You glance around and have no idea what she’s asking you to do, as you can’t see any more papers around. Mel, James and Sand have moved on a couple of steps and have picked up a tray for lunch. Sand turns to look at you, shrugs his shoulders and jerks his head to beckon you forward to join them. Do you shuffle forwards to pick up your own tray and sit down with your friends (turn to 161) or crouch down beside the muttering lady to ask how you can help (turn to 227)?
118
The others in the room can only watch on helplessly as James delivers the killer blow, smashing you against the window multiple times until it smashes and hurling your now lifeless corpse to the ground below.
119
All of a sudden, you are plunged into darkness. All of the emergency lights go out simultaneously, and you are in pitch black.
“James?” you say, but there is no response. “Hey, are you ok?”
When James remains silent, you know you need to act swiftly. Something is very wrong here. You try to pull yourself round and head carefully to the door to see if the lights are off in the corridor as well. Turn to 262.
120
The square spins round and changes to the colour orange. Which number do you press now? If you press 1-5, turn to 102. If you press 6-9, turn to 280.
121
The great bench in front of you has a solid front, so you assume it must have cabinets on the side facing away from the door. You float over it and are greeted by a waist-high, purple mass of flesh, with six large legs that you can see and two mouths, side-by-side, each of which is lined with spiny teeth. It turns towards you, widening its glowing, spherical black eyes.
It lunges at you and will fight until one of you dies! Use the rules from the beginning of the book to fight this disgusting creature.
Purple mass
BODY 4
SPIRIT 8
If you win, turn to 27.
122
You approach the political centre, located just to the west of the centre in a particularly grand-looking dome-shaped building. As you near the door, you hear a great rumble and see a small rocket blast off from behind it and continue upwards until it disappears from view. Apparently it has its own private launch pad!
You walk into the entrance hall, being eyed suspiciously by about half a dozen guards spaced irregularly around the room, and are greeted by a short lady with slicked-back hair.
“Hello and welcome to the New Gaian Centre for Martian Politics,” she says in a professional tone. “Who are you here to see please?”
Do you say you are here to see the culture minister (turn to 228), the prime minister (turn to 208) or the military minister (turn to 23)?
123
You flail around, and connect somehow with the unseen force, and hear it collapse to the floor at your feet.
Time is running out, so you know you must check another console. Do you move to the navigator’s chair (turn to 255), or the commander’s (turn to 172)?
124
The instant you press the button, you feel the brakes jam on to their fullest extent, and the entire ship is drastically slowed. An experience of gravity suddenly becomes present on the ship and you are hurled to the floor.
Make a combined BODY and HEART check at difficulty 19. If you are successful, you are quick enough to grab the seatbelt and get yourself seated again. If you fail, the seatbelt slips through your fingers and you hit the floor painfully; lose 2 SPIRIT points before you guide yourself back onto the seat and strap yourself in.
The ship then starts to reposition itself for a safe landing. You find yourself praying that the rest of the team somehow found themselves somewhere safe to stay for the landing process, and as the ship hits the earth’s atmosphere the entire ship begins to shake violently.
You are forced to your side in the chair as the ship pulls off an extreme manoeuvre to turn itself around for a safe landing, and the intense force causes you to black out.
Turn to 96.
125
When you wake up, it’s still very dark outside and you can feel an odd, damp pressure on both legs, which you quickly realise is also painful. Your legs are bleeding. You switch on the light, and the bottom half of the bed fills your vision with a bright red.
You sit up, banging your head painfully and falling back to the bed, but you can’t tell what your head cracked against. You try sitting up again, and this time are sent sprawling onto the floor by a violent blow from an unseen attacker. James! you think.
You try to move and only then notice that your legs are missing from the thighs down. You look around for something you could use to defend yourself, but before you can grab anything or even think to feel sorry about your lost limbs you are struck again from behind and lose consciousness. You never wake up.
126
Pushing open the door, you see a room lined from floor to ceiling with screens and control panels. It is not obvious at first what the room was used for, so you look a bit closer and see that labels on the screens name specific places around the ship, and the control panels have buttons for numbered cameras, as well as movement and zoom controls.
You have stumbled across someone’s covert surveillance for the whole ship. Whether this was designed here for a security officer, placed here by mission control or built in as someone’s dirty secret you can’t tell, but you can tell that it has not been used for a very long time.
Would you like to try to switch on some of the screens (turn to 246) or spin round and leave, continuing along the corridor (turn to 224)?
127
You feel drawn to the handgun section, which you can see in the corner to your right. You pull on the corner of a shelving unit to propel you towards it, but it is not connected to the floor as you suspected and the moment you tug on it, it shifts towards you, meaning you do nothing other than crash into it, bashing your shoulder on the sharp corner of a box full of grenades. Lose 1 BODY point.
Rubbing your shoulder and, at least in part, feeling grateful that it didn’t turn out worse than it did, you carefully use the ground instead to move you into the corner. Turn to 21.
128
You are just about to head towards the exit when you notice something else in the opposite corner. Pauline is starting to get audibly frustrated with you now – quite an achievement over the sound of the alarm – but you can’t help yourself as you launch your body to the opposite corner and pull something out from behind a screen.
Yes, you almost can’t believe it, but in your hands is something you’ve been wanting for as long as you can remember. It’s an attachment for your glove that sends a beam of ultraviolet light in the direction of the person you’re attacking. From now on, if you are told that you must suffer a penalty in combat due to it being too dark, you can ignore that penalty.
You leave the shuttle bay; turn to 216.
129
Emerging from the horrendous stench you find yourself gulping in deep breaths of cleaner air while the alarm continues to sound. You find yourself in another corridor, dim like all the rest, although you can clearly see the odd glint off a sticky substance that has been splattered around the left-hand wall and seems to continue down the corridor. You think it could be blood but the light here is particularly dark so it is difficult to tell. You and the rest of the team say to one another that none of you remember being in this area before and hope that the bridge is not far.
The corridor continues forward for several yards before you see a door on the right. Straight ahead, the corridor continues and then bends round to the left, taking the splatter with it. If you would like to go through the door, turn to 241. If you would like to ignore the door and follow the corridor, turn to 84.
130
It takes you several minutes to find a password that allows you access, which is no mean feat. You thank the gods you remembered your training enough to at least try some factory default options.
You are accessing an open layer of the computer; your skill isn’t great enough to
get you any deeper. There’s no indication here of the source of the alarm, and you can’t view any camera feeds so you still have no idea where Bartu is, but it does confirm that there are multiple lifeforms detected throughout the ship.
You bring up a map of the ship on the screen to see where the lifeforms are, which looks familiar now you see it. Turning left out of this room and following the corridor round will take you to the bridge most quickly, although you’re intrigued by the fact that the opposite side of the ship seems littered with life signs. You can’t tell what is what, but you think that if you hurry you should get to the rest of the team before they meet them.
If you’d like to leave your team to deal with whatever they are and turn left out of the room, continuing in your original direction, turn to 176. If you’d like to return back to the original junction and find the rest of the team heading towards the shuttle bay, turn to 264.
131
You feel the life leaving you as the horrific creature bites down on one of your arms and blood fills the air around you. It looks directly into your face with its pitch-black, lifeless orbs that his has as eyes, and then lunges forward and rips out your throat.
132
As you float over to the nearest shuttle, Pauline calls to you, “What are you doing?”
You explain you’re going to see if you can power it up, and she rolls her eyes, muttering, “Of course you are. What else would you be doing?”
You fly up to the entry and manage to make your way inside to the cockpit. Nothing is switched on, and, try as you might, you can’t figure out what the problem is.
You notice the rest of the team continuing towards the doors, so you quickly drop back to the floor and follow them through, your tail between your legs.
Turn to 216.
133
With no idea what’s happening elsewhere on the ship, your only option is to wait in hope that your team comes to your rescue.
After floating aimlessly for about fifteen minutes, the ship starts to judder and shake and you’re hurled against the floor violently. You try to find something solid to hold on to but there is nothing, and within a couple of minutes you are being bounced around the room like a giant pinball machine, each hit adding more pain to the mix and increasing your sense of disorientation.
You don’t know how long you remain conscious, but at some point you pass out, whether from the shaking or from a concussion you will never know. You never wake up.
134
You have only been waiting about five minutes when one of the security guards shuffles over to you, gives a look at your badge and then winks at you.
“Come with me,” he says, marching purposefully towards a small entrance to the side of the long queue. “Right,” he says, stopping just short of opening the door. “You’re not an alien looking to immigrate, so I’m guessing you’re here to find something out about them. Let me give you something you might find handy.”
He hands you a pamphlet bearing the title Let’s Protect our Planet! with a series of pages speculating on the various tricks that alien races could use to make themselves appear as humans. You are about to ask what this all means, but he has already marched away to speak to some others looking to join the queue. You quickly flick through and spot some of the tells aliens would apparently use in the queue already, and wonder how many innocent earthlings have been turned away based purely on the racist attitude of the immigration officer. Two particularly odd habits do stand out to you though: patting one’s own head repeatedly and using one leg to kick the other forward are apparently expected to be common traits among alien races. Record the codeword Leo.
You wonder if it will come in handy in the future and return to the city centre. If you have the codeword Cetus, turn to 99. If not, turn to 140.
135
The door opens and you float forwards into a kitchen area. The right-hand wall is lined with bright white cupboards from floor to ceiling, and the left-hand wall contains a variety of appliances and work areas.
You wonder if there are some kitchen tools or food that might come in handy. Do you explore this room (turn to 252) or do you cross this room and leave through the door
opposite the one you came in by (turn to 83)?
136
You swing your fist round to strike at the robot, and it catches your arm in mid-air with a gripping tool. At the same time, one of its other limbs emerges at great speed, equipped with a circular saw, and it slices your forearm clean off.
The pain is so extreme you aren’t even able to scream and look up at the robot as it slices back across your neck. Grasping at your neck with your other hand while your now-amputated arm flaps helplessly, spraying blood generously across the floor, you collapse to your knees. You are helpless to prevent the robot from rolling you you’re your back and inquisitively slicing your chest open to investigate this new entrant to its little kingdom.
137
The team understands, and you all gather more closely to see how you can take some of the discomfort away from Bartu, but it’s no use. He waves the team away but grabs you by the arm with one hand and your head by the other to whisper in your ear: “You must access my console! The password is 327.”
He suddenly breathes in loudly and slumps back against the wall. You quickly check, and he has died. You know there was nothing you could have done, and yet as you stand you curse yourself for not having got to him more quickly. You gather the team and proceed down the corridor. Turn to 287.
138
Turner listens carefully to you, and eventually holds up his hand to indicate that he’s heard enough.
“Very well,” he says. “I will leave you in Pauline’s hands, who is a better leader than I think you may give her credit for. Don’t make me regret this decision.”
He opens the door and you walk out to join the team, followed by General Turner. You step to one side, and he formally introduces Pauline to the team as captain before explaining the other roles based on your collective backgrounds and performance so far. Catalina is given the role of second-in-command, you will be security officer, Bartu will be navigator, James will be team medic, and Mel will be engineer, a role she punches the air on having heard she receives. He also hands you all a glove he instructs you all to wear from now on; this glove can be powered up with a tiny switch on the inside, enabling you to punch much harder than you would be able to otherwise.
“Congratulations on becoming a full part of the team,” Turner says, “and best of luck for the rest of your time in training. I look forward to taking things forward when a deployment is assigned.”
Over the following days, you and the team begin to settle into your new roles as you engage in more exercises. Pauline initially experiences some conflict with you and the others in the team, but within a few days, you have all managed to find enough of a rhythm to work together, and you all feel that you are performing well.
After a full six weeks has passed since you arrived at GIG, you find yourselves in General Turner’s office again.
“I’m afraid your formal graduation is going to have to wait,” he is saying. “You are about to be given your GIG equipment and it’s important you take that seriously, because you’re not going to have the lead time I’d expect for newly qualifieds. A meteorite somehow changed its course while passing between Jupiter and Saturn and has a 35% chance of colliding with earth. We need a team to intercept, investigate and respond appropriately. It’s a low risk mission, one that doesn’t justify sending a more senior team, but we have no other junior teams available, and this is an important task we need to carry out. You will have one week of briefings and final preparations before launch. Thoughts?”
You stand in stunned silence for a moment before opening your mouth. If you express your thanks and say you’re excited to have your first opportunity to serve your planet and can’t wait to get out there, turn to 232. If you say you think you will need more time to get ready as a team for your first mission, turn to 284
. If you say that you don’t think this mission is one that justifies the resources needed to send you there, turn to 272.
139
If you have the codeword Virgo, turn to 184 immediately.
If you don’t have that codeword, you can choose to talk to Pauline alone (turn to 209), Bartu and James together (turn to 289), Catalina and Mel together (turn to 50) or the whole team (turn to 249).
140
You are walking around the centre of New Gaia. Record the codeword Cetus. Where would you like to visit? You can go to:
The market (turn to 225)
Your nearest bar (turn to 256)
The extra-terrestrial research facility (turn to 213)
The headquarters of the Martian Navy (turn to 167)
The immigration centre (turn to 56)
The New Gaian Centre for Martian Politics (turn to 122)
141
She walks you over to her laboratory and reveals her great recreation, which looks to you like the sort of thing you made when you were eight years old. From a distance it could be a miniature papier-mâché island or a large anthill, and up close it barely looks like anything.
Do you ask if there are other experiments that might be more accessible (turn to 51) or simply say “fascinating” in as genuine a tone as possible (turn to 74)?
142
The alleyway continues to the end of a building and then turns right up a flight of stairs. You can hear the predator behind you and you don’t slow down. The alleyway continues from the top of the stairs until it reaches another T-junction.
Do you turn left, running down a flight of stairs to a balcony with a view over the city (turn to 217) or right, running down a flight of stairs and deeper into the alley complex (turn to 3)?
The Altimer Page 7