Drive

Who: Jay and Katrina
Where: Their quarters
When: Late night

“Three fucking weeks!”
“Yeah, I know honey, but we found it in the end, didn't we?”
“Three weeks though! Three fucking weeks, grubbing around the lower decks, following all those faint tachyon signatures” Jay paused and shook his head in exasperation “You know....” he continued “The things we found down there...”
“Yeah, I know hon”
“How did this even happen?” he grumbled “How?”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about it” Katrina soothed, placing a comforting hand on one of his shoulders as she moved past where he was sat, glowering at the time drive on the table before him “We found it, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, but how the hell did it get into Max’s building blocks?” Jay demanded “He plays with the damn things all the time. How did we ever miss it?”
“Oh, I dunno” Katrina sighed, casting herself tiredly down on the sofa and snatching a well-thumbed magazine up from the floor “Maybe there’s some paradoxical stuff at play? - You know how it is with the things”
Grimacing at the merest suggestion, Jay shook his head and turned his attention back to the drive to slide his fingers across its smooth, featureless surface, and draw the complicated unlock pattern, that he recalled from his time with the STCP
He was immediately rewarded with lights shimmering across the surface of the device as soon as he had finished, and he leaned forward in his chair to dab his fingers across the controls and scrutinise the results on the readouts
“Not good” he muttered, his brown eyes narrowing as he absorbed what the diagnostics were telling him
Katrina glanced up from her magazine
“What’s up?” she asked
“We don’t have enough power to jump the whole ship” Jay grumbled “Passive recharge only works so fast”
“So we just jump a group of us” Katrina shrugged “We go in tooled up, snatch Cass and jump straight back out again”
Jay gave her a sceptical look
“We both know it’s not going to be as simple as that, don’t we?” he grumped “This it Brittany and Cass we’re talking about – It’s going to be a fucking nightmare, I just know it”
“Cass said she’d escaped” Katrina shrugged "So hopefully Brittany won't even be an issue"
“We're not even sure if it even was Cass who wrote that letter” Jay retorted blackly “I’ve replayed that newsreel time and again, and from the brief flash of the letter we get on camera, it looks like her writing, but this could easily be a trap”
“Agreed” Katrina conceded “So we go in tooled up and expecting trouble”
“We...” Jay repeated thoughtfully “Should both of us even be going?” he blurted after a moment’s awkward consideration, inwardly wincing at how it must sound to her “What about Max? If it is a trap...”
He lapsed into silence, leaving unsaid the very real fear that their son could easily have to grow up without both his parents if anything went wrong
“She’s my friend too” Katrina said softly, her eyes meeting his “We’re both STCP Jay, and if anything goes wrong, we both need to be in on this”
Grimacing, Jay looked away with a shake of his head
"I don't like it, but that makes sense" he grudgingly concurred
Katrina was, of course, coming along; he hadn’t even needed to ask - She was not only friends with Cassandra, but given what had gone on between him and Cass, she would have to be mad to let him disappear into the mists of time, when there was no telling how long he would be away with the 'other woman', as she sometimes jokingly called her, or even if they would ever come back
How had he ever got into this mess?
At times, it felt as though Cass was the metaphorical elephant in the room where he and Katrina were concerned; and while he was trying hard to remain even handed and not put her ahead of other crewmembers like Jaxx who remained trapped in the body of skutter, he was finding it increasingly difficult – especially when his own conflicting feelings were making him feel as guilty as hell for wanting.... no, needing Cass back as much as he did
What had she done to him?
He’d embarked on their short-lived relationship in good faith; honestly and truly believing that Katrina was forever lost to him, and finally content to find that, even in spite of his protestations to the contrary in the past, the attraction he felt towards Cassandra was...
Undeniable?
The breath of an inaudible sigh escaping his lips, Jay shook his head and leaned back over the time drive to dig deeper into the system diagnostics and scrutinising the results
What was it that Jade had said?
Something about a lively one, or one that improved, the longer you stuck with her...?
Of the two women in his life, Jay still wasn’t sure which one was which, that that particular analogy related to – They were both similar in many ways, but utterly different as well; Cass was...
No... That was a bad idea
Guiltily shaking himself from his reverie, he forced his thoughts of her to the back of his mind
He really shouldn't be making comparisons
He was married to Katrina and that was the end of it
Wasn't it?
Rather than have dwell on it any longer, Jay tiredly pushed himself up out of his chair and padded across the room to flop down on the sofa next to Katrina, who glanced up from her magazine to favour him with a smile
One thing at a time, he resolved, guiltily returning the smile
He'd get Cassandra back and then he'd deal with everything else after that

Who: Everyone
Where: Canteen
When: Next morning

“Okay everyone” Jay gazed out at the assembled crew standing all around him in the canteen “As I’m sure you all know, Jaxx’s mind is still trapped in skutter eighty six's body, and despite several creative and probably illegal suggestions put forward by Artemis, Doctor Black assures me that his best chance for any sort of recovery, lies in some sort of biomechanical interface that’ll compensate for the damaged parts of his brain; now that's a highly specialised cybertech job, so we’re going to need Cass back with us”
He paused to pick the time drive up from where it lay on the table beside him
“I’ve set this drive to jump us into Hertfordshire 1794, where we should gate in, in a remote spot at around midday on June the fourth. Now Hertfordshire’s a pretty big place so it’ll probably take a few days to find Cass; but all being well, we should be back her only a few moments after we set off
"I know that many of you are here as a personal favour to me, so it’s only fair that I let you know there's every chance that this'll be dangerous" Jay continued "So if any one of you wants to back out and remain behind, this is your last chance; neither I nor anyone else here will think any less of you"
Nobody said anything for a breathless moment until Katrina broke the silence by clearing her throat
"I think we're set, Jay" she nodded as she unslung and readied her pulse rifle "Let's do this"
"Last chance?" Jay asked, his eyes searching the faces of each of the assembled crew
"Oh, get on with it" Katrina chided

The time gate span up and quickly collapsed in around them, before opening up again an instant later in chilly, candlelit darkness in what appeared to be a cellar, filled with empty wine racks
“What was that you said about a ‘remote spot’?” Katrina hissed as she swept her rifle around in a controlled arc, her eyes suspiciously scanning the shadows for any movement
“Indeed” Artemis cackled, pulling his psi-scanner out and waving it around “It’s not exactly a pastoral vista, is it?”
“Well, that’s what I damn well set it for!” Jay snarled peevishly as he in turn swept his own weapon around the room
“That’d be my doing” a modulated voice rang out, making everyone start and wheel to train their weapons on the decloaking figure that shimmered into existence beside one of the pillars supporting the ceiling
“Cass?” Jay frowned after a moment as the cloaking field finally dissipated to reveal a tall, slim woman in one of the STCP’s pitch black, figure hugging nanosuit’s
“Damn right!” Cass smiled at him as she hauled her rebreather mask off over her head “You’re a sight for sore eyes!”
“I... Jeez...” Jay whispered, momentarily forgetting himself and allowing his eyes to drink in the contours of her body
The crash of breaking glass, somewhere in the house above made everyone jump
“We’ve got company” Cass warned, unslinging her pulse rifle “Things are going to get real nasty, real fast”
“Yeah, well let’s just jump outa here!” Kat snapped “Jay?”
“We can’t” Cass shook her head “There are a bunch of paradoxes trapping us here – It’s how I escaped Brittany!”
“You what!?” Jay exploded
“I’ll explain it all later” Cass soothed “We don’t have time right now. There’s an infestation of some sort of alien mind parasites occurring in this time line”
“Lady Cassandra!” a voice echoed throughout the house above them “We come for you!”
“Once you’ve become a host, you get what looks like a sixteen legged spider, about the size of your fist, developing inside your brain” Cass said hurriedly “I think they’ve some sort of limited psychic ability, because after a person becomes a host, they don’t show up on the psi-scanners”
The sound doors crashing open and hurried footsteps thumping across the floorboards filtered down from the rooms above
“They hunt at night and have been picking off the squad that I gated in with, one by one, since we arrived” Cass continued “They knew who we were and why we were here; and tonight, it’s apparently my turn
“But hey” she smiled “It’s not all bad – I finally managed to escape Brittany!”
The door at the top of the stairs down into the cellars burst open to reveal a tall, thin, balding man carrying an oil lantern and a stout cudgel
“The cellars!” he shouted and began hurrying down the steps


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So what happens next?
We’re trapped in a cellar with a horde of attackers about to come swarming down the stairs, intent on implanting embryonic mind spiders in everyone’s heads
The infected hosts act as one and don’t show up on psi-scanners, but do they have any other abilities or alien technology?
Are there any other ways in or out of the cellars?
How many hosts are there?
Did anyone else bring guns?
Where do we wind up after escaping? – Do we escape?
It’s 1794, so think Regency England, Pride and Prejudice and Blackadder III
I’ve purposefully kept from mentioning too many people to give you the freedom to write your character in however you like – Of course if you don’t fancy a jaunt back to the 1790’s, that’s entirely your prerogative, but I’d strongly recommend it since the focus of the campaign will be shifting towards a time travel theme for the next few months at the very least, with visits to other times planned after this
I think we’ll have awards on offer for historical accuracy, so how about trying to work responsibility for a historical event into the narrative over the coming weeks?
Write your character in and go for it

Blue Dwarf – fun and educational ;-)
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