Galactic Dawn: Running Story of the Starcraft&Metroid Campaign, 2005.
This is the story of the players of my
Dungeons and Dragons session. They deserve credit for some of the creative
content of this story. Materials presented here are game content.
Chapter One: Biologic Space Limited.
-Officer Tam. This is your nine hundred hours alarm call. Please report to sick
bay wing 786-A by zero nine thirty. Officer Tam. This is...
A small click sounds as Doctor Alexander Tam taps his table mounted station
alert mechanism. Biologic Space Limited (BSL), his employer, often had elaborate
and official sounding names for things as mundane as an alarm clock. His primary
nursing device for field application: the medi-beam emitter, was known as BSL
device UAK-200, the two-hundredth issue of the Universal Adaptogenic Kinometer.
Dr. Tam strapped it to his daysuit on his way out the door. Though the device
was only useful when full battle armor prevented more delicate medical
operations, his natural paranoia forbade him from leaving it behind. Much in the
same way that one of his co-workers, a Private Joseph Mericor, never seemed to
be without a grenade or two. Sometimes even at office meetings.
Tam's squadron served as a mobile-versatile-security force (mvsf) for the
Tarsonis-bound BSL headquarters. An orbital platform in the style typical of the
Terran mode following the establishment of colonies throughout the Koprulu
sector of space. BSL headquarters was the largest known orbital platform of the
day, spanning thousands of square miles of space, visible from the surface of
Tarsonis during the daytime.
Tam walked a moment in puzzlement. Sick bay 786-A was three blocks away from his
usual post. Tam's usual post was the triage pod outside his squadron's mvsf
launching station, where he was used to rushing with injured comrades to
attempt, and usually succeed, at keeping them from dying. In fact only one
member of mvsf-8086 had ever been recorded as dying, and that hadn't been under
Tam's watch.
A clock on the wall near his destination told Tam that something was very
unwell. Checking his own watch (he hadn't until then), he discovered why his
morning fatigue had seemed to persist longer than usual: the time was close to
zero three hundred hours Tarsonis Capitol. Tam rushed into the sick bay.
Inside was a typical assortment of medical apparatus. The Doctor-in-charge of
this bay must have been either overworked or naturally disorderly to leave to
many devices about. Especially with no patients occupying the beds. An I-tech in
scrubs approached and addressed Doctor Tam.
-Officer Tam, I am Ensign Burgos, I-tech of this bay and a few other rooms near
this block. I had the station call you specifically when I found out that you
had been ordered in charge of this patient by Commander Raynor.
Tam remembered Commander Raynor's order to assist the mysterious occupant of a
stasis cell that had come back in place of one mvsf-8086's most valuable
commanding officers. That had been two weeks previous. Tam had been keeping the
stasis cell in the team's dropship, afraid to move it for the sake of the
humanoid inside in temporal stasis. Tam had asked the team tinker to investigate
the mysterious device.
Known stasis cells are much too large to fit in a dropship, and use exclusively
Protoss psionic technology to affect the needed micro-temporal loop. Similar
technologies enable SLAM travel between sectors of space: two gates align
themselves to create a chamber of temporal aphasia. Ships that fly through the
chamber are warped to the other side in what appears as only a few seconds
because the chamber itself distorts natural space-time flow. In a stasis cell,
the chamber has been looped back on itself to create a toroid of temporal
aphasia, designed to keep the imprisoned preserved in space. The stasis cell
that had returned in place of the presumed dead XO was not a uniquely Protoss
design, and Tam wondered who could have even made it, let alone placed it in the
dropship without the pilot's knowledge.
-Who had the patient moved? Tam asked.
-Sir, the stasis cell was ordered moved by the Luminoth researcher, Dr. Lucent.
He feels he can help with the investigation.
-What investigation?
-Sir, following the pilot, Ensign Jeremy Redd's request to have the cell removed
from his ship, BSL delegates themselves took a vested interest in the cell. The
event has gone outside of station security's private affairs, and is now of
importance to the corporation proper.
-And this is supposed to be my proper first-notice of their decision? Awakened
in the middle of the night to learn that a humanoid, possibly a Terran life has
been recklessly put in danger to satisfy a bureaucratic power-play?
-Sir, this is a stasis cell, as I-tech it is my duty to...
-To hell with your duty. Where is Dr. Lucent?
-He is here as well. I must ask you to suit up, Sir.
Doctor Tam took a moment to consider and then grabbed a sealed box of scrubs and
made his way to the nearby cleanroom. The bright lights of the room reflected
off every facet of the sterile, metallic chamber. Placing his clothes and
personal effects in the designated drawers (which were labeled with
call-numbers, nothing at BSL went un-catalogued), Tam changed and awaited the
violent rushing noise that always accompanied his being scrubbed. He exited into
the cleaned area, and saw Dr. Lucent, Ensign Burgos, and the now familiar
looking stasis cell. Dr. Lucent had prepared a bed for the occupant, and half
the room looked like a typical hospital room. The other half looked like the
laboratory of a madman: thick wires ran from place to place, some labeled with
voltages and currents, others clearly electrical and unlabeled. Still more bore
markings of vacuum pressure, compressed air, other gasses, hydraulics and
fiber-optics. Some of the devices that the mass of tangled cables ran between
were familiar: the bls and als monitors, psychic arrhythmia detection device,
the pseudo-chaos Hopf stabilizer. But others, most in fact, looked perplexing
and more like devices that belonged in the machine shop than in the sick bay.
What the hell was Dr. Lucent up to?
-Dr. Lucent, may I ask what the hell all this stuff is for? Tam asked.
-Dr. Tam, welcome. I should let you know that my name was O-lcu before I began
work at BSL. There is little I can do to keep the name "Lucent" from chafing.
-Stop dodging. Why did you risk the patient's life without my notice?
-Perhaps you are unaware of the weight this discovery carries with it. The life
inside this cell is certainly stable and well contained. It is your
misunderstanding of the device itself that has caused you worry for the Terran
girl trapped inside. In fact she is not trapped, only sleeping.
-My apologies. Still, you could have told me about...
-Dr. There is little time.
Dr. Lucent's wings began to beat slightly more rapidly as he gave a stolid nod
to the I-tech, who reacted by turning to his tablet and scratching furiously
with the stylus. The lights flickered and one of the devices gave off a bright
orange light for a moment. Dr. Tam then saw images of the room recreated in
orange holograms that began to walk about on their own.
-Stay still for one moment longer, please Doctor Tam. The I-tech averred.
Tam felt a cool rush fall over his body, wet and dry at the same time. When the
feeling reached his toes, he felt a ripple and then warmth returned. He had been
cloaked only a few other times in his life, and it was a feeling he hadn't
forgotten. O-lcu was apparently also cloaked. He spoke solemnly over the muted
transmissions of the holographic tableau.
-Dr. Tam, forgive me for the theatrics. This is the only way that I found to be
able to keep this meeting off of the BSL record. My holograms will carry out the
discovery that the Terran girl inside has died, while you and I discuss the
truth of the matter. Let me give you a closer look at the base of the cell.
-I don't understand. Why would you need to keep this from the company?
-Look.
Tam took a closer look where Dr. Lucent's spindly fingers pointed. Markings
along the base resembled Luminoth texts that Tam had reviewed before. Following
the string of text was the name "O-lcu" spelled in several languages.
-My God, you knew all along...
-No. I do not keep track of every last device I develop with the keen surveying
eye that our employer uses. This cell, however, I remember crafting. I can tell
you who had it, but I can tell you nothing about the Terran girl. I have had her
effects, also held in a device I made, transferred to your squadron's locker. I
trust they will remain safe there. Within the hour I will convert this cell into
a supply crate, and it will also be moved to your squadron's locker. When the
time is right, I will tell you how to awaken the Terran girl. Until then I have
to craft a duplicate and find a corpse.
-How are you going to find a Terran corpse to match?
-Sadly, Doctor Tam, that will be the easy part. Our employer has many areas of
research, and my race has a knack for discovery.
Dr. Tam's gut had been through many macabre episodes, enough to make him calm in
the face of gore that would make stern men wretch. With that last sentence, Tam
felt his stomach tingle.
-What are you asking me to do?
-It is my hope that I can trust your discretion. You will get my message soon
enough. I am preparing a mission for your mvsf that will allow you to transport
the girl safely away from this station. I doubt it would be safe for her to be
here.
-How can you assign a security mission? You're only a research scientist.
-I told you my race has a knack for discovery. I have a knack for manipulation.
What will look like an accident to the company will look to me like a plan
carried out. My friends have discretion to match my own.
The simulation ended and Tam felt the slight stripping jerk on his clothes that
had always accompanied his decloaking in the past. Dr. Lucent assumed his
initial tone of slightly delighted discovery.
-I am crestfallen, Dr. Tam. It seems that our subject was unable to survive the
recovery process.
Taking no time to assume his role, Tam performed.
-Wha...you madman! If you hadn't moved the cell from my squadron's ship without
my permission we may have saved this life...
-Dr. Tam, please stay calm. You know as well as I do that the patient had little
chance to begin with. We've both done all we can. You must have long ago stopped
blaming yourself for your patient's deaths. I will take care of things from
here. You should get some sleep.
For the next part, Tam did not have to act.
-Actually, Dr. Lucent, I never have stopped.
He turned to the cleanroom, and left the sick bay with his mind in torpor. Even
if O-lcu was a genius of discretion, he stood a fair chance of endangering the
entire squadron by circumventing BSL authority, and for what? And what was to
happen with the girl? And what was this "accident" that O-lcu seemed to have
planned for the company?
Never in his life had the danger been as abstract and still real. Feeling his
medi-beam at his side, Tam almost longed for the days now gone when he was
keeping marines alive in battle against monstrous xenomorphs.
Almost.