Seraphina settled Carm down and sent him back to the ship before heading back to the RAM base to help the others. In the weapon room, Seraphina meticulously packed a pallet or two of the Doomsday weapon materials in preparation of moving them to the ship.
The desert runners helped the adventurers load the weapon parts onto a troop carrier while buzz did preflight inspections. With the parts loaded and the troop carrier ready to fly, the adventurers got onto the back with the equipment and Buzz took off. Moments later, Buzz flipped the plane upside down and then crashed it into the wall of the base, causing it to catch fire and break in half. The wreckage of the ship slid down the wall and landed in a heap of slag.
The adventurers climbed from the wreckage before it completely turned to molten metal and glass as it burned into the sand next to the facility. Tuscan assured them that RAM often booby trapped things and they were lucky to be alive. Buzz agreed that must have been the problem while Alex mentioned that Ron the Swan would never have let that happen. Tuscan asked if the wise Swan was available to check the other planes for issues, which left Buzz salty to say the least.
The adventurers decided that the weapon parts were sufficiently destroyed and so headed back to the rocket to rest a bit before making their exit window. As they took off, Scott.DOS explained that NEO had been trying to get a hold of the group for around a day. At 11 PM, the Maelstrom rider rendezvoused with the Heat Death, and Buzz expertly docked the ships together. The two soldiers came across looking for their money, and when the transaction was complete, Seraphina offered the men some food. The RAM soldiers seemed excited at the prospect of a real meal and eagerly accepted the invitation.
During the next two hours, the soldiers and the adventurers made small talk and enjoyed one another’s company. The Soldiers headed back to the Heat Death and brought out two cases of very nice beer they had confiscated from smugglers and a good time was generally had by all. While they partied, Max sneakily stole the money they paid the soldiers back and eventually the two ships parted ways amicably.
Once clear of the closest Martian orbit, they sent a tight beam to Salvation. NEO explained that the Maelstrom rider was the closest crew to a priority extrication. One Jason Dupre was currently believed to be being held in a Radium mine prison that RAM operated in the vicinity of Hygia. Dupre had very important information that took a lot of effort to get, so NEO desperately needed their assistance retrieving him. The adventurers agreed to help and so headed off toward Hygia.
When they arrived near Hygia, they had no trouble finding the mine and started to try and figure out how to gain entry to it. Buzz hailed the station and attempted to get the mine to believe that the Maelstrom Rider had technical problems and needed an emergency dock.
The mine radioed back and explained that the Maelstrom rider was listed as a pirate vessel and that there were no facilities to help them here. Having lost the argument, Buzz instead expertly parked the Maelstrom Rider on the dock doors. Seraphina attempted to step out carefully to try and manually open the docking bay doors, and tripped on the way out, spiraling off into space.
Alex executed a slingshot maneuver collecting Seraphina and putting her back on the doors, where Searphina easily operated the emergency mechanism and opened the doors, letting Buzz put the ship into the bay. Once inside, they collected themselves and to the music of the Klaxon alarm, they walked through the doors of the mine. To their right there was a sign for dormitories, to the left a sign for the workshop and ahead a sign indicating hallway A.
Alex headed for the dormitories with Seraphina and Max right behind him. Buzz stood behind to watch their backs, which was fortuitous because the door for Hallway A opened and three RAM combat robots walked into the room.
In the dormitory area, three men with rocket rifles came out of rooms, so Max threw a chaff grenade into the open area between the adventurers and the RAM soldiers. This had the effect of making the soldiers run for cover, except one who drew a cutlass and charged Alex.
Alex quickly dropped the man attacking him, while Buzz shot at the robots to no effect before diving into the dormitory room, leaving Max with their back to the open door. The robots shot Max almost to death, before Alex had a chance to run into the hallway and destroy one of the robots. Max, half dead, threw a grenade into the hallway at the remaining two robots, but missed and almost exploded Alex. Seraphina took the grenades back from Max and then carefully put one near her feet, before closing the door, which destroyed the remaining two robots.
With the RAM soldiers hiding, and the robots destroyed, the group took stock of their wounds and thought for a moment on how to proceed next.
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