Avery/GM: Welcome to episode 45 of beyond the furthest stars,

just a quick announcement. Sorry for the delay in getting this episode up. I had a lot of work travel and other issues come up where I just couldn't get to the editing. So it's a little late and it's a little bit of a shorter episode. Like I've been making lately.

Sorry about that, but hopefully. We'll be getting out more episodes soon. Thank you and enjoy.

So you have just this small army of NPCs with you all on this ship, and maybe that's helping boost your confidence in in attacking Rhea and getting Hermes back, Rhea has just sort of revealed that she knows that you all are here on the ship and yeah, otherwise that's it. The power is out, mostly, or the, the power providing light to this floor is out.

So the only thing illuminating this floor is whatever lights y'all have on your person or from your robot buddies,

Zach/Zahn: I believe Zahn kicked on a light source on the side of his helmet, Mando style. So

Chris/Ollie: yeah, I figured

Bee/Polaris: helmet boys have lights. Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Ollie will boost the brightness of his eyes.

Bee/Polaris: I was about to say, Ollie's fuckin' eyes.

Avery/GM: Yeah. 10, 000 lumen flashlight.

Zach/Zahn: oh Jeez.

Chris/Ollie: Brightness Elevating.

Avery/GM: So Yeah. What's what's the plan here? Rhea has graciously invited you up to the deck to come and see her in person.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Polaris flipped off the air because

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah,

Avery/GM: yeah.

Bee/Polaris: The camera.

Avery/GM: The cameras.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. I believe the plan to still be going floor by floor. We're clearing this bitch so we can own the ship.

Bee/Polaris: I think we should take our small army, load 'em all up on the TSKAM and leave . .

Zach/Zahn: What about, what about hermes?

Chris/Ollie: Well, we need Hermes.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, we leave a bomb, obviously, as is our calling card. We gotta stick to tradition!,

Zach/Zahn: but we'll blow up Hermes .

Bee/Polaris: No, we won't. We know that we went over Hermes.

Zach/Zahn: We blow this version.

Bee/Polaris: We know where Hermes is. We'll just put the, we'll just put them like slightly out of the radius.

Zach/Zahn: What? We'll put them slightly out of the radius of the whole ship blowing up.

Bee/Polaris: Well, okay. Here's the thing, because we established that Rhea is a meat boy, like most of us. And all we had to do was blow a hole in the side and vac her and then shoot her with her ship.

Chris/Ollie: True. If we void canon, the the wall of the the cockpit.

Bee/Polaris: We Don't have that.

Chris/Ollie: Oh. What do we have on

Bee/Polaris: the custodians have that

Chris/Ollie: on the TSKAM.,

Bee/Polaris: the custodian. Yeah. Well,

Chris/Ollie: we've got the plasma gun.

Bee/Polaris: On their way,

Jenine/Marty: the custodians are on their way.

Chris/Ollie: Plasma's good enough.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, they're on their way. 'cause Marty called Polaris's parents to come pick him up.

Jenine/Marty: No, no, no, no. Polaris. The only way that Marty could find a way to get friends was through. This was a bad idea. No, no, no. This was bad.

Bee/Polaris: yeah.

Jenine/Marty: Was a bad idea.

Bee/Polaris: calling Polaris's parents, who notoriously hate everyone that isn't Polaris. To tell them that Polaris is in a dangerous situation, probably not the best move. But I got here fast. Yeah, but they're gonna get here fast as well.

Avery/GM: Oh, it'll all come to a head. It'll be great.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, good. Anyway, Polaris is gonna be put in timeout.

Avery/GM: Because there is also another thing coming.

Jenine/Marty: I don't know what you're talking about. We're just gonna go, we're just gonna go and have fun.

Bee/Polaris: Are we missing anything? We have the oracles. Is the, are the Crimson Chaos Pirates on the way?

Jenine/Marty: My buddies!

Avery/GM: Rhea's plan is a two step plan

Bee/Polaris: right!

Avery/GM: first blow up Ithaca. second part open a wormhole to the other galaxy.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, to start a war, to start an intergalactic war. Yeah. Well.

Avery/GM: There's always some jackass trying to cause a war.

Zach/Zahn: Why would you want to cause a war with another galaxy when you don't even own the whole resources of this galaxy?

Bee/Polaris: To have a common enemy to weaken the ones opposing you so that you can swoop in after that's taken care of so that you can control all the resources of this galaxy.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, eliminate all public support for rebels to unify against a common threat.

Avery/GM: Yeah, come on, did you not watch star wars? So yeah, so anyway you're just gonna head up with this whole army up to one floor?

Chris/Ollie: Well, how many floors is it? We've got like, one, like, armory above us, and then is it the cockpit above that?

Avery/GM: You've got deck three, which is right above you, and then in between decks two and three is the information core, which can only be accessed from deck three, and then you've got the command deck.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, yeah, that's right. Ollie has control of one of the robots in the information core, or both robots in the information core, I think, and was doing something with one of them.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. I think one of them, they're hacking the core and downloading it right now, or they're doing something with the core.

Avery/GM: Yeah, you were, I think you were having them download the information.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. I think we have the information now, right? Like we have the layout of the, everything of the, all of it.

Avery/GM: Yes. So you do have quite a big party. If you're going to go up to the next floor, there will need to be two trips because this many people will not fit in the small ass lift.

Bee/Polaris: Perfect. Wait, wasn't there a secret hatch?

Zach/Zahn: Well, we could send Ollie with all the robots up in one go and then the rest of us behind.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. There is also the secret, the secret boy hatch.

Avery/GM: There is the secret hatch that is on deck three that goes straight up to the command deck.

Bee/Polaris: Why don't we just cut a hole in the ceiling and fly up?

Zach/Zahn: I feel like that would be pretty obvious.

Bee/Polaris: We're already on camera! Rhea addressed us directly!

Chris/Ollie: It took us a little while to cut the hole in that wall.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, that's true. The floor might be thicker. Well, Polaris has a jetpack.

Avery/GM: I forgot I gave that to you.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, I also forgot you gave it to me. Until the end of the last fight. Doesn't Ollie have extendo tentacles in his dog form?

Chris/Ollie: I do. I'm not quite sure if they could like, pull me up though.

Avery/GM: They're, they're basically Doc Ock style.

Caden/Bruce: Could I not just like, lift you up to the ceiling?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Yeah. Bruce could probably just put us all up there.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, true. Just grab us with his tail.

Chris/Ollie: Bruce, uppies!

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, uppies! Yeah. Okay. So like Part of us can use the lift and then the other part of us can use the hole in the floor that we create that we'll have to repair later.

Zach/Zahn: Man, I'd be the one who has to fix that.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, Polaris does a lot of damage that you

Chris/Ollie: We're starting to build up an army. I can start delegating repair tasks to my robots.

Avery/GM: Marty, could you roll a 2d10 and let me know which, which number is, and then just let me know which one is the 10 spot and which one is the ones spot.

Jenine/Marty: Okay, so it's a 6 and an 8.

Avery/GM: So 68?

Jenine/Marty: Almost a 69, unfortunately.

Zach/Zahn: Awww.

Avery/GM: So close. Okay. That's all I needed to know.

Caden/Bruce: I don't like this.

Zach/Zahn: Love it.

Chris/Ollie: We have the number advantage. Might as well use it while we have it. We should rush up the main stairs.

Bee/Polaris: Should we not say this in our group chat and not out loud where Rhea can definitely hear us?

Chris/Ollie: Oh yeah, that was, that was a group chat. Hahaha. No. Yeah, totally. We should. You know, it's my bad. Yeah, my bad. Usually when we're talking to each other, it's, it's group chat for me.

Avery/GM: Yeah, no. I think we established that before. Like, usually it is group chat.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, is Psi in the group chat?

Avery/GM: Psi is not in the group chat.

Bee/Polaris: Claris walks over to Psi and says what's your handle?

Zach/Zahn: What's your at?

Avery/GM: Yeah. It's at SilverShield01. I ended up getting on a little late, so, you know.

Bee/Polaris: Someone else had. That's unfortunate.

Avery/GM: Yeah.

Bee/Polaris: Why didn't you go with Silver Shield Official?

Avery/GM: Oh, that's a good idea. I might look into that.

Bee/Polaris: Anyway, Polaris, add him to the group chat. Actually, he makes a new group chat and adds everyone and says and calls it New Management.

Avery/GM: New Management. Okay. So, yeah. So, you have these robots. You have Jasper, who is just a historian who you could probably ask questions of if you have questions. You have the two super psychics, and then you've got the rest of your party. Oh, and all of Ollie's drones. So, yeah. So who's going up first or what's the plan?

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's going to put forth. So we know that there's an armory directly above us, right?

Avery/GM: On the next floor.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah. Yeah. Cause I guess it's not technically directly. Cause that's what the information

Avery/GM: Depending on where you cut, you might cut into the information core.

Zach/Zahn: Got it. So I was going to, well, there's a armory directly before Rhea.

We could, I don't know. Maybe we raid that. Maybe there'll be something anti psychic in there. No, no offense. He like, quickly was like yeah don't, don't take that the wrong way.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris...

Chris/Ollie: Does, oh really quick, does the robot that I hacked that's in the armory does it have a manifest of the armory? Like, does it know what's in there?

Avery/GM: Yes, yes, I guess that it would, yeah. So, let me pull that up.

Bee/Polaris: Double really quick. Add Jasper to group chat, and also, I believe last session I asked Jasper if he knew anything about Rhea, like, weaknesses.

Caden/Bruce: Least favorite food.

Bee/Polaris: Least favorite smell.

Jenine/Marty: Allergies.

Zach/Zahn: Her relationship with her mother.

Chris/Ollie: Rhea's social medias,

Bee/Polaris: personal thoughts and feelings.

Avery/GM: So answering those in order Ollie, you look over the manifest for this armory and it is all basically just standard issue, like ship weapons for, you know, basic crew members. So it's just your basic laser pistols, rifles, anti personnel weapons. Nothing, nothing flashy.

Bee/Polaris: Any grenades.

Avery/GM: There are no grenades on this one.

Chris/Ollie: They're smart enough to think, maybe, hmm, grenades, spaceship, not a good idea.

Bee/Polaris: Well, it's a good thing the other ship wasn't, because we're hella loaded with grenades.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, we're stacked.

Avery/GM: And one other thing I will note on here, Ollie, is you notice that there are about four dozen Pistols and rifles that are marked as checked out.

Bee/Polaris: Aw Man!

Avery/GM: And you have have not run into four dozen ship personnel.

Bee/Polaris: Oh.

Chris/Ollie: Okay, so Ollie will post a manifest in the group chat, and mention 48 combat weapons are missing from the Arsenal. Be on the lookout for hostiles.

Bee/Polaris: Or, Ollie, can you check and see if there are any ships missing from the ship's bay?

Chris/Ollie: Do I have any access to those? Because we've run into pretty isolated systems so far.

Bee/Polaris: On the floor before didn't have, like the ships and stuff. Like, we knew that there was a docking bay underneath. Yeah. And how many vehicles were there?

Avery/GM: I don't know if you knew how many vehicles there were.

Bee/Polaris: Ah.

Avery/GM: But, if Ollie rolls me a program, an intelligence program check, I'm sure we can get there.

Bee/Polaris: Sick.

Avery/GM: Cause you're pretty much through this, through this mech. You are pretty much interfaced with the rest of the ship. So,

Chris/Ollie: Oh, the armory is the armory mech has like permissions

Avery/GM: Permissions enabled, yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Nice. Okay.

Avery/GM: You just rolled so good that I couldn't not let you hack it.

Chris/Ollie: Dude, rolling three and dropping the lowest is beyond, beyond next level. I just have to do more math now. Yeah. 13.

Avery/GM: 13. Yeah. Okay. Easily. Yeah. There are about 24 two person shuttles that are missing from the docking bay.

Bee/Polaris: Send in.

Chris/Ollie: 24 two person ships.

Bee/Polaris: Send a message to the ship that we came from with the other furry.

Chris/Ollie: So we've got squads.

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah, we sent the other furry down by, by them, Lazuli down by themselves, to the planet to warn the locals.

Bee/Polaris: Lazuli's planet side, to protect.

Avery/GM: So there's no one that you know personally on the Oracle's ship.

Bee/Polaris: But we can ping them, no?

Avery/GM: You could ping a general message to them, yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Well, could we contact Lazuli on the surface from here?

Avery/GM: I believe only one of you has contact with Lazuli directly, and that would be Bruce.

Chris/Ollie: Then Ollie will ask Bruce to please relay the warning to Lazuli.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will just forward the message onwards.

Just like screenshot group chats.

Avery/GM: You get an automatic reply that just reads a bit tied up will respond to your message as soon as I am not being fired upon.

Bee/Polaris: Oh yeah, that'll do it.

Caden/Bruce: Thumbs up.

Zach/Zahn: That's in direct relation to you being fired upon.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Well.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. Yeah. Ollie's... Seeing that he'll forward the same message to the bridge of the Oracle ship,

Avery/GM: okay, they acknowledge your message and you feel the ship's your ship that you're on right now Start to shake a bit more as it seems like firepower has increased.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, wait, did we want that?

Avery/GM: I don't know

Zach/Zahn: I don't know but it happened!

Bee/Polaris: Why but the engineer went down to the the engine and also we told the engineers down there that we didn't murder to Keep it off.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah. An increase in firepower and a decrease in general awareness seems suboptimal.

Avery/GM: Oh, I'm sorry. Increase in firepower coming from the Oracle ship.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, okay. I was about to say, do we really need to go down there and like, dispatch of insubordinate employees?

Zach/Zahn: Not yet.

Bee/Polaris: I'm kidding.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn will murder them.

Bee/Polaris: Okay.

Zach/Zahn: Like he promised.

Bee/Polaris: I mean, he did promise that. Polaris did promise that. But if Zahn starts murdering Oh, well, what's Polaris to do but follow suit?

Zach/Zahn: As everyone should be reminded, Zahn is also in a pretty dark place right now.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, no, that's fair. Polaris is just morally gray.

Avery/GM: Marty, can I get one more percentile roll, please?

Chris/Ollie: Oh. Also, my core on my last roll was 98%, so I'm just pretty much going to assume that it's full by now.

Zach/Zahn: Oh man, 100 percent Ollie Crystal.

Jenine/Marty: 52.

Avery/GM: I'm sorry, you said 52?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay. Good. Good. Good.

Bee/Polaris: I don't like that.

Avery/GM: Nothing to worry about.

Bee/Polaris: I'm sure it's not. But also, Rhea guy didn't, oh my gosh, sorry, historian guy didn't tell us about Rhea.

Avery/GM: Oh, right. So the historian, Jasper so you asked, you asked about what he knows about Rhea and he, his initial response was talking about how she's one of, you The members of the Council of Twelve for the hegemony that leads the, that leads the hegemony under the Eternal One.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: And he starts going into detail about how her origins are unknown, but that she has been rumored to have existed for thousands of years.

Zach/Zahn: Wait, what?

Bee/Polaris: This is in group chat, right?

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's actual response.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, this is in group chat

Zach/Zahn: zahn's actual verbal response. Oh, wait, what?

Bee/Polaris: Polarisays Shh,is like in a library.

Avery/GM: Yes. Records of, of Rhea's existence and, and that of the eternal one and this council of 12 seem to go back to some of the oldest mythologies on, on some planets. They still refer to people with these names, beings with these names going back thousands of years and the paintings and descriptions are all, at least of Rhea, have all been accurate based on what I've witnessed.

She is a powerful fighter, warrior. She, there's, there's a reason she's here and not back on Tartarus. The Eternal One kind of sees her as his personal weapon against the galaxy.

Bee/Polaris: This is all of the group chat, correct?

Avery/GM: No, he, he, well, he answered you verbally.

Bee/Polaris: What? I told him to put it in the okay. Well, I can't be responsible if Rhea kills him first. Anyway. Polaris is going to put a mad face in the group chat and then say, do we really want to fight this lady? Polaris actually turns to Jasper and says, sorry, what are Rhea's pronouns?

Avery/GM: Oh, no, she, she, her.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool. Polaris, go back to the group chat. Do we really want to fight this lady? What did you edit?

Zach/Zahn: Zahn, Zahn shrugs, and like, and puts in the group chat, we're gonna have to eventually. May as well be now.

Bee/Polaris: No, I, I mean directly. We can just vac this lady. And then shoot her with the ship.

Chris/Ollie: If we want Hermes, confrontation seems guaranteed.

Bee/Polaris: No, for sure. I'm just saying direct confrontation might be unnecessary. We could, we could vac the command deck and then shoot her with the ship to guarantee she's dead.

Avery/GM: At this, Rho pops into the chat or, or chimes in on the chat and just says, Polaris, if you do that, you will die.

Bee/Polaris: What? I'm sorry, what? What? Why?

Really? What, why will I die?

Avery/GM: Polaris, I, I told you all that you would need my help on this ship and I didn't really elaborate much, but if you need, if you want Hermes back, all I need is a little bit of time and eyes. On where Hermes is. If you can get me those two things, I can get Hermes back. But if you confront Rhea, you will die. I've seen it.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris throws up his arms like, I don't wanna fight her anyway! Yeah, Polaris is like, okay, well, I guess we can distract her, I guess. I don't Is there any way to Ollie, is there any way to figure out where specifically Hermes is?

Chris/Ollie: Ollie is going to reach out one of his tentacles and reach either into his own inventory or whoever has it, and grab Coil Scanner.

Bee/Polaris: No, ohhhh.

Chris/Ollie: And give that over to Rho and say, will this suffice?

Bee/Polaris: Who has that?

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I don't know who has it, but we have it somewhere.

Bee/Polaris: Cause it wasn't me.

Avery/GM: I'm pretty sure Zahn picked it up.

Zach/Zahn: I probably did.

Bee/Polaris: I have the cube..

Zach/Zahn: We'll just say that I did.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, I don't remember. We definitely picked it up though. I wrote it down.

Avery/GM: For the sake of argument we'll say zahn picked it up.

Chris/Ollie: So yeah, one of my tentacles will just snake into his pocket.

Caden/Bruce: Oh god.

Bee/Polaris: Wow, uncomfortable.

Avery/GM: Okay. Yeah. You have the coil scanner, Rho looks at it, kind of tilts her head quizzically and it's, and catches on and it's like, Oh, that'll work. Yeah. That should work just fine. Ollie, you're good with technology. Could you get it to work for me?

Bee/Polaris: Just press the on button.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn looks at it. It's just like, well, what am I just a meat puppet? I could turn this thing on.

Avery/GM: Psychics notoriously bad with technology.

Jenine/Marty: Fact.

Chris/Ollie: Yeah, Ollie will do it and make it look like he's doing some technical procedure to activate the machine.

Avery/GM: Yeah it turns on.

Chris/Ollie: Just so Rho doesn't feel bad.

Avery/GM: It turns on and it displays like a little holographic display of the area. Like like it pings a couple times and then like this little hologram forms of the ship and kind of the surrounding space around it. And you see that Hermes is located

Bee/Polaris: Real quick, did we actually ever establish where the cameras were?

Avery/GM: They're basically in the corners.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, Polaris would probably have shot those out. So Rhea can't see what we're doing.

Avery/GM: You basically see that Hermes is right here.

Zach/Zahn: Is the horrific creature Rhea? Okay.

Avery/GM: That's Rhea. Yeah.

Chris/Ollie: Okay.

Bee/Polaris: I just saw Hermes.

Chris/Ollie: The anime boss final arc enemy.

Bee/Polaris: Jesus Christ. I don't want to fight that lady. We just learned that she's essentially a living God. Let's not fight her.

Zach/Zahn: No, we got this.

Bee/Polaris: No, Zahn!

Avery/GM: You just learned that there's a being that goes back thousands of years named Rhea. There's lots of people named

Bee/Polaris: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is, this isn't like a, a Link situation where it's just like a reincarnation with the same name who happens to wear the same green tights. We're not, this is definitely the same Rhea. I can'twere... No!

Avery/GM: That was, that was, yeah, okay, fair enough. Perfect retort.

Zach/Zahn: Well, if we're gonna take over the ship, we need to at least get her off the ship somehow.

Bee/Polaris: Vac. I'm team Vac

Chris/Ollie: that sounds most effective.

Bee/Polaris: Good to know. I mean, we could also, I mean, she definitely, like, she invited us up, so I assume that she has absolutely no qualms knowing, even knowing how many that we are in this group.

She has no, absolutely no issue fighting us. So, I was gonna say maybe have her evacuate the ship, but I can't think of a way to actually do that, considering how confident she seems.

Chris/Ollie: Well, Ollie's got an idea. How exactly do you plan on getting Hermes out of there?

Avery/GM: Rho holds out her hand and suddenly the, the coil scanner that's in your hand appears in her hand. And she's like, I might as well use these powers for something.

Bee/Polaris: She can yoink him.

Chris/Ollie: Perfect.

Bee/Polaris: Do you need visual?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Oh.

Avery/GM: So we need to be. But just for a few minutes. And I might not need to physically be there. If, well, Ollie, do you, are you okay with maybe not having one of these robots anymore? I don't know. I, I don't, I don't want to make it seem like robots are less valuable than humans or anything, but.

Bee/Polaris: No, but they can replace their bodies better than we can.

Chris/Ollie: Well, what exactly does she want to use it for because I've got the one bot that's got like one out of eight HP He's like barely limping along.

Avery/GM: So she's saying that she needs visual visual Contact on where Hermes is located. So this thing needs to go up to the command deck.

Chris/Ollie: Okay Well, I'm gonna be bringing them all up there if we go or yeah I could send any number of them Ollie is fine with that All of that.

Bee/Polaris: Couldn't you send one of the drones into the vent and just have like a camera feed looking down at where Hermes's is?

Chris/Ollie: Sure. So yeah, Ollie will take all his three small drones and send them into the vents. I'm assuming we have those mapped with the rest of the ship.

Avery/GM: Yes. Yes, you do.

Chris/Ollie: So I want to send them up through the vents to hide as much as I can, but where they have a visual on the cockpit..

Avery/GM: Okay, it'll take some time for them to get there. In the meantime, what is everyone else doing?

Zach/Zahn: Zahn is still gonna put forth we should hit the armory. Get some get some good shit.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, oh, I just realized we did tell the people below deck after killing the military personnel that we were gonna take over the ship

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, we kind of did promise them.

Avery/GM: You have made promises

Zach/Zahn: that we would take over the ship

Chris/Ollie: Well, cuz we found out that the armory doesn't have anything good just standard stuff But we could supply all of the contractors with weapons and bring them up with us if they want to fight

Bee/Polaris: They probably don't they probably just want to go home.

Zach/Zahn: Fair. Are there any security personnel on the floor above? I may have blanked hearing that.

Avery/GM: There are all security personnel up there. There are no contractors on that floor.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, good. We can kill them. We but if we're not going to like get Rhea off the ship, we might want to get the contractors off the ship onto the Oracle ship, maybe.

Zach/Zahn: I mean, we can tell them to pull the TSKAM up from the docking floor and Load onto it just hide in the cargo bay.

Bee/Polaris: Do we have that? We don't have the TSKAM. TSKAM was what Marty and

Avery/GM: No, Marty came here in the TSKAM.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, so but we have we have another ship. We do. We have the TSKAM and then the the shuttle that the Winston's gave us.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah, but if I recall correctly that shuttle was only just big enough for us.

Chris/Ollie: Well, the ship probably has plenty of escape pods and and whatnot. We can just tell them to dip.

Avery/GM: Marty Can I get one final?

Zach/Zahn: No, why are you picking on Marty?

Bee/Polaris: Oh gosh.

Chris/Ollie: Also, I want to use the visual feed of the robot in the armory to see if like there's any action going on. Like, are they sending anyone down? Are they just bunkering down, up there?

Avery/GM: There is no activity on that floor currently, you can see from the bot. What did we get, Jenine?

Jenine/Marty: Do we want a low number?

Do we want a high number?

Avery/GM: it's cumulative, so probably doesn't matter at this point.

Caden/Bruce: It's a 37.

Avery/GM: Alright. Yeah. Okay, cool. Some stuff happens outside in space that you cannot see.

Zach/Zahn: Oh, wonderful. ?

Bee/Polaris: Oh, no. Oh, no.

Zach/Zahn: I don't know. If we're not gonna clear out the armory floor, then we should just go confront Rhea. Do the distraction bit.

Bee/Polaris: Let's clear.

Chris/Ollie: Well, we have to pass through it anyway.

Bee/Polaris: Ugh.

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah. We have to go floor by floor anyways,

don't we?

Bee/Polaris: Yeah. Let's clear the armory.

Zach/Zahn: Yeah.

Avery/GM: Okay. Who's all going up? Is this whole party going up? And if so,

Chris/Ollie: I'm going to send the three robots first.

Zach/Zahn: So yeah, Ollie and robots first.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris wants to go next. He wants to kill.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's going to recommend that Jasper go up or go down with the rest of the crew. Unless he actively wants to fight with us.

Avery/GM: Jasper is not a fighter.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, no, this man's a nerd.

Avery/GM: You give Jasper that suggestion, he's like, Oh, really? Thank you. I was really nervous about having to fight. Not, not much of a fighter, more of a, a nerd who likes to sit and read a book. So I'm going to go do that.

Zach/Zahn: Zahn sighs, I missed those days. And then he's going to walk over go down after us.

Avery/GM: If you're gonna blow this place up, will you, will you give me a heads up?

Zach/Zahn: That's in the plan.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, could you actually, should we not evac the contractors? Get them all on ship and, you know?

Avery/GM: I can get them all on there. Well, except for Nolari. I don't know where they disappeared to. Do we want to get the rest of the contractors onto the ship?

Zach/Zahn: Zahn's gonna nod though. He's gonna be like, yeah, that's, that's a good idea. Better, better safe than sorry.

Bee/Polaris: Rest of crew?

Jenine/Marty: Yeah. Agreed.

Caden/Bruce: Bruce is nodding.

Chris/Ollie: It is the safest place for them.

Bee/Polaris: Okay. Yeah, Jasper, if you could go down and tell the rest of the contractors to get onto the ship. Please don't fly away.

Zach/Zahn: We will find you.

Bee/Polaris: We will find you.

Avery/GM: Okay, yeah, no, we I wasn't gonna steal your ship, if that's what you're

Zach/Zahn: Just don't let any of the other people steal our ship. Yeah, we trust you.

Bee/Polaris: Yeah, we trust you, not We don't know about everyone else. Don't steal our ship.

Zach/Zahn: Please.

Avery/GM: Yeah. Jasper gives you a big thumbs up. Okay. Ollie, you have gone ahead. Okay. You are here on this floor. Your mech robot here is just walking around, doo doo doo doo doo, you know, having a good time.

Bee/Polaris: What? He's free?

Avery/GM: I mean, I mean, he's just, you know, when Ollie's not directly controlling him, he's just performing his normal patrol duties, you know, are you just waiting here for your friends? Or are you in this little team going to try and do something?

Chris/Ollie: Well, how much do I know about the people on this? Like, do I know enemy positions?

Avery/GM: You, yes. Cause this mech has access to this whole floors layout and activities. You know, that this is a secondary command center for the ship, possibly controlling the weapons that are firing at the Oracle ship,

Zach/Zahn: that's a sexy combination of words. .

Chris/Ollie: Oh, in that case.

Avery/GM: You can wait for your friends. I just, I wanted to give you the option in case, you know, cause there's probably like a five minute delay.

Chris/Ollie: No, I'm going to go ahead and have big boy start pushing down the hallway and then get into the, into the door. With the other three as backup, and me right behind them.

Avery/GM: Okay.

Chris/Ollie: I'll get as far as I can.

Avery/GM: Okay. As Ollie is doing that you all load up on the, the rest of you load up onto the lift and pop out up here. As you are stepping off the lift, you hear Rhea's laughter come through the speakers. And she's not talking directly to you, but is definitely purposely letting you hear this.

She says, in the language of the Milky Way, by the way.

Bee/Polaris: Oh, we can translate that.

Avery/GM: Yep. Welcome, armies of the Pan Solar Union. We are so glad you could join us today. I, as a representative of this galaxy, am officially declaring war for your trespasses into our territory and the imminent destruction of Ithaca. that you have perpetrated Surrender now, or prepare to die and Then there's just laughter Just

Zach/Zahn: That's fucked up, lady.

Bee/Polaris: Goddammit Can we ping, The Pan-Solar Union ship?

Avery/GM: Not from this distance, no.

Bee/Polaris: Dammit. Okay.

Avery/GM: There is too much interference from the Wormhole that has opened outside

Bee/Polaris: Yeah.

Avery/GM: this system

Bee/Polaris: Did Hermes install the translation thing on our communication devices so we could understand what she was saying?

Avery/GM: Yes.

Bee/Polaris: Okay, cool.

Avery/GM: And, any of you that have had psychic contact with Rho, which I guess would just be Marty and Polaris, actually have the language in your mind.

Zach/Zahn: She tried to read my mind once.

Avery/GM: Yeah, and you

Zach/Zahn: Oh yeah, that's true. But I also did grow up on New Terra, which integrated over time Terran and this galaxies.

Avery/GM: So you, you understand bits and pieces of it.

Yeah. And the rest of it, you get translated on subtitles on your, on your HUD. So I think the only person that doesn't understand that would be Bruce.

Zach/Zahn: Oh no, poor Bruce.

Bee/Polaris: Polaris will send like the translated audio to Bruce, yeah. And he'll say, we need to get on comms like ASAP and we need to send a message to them to not have this break out into a full on war.

Avery/GM: Bruce, you get a message from Lazuli and it just says, mission failed, all units retreat.

Bee/Polaris: Son of a bitch!

Caden/Bruce: Bruce will post that in the group chat. And just be like, oh.

Avery/GM: Thank you for listening to our show. Beyond the Furthest Stars is a one up podcast network production. Intro and outro music produced by Dustin Carpenter. Background music provided by TabletopAudio. com and used under an attribution, non commercial license from Creative Commons. Tracks used today include Starfreighter, Starship Bridge, Robotics Lab, and Covert Ops.

We'll be back in two weeks with our next episode. See you out there, beyond the furthest stars.