Epilogue (Dead Planet, campaign arc one)

126 years, 5 months, 13 days after the events on the moon of the Dead Planet, the thirteenth awakening...

The cryopod doors powered up one last time, and the deck lights on the Lucifer Rising blinked on again, and the cryochamber was bathed in a harsh yellow light. The frost on the doors is beginning to sublimate, the life support, pushed to its limit, rushes to full power and begins heating the ship and recycling the stale air. The humans twitched awake. Radon rose instantly and glanced about to take a quick inventory of their vitals and quirks. Humans never stop being concerned about Androids-- even when their own best interests are at hand, so he disguised these scans by pretending to yawn (as humans do) and take quick darting glances while examining his finger nails. 

Several of the breakers were suffering from neurological damage, as to be expected on such a long flight, and many were pale and malnourished. Radon saw that many, at least half, seemed at times forgetful of why exactly they were waking up, and almost seemed to want to roll over and go back to sleep for another ten years. But they had a routine that Wei established just before the massive thruster burn-- make sure everyone gets up, spools up the long range scanner, sets off a distress signal, and eats. Once every ten years. Before they resume their cryosleep. Not all of them made it this long, or this far- unfortunately. Wei passed before the first cycle was complete. But this last sleep was just longer than a half-nap, they woke up early because... this... this was the spot that Brekt was sure... reached civilization.

While the humans absentmindedly shambled for the galley to brew coffee and eat the last of their rations, Radon made his way to the communication array and began scanning with the forward dish and repeating their distress call. Long range scans indicated a compound on the side of a low grav planetoid, a bristling array of communication equipment, and... it just began scanning them! A corporate call sign, the automated hailing computer is performing a handshaking routine with their communications equipment! We're saved!

A cheer erupts among the human crew and they immediately begin hogging the communication computer and equipment zone, but, the sensor suite is picking some anomalous readings, Radon is almost happy to switch stations.

32% of the stars to the aft of the ship are gone. There's no mistaking it. The Lucifer Rising has burned out of dark-space. The distant stars are still luminous, but every nearby star... they came from a dark... circle? We never performed full scans in the previous 100 years, the reactor drain was too great, but from partial scans, and from an occasional accidental scan Radon determined pretty quickly that this all happened recently, some cataclysm has been wrought, just in the last 20-40 years, which has caused thousands of stars in this sector to disappear.

The automated message from Listening Post CGP-55845 doesn't make any sense. It's semi garbled, repeats every 13 or 17 seconds. The message spins up the automated docking computer, and access is provided at the nearest docking platform, but they can't seem to reach out to anyone, any person. The automated space tugs are offline. The remaining breakers, with thin skin, now so weak they have difficulty hefting the pulse rifles they boarded with all those years ago, decide to thrust over on fumes and suit up and check it out. What other choice do they have?

The entire listening post is empty but is riddled with small arms fire, broken chairs, terminals, desks, office supplies, toner cartridges, and blood stained carpets litter the area. The area is secure.  Radon floats across to the secure airlock and taps several times to be let in, but the access point requires an actual human thumb to gain entry-- doesn't work for androids. Typical. They have to buzz Radon in manually.

Radon makes short work of the datalogs. Unfortunately the data-storage suffered irreparable damage a few years ago (it was near an anti-vehicular mine when it detonated), but from that he's still able to extract at least a dozen individual narratives. It doesn't help that the humans are running about and screaming, disrupting his concentration. 

Corporate learned the other posts went dark because of either psychotic spacers or, and this is highly unlikely here, extra dimensional ///locking mechanism in place do no worry, ha, only human thumb prints get in, hotwired the access plate myself/// not possible before this at station gamma and at station psi in the andalusia sector they only used psionics and weaponized gamma ray bursts, so they mimic our technology now?/?//Corporate// Sara we have raiders at the gates, another chimera ship, new config computer identified four shuttles fused together, this could be them. doors locked. if doors lock// Sara looks like a fuel tank connected to a jump drive just blew past us// i think we powered down just in time maybe they didn't notice/// if doors locked we're blocking the marine back up we call// we called in//locking mechanism in place do no worry, ha, only human thumb prints get in, hotwired the access plate myself / preliminary reports from beta sector suggests/is// Sara we are getting a trialphafusion carbon flash from that main sequence star there, there! there! sector 4! that is is the second one this... shit it just went super nova/ novel supernovas originated from fission core /illegal tech corporate has decried all responsibility/bombs, scaled up in size and destructive power, and then teleported to the core of young starsshit is that them?///these things never used our tech before just gamma ray emitters and psionics. this is new. this shuttle is new. what else are they doing?//// that one with the white skin has a lotus instead of an arm, and when it bloomed, did you see that? i saw a single h/uman wrist extend out// with one thumb and two fingers projecting from it/// wait is that... steve precoda's arm?// Sara it opened the airlock

The creatures followed us out of the system. Maybe some of them got on ships before we even left? The creatures are destroying stars? While Radon scanned through the logs, the lights flickered off at Listening Post CGP-55845. Darkness gathered. The demons began to stir