The simultaneous detection of human life signs from within the egg chamber and movement coming down the passage behind them led to Our Heroes engaging in a protracted period of dithering. Eventually, Kappo and Weptish advanced to meet the unknown motion signals, while K'pok and Jek followed at what they hoped would be a safe distance behind.
Before long, Kappo's enhanced eyesight and cybernetic pattern-matching module resolved what appeared to be two humanoids advancing through the fog towards them, one short and one tall. He immediately dropped to his knees to brace his gun-arm and called out a challenge..... Weptish, deciding that craven cowardice was the better part of valour, threw himself to the floor to avoid the hail of gunfire he was certain was about to erupt. What followed was extremely unpleasant for all concerned.
Regrettably, the mysterious opponents of our Gallant Chums failed to shoot wildly into the thick mists with nice safe lasers, but instead stooped to the dastardly depths of using a portable mining crumbler. The first few seconds of pulverizing with this tool left both Kappo and Weptish with bleeding noses and ears and an all-over body bruise, not to mention blurred vision and really sore teeth. Worse still, the internal pounding led both of them to lose control of their bowels, and in a closed environment suit that's just no fun at all. Even K'pok and Jek, five metres behind, felt as though they were standing in a steel drum right next to the giant bass speaker at a heavy metal concert for the profoundly deaf.
Weptish let fly with his trusty Mk.II-D laser pistol, burning through a whole battery pack in the blink of an eye and hitting nothing at all (except the floor and the roof). Jek picked up a hefty chunk of resin that had been vibrated out of the ceiling and frisbeed it blindly down the fog-bound passage, also hitting nada. Then everybody retreated back into the egg chamber to get out of the line of fire — everyone, that is, except Kappo. Kappo charged. And Kappo discovered something about mining crumblers: the effect gets worse as you get closer. In no time flat he was flat on his face, bleeding from every pore, with eyeballs reduced to red pulp and with internal organs the consistency of paté. His teeth all shattered, and every one of his bones was a network of hairline fractures — quite nasty really.
The remainder of the team retreated, and K'pok activated her shield and A.G. harness to float off over to where she'd detected the human life signs. Weptish, having neglected to buy any spare batteries, frantically set about trying to modify the power supply of his A.G. unit to power his laser pistol, and soon became engrossed in the fascinating problem. Meanwhile, the Bad Guys advanced to within visual range, at which point Jek could see that each of them had one of the spider-critters attached to the back of his head, its knobby finger-like legs wrapped around the face. "Oh no!" he said. "Weptish is going to be posessed by something!"
Having none of that, Jek slapped on his shield and attempted to do the shorter one — who happened to be carrying the crumbler — a favour, by setting his head on fire. He collapsed as his spider-critter sizzled, and the other one fired randomly with a strange-looking laser rifle, fortunately missing everyone. Meanwhile, egg-sacs along K'pok's path were bursting and spitting out more of the nasty little creatures which attempted to crawl up her dangling legs; fortunately they were unable to get a grip on her shield-encased form. Some of the disappointed parasites gave up and started swarming towards Jek and Weptish — also safely encased in glowing force fields.
Up the mine shaft, Kappo had regained consciousness but found himself blind, deaf, and in incredible pain. Fumbling around in his medkit, he immediately shot himself up with a Giant Economy-Size dose of painkillers, and when the worst of the agony dissipated began to drag himself back up the passage towards the outside world.
K'pok, having seen the laser fire in the mist, turned around and came back to the aid of Jek, just in time for him to set the other Bad Guy on fire; oddly, the man ignored his suddenly inflammable chest and carried on firing ineffectually. Jek then tried to grab the rifle from his hands telekinetically, only to find that his puny TK was inadequate to the task until K'pok finally got in a lucky shot with her stunner. He turned the rifle on the swarms of spider-vermin, only to find that he could not make head nor tail of the trigger mechanism, the model being completely unfamiliar to him. At that moment, K'pok heard what sounded like machinery starting up back up the mineshaft. Although momentarily curious, she decided instead to try to retrieve the burning crumbler from the burning Cordwainer's burning corpse and began trying to beat out the flames.
Weptish finally finished jury-rigging his laser pistol, and noticing what K'pok was up to, went to help. Jek, having given up on trying to make the laser rifle shoot, began using it as a club to beat the spider-swarm to death. regrettably, though they flew a good distance when whacked they failed to die properly.
Leaving Weptish to retrieve and mend the crumbler, K'pok went back over towards the point where she'd detected the life signs, and soon found them — eighteen bloated humanoids, mostly Human but including four Cordwainers. They were semi-conscious and moving feebly, but all showed great tumorous swellings in their abdomens, and none were able to speak at all. Confronted with the problem of getting eighteen inert people, possibly full of alien spider-eggs, back up the passage and back to medical care proved to be a bit of a poser. However, Jek recalled that the ore carriers back at the head of the shaft all still appeared to be operative, and thought to use them to carry the invalids out.
Weptish was still engrossed in fixing the burnt-out crumbler, so K'pok and Jek went back up the shaft to the ore carts. Getting there, they found Kappo still trying feebly to drag himself out. K'pok picked him up and went to carry him out into the refinery, when over their suit comms they heard a command to put down their weapons and surrender "...or lethal force will be authorized against you". Peering around the refinery machines they saw half a dozen tropers in battlesuits — at first glance, they thought they were marines, but then noticed that the insignia were not marine, but TSS. Uh-oh. After a brief moment of thought, they put down their weapons and followed instructions to lie face down, whereupon they were handcuffed and dragged outside to join about a dozen other prisoners, Cordwainers and Humans, handcuffed and kneeling under the very big and intimidating guns of the TSS guards. Kappo was given medical attention sufficient to ensure he didn't die on the spot. K'pok tried repeatedly to convince them that it was all a huge mistake and that they were there on Panderjack's authority, but for some reason they did not seem to want to pay any attention to her. Unarmoured TSS officers were making piles of what, in daylight, proved to be Thorgon laser rifles; they photographed them, and also photographed the prisoners.
Weptish, having fixed the crumbler, was having a fine old time squishing bugs when he noticed bright lights from the tunnel entrance — battlesuited troopers. They saw him easily through the fog, though all he could see was a bright glow, and unfortunately since he was deaf as a post after having been crumbled, he didn't hear them command him to drop his weapon and surrender. Fortunately, at that moment a freak eddy in the mist revealed them in all their terrifying glory; having already been forcibly evacuated earlier under the gentle ministrtaions of the crumbler he was able to maintain his presence of mind and immediately dropped the crumbler and put his hands up. He was led away to join the others.
It took the TSS interrogators about half a day to determine that Our Heroes were actually there on legitimate business. nevertheless, they were kept in custody and under more or less constant interrogation for over three weeks. Once released, they went straight to Panderjack to find out what was going on; it appeared, according to the news releases, that the TSS strike force had been invited in by the peace and freedom-loving people of Cordwainer to avert the threat of civil war and a Thorgon-sponsored terrorist coup, and that Imperial forces promised a return to normality "soon". Panderjack's mining operation had been impounded and nobody would tell him what was going on there, or what had happened to his missing people.
Although they hadn't been on the job for more than eighteen hours when they were arrested, Panderjack (to the outrage of his accountants) offered Kappo, Jek Porkins and Weptish two days pay and a $500 bonus for the inconvenience of having been incarcerated. Naturally, the company bean-counters bickered and argued over every little detail, and stretched out the procedure so that it was more than a month before payment was actually authorized, and nearly two months before K'pok got the deuterium she'd been promised. As it turned out, that was fortunate for Kappo
Kappo had gone to the newly-established TIC field office — a very tiny operation — to deliver his report and to get some replacement equipment. Regrettably, he decided to continue his pose as John Alexander, and when his forged ID failed to pass muster he was immediately thrown into pokey for impersonating a TIC officer; a very serious offence, even punishable by death if the judges happened to be in a foul mood. He tried first to bluster his way out by brandishing his (real) TIC authorization, but they just assumed that he'd also either stolen or forged that as well and took it away to go with the rest of the evidence. He tried next to use the Old Boys' Network to find someone to vouch for him, but that also failed to pan out. Things were looking pretty bleak for a while, but eventually someone finally returned his ever more plaintive calls, and he managed to establish his bona-fides before actually being put before a tribunal. He finally got out of jail after about six weeks, and immediately set about demanding that the local office re-equip him and get his busted cybernetics fixed. The long-suffering agents took care of his needs, even supplying him with some explosives — after subjecting his (forged) authorization to very close scrutiny.
Back at the spaceport, K'pok had finally managed to get refueled and was about ready to blast off for Vardel IV when Kappo reappeared.
Kappo waited until they were well out into hyperspace before discarding his "Jack Alexander" persona, and reassuming the "Biffo the space rat" persona he'd originally met Jek and Weptish in on the Etylia Gargantyr. Curiously, in spite of being in a very small hermetically sealed box hurtling through space faster than the speed of light with only three other people (and the corpses of K'pol and the other two dead Vulcans), he seemed to expect everyone to be taken in by his Cunning Disguise. Nobody was. K'pok is beginning to think he may have some sort of mental disorder.
