Cold:Session/1 "Recruited" by the CIA

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Starring: 🗽 Quinn, 💳 Ciarán, 🧟‍♂️ Louis, 📎 John
Guest Starring: Bertie Holmes (CIA), Ham Tohyon, Ham's Attendant
Challenge: Death of Ham; O2 leak in ROKS Sun Myung Moon; Boarding party
Location: ROKS Sun Myung Moon
Date Played: 12 May 2022

Microscope to create the world

• File:Cthonic Cold War Microscope 1.pdf
• File:Cthonic Cold War Microscope 2.pdf

In-flight Chit Chat

CIA incident report Agent John Jones

Current Assignment: REDACTED

Debrief:

After boarding the RKOS SUN MYUNG MOON, agent carefully assessed other passengers for threat level. Precautions maintained against poisoning/inebriation. Made innocuous conversation with other passengers to maintain cover.

Threat Assessments:

Ciarán McDougel - CEO of space travel agency. Wealthy and he knows it. Possibly more intelligent than he appears. Has deep pockets and multiple resources. Business card is high end and freely given. Physical threat level low, however may be able to present obstacles using wealth and hired assistance. Recommendation: Recruit for resource acquisition before opposing agencies can do so.

Quinn Montoya - Space Marine. Physically imposing with obvious military training. Unclear allegiances. Not a born American citizen. May have use as a mercenary or deniable asset. Not one for small talk, unable to engage for full assessment. Recommendation: Hire with strong contract. Non compete and non-disclosure agreement required.

Louis Slotin - Undead asset. Like all reanimated assets, some concern about true allegiance. Strong and versatile, more intelligent than one would expect from reanimated corpse. Takes direction well. Recommendation: Requisition from current handler. possible deniable/disposable asset.

🧟‍♂️ Louis Personal Report

The conference was a typical academic conference. It's the closest thing I can get to vacation, even if I can't get effectively drunk while I'm out there. It's a big event, and the whispers are easier to ignore when I'm surrounded by other brains. I worried a bit about boarding the shuttle, it was going to be so empty- but it turns out that I was misestimating the dangers.

🗽 Quinn Personal Report

The conference was standard fare for the most part, a bunch of your typical bureaucrats gathering to try to out do one another. They did spring for upgraded quarters for us security personnel, so I got to enjoy a bit of extra comfort between shifts of watching a bunch of talking and political maneuvering.

💳 Ciarán

We talked about what we got out of the conference Quinn loved that conference had a nice hotel. John really appreciated the new anti-forgery technology. Louis didn't have a favorite reason. For me, it was network with Mr. Hefner. He's going to lend us some of his bunnies for a new advertising campaign. The coffins on this intermediate transfer vessel are pretty tight. I should like to make sure my staff plans a better itinerary next time. John is particularly attentive to everyone's needs. Perhaps we should hire him?

Trouble on the ROKS Sun Myung Moon

CIA incident report (cont) Agent John Jones

Current Assignment: REDACTED

Debrief:

During flight, it was determined that the ship had been the target of sabotage by person(s) unknown. Flight crew was poisoned, ship's air supply damaged, and access to flight controls and non passenger areas limited. Making use of skills held by other passengers, access to these areas were obtained. Corpses of flight crew were located. Agent used proficiency in linguistics and financial resources of one of the passengers to obtain assistance from flight control. Undead asset moved to exterior of ship to repair air supply issue. From discovered hidden caches and resources on board, pilot may have been a foreign agent, asset, or smuggler. Ship was boarded by two assailants in an infiltration pod disguised as a rogue satellite. Space Marine proved useful in subduing boarders. Agent barricaded flight deck entry and maintained ship control. One infiltrator proved to be undercover operative for the agency. (Bertie Holmes - confirmed by passcode)

🧟‍♂️ Louis Personal Report

The crew was killed, the ship was sabotaged, and all the breathers were bound to die. That's… actually not an unpleasant thought. There was a small concern about a small orbital craft colliding with the transport, but that's something I could solve with some explosive decompression. Then… just a drift. Probably just a few days in orbit before ground track dispatched salvage, but being alone with my thoughts- with our thoughts- well, it has a temptation to it. The whispers would turn into screams, though.

In the end, I'm sent on an unscheduled EVA to fix an issue with the air recycling. This hacked together ship can't hold its atmosphere. I don't have to fix it, I could let them all die, but… being completely alone means that the beings which animate me would… I don't know. I might not survive days in utter black space. My body might, but I might not. It's… a source of conflict for me. I could just stop. After all this time.

🗽 Quinn Personal Report

If I had a US nickel for every time I found out a slovenly flight crew was dead because of a random mishap that was there own fault...I'd have a nickel, which isn't much but it is odd that it happens in this day and age. We didn't ken to it until I saw the reserve O2 draining visbily on a readout and it turned out we were all locked into the passenger area. We found the flight attendant dead, got the cockpit door open to find the pilot dead as well.

The bureaucrats surprised me in actually being useful, guess I need to rethink my assumptions. We found where the reserve O2 was leaking, and one of them went out and got it fixed. We were then boarded by a pod masquerading as a rogue satelite. The boarders made the mistake of throwing a smoke grenade which let me take one of them out before he could get to the cockpit.

💳 Ciarán

Quinn noticed a discrepancy with the oxygen systems. None of the crew calls were responding and no one could be found. We popped open the extra coffin and found it was our stewardess. Dead. John reports mushroom poisoning. Someone manages to break into the cockpit and we find the pilot is dead. Same cause, it seems. We search around and find some interesting things -- a safe, wad of money, unused revolver, used ticket to a casino, and some other things. The manual for this ship is in Korean. Apparently John knows passable Korean and starts working on figuring things out while the rest of us take the keys to go search the cargo hold. Which has more weird stuff -- a bundle of passports included. We get word of imminent collision from the ship's detector.

Recruited Into A CIA Operation

CIA incident report (cont) Agent John Jones

Current Assignment: REDACTED

Debrief:

Agent Holmes recruited other passengers under temporary contract to aid in agency investigation of possible upcoming threat incident. (Temporary transfer orders for this agent attached to this report in triplicate with prerequisite stamps and signatures.) With the promise of rewards from the agency passengers agreed to take part in investigation. Undead asset was selected to replace captain. Wise choice considering immunity to poison and difficulty to incapacitation. Several options provided for investigation. Additional intelligence will be reported as obtained.

🧟‍♂️ Louis Personal Report

The approaching orbital craft was a boarding shuttle. I missed most of the excitement while fixing the oxygen, but the long and short of it is that we've been shanghaied into being CIA stringers. I have the worst luck with this, don't I? I died at Los Alamos because I was the best bomb-putterer-togetherer, and they wouldn't let me go. A few years later, they still need good bomb-putterer-togetherers, so suddenly I'm pulled back into my remarkably preserved corpse- why did they even save it? They didn't know what was going to happen. They didn't know how things were going to develop… or did they? Who even are they? I don't know. But I'm not working for them now. I'm property, and the CIA has commandeered me. Now I have to pretend to be a pirate captain and sexual deviant, because somehow I'm the right body for the job? Well, it's lunacy, but it beats managing a team of post-docs trying to encode Enochian in vacuum tubes to build a machine capable of a hundred SuOPS- summoning operations per second.

Hah, lunacy. I just got that. Who says my sense of humor is dead.

🗽 Quinn Personal Report

...and it turns out our boarding was brought to us by an undercover CIA op. Not sure what they were looking for, but sloppy mcpilot wasn't going to be any use to them anymore. That seemed to hit them hard, but they got over it pretty quickly when they realized they had a viable crew they could indenture right there.

Can't say I'm not curious, apparently, there is a doppelganger of me running around out there. The cherry on top is the Vatican appears to be connected, so I may be able to add a bit of hurt to them in the process of all of this. I'm guessing that I will have a lot to report when I get back to Liberty, whenever that will be.

💳 Ciarán

Louis and Quinn figured out how to fix the Oxygen situation while I worked with John to get our rescue handled (at great expense). Ground Control altered our course to dodge the incoming collision. But it happened anyway, somehow. Quinn gets a message to John across the ship that the we've been attached and are about to be boarded. Suddenly the ship is filled with smoke.

Fight. Contract