Episode One: Raiders of the Lost Spaceship
The mercenary crew of the starship Blue Heaven were hired by Yoritomo Manzo to retrieve a rare antiquity, one of special sentimental value: the ashes and sword of his ancestor, Yoritomo Seika, believed lost on the planet Elidan IV. The planet had been settled in the 2500s, but after scarcely three centuries of colonization, a series of enormous caldera eruptions obliterated the settlements and killed half of the population. Most fled to other worlds, but many couldn't afford to; the remaining population lives a wretched existence in a fume-choked world plunged in perpetual volcanic autumn. The planet has been stuck like this for over five centuries, and local folklore had grown up around the lost relics. Some say they're cursed, lost in the ruined cities of the wastelands, amidst an enormous poisoned marshland infested with carnivorous plants and swamp tigers.
The crew acquired a guide who led them into the badlands, cutting their way through thick underbrush and mangroves. Geysers of steam vented out of the ground throughout the swamp, and the air was thick with a sulfurous stench. As they made their way through, the guide seemed increasingly nervous. As they chopped past a large mangrove into a clearing, they came across a few humans encased in volcanic ash, petrified centuries ago when the caldera erupted. With apparent unease, they continued. While passing through a thicket, shrouding the dim sun and casting their swamp in darkness, they were beset by a fearsome swamp tiger, pouncing upon Omar and slashing him deeply before lunging and biting his arm. After sustained gunfire from Omar's shotgun, Noriko's machine pistol, and Dr. Valhalla's sonic blaster, the creature was at last subdued. With increased caution, they picked their way through the woody growth. They saw a mile of ashen heath before them, and at the opposite edge of the clearing, the stone ruins of the Old City.
Entering the barren ruins, they saw the horrific sight of thousands of flash-petrified people, clad permanently in blackened, yellow-dusted ash. The sulfur fumes remained thick in the air, as the ancient caldera continued to vent its excess steam. They picked their way through the ruins to a delapidated old Shinto shrine, and its fabled underground reliquary. Their guide refused to go further, saying the ruins were cursed, and the crew went on without him. Delving deep, they had to leap over a collapsing floor as steam continued to gush forth from deep within. Sneaking through hidden traps, they mad their way to the reliquary itself, and carefully trod in. They were confronted by a fellow graverobber-adventurer, a xan with a gun, and shootout commenced. Noriko's quick thinking and mindhacking skills incapacitated the foe, and they retrieved the prize they came for: a family heirloom sword.
However, the ruins were on its last legs, and they were forced to flee in a hurry, dragging their captive enemy with them as venting steam destroyed the reliquary. Exiting, they were confronted yet again: their guide pulled a gun on them, flanked by armed and armored drones, demaning the prized sword. Another scuffle ensued, this time with the xan fought with them, earning some measure of respect. They called down their shuttle just in time before the whole ruined city was engulfed by a burst of steam and ash.
On the return journey, the crew got to know the xan whom they'd rescued: he was a professor of human studies at a university, and was on a sabbatical to undertake some field excursions—many of which included danger that fed his adrenaline junkie habits. Accepting their nickname for him, "Jonesy", he promised to make himself useful on the ship, as he was hungry for adventure. Upon returning to New Tejas in Space Mexico, Captain Valhalla spoke with the giver of the quest, crime lord Yoritomo Manzo; the sword was his ancestors'. He tipped them off to a new discovery that could lead to salvage: the ESV Leif Eriksson, a derelict spacecraft detected on sensors passing through a frontier star system, which had been launched in the early 2200s and never been heard from again. An exploration ship, lost in space for a thousand years. It was too good to pass up; Yoritomo recommended a contact known to be on a world along the way, a broker and merchant who could help them assess the value of the salvage.
The crew picked up this new contact, a shrike named Jibril, along the way after much haggling. They reached the Leif Eriksson a couple days later, and breathed a sigh of relief: they were the first craft to respond to its presence, and could claim it as their own. Entering through the airlock, they carefully explored the ship's main hold and commons area. Jonesy proceeded on to the ship's command center and bridge, to see if he could find more information on what had happened. It was not long before some strange sounds were heard, which the crew pursued until a woman fell out of an air duct, holding a fireaxe and looking wild-eyed. While the crew tried to calm her, she saw Jibril's alien appearance and screamed, fleeing down the hall to the airlock. Again Captain Valhalla tried to calm her, but she backed up and quickly swung her axe into the airlock's controls and the hatch latch. Jibril disarmed her but the damage had been done: the airlock was broken and they would have to damage the ship to get off of it. The woman calmed down and introduced herself as Dr. Janelle Kinder, the ship's resident geologist.
She began to tell her story: how the ship received a strange signal from a nearby planet, which the ship's computer interpreted as a distress beacon, which necessitated the ship detouring to investigate possible signs of alien life. The scientific crew was awakened and the ship detoured and parked in orbit of a small moon, finding the vaporized remains of an alien spacecraft and a piece of inert debris that scanned as containing organic matter. The debris was taken in, along with some pieces of scorched hull plate, for analysis. Kinder took the Valhalla crew down to the science lab to show them the notes of the ship's resident physician Dr. Clark. Noriko painstakingly downloaded the notes for further research. It conveyed a horrifying timeline of paranoia and death:
The debris was revealed to be a frozen alien lifeform that mysteriously disappeared along with flight officer Lieutenant Palmer. Soon after, crewmembers Malloy and Franklin also disappeared. Palmer reappeared and attacked crewmember Varnes, and was subsequently electrocuted and sprayed with acid to kill him. An autopsy found enormous tumor-like growths, distended and clawed limbs, and normal but non-functioning human organs. A few days later, Varnes went missing too. By this point, Dr. Clark had determined that Palmer's remains' tissue was still active on a microscopic level, and his body was fully contaminated.
Dr. Franklin was found in an air duct, and behaved viciously like Palmer had. Flight officer Lieutenant Reiko electrocuted him to death, and analysis of Franklin’s tissue shows similar contamination as Palmer's. Clark determined that the infection was concentrated and transmitted through blood. The infection, when it completes its contamination, transforms the infected organisms into a perfect mimic of its host. By the end of the first week, Clark estimated that there was a 75% chance that more than one of the remaining crew was infected but hidden, and further estimated that if the infection returned to Earth it would be apocalyptic. Soon after, blood samples taken from all of the crew were sabotaged. Crewmember Malloy's arm was found in a storage bin, and Malloy was found with his arms intact. Certain Malloy and most of the rest of the crew were doppelgangers, Clark set out to kill them all, and that was where the records stopped.
Kinder told them that Clark went mad and killed several crewmates, then pursued the doppelgangers to the cryo pod wing, where most of the crew were still in hypersleep, and detonated a jury-rigged explosive. Entirely out of propellant and flung off-course, the Leif Eriksson drifted until it was picked up, unknowingly, by the CGU's deep space scanners. Kinder had held out for three days, with no sleep and in total fear, of an apparent other doppelganger that still remained in the ship. She revealed Palmer's scorched corpse in a section of the lab. Valhalla, Jibril, and Omar left to find Jonesy and investigate the ship's command center, suspecting Kinder may be right about the loose contaminants. They found a smashed navigation system, a broken communications array, and a cryo pod with a man in it. They defrosted and drained the fluid, but hesitated to open in. The man inside began screaming to be let out, saying he was flight officer Reiko. The cryo pod burst apary as fleshy tendrils burst from him, and the three fled in terror, firing as they went. Minutes later, Reiko appeared from a hallway, saying that he had seen his own doppelganger and was looking for survivors. Valhalla tentatively took him with her, and they reunited in the science lab. Noriko met Reiko, who she knew to be her ancestor. It was a surreal feeling.
Kinder was immediately suspicious. Noriko had begun working on inspecting Palmer's body, wearing a hazard suit and opening up the body, to continue Clark's research. Palmer's body suddenly convulsed, the opening contorting into a vast maw with ribs becoming sharp teeth, clamping shut on Noriko's arm. Flesh sprayed itself onto the ceiling, adhering and growing limbs and tentacles to swipe at and gnash at the crewmembers. Kinder had a panic attack and had to be dragged away by Jibril, while Jonesy helped Noriko stanch her wound and run. Omar unloaded with his explosive shotgun and tossed incendiary grenades before shutting the lab's doors. The crew made it to the airlock and quickly donned spacesuits. With little time to spare, they blew the airlock and rappelled to the Blue Heaven. Noriko was isolated to an escape pod, as was Jibril, Reiko, and Kinder, all of whom were wounded in the battle or otherwise suspected of being infected. Valhalla consulted with her ship's AI, and made the decision to wheel the ship's engines around and torch the Leif Eriksson until it was vaporized. It was the only way to be sure.
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