We take a few days to scan the system and find the pnet: With the individual ships, we can have fIve people scanning at once and run five pnets through analysis at the same time… for certain values of “people”, anyway: I'm not sure if the summons really count… and yes, there's one rocky pnet with an Oxygen/Nitrogen atmosphere in range.
We fly there and scan… there's a space station and a few docked ships… small ones: Alice's ship is bigger than the station, and the docked ships consist of two shuttles and eight fighters.
We spend some time scanning them, and Charlene gives her conclusion, “We can probably take them out.”
“Yes.” Alice agrees, “other than the supernuclear missile silo on the station - which we can basically ignore, as it's really only any good at shooting ground targets - we have them beat on raw firepower, shielding, speed, and sensor range: No problems there. But I want to have the option of fleeing if we're wrong. Let's retrieve the girl and have her on the big ship, cloaked, before we try something like that, all right?”
“And keep one of the little ships on board and in reserve,” Brenna adds, “for the sensors, and so one of us gets away if things go very south.”
“Fair…” Charlene nods.
“Hey Ferdinand?” I call for our ghost.
The specter appears, “What can I do for you David?” I am of course dressed for the day right now, including being very invisibly wrapped around the neck of the summon I'm piloting.
“Do you mind pointing us at the boyfriend's house?” Alice breaks into the conversation.
“Ah, certainly. Indigo's boyfriend's name is Joshua, by the way.” Ferdinand pauses, “Mind pulling up a map of the pnet?”
Alice calls it up on the screen… we can see the major roads on the map, all of which end in rge craters. Still, there's enough of the terrain left that the pnet is recognizable. Ferdinand starts pointing, “Zoom in here…” Alice does, and we repeat that a couple times, until we hit the limit of what the ship can see from orbit. “There: His house was right at the edge of this crater, along this road.”
“Great!” I smile, “Let's go to the airlock.”
Ferdinand tilts his head, “You're not going to use the tugs as shuttles?”
Charlene chuckles, “Nope. They can be seen, and we don't want that. We're all rated for space and can fly, so we just cast Invisibility on ourselves, step outside, and fly down.”
Alice adds, “When we want to come back, we just stuff her in Warp storage and reverse the process. Saves being shot at.”
Ferdinand nods, “Stealth rescue for now… thank you.”
“No problem.” Charlene comments.
We head out and… oh, wow, what a view. The pnet is severely scarred, but it's still a variegated blue and green marble with a wrapping of clouds on a background of stars: Beautiful. I spam a long-duration Invisibility on everyone, and words don't do it justice as I jump into the bck, using my flight and starflight from my racial choices to navigate through re-entry (well, entry, I supposse: I have never been to this pnet before) and nd an hour or so ter on the ground at my chosen destination, along with my party mates.
Thinking a bit, I expand my senses: Stack Metamagic on Enrge spell on my Burrowing Spell Touchsight gets me a nice picture of everything within ten miles. I could, theoretically, get the entire sor system this way if I wanted… but that isn't needed here. I take my time to focus… I'm looking for an underground bunker that's still mostly intact … found it. Two people inside… a man and a woman, sleeping on a bed… bottles full of liquid with string in them nearby, rock and metal tools by those… and the woman is… oh… deal with that ter. Okay… now where's the entrance… aha. And then I shrink it back down to “just” seeing everything within about five hundred yards.
Ten miles was giving me a headache.
“Found the pce,” I announce, “and by the way, infinite stacked metamagic is FUN. You should try it.”
“Great,” Alice nods, “Lead the way.”
We head up the side of a crater covered with scattered tufts of something like grass, flying along. I mean… why wouldn't we? We stay invisible (likewise) until we come to the area I saw: A section of crater where the wall seemingly colpsed inwards. Which kind of seems to be what happened… because someone pulled the dirt out from behind it: I can ‘see’ the mildly organized piles of dirt and rocks where someone cleared out the material that ended up on top of the tunnel.
We head down through the tunnel. It has light fixtures, but they're not on… and given the smoke stains, I don't think they turn on anymore. This bunker isn't intended for multi-generation habitation… it has a storehouse (mostly full of field rations… a few decades worth) a utility room (in which nothing is moving, when the pumps and fans and such really should be) and a small nuclear generator (which seems dead). It also has barely enough room to qualify as a ‘small apartment’. Yes, it's a bunker… or at least, it was. Still… it DID shelter the inhabitants from orbital bombardment, so I guess it did the job.
I dismiss my Invisibility and call out, “Is anyone alive down here?”
I watch as the two people start stirring… grabbing shovels, and holding them as makeshift weapons.
So I add some information, “I'm here on behalf of Ferdinand. He received Indigo's message, finally. We're here to get you off of this wreck of a world. Indigo and Joshua, was it?”
The woman drops her shovel… the man tightens his grip. I think at Ferdinand, “I could use something to say here.”
He appears… “Ahh… maybe let me speak?”
As Alice, Brenna, and Charlene gives me puzzled looks, I cast the illusion on our ghost, and he smiles, “Precious, it's okay. I can live with you sneaking off with Joshua if it means you're both alive for me to be angry at him.”
“Daddy?” The girl comes out of the hiding hole: Same dirty blonde hair, white blouse, jeans, purple eyes, and a bck leather jacket with metal shoulder spikes. She is, however, not moving quickly.
“You're pregnant?” Ferdinand's eyes go very wide at the sight of his daughter, who looks to be about eight months along.
Okay, that answers one question: He isn't automatically aware of everything I am… good, I think.
“Yeah, well…” she shrugs, “I couldn't exactly refill my prescription….”
Ferdinand pauses, “No it's… not a bad thing. A good thing. I wasn't really expecting to see a grandchild, and now I might. I thought you were dead… come here…” They walk up to each other and hug.
Yes, it's a full sensory illusion, touch included. He can't pick anything up, but she'll feel it when he hugs her.
The boyfriend… Joshua… comes up behind, still clutching the shovel, “So… you're not mad at me, then, Lord Ferdinand?” The boy isn't much to look at: Shaggy, unkempt dark brown hair, a simple white t-shirt and jeans (needs a good wash, but that's understandable), maybe five eight, and skinny as a broom. But I can see through his clothes, and figure the attraction is that rod that's shoved down his pant leg and past his knee… which is still soft.
“Furious,” the ghost speaks through his tears, “...but also euphoric that you kept her alive, even if it was by accident. No, I'm not going to kill you for this.”
“Thank goodness,” the boy looks honestly relved, “I'm itching for a good shower… just itching in general, really. Ah… where's your ship?”
“That's… a story for another time,” our game master shakes his head, “but there's a ship in orbit that can at least get us to an intact civilization. The shuttle up might be a little odd, but the ship is good.”
“A little odd?” She frowns.
“Getting a ship down here is risky; the pirate left forces in space,” Ferdinand takes a slow breath, “So the pn is magic… literally.”
I smile at the two, “Anything you want to keep?”
They both roll their eyes simultaneously.
“All my stuff was in my house, which is GONE,” the girl shakes her head.
“What little I had here that I wanted to hang onto…” the boy shakes his head as well, “...the electromagnetic pulse from the nuke fried it all.”
“The bunker held up to the actual shockwave… but that's it,” the soon to be mommy sighs.
“Saved our lives, so did the primary job, at least,” the boy again, “but setting aside simple tools we made - useless in proper civilization - and the stockpiled field rations…” he gags.
“...we got nothing but the clothes on our backs. So… yeah, we're ready to go now,” the ghost's daughter finishes.
I shrug, “All right then…” and reach out to them, using the Warp Torpor talent to put them away into extradimensional storage, vanishing them to a bubble outside of realspace where they will sleep and not need air. They will still need food eventually, but I don't pn to keep them there long enough for it to matter.
“Anything we want to try and loot?” Alice looks at us.
“Well… in a total loss zone like this, it's salvage,” Charlene chuckles, “but no. The folks in orbit will have had time to scan for and grab anything of worth, we're not going to find anything worth our time quickly.”
Brenna nods, and speaks into our heads, “Let's go test out the guns on the ships, eh?”
As we leave the broken bunker behind, I renew my Invisibility and we head for the sky, watching as the horizon slowly bends into a curve, then a circle, then becomes the pnet beneath us… and soon enough we're back inside the main ship, dismissing a few of Charlene's summons to clear space for our guests.
At which point, of course, I release the two.
They're mildly disoriented, so I start, “These will be your quarters for the trip back to Absalom Station.”
We haven't dismissed Ferdinand, so he is still around, wrapped in illusion so anyone can see him, “My ship is dead, so…" he shrugs, “this will have to do for now. Your quarters back at Absalom Station should still be paid up, so that's where we pn to drop you off.”
News to me, but works fine. I stand awkwardly as the young expectant mother asks the obvious question, “Umm… do you mind giving me some time alone with my dad, ma'am?”
Fortunately, Ferdinand comes to my rescue on that one, “HE can't, no,” Ferdinand takes a breath, “the most HE can do is pretend not to see and hear. I followed the instructions in my great grandfather's journal. I'm bound to them now. If there's not at least one of them around, I am blind and deaf.”
Indigo frowns, “You don't look dead,” and reaches out to pinch him, squeezing his cheeks between her thumb and forefinger, which works.
“My charges are gracious enough to…” Ferdinand begins.
Joshua interrupts, reaching his hand up behind Ferdinand to give him a good sp on the back, “What's all this talk about being dead? You look fit as a…” he trails off, because his hand passed straight through.
Indigo blinks, “But I pinched you… how?”
I answer that, “Because I am VERY good at illusions. Your father exists as a ghost that only my comrades and myself can see and interact with. But because he exists for me, I can wrap him in a full sensory illusion of himself. And yes when I do it, ‘full sensory’ means touch, too,” I look at Joshua, “you'd even get bruises if he were to punch you, and you can't hit him back anymore, so don't get him mad.”
“Right…” the very nky boyfriend nods slowly, “I'll remember that.”
I nod, “Good. Well… I'll go sit down and pretend not to be here for a while.”
Their conversation sts hours….
