Cool. As for your actions, however, what would Luis like to do? You have your captain telling you to get Arketta awake and get to the cargo bay, but your own plan lies towards Yaris and the bridge.

I'm waking Arketta, and asking Hugh over the comm for the fifty second version of events. Once Luis is familiarized, he sugests what I gugest. If Hugh likes it, we go with it. If not, I defer to Gatac's judgement, but either way I recomend sending Arketta to the bridge. Whether I join her or go to disarm the bombs is the primary issue in my view.

This is a sticky point, but since Gordon remembered the bombs and is taking some action to prevent them from going off (good job), I should clarify EXACTLY what is up with the charges.

1. The charges are indeed within movement range if one were to, say, win initiative vs. everyone in the room.
2. It's not the charges themselves you have to worry about. I did post in the OOC thread that Max still had the deadman switch, and said switch was not activated (meaning nobody has their thumb on the button).
3. The charges, as far as anyone knows, are ready to arm as soon as that deadman gets pressed.
4. The deadman does not have a "safety switch". It cannot be disengaged once pressed. Only disarming the bombs will prevent a catastrophe in the event that the deadman is pressed but NOT released.
5. If the deadman is pressed and released, BOOM. I'm not going to roll damage on anyone in the cargo bay. It's not something you can dive behind cover to avoid. Luis and Arketta might live if they're not in the cargo bay for the explosion.

So, with that said, Gordon, if Semo's intentions are more towards making sure Max can't blow you all up you need to get the deadman from him. If he goes to hand it over, he holds Earth's fate in the palm of his hand should he trigger the switch. To get it away from Max without trusting him not to screw you all over would involve physically restraining Max and taking the switch off him.

As for Max's options:

1. Don't go crazy. Hand over the switch.

2. Let them restrain you and take the switch. File under "Don't go crazy".

3. Move to hand over the switch, but trigger it while it's in your hand. There's really no defense against this, but if they're trusting you NOT to blow up the only Earthlings in the Imperium and doom Earth to the steel boot of space-fascism, and then you go ahead and threaten to blow everything up over some space truckers, well, file that under "good and crazy".

4. Go crazy, grab the switch and thumb the button before you're restrained or otherwise. Producing the switch provokes an initiative roll (Move trait). If someone beats you in the initiative and your intention is to trigger on your action, they have to successfully disarm, KO, or kill you before your initiative count. Best man to take you down non-lethally is probably Semo. To kill you or blow your hand off, probably Angel. Everyone else I think moves just a hair slower than you.

I would assume if it came down to initiative, Wild Dice are to be spent like water to prevent thumb from contacting deadman button.

I would also like to add that in case this doesn't degenerate into a TPK, there's a bit of the pot calling the kettle black here about making individual decisions that impact the rest of the party. I refer, of course, to Davis' execution of the Kansatai back on Botane.

Secondly, I am totally fine with what's going on as long as everyone is mature about it. It's cool for two PCs to have infighting and bickering - we wouldn't have Lethal Weapon or Aliens without it - but keep it out of your player-to-player interaction. Don't actually get bent out of shape over a game. I'm enjoying the craziness, but I have to tend to dishes and dinner and whatnot, so hopefully everyone who wasn't in on the posting hurricane will be able to see the sorry state that Earth's last, best hope have fallen into.

Updated my post to account for the trigger.

No sweat on my end, personally.

Ok, so it looks like everyone's against Max. There are certain things that have been said that can't be taken back (short of ADS declaring GM intervention), so I'm going to ask for a show of hands on which side everyone is on. The fact of the matter is, I really don't want to completely derail the game over a pissing contest, but both myself and Max have personal pride riding on this decision.

It was my general impression everyone was for the bomb shenanigans, which (obviously) does not appear to be the present consensus. Any sort of support (stares at Punkey) seems to have scattered like rats on sinking ship...which may not be far from the truth.

I'm not sure where to take this, because up until today I thought the Team was actually getting for once. And dammit, I like Max as a character.

Semo is By The Book. Thus, the ranking officer is always right. Period.

As for me, I think I posted pretty clearly that I was against the bomb idea.

fanchergw wrote:

Semo is By The Book. Thus, the ranking officer is always right. Period.

As for me, I think I posted pretty clearly that I was against the bomb idea.

Well, since Gatac started this whole overblown anti-insurrection tangent, I'm leaving it up to him to get us out of it.

Truth be told, I don't think the bomb plan was that bad, but I do believe that a) Hugh wouldn't go for it, instead favoring negotiating with the crew in good (or atleast marginally better) faith and b) he's just about at his limit on how much interference and bickering from Max he can take, plus c) the involvement of Max and Davis, both of whom were already on his shitlist for various things, doesn't exactly make him judge the situation on its own merits.

So yes, he's overreacting at the moment and I don't have any intention of getting us all killed here, but it felt like the right choice IC. No harm, no foul from my personal side - I actually like Max a lot. I just wish he wouldn't keep antagonizing Hugh with his flagrant disdain for the chain of command.

As for my plan, withdraw everyone to the cargo bay and hold that as perimeter for the moment. Hugh and Arketta will head out to request a conversation with Swims-the-black - if we run into any hostile crew and they shoot at us, it's weapons free, but I'd like to avoid that. If we do get to Swims-the-black peacefully, I'm gonna stick to the truth - one of us, acting without authorization, hacked the computer to satisfy his curiosity, we apologize for that. But, we did find the secret logs and know that previous passengers were sold off - then we make it clear that we don't want to be trouble, but we're preparing for shenanigans and any sudden docking attempts will be treated as a hostile boarding.

Gatac

Well, I'm for the bomb suggestion, but Hugh has large men with guns, and right now he's a wee bit touchy, and since no one does anyone any good with their hands zip-tied behind their backs, Davis thought it would be best to stand back and do what they need to do without the explosives. As it turns out, things moved a little too fast for that anyway, but they might still be useful if we're boarded.

If negotiating with the crew fails, we can simply use the exploves as breaching charges for the door and then take the ship.

Max isn't apologizing for anything. Besides, everything that just transpired over the last 20 minutes is now trumped by the arrival of the Turai Capital Ship.

Sensor ghosting is fine and dandy, but I'm worried they'll go optical if that fails. We really need to know how far away from the gate we are.

Gatac

Gatac wrote:

Sensor ghosting is fine and dandy, but I'm worried they'll go optical if that fails. We really need to know how far away from the gate we are.

Gatac

I doubt they can go just switch to optical based on the command center configurations we've seen in previous encounters. It's like telling an Aegis Missle Cruiser to fire a cruise missle based on analog readings. At any rate, their aiming abilities will go way down even if they go that route.

How long does the gate take to warm up for a jump after it gets the coordinates transmission, and are we within the reception range of the gate?

I'm not putting down the ideas, I think we need to do both. Ghost sensors and go full burn towards the gate.

Gatac

I'm wondering if we might be able to secure Swims' help. Yaris may be sympthetic- her departure from Imperium service seems to be something, and if we call in the "we're from the Homeworld, and we're here to stop our planet from suffering the fate of (whatever the one he saw decimated) and our people from suffering the fate of yours. We can point out we have the weapons, and that physics can stop them from ever reaching the Akuma's decks, if they just choose to help us. We might be able to reference their habits of skirting Imperium law before. And...as much as it hurts to say it, we need to do two things:

1. Blow open the cargo bay door.
2. Consider setting the charges to the exterior hull.

Gatac wrote:

I'm not putting down the ideas, I think we need to do both. Ghost sensors and go full burn towards the gate.

Gatac

Agreed. We also need to get ADS to update us on the finer points of this expeditious retreat.

Gatac wrote:

I'm not putting down the ideas, I think we need to do both. Ghost sensors and go full burn towards the gate.

Gatac

Either (or both) ways, we need control of the ship, and convincing Swims-the-Black is going to be easier. Anothe rpossible line of argument: fail to help us, and he is just as implicit in Earth's decimation and the resulting deaths of hundreds of millions as if he pulled the trigger himself. He'll be no better than the Imperium. He says he can't resist and won't resist, well, he can, with our help. All the remains is will he? Will he condemn hundreds of millions to death or slavery simply because he doesn't want to stand up and say that a line must be drawn? Or will he sign their- and our- death warrent?

EDIT: In five minutes, I gotta sign off for two hours for classes. Try to avoid getting killed until I get back.

I'm pretty sure I can talk him into helping us. Shall I start doing that now?