LogBrink-Jason-1

Game log for the 2014/09/28 session of Brink, as taken by Jason

Honey calls Absinthe to report that her key card is gone, and someone else has used it to get access to an accessway leading to Ag Dome 35. The two of them go heading toward the ag pod, hoping to get control of the situation before Honey gets busted for letting her card get stolen. They climb down a long accessway and pass through a hexagonal hatch into a second tube, which is dark and dusty inside.

Cipher's about to pressurize an airlock that will let him into an abandoned section when he hears people approaching. He pokes his head out of the airlock, becons to them and says, "Quick, come! We need to get in here." Honey, in turn, says, "I know that guy!" Cipher pulls both in, cycles the 'lock, and explains that there are people in this section. He hears them tapping. He then uses his Brainer powers to make her think she gave him her access card as a humanitarian gesture, and tries to return it to her as she brushes past him into the abandoned compartment. He drops it instead, so he has to pick it up and return it to her. Honey is getting cranky about the situation.

Absinthe can tell that Cipher is lying about people tapping on the walls of the abandoned compartments. She tries to read him and see his real intentions, and finds that he wants to close the Gate forever.

Through the lock, in the abandoned section, Absinthe worries about the unnatural hold Cipher seems to have on Honey, but worries even more about the prospect that malfunctioning hardware or other threats in this abandoned space might threaten them.

Cipher enters the section and tells Honey to wait for him. Absinthe decides to wait with her - on the pressurized side. As the airlock cycles, Honey asks Absinthe not to leave her alone with Cipher.

In the same abandoned section, Swan's team is trading canisters for magnets with Flint. Flint warns us that the magnets are ready for the taking through a specific tunnel, but that the maint robots in that section are active. That almost ruins the deal, but Swan figures he can handle the risk, and Flint can make it up to him on the next deal.

A couple hundred meters down the tunnel, we find the magnets, bolted at intervals around a giant cable. Presumably this creates a magnetic field to protect the ag dome from cosmic rays, but we care less about that than about getting rich. Near the first magnet (past several spots where magnets have already been removed), we see three bodies, one of them apparently from Flint's crew. Swan loots 1-barter from the corpses, including a nearly complete metric socket set. Seems they had tools but not weapons - although two of them have empty holsters, so maybe whoever killed them took their weapons instead. There's a chunk of what look slike an axe head buried in some conduit nearby. Two of the dead look like obvious casualties of rogue maintenance robots, but the third has a massive chest wound, like something fist-wide went right through him, probably a maintbot boring tool. As we look, a bot starts climbing Swan's leg. Swan yells and tries to kick it loose, Abner runs, Torch positions his cutting tool near Swan's leg, and Swan grabs it and levers it up enough for Torch's cutter to get a bit out of it. From there, it's all done.

Through the airlock window, Absinthe can see that Cipher has frozen in place, and she can also guess why. Honey's starting to get really twitchy here, and would like to go, but she promised Cipher she wouldn't. Absinthe can't figure out why Honey seems so concerned with standing by this creepy weirdo.

Swan's crew's harvest of magnets is interrupted by one more body - or rather, one really still human, pretending to be dead. It's Cipher, of course. We make radio contact and it turns out that Cipher will pay for a magnet. Torch throws a chunk of broken-up maint bot at the security bot near Cipher to distract it, but instead of being distracted, it summons help. We all retreat with great haste. Abner goes through the airlock first and cycles it, cutting off Torch and Swan's retreat. Torch cuts a hole in the hull, exits, and tries to drag Swan with him. He picks up a security bot on his suit and rips Swan's suit as he does so, but they make it out. With a hand from Swan, Torch gets the bot off his head, and then tells Abner to get them a nearby exterior lock or face Torch's wrath without Swan to hold him back. Abner does so.

Meanwhile, Cipher gets through his airlock, and feels safe for the first time in... well, just a couple minutes, but it feels like hours. Unfortunately, the door on the other side doesn't open. Honey isn't letting him out of the airlock. She makes him trade a couple of diamond cufflinks for being allowed through the airlock... which she sets on a thirty-minute timer, just to let him know she cares.

Meanwhile, after we've changed out of vac suits, we meet at Lefty's Bar, where we remind Abner not to screw up like that again. The consequences to him for screwing up like this again would be measurable in pounds. Cipher meets us there somewhat later than we expected.