DEAD PLANET 7: Escape Plan

7: Escape Plan

Scotty: Doc Marty. Christian: Kanan "Carrion" O'Tool. James: Bobby "The Business" 0428.

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Approaching Brekt's junk-heap-coliseum. Entering Brekt's bunker. Capella and Beef collapse in exhaustion and rest in another room. Bobby suddenly boots back up. Brekt is smoking cigarettes with another Breaker: Kanan "Carrion" O'Tool. Marty explains the situation to both Breakers and the newly-awoken Bobby. Bobby is confused and believes Igor's "Crazy Girlfriend" and their "crazy sex" is what caused the crew to abandon ship. Everyone is in agreement: Brekt's 100-year coffin run is the best bet. All aboard the Lucifer Rising in five days!

After some conversation Dean intercoms and enters the bunker. He plays both of the transmissions he's recorded the past week (the intercepted frequencies from the Dead Planet). The crew of the Aphrodite see starvation on the horizon. They juggle joining the moon colony for goat meat or traveling to the Dead Planet's surface for supposed food. Otherwise they may not make it aboard Brekt's ship.

The moon enters golden hour. Carrion is off the clock. The crew decides to travel back to the Aphrodite, board the Merida, and travel to the Dead Planet. Dean is excited. Carrion decides to tag along.

Beef stays back with Brekt, who shoots up some heroin. Brekt says he'll need to rescue his lady Leer from the colony, but then most of the preparations are accounted for. Just last-minute touch-ups on Lucy in the coming days.

Capella goes along with the crew in the Kokomo. He sticks to the back and doesn't talk much at all, really.

Nearing the Aphrodite. A shape lumbers towards the Kokomo. Now properly hunch-backed: Igor, shambling. Along the insides of his legs, crooked, are prehensile teeth groping outward, this gash splitting up his abdomen and into his mouth. He's become a creaking pair of twisted lips. Carrion runs him down. Bobby is shocked and confused.

Loading into the Merida. Bobby commands the ship as the humans rest.

DAY 3.

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Nightmares. The crew wakes as the Merida enter the planet's dark atmospheric storm. Purple lightning snapping through clouds. Bobby plays "Three Little Birds" from the ship's speaker. Out of the storm: a deep emerald sea. Hazy darkness. Little light. An island in the distance. The smoggy storm funnels towards the plateau of a mountain in the north. The island sinks into the waves as a swamp creeps out of the east. A desolate rocky expanse in the west. And buildings in the south: any architecture you can imagine, and some you could never dream up. One of these buildings, a contemporary-styled colony building, has dim lights. 

Carrion lands the Merida in the west. The oxygen of the Dead Planet is perfectly breathable and the gravity is comparable to an earth-like planet. Dispatching the Kokomo southbound towards the light. 

Two alien-isopod-beasts the size of strollers scuttle towards the Kokomo. As the carrier begins to slow down Marty identifies acid-spitting organs on the underbelly of the aliens. He plows forward, running the beasts over before they have a chance to attack. Bobby is shocked and confused.

Marty discovers some beef lasagna MREs and combines them with some cooked isopod meat to stave off the crew from starving for another 24 hours. 

[Approaching The Red Tower]

A white corporate building emblazoned with text reading "Carmine Ergonomic Building." Carrion and Marty venture in, dragging Capella along sheepishly. Bobby and Dean opt to stay in the Kokomo. Bobby privately expresses his concerns about Carrion and Marty: why were they running over so many things? He's freaked out by those two! Dean admits it's strange behavior. Bobby asks to listen to Dean's music player. Bobby trades him one of his penguin drawings. They bond and decide to take the APC for a joyride and explore other parts of the Dead Planet.

Marty and Carrion hear the Kokomo drive off. The Carmine is a dust-covered research building. Cracked plastic furniture, overturned mildewed couches, stale air, fluorescent lights puttering under generator power, calendars from 30 years ago, graffitied walls, corporate posters, dried brown-blood splatter, military footprints in the dust (recent). A glass elevator. A storage room. After intensive searching Carrion discovers a crumpled research paper by Dr. Peter Klaus.

It details the "alien" species known as the Gaunt. They live in an invisible frequency overlaid on top of our reality: nicknamed the "Dead Dimension." They are parasites. They cannot live in our carbon-based physical light-ray environments for long. Death Worm > Host > Gaunt > Decades of Life > Alpha Gaunt. Also notes of Gaunt "Crawlers" and "Dogs." This research center was built to observe, but at the end of its use it was effectively a military bunker. The Gaunt are spreading. Exponentially. They pour out of the "Dead Gateway," powered by the "Necropolis." The research paper is dated six months ago.

This is a lot for Marty and Carrion to take in. Back to the glass elevator. Floor B.

An old decontamination room. Carrion disables the generator, bypassing the sealed door but simultaneously disabling the lights. A depressurized hiss, and darkness ahead. Deeper inside the bowels of the Red Tower...

> The Aphrodite is abandoned.

> Day 3: 06 hours post-rest.

> 13 hours of fuel remaining in the Merida (7 hours to return to the moon).

> 21 hours of fuel remaining in the Kokomo (12 hours to return to the Merida).

> No food or water (20 hours until next starvation cycle).

> The moon has entered night (14 days until next sunrise).

> 4 days until Brekt boards the Lucifer Rising.

Lucifer Rising Crew List:

1) Brekt 2) Leer 3) Carrion 4) Doc Marty 5) Igor Capella 6) KR& Bobby Beef 7) ? 8) ?