could see. Slight shivers in his, under his suit from him like

Bee/Polaris: holding laughing. Yeah. Polaris is, Polaris is holding his son away from Zahn and fully believes that Zahn intends to murder his son

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Yeah. So he's gonna look to Ollie and be like, all right, I need you to hold thi… this cable in this place and he is just gonna like step by. Go through it, put all these, uh, cables back together.

Avery/GM: Sure. Go ahead and roll a dexterity fix just to see how quickly you can get this done, because you'll get it done, but

Chris/Ollie: Oh, should I roll to assist?

Avery/GM: Oh, yes, please.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Eight.

Chris/Ollie: oh, no, I got a good modifier. I got a seven.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: I got an eight.

Avery/GM: Okay. Polaris, do you help at all or are you still just holding your, your tin son away?

Bee/Polaris: No, Polaris is holding his tin son and probably like watching them work while like laying on top of one of Ollie's, drones, like kicking his feet, laying on his stomach and kicking His feet while he holds his son.

Chris/Ollie: Like you’re a cat sitting on a Roomba just floating around.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, but he's like laying on his kind of like surfboard, but like his legs are up and he's like kicking 'em back and forth.

Avery/GM: okay. It takes probably about an hour to, to get all these cables back in, but as you're plugging them in, you do hear like the rumble of like distant systems kind of coming back online and then you plug in this last one, get it taped up and stuff. It's not perfect. It. It will need to actu… The cables will actually need to be replaced at some point. But you do hear Navi announce through the loudspeakers that are now working

Avery/GM: “power restored systems coming back online. Archid… Online, Caph… Online, Schedar… Online, Ruchba… Online, Segin… Offline.”\

Bee/Polaris: Oh my god

Avery/GM: Self-destruct sequence, still disabled. Unable to complete mission objectives.

Chris/Ollie: Ooh, okay. , because I was thinking

Bee/Polaris: oh my God.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, they're, because they're not gonna blow it until all of 'em are on.

Bee/Polaris: I thought. Okay. I thought it was like going down the sequence and rebooting all of them, regardless of what Zahn did.

Avery/GM: No, no. No. Okay. Oh my gosh, my, my poor little eyes. If Zahn had activated Segin, then yeah, then you would've had to probably try and hack some shit, you know?

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool.

Avery/GM: Two minute countdown or something like that.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Or this would be the end of season one and Season two would be Bruce assembling the team.

Bee/Polaris: Right?

Avery/GM: reassembling the team.

Bee/Polaris: Bruce is Nick Fury.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Does Bruce get an eye patch?

Caden/Bruce: Yes. . . No hesitation.

Bee/Polaris: We all come back as like, uh, different. Winstons .

Caden/Bruce: Oh God.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Oh God.

Avery/GM: And Navi says, I can still not activate artificial intelligence notes. Segin, please activate Segin so that we can complete mission objectives.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris puts, oops, smiley face and chat.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: Zahn just puts no.

Bee/Polaris: Heart.

Zach/Zahn:ch/Zahn: No! Thumbs Up!

Bee/Polaris: We probably shouldn't have admitted that to the AI that controls the whole ship

Chris/Ollie: after activating most of it.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: And Marty, you are still in the bridge, right?

Jenine/Marty: Ye

Avery/GM: Marty, You see, as soon as the power comes back on, you see a. Shoot up towards the glass of this case, uh, from this person, and they're like, gripping at the glass.

Jenine/Marty: I'm trying to open it.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you, you find the, the latch and it actually responds to your touch and you lift it open and you see this person sort of still flailing their arms a little bit and then kind of stop and, and sit up and kind of like shake their head. They're, they, they seem very disoriented at the moment.

Bee/Polaris: You freed Hatsune Miku.

Avery/GM: Gosh. Okay. Note of self, don't use anime girls for the avatars next time

Bee/Polaris: And if you do use Hatsune Miku

Avery/GM: and our camera shifts perspectives. To outside of the Cassiopeia, we see a small two person craft uncloak and start pulling away from this system. Bruce, you get teleported and maybe feeling a little queasy from the teleportation and Lazuli just kind of left you there. Went to the pilot chair and started piloting away.

And so you kind of have like, there's basically like a door separating the cockpit. This transport area that you're in, and you have just a few moments to yourself.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce Rummages around and his, uh, chef suit that he's wearing underneath his Vac suit and pulls out his mini walkie talkie and presses to engage.

Avery/GM: Perfect… And our camera pants onto the ship, formerly known as the Minos and zooms in on a blender. It starts turning on.

Bee/Polaris: What the fuck?

Jenine/Marty: Oh,

Bee/Polaris: what?

Jenine/Marty: I'm sorry?

Bee/Polaris: what? What? That's awesome. has Bruce been a spy this whole time?

Caden/Bruce: All you hear over the blender is just Bruce's voice, just being like, hello? Can anyone hear me? And that's it.

(background ambience fades out, outro music plays, then fades down)

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a one-up podcast network production. Be sure to check out more of our shows at one-Up podcasts.com and follow us on Twitter and Tumblr at Furthest Pop. Intro and outro Music by Dustin Carpenter. Background music provided by tabletop audio.com and used under an attribution non-commercial license from Creative Commons.

Tracks used include star forged – Vault, Deep Space EVA and Covert Ops. We'll be back on April 1st with our next episode. See you out there beyond the furthest stars.

(Outro plays out to the end)