Session 10: Aliens Invade Planet Dirt
Two months had passed since the hangar was discovered. The team spent the time seeking out and interfering with HYDRA's warehouses and plans - at least two warehouses a week - and got better at making sure the Bobs failed to bite their cyanide capsules. (And no, not all of them were named "Bob", but at this point it had become standard by the party to refer to the warehouse foreman as "Bob" after the first two.)
One thing the party did learn is that the Supreme HYDRA and Madame HYDRA, the org's leaders, are very good at compartmentalization. None of the Agents Bob in charge of the warehouse knew what the guns and ammunition they were storing were for. One of the Bobs mentioned a "Secret Empire" and a "Fourth Reich" in his ranting, though there was little to go on besides the name.
As the weapons are all AIM manufacture, and AIM is a public corporation, the idea that the team should talk with someone at AIM's manufacturing plant came up; it was then mentioned that the Feds would already have done so, but due to sales being to shell companies of shell companies of shell companies whose records are stored in offshore accounts where the Feds have no jurisdiction, they were stymied. The amounts of armaments involved were staggering, however; invasion-level stuff.
And then without warning, giant saucers a kilometer in diameter appeared over the skies of several cities: New York City; Chicago, Illinois; Los Angeles, California; Washington, DC; London, England; Paris, France; Bonn, West Germany; and Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. As the saucers appeared, all the television signals switched to a purple-skinned alien face with no mouth, which delivered an ultimatum: "ATTENTION, DENIZENS OF PLANET DIRT. WE ARE THE GEHANEIACTIX. YOU HAVE ONE ROTATION OF THIS PLANET TO SURRENDER YOURSELVES TO OUR CONTROL. THIS IS NOT A WARNING."
Jim immediately stated that there
was no such species or nation in interstellar space known as "Gehaneiactix". One of his bodies immediately lit off for a news station to set the record straight. In the meantime, Meatshield identified the saucers are using tech based on Tesla's theories, including coil levitation and bleed-off magnetism. As the group discussed options, the holo-communicator in the bunker flickered to life, with the hologram of Captain Britain (Sir James Braddock, the father of the current comics Captain Britain) popping up. It seems Jim's fourth mobile body had shared contact information with the
Super-Heroes of Europe (yes, they're canon; in the Reboot, they've been operating in Western Europe since the Berlin Wall went up). Captain Britain asked the team for what they knew/suspected, and assured them that his team would handle the three saucers in Europe, indicating that Le Femme Fantastique (Fantastic Woman, France's homegrown hero - a Wonder Woman expy) was pushing for a more direct confrontation. Meanwhile, Spellbinder contacted Namora, who indicated that she and King Namor of Atlantis were headed for the saucer in Rio with a contingent of Atlantean soldiers.
At the television news station, Starbot gave a live interview with April Thomas, one of the reporters who covered the Liberator attack. (I was gonna use April O'Neill, but I didn't want to pull in from sources the Mouse doesn't yet own.) Starbot delivered a live speech which outed himself as an alien AI and his peaceful intentions, assuring the people of Earth that the 'alien saucers' were not actually aliens.
The news cut to footage of a few F-111 and F-15 squadrons launching their ordnance at the saucer sitting over DC. The missiles impacted uselessly against the saucers' magnetic force fields; seconds later, lightning shot from the field to destroy the jets.
Back at the ranch bunker, the team prepped for their assault trip. Dimitri scanned the New York saucer and discovered the minds of "hundreds if not thousands" of people on board, although most of them were "inactive".
The team gathered outside the bunker to teleport into the New York saucer, figuring that after they took care of the nearest one they'd work on the others. Spellbinder wrapped the group in a black Darkforce bubble. (At which point the power went out due to a tree limb bouncing off a nearby power line! Spell's player had rolled a critical failure - an 18 on her Space skill - just before that, and quipped when I got back a few minutes later that she rolled worse than expected.
Something fought her as she dropped the team into the Darkforce Dimension, which was described as an inky pitch blackness with a hungry cold that threatened to devour them.
Several minutes later, the team arrived in a lab that looked like a cross between a
Star Trek (original series) med bay and a dieselpunk mad scientist's lab. Bodies lay on rows of medical tables, each of them looking like they'd had parts of their bodies and a sizable chunk of their brains replaced. The team was as expected slightly unnerved by the sight. Dimitri scanned the saucer, determining that only ten "active" minds existed on it, in the center of the saucer.
Moments later, all the !Borg drones sat up and grabbed their rifles as one....
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JSYK, this is part one of what turned out to be an 8-part arc, not counting a tie-in mini and the previous prelude. It'll take me a few days to type up everything.