THE DESCENT

The Cerberus had mostly destroyed the LaSalle spaceport on New Galveston, leaving only a few access points to the underground base. 2 ships had managed to leave. Brackett says they will pursue the Church ship who gathered xeno samples on Sullivan9 before they reach Earth.

Maddox believes it’s Weyland-Yutani who implanted him with a tracking chip during a a procedure he got a while ago.

Brackett calls us all together again, The Church ship has a 30 days lead on the Cerberus so they need to leave very soon. Tells us they have an informant on the station, appearance unknown, only known as Ruby Scott. Asks us to exfill her. Last transmission as of two days ago, there was panic on the station. Ruby knows Brackett and Parris. Cerberus will return as soon as they have dealt with the Church ship.

We are given a small nuclear device, the detonator given to Kit Handred. Landow is ecstatic at the thought of having to detonate it. Landow goes to take another long dump and do God knows what. Brackett tells us to set a long timer on the bomb before we detonate it, we should be able to get back on the surface where it might be relatively safe, the station is about 1 mile underground. Brackett suggests we put the nuke in the xeno hive if we can find it. The nuke weighs about 100lbs.

We discuss our options to approach the base undetected, Brackett says we’re unlikely to sneak in undisturbed. We’ll probably need Ruby’s help to get the nuke in the right spot. We determine that weapons don’t do much against xenos unless we have armor piercing rounds.

Brackett sends us back onto the Sherwood. Gordi flies us to the designated area on the planet. It’s dry and rocky and devoid of life.

McWard finally gets to draw some blood from Maddox, his blood his red, everyone seems to not be a synth so far, except Ava.

Landow says in 20h we’ll get a supply drop of ammo, which is later revised to 6h. It comes to light that he might be indirectly responsible for Kit Handred’s ship being blown up with his constant transmission of messages.

We make plans to go down into the station as the ship is made ready for planetfall, it’ll take about 2h to get there.

Weylon’s decoder goes off, it intercepts an outgoing message but can’t figure out what the code is yet.

Kit and Landow argue about what he’s done, telling Weyland-Yutani our position.

Finn and Gordi prep the ship for landing. We argue is we wait for the Weyland-Yutani ship to arrive with the supplies or not. Landow wants to wait, everyone else kinda wants to go now.

We’re planning to land about 1 mile off site and drive our APC over there.

We’re about 20mins away from landing when we pick up a signal of incoming ship. Seems to just be a transport C-Class, Finn says there is no weapon lock on us. Ship hails us, asks for Roger Landow. Ship says we gotta make this fast.

Gordi laments that he’s just a hauler, he shouldn’t be in this situation. Landow says he wouldn’t be in this situation if he hadn’t been carrying xenos in the first place.

Finn suddenly realizes there is a weapon lock on us. The ship rocks as it gets hit but it doesn’t seem to be coming from the C-Class ship. A sweep doesn’t indicate or detect any other presence around us. There is a fire in the crew quarters, then a second explosion happens and we’re suddenly venting air out. A second sweep reveals a frigate that was running cloaked, it’s a Weyland-Yutani ship.

Gordi tells us to make for the escape pods while he takes the Sherwood down asap.

Trinket is missing again and Gordi is piloting, the ship is shaking as we’re heading down toward the planet.

There’s another huge explosion from the crew quarters.

McWard runs to the medbay to grab as many supplies as he can.

Maddox tries to keep the bulkhead hatches from coming down, to keep a clear exit path to the escape pods.

Another explosion, ship feels like it’s spinning.

Maddox runs to the medbay to get McWard, sees him filling his bags with drugs and medkits. Another massive explosion next to them, McWard gets knocked out and gets a broken foot in the process. Maddox drags him to the escape pods.

Escape pod launches, the Sherwood is spinning, will probably “land” somewhere on the planet.

Finn pilots the pod down to the planet, it’s a Mars-like barren landscape, dust and rocks everywhere. The ruins of the station are east of us. Strange rock formations to the west. Smoke further west.

McWard binds his broken foot and finds something to use as a crutch.

Kit blames Landow for getting us shot out of the sky, W-Y would never have known where we were if not for him – allegedly.

We debate whether going back to when the ship landed a few hours away, or to the ruins which are much closer. We decide going to the station. Gordi says there are some holes in the hull, and not Landow’s fault this time around.

We gather around the nearest entrance hatch, Weylon hacks into the controls and manages to open it. Down the tunnel shaft is a tangle of steel and wires, like something has collapsed. We go to the next nearest entrance, and we notice it shuts close as we get nearer. Roger pounds on the hatch.

From behind a low wall, a xeno suddenly pounces on Roger, then another one shows up.

A firefight ensues where Roger is nearly dragged away, Kit and Roger suffer some acid blood burns, both xenos are killed.

The shaft the xenos came out is entirely covered in hardened resin.

The third hatch is locked, Weylon unlocks it. The shaft is clean of xeno presence. There’s a ladder going down 30ft to a grate/catwalk.

Landow goes down first, gun aimed down, it smells a lot of body odor down there. Kit, Weylon, Maddox, Trinket, McWard somehow and Dozer go down the ladder.

There’s a guy hiding under a console in that room. Maddox yells at him to come out but he’s ignored.

The guy asks us if we’re from the company. He’s drooling, holding pills, face is distorted, angular, like plastic burned on him. He looks at Trinket, says “It’s you, really you, SHE said you would come.

Trinket suddenly yells that “This isn’t a real person!” and Maddox immediately shoots his gun at him. Everyone else shoots, the man is riddled with bullets, he falls on the ground, weakly looks up at Trinket and says “Mama..” Blood is seeping from the wounds, it burns and hisses but not as potent as actual xeno blood.

The pills he was holding are capsules, no markings other than a LaSalle logo. McWard takes a few pills for him and Weylon to analyze later.

The guy built a nest under the terminal. There is a lanyard with the name and picture of a Raynier Weiss on it. Guy has spiky ridges down his pants legs. Large claws on one hand. Service pistol in his pants. His drooling is starting to harden like the xeno resin we saw earlier.

This room appears to be some kind of emergency station. Maddox accesses some basic controls, turns on all the lights in the station. There are no maps of schematics available here. There are hundred of camera feeds but 95 of them are dark. We see a cafeteria, back wall is covered with resin and weird twisty formations.%

We see some kind of lab, there is a woman sitting at a microscope. Door to the lab is sealed, piles of stuff against it. There is a body with a sheet over it on a table. Camera seems centered in the room, more of that room behind the camera that we can’t see.

Above the lab door is the indication 3-E. The woman has a comms unit on her head. She suddenly gets up and walks off camera very fast. She then comes back into view right in front of the camera, flips the bird and the camera goes black. Woman has long red hair.

Another feed shows about 10 security guards cleaning rifles, room 1-B.

We hear gunfire seeming coming from the surface. Landow locks the surface exit. We think it might be Weyland-Yutani troops following us. We open a hatch in the floor, it smells like gunpowder, a ladder goes down 50m to a hallway, 10m away is a lift.

Weylon calls the elevator to us. We go down about 20minutes, the door opens into a large hangar. Plenty of stuff covered with tarps. We check the other lift going to deeper floors, Weylon calls it up to us. In the hangar it seems everything of use that wasn’t bolted down has been removed.

A door leading to 1-B begins to open, it’s the room where we saw the guards earlier. Maddox who had been moving closer to that door dives by the ramp leading up to the door, trying to remain unseen. Everyone else takes cover behind large stuff. Guard conversation indicates they are worried about the elevator coming up. They call out for us to “Come out!” They seem to think it’s some “jelly head maybe”.

They go back in their room after leaving a device on the floor by the door.

Trinket suddenly wanders off as if in a daze. Kit runs after her, grabs her, Trinket begins to scream thinking it’s a monster who grabbed her. The device left by the door starts beeping rapidly.

The lift comes up to our floor, there is a corpse in it with distorted facial features, elongated head only on one side.

The device at the door suddenly explodes, scattering ball bearings everywhere in the hangar but we’re all safe aboard the lift.

We decide to head down to Lv3.

Trinket calms down once she realizes she’s safe with us. She says creatures were calling to her.

It’s another 20mins to Lv3.

There are 3 doors ahead of us in the hallway, labelled L, M and N.

==- END OF TRANSMISSION ==-