After Desiraye fires her shot, she throws her gear into the elevator and then takes up a position of cover just outside the elevators so that the others can get in.

The classical music filling the hall ends with a beep as the elevator door opens.  Behind you, the Pegasus is filling the window with its imminent crash into the space station as the oxygen is sucked out in a whistling sound through the hole made by the singularity turret.

You jump into the elevator, with Hammer holding the datasphere closely to him.  Desiraye takes cover, but you can't see anything coming.  You wouldn't anyway since they do not show up in the visible spectrum.

The doors to the elevator close, and again you hear that soothing classical music filling the air.

Then you begin to wonder what happened to that thing that was on Kyrillian's sensor.  He flips it up and looks again.  "It's here with us!" he yells as you are all standing in the crowded elevator.  The elevator is roughly 8 feet cubed, and the thing could be anywhere.  You can't recall bumping into anything invisible...yet.

42 seconds to impact.

Desiraye hops into the elevator as the doors close behind her and slings her experimental rifle just newly acquired.  When she hears that something is in there with them, she reaches into her vest pocket and slides on her brass knuckles and then retrieves her vibroknife from its sheath into her other hand.  She first looks up and then around the elevator to see if she can see anything.

Kri'lik quickly scans his own motion detector to try and find the hidden enemy if/when he does he shouts out its location. He acts quickly as he realizes that in this confined space he would be an excellent target for this enemy since he has a method to "see" them.

Will fire a laser shot if no one is behind the enemy, if so he will go for a pitol whip.

S'Krllk eloquently sums up his feelings by exclaiming, "GAAAH!" and then flails all his arms in his immediate vicinity as if he's swatting a giant cloud of mosquitoes.

Hammer holds the datasphere close like a football, swinging his metallic fist around to ward off whatever is there.

Kri'lik pulls up his detector and finds that it is right in the middle of you all...but up.  You all look up as it drops from the ceiling area and into your midst.

Desi strikes out with the vibroknife, drawing a purplish goo as she hits.  The goo sprays...

...it hits Hammer...  (4 STA damage)
...and Desi... (6 STA damage)
...and S'Krllk... (8 STA damage)

(It is not affected by armor.)

It burns like an acid, but your skin is actually being transformed/transported into another dimension, leaving it to burst open as if suddenly cut away.

The scream is like a shrill scrape of metal sheering across metal.  It strikes out at Hammer, hitting.  (12 STA damage.)

It fails to get the datasphere from Hammer and suddenly disappears, leaving a black gooey-like spot in the center of the elevator as it goes into its own dimension again.

The classical music stops, and the elevator door opens...

There is nothing there.

24 seconds to impact.

You are now on level 4.  (Levels 5 through 8 were being evacuated.)

It will take you approximately 2 minutes to make it to the escape shuttle.
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:41, Thu 29 Dec 2011.

Desiraye tries to shake off the pain of her wound and yells out to the others with obvious urgency in her voice, "Let's go people!  We need to go now if we want to get off this ship efore we're royally screwed!"

Desi tucks away her vibroknife and brass knuckles and unslings her experimental rifle as she begins to lead the way towards the escape shuttles.

Hammer follows:  "I won't argue with that.  Lead the way."  He was certainly glad he was wearing a spacesuit now, just in case.

Your party makes a break for the shuttles.  The halls are chaos as people from the ship are running in a panic, some holding portable computers or experiments.  You see a crowd gathered outside the shuttle bay, a horde of people blocking you.

And then comes the crash.  The entire space station rocks from the impact, and metal begins curling in and bending with a sound like a vehicle being crushed in a compactor.

You hear the sound of breaking glass in the distance and then screams.  The crowd begins spilling out into the docking bay.

It pulls you too and you find yourself being swept toward the hangar door.  People are being pulled out into the vacuum of space ten at a time.

Hammer maintains his grip on the datasphere.

You may:

Try to grab onto the hangar door (though someone will also have to try to grab Hammer);

Let yourself be swept into the hangar and possibly grab onto the shuttles or be swept into space; or

Something else you can think of.

Right now, there are people being swept toward you like projectiles, making the hangar door a dangerous place to be.  There is not much to grab onto, but you do have your weapons and equipment and spacesuits on.

Hammer holds tight to the datasphere.  "Someone grab me!" he calls.  "Human--and robot--chain!"

As Desiraye enters the shuttle bay from the elevators, she immediately slings her experimental rifle again seeing the mass of people in front of them trying to get to the escape shuttles that they're trying to get to as well.  The shock of the ship hitting the station is pretty bad as she's knocked into one of the walls and she double checks her gear that it's lashed down or in a pocket or pouch that is secured because the worst of it is about to begin with the decompression of the station.

TBC after OOC question...

Hoping his Vrusks natural aptitude of ambidexterity and his multitude of legs will do the trick Kri'lik reaches one hand out for Hammer while the other tries to find something solid to hold on to.

"If we all bulk up on the door, we still need a shuttle to get out of here.  Screw it, it's worth the risk," Desiraye thinks as she Grasps only her coil of rope and she lets herself go through the doors into the hangar bay where the shuttle are.  Her intention is to get hung upon something and use whatever she has to (including people not on her team) to get near a shuttle and get her and the rest of the team out of here.

Kri'lik grabs Hammer.  You are being thrust out into the hanger and find yourself floating in the air.  Hammer manages to maintain his hold on the datasphere.

You all manage by some miracle to land your feet on the outside of a shuttle.  Unfortunately, the breach in the hull is just twisted metal, and the many corridors emptying into the hanger are emptying their oxygen as well, creating a suction effect that is actually ripping the shuttle from the hangar floor.

In moments, you find yourself standing on the outside hull of a shuttle that is floating outside the space station and toward a huge metal bulk below.  Their had been people clambering into the shuttle, but the sudden lack of pressure and oxygen has sent their bodies flying out into space.  Only one corpse remains, its hand clutched on the door.

You manage to jump into the shuttle and get to the cockpit, pushing the button to repressurize the shuttle.  Unfortunately, the shuttle is floating toward the Pegasus and will impact it in 12 seconds...unless someone with piloting skills can get it up and running fast enough.

OOC: Anyone with piloting skills?

This was mainly a pass/fail scenario since you could get to the shuttle without a problem due to its size and your control over the direction of travel.

Kyrillian is still with you, his eyes wide as he is frozen to the shuttle seat.  "Disaster of disasters," he says, in shock.  "Where is the tracer?  Can they find us?"  You are not sure who he means by "they," but you think he means the invisible, extra-dimensional alien race.

Desi jumps into the seat and starts the engine, getting the engines to pull hard to the left.  (Solid success roll.)

As she is doing this, communications are coming on in the shuttle.  There is a distress call.  "This is General Ashe aboard the Pegasus.  We need immediate evacuation.  We have valuable data regarding the Matrix infection.  Please land a shuttle in the rear docking bay.  Repeat, this is a code red emergency.  Is there anyone in the vicinity?"

The message goes on and on like this as he seeks for help.

OOC: Since Desi was so successful at her piloting skill, she can land it in the Pegasus shuttle bay if she wants.

As Desi jumps into the seat of the shuttle and gets the shuttle going away from the disaster they just escaped from.  She begins to check all of the gauges and readings to make sure that they're all in the 'green' and they can get away when the distress signal comes over the comm channel.  Desi flips the switch and opens the channel to reply, "General Ashe, this is Desiraye Lipost.  We've got a shuttle and we're on our way to your location best speed.  Advise of changes.  Lipost out."

Desiraye begins to bring the shuttle around to the location General Ashe gave them and tells the rest of the team, "Secure all our gear fast!  We're going in to see if we can help.  Gear up with weapons and screens up in case there's trouble and we can support and react accordingly.  I don't know what's going on but, we're probably going to have to dust-off quickly so if you get out, don't go far!"

Desi will take the shuttle in...

General Ashe says over the intercom, "Thank the seven galaxy gods you're here!  Use shuttle bay 3.  It should look familiar.  Do not exit the shuttle."

Desi pulls around, and sure enough it is the same docking bay that you recently escaped from, where the robots attacked and where you did not go without your losses.  Luckily, no riddles this time.

The shuttle docks, and you see what Ashe meant.  The bay doors are blown open and the entire area is decompressed.  After a few moments, you see Ashe, followed by Shinsa and three others.  They are all in spacesuits, and he tells you to open the docking doors of the shuttle to allow for safe entry.  You do so, and soon the General, Shinsa and three other soldiers are aboard.

"Get us out of here, and now!" Ashe orders.  "The whole place is going to blow after that impact."

In reply to General Ashe (msg #82):

Desiraye opens the docking doors of the shuttles to let everyone in and she adds with a lot of enthusiasm, "LET'S GO!  LET'S GO!"  Once everyone is in and secured, she gets the shuttle moving away at best speed.  Desi lets the shuttle build up cabin pressure so that they can take off, or at least stop using, their spacesuits and relax some.  "Welcome aboard General and staff.  Would you mind telling us what the hell just happened back there?"

Ever the protective type Kri'lik wanders over to the new arrivals to see if any of them need medical attention.

S'Krllk remarks, "That was novel. Usually the universe just shoots at us, this is the first time it tried to ram us with a spaceship."

The general holds up a small data disk.  "Look familiar?" It is the original disk you took with the Matrix virus data.  "This fried our entire network on Pegasus.  But nothing we could detect.  It was a Trojan Horse that just took us on a crash course suddenly.  Shinsa, let them know what we found out."

The general begins getting comfortable.  You see he is still hurt from his previous wounds.  No one else is injured.

Shinsa takes the small data disk from Ashe.  You see it has been put inside a sealed vial now.

"Well," the human woman with cybernetic implants says, "we were tracking the purpose of the Matrix.  Although it is a native species able to infiltrate mechanical devices, we believe it was...shall we say, 'genetically altered,' to be a weapon.  There is a race of aliens -- extra-dimensional aliens -- and the Sathar are trying to align with them to defeat the rest of us.  The Matrix was re-engineered to track down and destroy those aliens when they make themselves known."

Kyrillian says, "So when they showed up on the ship, the Matrix detected and tried to destroy them by ramming the Pegasus into the space station."

Shinsa nods.  "Exactly.  And we couldn't do anything to stop it.  They do not respond to human commands, not that we know of anyway."  She stuffs the vial in her pocket.  "So the Matrix cannot be allowed to infest any machinery, especially if there is any danger of those aliens appearing, because it will turn the machinery into a fighting machine against them."

"Oh. That sounds really, really, really bad."
"See, that little matrix thing has been trying to eliminate us since we first ran into it. If it was always supposed to track down and destroy the extra-dimensional aliens, they've been following us for a while."
S'Krllk is clearly confused, wondering whether they were being threatened by the matrix or protected by it.