Ming assigned us a new mission to investigate a missing Argonaut research ship called "The Blue Dolphin". The research ship, which had a complement of twelve, had been investigating a mysterious asteroid that apparently appeared out of nowhere near Mercury. The only presence on Mercury was a consortium of companies called The Planetary Consortium (PC) who had an anti-matter production facility on the surface of the planet. The facility was called Lumina.
A ship was made available to us and we travelled to Mercury. On approaching the planet we received a weak distress signal from a PC Battlecruiser that had lost all power. We contacted Lumina but they seemed reluctant to assist their colleagues. They were clearly hiding something from us, but we decided to help anyway. We docked with the disabled Battlecruiser and met with the Captain. She explained that they had also been investigating the mysterious asteroid. It was surrounded by a dense cloud and as they entered the cloud they lost all power to the ship. Even the power to their vac suits seemed to be fading. There were 120 people on the Battlecruiser but there was enough time before their orbit decayed for us to ferry all the crew down to Lumina. The Commander at Lumina base was more interested in saving the Battlecruiser than the lives of the employees, so we left them to it while we saved the people.
Once everyone was safe we agreed to work with PC to try and ascertain what happened. A PC engineer called Morgus was assigned to assist us. Morgus analysed the inert anti-matter from the Battlecruiser and detected the presence of strange sub-atomic particles. Professor Arronax was able to analyse these particles to determine that they were organic and been genetically engineered. They were capable of attaching themselves to atoms and stopping all motion; essentially they were capable of stopping any source of power used in the Galaxy. This technology was clearly beyond anything transhumanity was capable of.
Using the labs on Lumina, Professor Arronax and Morgus were able to work out that extreme radiation would temporarily disable these organisms, dubbed Morgites after Morgus who had discovered them. Morgus modified our ship so that the sensors would emit pulses of radiation to disable the Morgites, and would enable us to keep power and fly through the cloud surrounding the asteroid. However, the radiation was of extremely high levels, and even in the ship and wearing suits we would be vulnerable to radiation poisoning should we use the device for too long. It was a risk we had to take.
Morgus accompanied us as we flew into the cloud. The device worked successfully, and despite dangerous radiation levels we penetrated the cloud to locate the asteroid. It was quickly obvious that the asteroid was somehow alive and organic. We saw the wreckage of "The Blue Dolphin" which had been absorbed by the "asteroid". To our surprise we also saw the wreckage of a Factor husk ship that had also been absorbed. The Factors were an alien race we had previously encountered on Rorty. Nova landed us on the asteroid. We remembered how to create a simulspace session with the Factors so we contacted them to discover that they had been attacked by an Extra-terrestrial Intelligence (they referred to it as ETI) which had absorbed their ship, and they requested our assistance. They had a plan to get to the core of the “asteroid” in the hope of destroying it, but had been incapacitated by the ETI. They asked us to dock with the part of their ship that had not yet been absorbed. To our surprise the "asteroid" had already started to absorb our landing gear, and Morgus had to reroute nearly all power to the engines in order for Nova to take off.
We wanted to help the Factors and try to locate any survivors from "The Blue Dolphin" but decided that docking with the Factor's ship might risk our craft also getting absorbed. Instead we free-falled across. Morgus was unaware of the existence of aliens and when Nova created a simulspace version of the Factors to try and prepare him, he completely snapped and went into a psychological shock. We couldn’t pull him together, so we left him on our ship with strict instructions to the AI not to allow him any access or perform any of his instructions - we didn't want him flying off in his panic!
We boarded the Factor ship and immediately found a Factor twitching, with a hideous alien spider like creature on the Factor's back that had claws holding on to the flesh, and appeared to be injecting something into the Factor. We shot at the creature which leapt off and tried to attach itself to one of us, but we were able to kill it before it could do so.
Professor Arronax looked at the Factor's injury and found that five tiny eggs had been injected. Bizarrely these eggs had miniscule fins that enabled them to move about, making removing them extremely difficult. The Professor began the slow process of trying to extract these eggs from the Factor. While he was doing so a human sized alien biped that had crawled along the roof dropped down to try and attack us. It had razor sharp claws, and to our horror was also capable of spitting some kind of acid. We were able to kill the creature, but not before it had injected something into Nova after a successful attack. Her medichines detected an infection, and were able to deal with the threat.
Once the Factor was free from the eggs we communicated with it to discover that there were three other Factors on the ship: three of them, including the one we saved, were "Guardians", and the fourth was an "Ambassador". The alien biped we killed it referred to as a Defiler. They inject eggs which consume the host in order to create more Defilers. Each host could produce up to six Defilers. With 3 Factors and 12 transhumans from "The Blue Dolphin" available as hosts we started to get a bit concerned about the number of Defilers we might be dealing with!
The Factor produced a map for us that showed the location of the Ambassador and the two other Guardians. It also showed 9 alien signatures near them, although we couldn't tell whether they were Defilers or the smaller, and easier to kill, spider creatures. We needed as many guns as we could muster, so we persuaded Morgus to join us on the alien ship with the hope that he could keep himself together. We then joined the Factor and set off towards the location of the Ambassador.
On the way we passed a chamber that had in it what looked like transhumans. The factor was insistent on continuing so we made a note of the location for later investigation. We found the Ambassador but it was under attack by many Defilers. We joined in the fight and some of the Defilers turned on us. The Ambassador was killed and Morgus was badly injured but we defeated them.
The professor set about trying to remove the eggs from the factor that had been infected during the fight. Another of the factors transmitted data to me that they had obtained from the asteroids core so I could analyse it. I broke through the encryption and analysed the data. I found markers in the data indicating the Titan Apex was the source. Apex was in charge of the defence grid around the Earth pre fall and was considered the most powerful of the Titans. Apex was rumoured to have left the solar system with many stolen egos after the fall.
The probe was an expeditionary force to test transhumanities defences. Another file called planet killer had additional encryption. I broke through it and found it was about a device that could destroy planets. It was in orbit around the Titan home world Olaf in the K2V system. The factor provided data on the location of K2V through a wormhole. I provided them a copy of my Ego for study in exchange.
We went back to the chamber where we found the transhumans. There were twelve of them. Three were dead and looked like they had died when something burst out of them The others were still alive but in various states of infection. We killed them and removed all the stacks. The Factors plan was to destroy the asteroid with antimatter.
The Factor provided details on how we could upgrade the power systems on our ship. I made the modifications and syphoned off some antimatter into a containment vessel. I jury rigged a timer on the containment vessel and we left it on the asteroid. The AI struggled to pilot our ship through the cloud but the prof stepped in and miraculously took us out of the cloud.
We left Morgus at the base on Mercury then returned to Titan after the antimatter destroyed the asteroid. We met with the destroyer Hermes that Ming had arranged we borrow from the Go-nin group. One of the profs contacts studied the data on the planetkiller. It was made of neutronium, super dense matter from a collapsed star with an energy emitter at one end. It had a control station in orbit around it.
I got the factors to upgrade the Hermes with the technology to generate wormholes and also to provide some stealth technology. The wormhole technology was initiated and we transitioned to K2V. Hermes scanned the system and detected one planet and no star. The planet was far larger even than Jupiter even though the surface looked solid and I theorised it could be a dyson sphere. The planet killer was detected in orbit and other fast moving objects in the vicinity.
The surface on the planet looked natural but with large areas of technology. The Hermes moved to within 10 kilometres and we studied the control satellite.
We free-falled across to the control satellite. It took me a couple of attempts to open the airlock as the technology was not transhuman. Nova shot what she thought was a camera inside. The other side of the airlock was a short corridor. Nova walked up to the end wall to search but when she touched the wall there was a bright light and we found ourselves in what appeared to be the reception of a hotel. The receptionist asked if we were from the transhuman delegation and said Mr Apex was expecting us.
We took the lift up to the presidential suite. Apex said we should join him or leave. His plan was to have a utopia for transhumanity on the planet and destroy everything else. When we declined the simulspace we were in ended and we found ourselves back in the corridor. There was a hatch in the roof of the corridor. Bob climbed up and opened it. In the room beyond was two morphs who drew weapons. They were dispatched before they could fire a shot.
We found a store room with some neutroniun in a storage vessel as well as other equipment. The corridor turned a corner. Around the corner was an area that was smooth and slightly translucent. When Bob ran through he was hit by multiple laser beams. On the far side he found a room with two morphs who he killed. I got blinded by the laser beams when I tried to go down the corridor.
Bob was in some sort of control room. I tried to connect but the data flow was overwhelming. Once everyone was through the lasers we climbed up another hatch and went down another corridor to another room. In the room was a mechanical insectoid creature which was a morph of Apex itself, and another six transhuman morphs. Apex ordered the other morphs to kill us. It was a hard fight and Nova was badly injured. I finally killed the Apex morph and the other morphs immediately stopped fighting and started looking confused.
I studied all the controls in the room. The planet killer was complex and would need several people to operate. We got several engineers over from the Hermes to help man the planet killer. We turned it on the planet and started destroying it. We estimated it was going to take a year to completely destroy what proved to be a dyson sphere once we cut it open, revealing a small star inside.
The factors offered us roles as ambassadors to their home world. The prof declined but I and the others accepted. It took a year to travel to their home world. When we arrived we were greeted by another transhuman who had been there ten years having chosen to stay with the factors. The factors had clearly been to Earth around the time of the fall. The prof returned to Titan where he resigned from firewall to continue his research.