Misplaced By Heaven / A Light In The Black

In late July, American Coalition's SSPARS radar in Greenland detected a large object at Lagrange 2, behind the moon. Well aware of the space station Libra and its disappearance three years prior, the AmC contacted the Armor Corps Coalition notifying them of the discovery. Attempts by the Armor Corps to contact the object returned garbled distress transmissions, proving that it was in fact Libra behind the moon, but leaving its state undetermined. The Armor Corps quickly begins planning a rescue mission; Kyle Cox assembles a team of Pilots and appoints Anna Graham as the mission commander, as well as Han Nu as head of ship security. Taking the AC Space Corvette, the Pilots begin a two week journey to L2.
Meanwhile, the European Federation also became aware of the space station's return, albeit accidentally through the reactivation of the once thought lost GAIA satellite, which itself was also at L2 and began transmitting a collision risk warning back to Europe. Initially confused by the transmissions, Federal Intelligence began to suspect that the hazard was an alien spacecraft and worked with Federal Orbital Command to eventually determine that it was in fact Libra, and that the station appeared to be issuing distress signals. A plan was hatched to take advantage of the emergency by sending a rocket full of special forces troops to the station. where they would take control of essential facilities and leverage the station for the Federation's benefit. For this highly suicidal mission, the SOE rejects were chosen. After being given a crash course in Hazardous Environment Suit Orbital Operations suit use, the team was placed into cryogenic suspension, loaded onto a rocket and fired into space from Scandinavia.
The AC Corvette provides a comfortable but uneventful journey. Anna Graham finds the trip difficult to cope though, however, feeling isolated from the Pilots and the rest of the crew, biding her time complaining about dust inside the spaceship and trying not to think about the distance from Earth. Upon arriving at the station, the crew observes that Libra's windows are closed, despite being open when the station disappeared. With the station's docking guidance nonfunctioning and the dock doors closed as well, Henry Locke and Raphael Dubois are sent out to perform as spacewalk in their Suits to open the doors and deploy the guidance beacon. Once the spaceship is successfully docked inside the station, David Frieden and Richard M. Augus join the other two Pilots in his own Suit. Due to Israfel's tremendous size, Raphael is forced to look for an alternate way into the station while Locke and Frieden pass through the spaceport terminal. Open entering the first welcoming area, they find the room plastered in a fine, thick layer of gore. Alarmed, Locke radios to the ship that they've found bodies, much to the crew's alarm. Frieden takes a video recording of the room with his Suit before the two press on further into the terminal, passing a security checkpoint and reaching the building's main area, which seems very similar to a typical airport. They note that the building is out of power, and reaching the spaceport's entrance, they can see that the station's interior is completely dark and filled with a very dense fog. 
Meanwhile, the crew disembark from the corvette and begin working on setting up their base of operations in the spaceport's traffic control tower. They are able to restore power to the building, but note that the spaceport's generator is already almost out of power, and that they will need to run cables from the ship to the tower to keep power supplied to the building. Upon returning from the spaceport's entrance, the Pilots notice that the room that was caked in gore is now completely spotless. Although they find this odd, no one reports this to Anna or the rest of the crew.
After the base of operations is set up, Anna instructs the Pilots to refrain from using their Suits unless given permission by her, since they cannot regenerate lost power without a source of light. Through the traffic tower, the crew are able to determine that the station's fusion reactor has been taken offline and the mirrors have been closed, leaving the station running on only minimum power. Because this limits Suit use and because the condition of the station’s crew and civilian population are unknown, Anna makes getting the power back online a priority for the crew while keeping the Pilots on standby, allowing only Elizabeth and Raphael to explore the city at Elizabeth’s insistence.
The two Pilots walk through the mist-swathed station towards the city, noting that the vehicles are all parked neatly by the sides of the road as opposed to being abandoned or wrecked in the middle of the street. They find no signs of the population, but appear to get lost in the fog, arriving off course from their planned route at a park instead, with a glass-roofed dome in the center. As Elizabeth approaches the dome, she notices that the roof is covered in spikes like an urchin, and on these spikes are hundreds of mutilated bodies. Terrified, she nonetheless risks entering the dome and finds even more evidence of excessive human mutilation and cult-like memorabilia, including a pyramid-shaped object on top of an altar. Elizabeth documents everything and grabs the pyramid before running out of the dome, her stomach failing her in the horrific environment.
Elizabeth and Rapael continue searching the city. Their sensors allow them to observe that there are numerous service tunnels running throughout the subterranean level of the city, but it does not occur to Raphael that his Suit’s massive, Fortress-sized footfalls would give warning well in advance to anyone not wanting to be found. The two proceed to the city hall to look for records of what happened after the station disappeared. As Elizabeth’s Suit is the only one small enough to actually enter the building, she goes alone again, discovering every computer has been purposefully smashed. She attempts to recover data from the damaged terminals and finds a few records from one of the city council members complaining about accidents onboard the station after its departure and the fact that the Engineers are acting evasive as to how they seem to have lost control of the situation, with a later entry descending into cultish rambling. Elizabeth proceeds to the higher levels of the city hall building and notices a single intact computer with a working screen and a command line. 
Elizabeth enters a command to the terminal experimentally and is surprised to get a response right away. Hoping that she’d finally found someone alive on the station after witnessing the horrible gore from before, she eagerly communicates through the terminal. The responses quickly become more insistent, with the other party taking an interest in her being a Pilot and wanting to know her location. They eventually ask Elizabeth to connect to the terminal, and she agrees, connecting her Suit to the computer via wire. Her Suit is immediately hacked and proceeds to attack Raphael outside. Confused, Raphael’s Suit proves too tough for Elizabeth’s to do much damage to while conserving power, while Elizabeth struggles to fight against her Suit from inside it to the point of dislocating her arm. Eventually, Frieden arrives and disables Elizabeth’s Suit with a shot from his own, managing to avoid hurting Elizabeth any further.
Upon returning to the corvette, Elizabeth explains what happened and what she found. She relays the scenes of human sacrifice she found in the dome, backed up by the other Pilots bringing up the welcome room being coated in bloody flesh when they first went through it. Anna is confused, as no one reported finding any such thing despite passing through the room several times since then, and Frieden shows her his recordings of the room to prove their point. Anna angrily demands to know why no one said anything before, and the Pilots simply shrug.
Anna then explains that the team of crew she sent to look into the reactor issue have not yet returned, and given the recent revelations of violence on the station, she’s worried for their safety. With Elizabeth recuperating and Raphael useless for scouting, she asks Locke and Frieden to go look for them, directing them to a small island in the station’s internal sea.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth’s Suit is taken to the corvette’s hangar for diagnostics and repairs. The Suit’s systems are swept for the enemy AI, but the entity appears to have self-terminated. The data left over is sent back to ACHQ and examined, and an AI specialist back on Earth debriefs Anna that the enemy AI seemed to somehow be a composite of at least three and likely several more AI, explaining its erratic behavior and deteriorating state. The specialist insists that creating such an AI is still beyond human capability (with the sole exception of the Chosen AI), and that something else on the station must have done it. The specialist concludes his report by sending Anna a “suicide note” left by the AI in Elizabeth’s Suit, which consists of a fable-like story of a conflict between old and new gods, ending with the old god being buried after being blinded by the people it tormented and having its hands cut off. The letter itself then ends with the AI declaring itself the right hand of the old god.
Locke and Frieden set off immediately, following the route given to them until they reach the city’s coastline. A voice hails them over nearby loudspeakers and declares them servants of the “False God of Light”, and a troupe of Tin Men rush out from an undersea tunnel to attack the pair. The Pilots manage to wipe out the Tin Men relatively easily and quickly proceed on their way across the sea. They reach the island described in the station’s schematics and see a Suit standing a little way up from the shore. Initially mistaking it as a statue, they determine it is an actual Suit left deactivated to serve as a memorial for someone. Past this they see a concrete, fortified-looking building covered in signs of an old battle. Getting closer, they meet a man with a pistol, who quickly identifies himself as one of the crew Anna sent. Leading them inside, he reports that they felt like they were being watched while traveling through the city, but were able to find a boat and make their way to the island themselves. Despite the eerie feeling, the island seems empty. Meeting up with the other technician, she tells Locke and Frieden that the reactor was taken off line on purpose, but apparently in a way that was supposed to enable it to be reengaged easily, and that she should be able to get the reactor back online in just a couple of days.
Meanwhile, the rocket containing the European Federation soldiers finally arrives, crashing into the agricultural ring around the station. After having been given about a day to resuscitate, the team finally emerges from their slumber. The team assesses that they’ve successfully boarded the station, albeit just barely, and begin to look for a way onto the station proper by moving through the ring until they reach a spindle where there should be a transit line. After passing through several seemingly abandoned agricultural modules filled with nothing but soybean planters, the modules begin to become increasingly overgrown with strange vines. Angela Watson attempts to identify the plant species, but the vines don’t appear to match anything she’s seen from her studies. The growth becomes thick enough to the point where Tora Foster has to give Gunther Gehring an axe to chop through them so they can pass to the next module, where the transit car is. In the final module, they encounter large, animalistic plant creatures and are attacked by aggressive vines, but easily manage to fight their way through the odd monsters and reach the transit car. Taking a moment to catch their breath while the car brings them to the station, the team ditch their HaES/OOPS suits. Gehring realizes he received severe blistering across his torso from the cryopod, while Watson received milder blistering on one of her arms. 
The car reaches the station, bringing the team to an industrial sub-level where soybeans are deposited for processing. Picking a random direction, the soldiers walk through a series of tunnels, until they detect someone or something walking along the tunnel farther ahead of them. Bob MacKenzie opts to shoot the stranger with his G28, but misses, and the target quickly runs off. Anticipating trouble ahead, the team proceeds onward and predictably start finding more locked doors blocking their path. One of the doors shuts behind them as they pass through it and locks itself. Concerned by this, MacKenzie and Gehring suggest maybe trying to open the door again. Watson manages to tinker with the wiring long enough to disengage the locks holding the door in place, but before anything else can be done, the sound of dozens of boots running on metal can be heard, and a few moments later the squad find themselves being rushed at by a horde of knife-wielding men in robes. Despite having the advantage of guns, a narrow field of fire, and an enemy that can only come from a single direction, the team performs terribly and fails to utilize the tactical advantages of having a light machine gun and marksman's rifle in the squad. Armed with only her revolver, Watson manages to hold her own from the back  of the tunnel while Foster quickly finds herself outnumbered and surrounded, fighting multiple cultists in hand to hand combat. She is quickly incapacitated by a stab wound by her attackers, but enough space is finally cleared by the rest of the team for Watson to reach Foster and quickly treat her wound before she bleeds out. The fight becomes more difficult with the appearance of more cultists with submachine guns and cultists that somehow seem to have the ability to throw fireballs. Watson revives Foster, and dazed from her near death experience, Foster manages to single handedly lift the heavy, though unlocked, door blocking the escape route directly behind them. She ushers the rest of the team through just as a large, hammer wielding cultist approaches, and, unable to hold the door any longer, Foster is forced to let it drop, separating her from the other side. Foster, severely weakened from the knife wound, is attacked and nearly killed by the hammer cultist, but manages to barely survive the encounter by crawling under the floor after blinding her attacker and shooting him with her sidearm in the head. Her energy spent, she passes out.
Meanwhile, the rest of the team immediately gives up on Foster, though Watson is clearly reluctant due to her just being on the other side of the unlocked door. Instructing Watson to lock the door so one one can follow them, MacKenzie proceeds to go through the inventory of the MULE Foster brought with them, taking all the food and water but leaving all the spare weapons, ammo, explosives, medical supplies and code-breaking computer behind, as they are too heavy to carry and no one considered just reprogramming the robot to follow them. 
Watson begins to get a strange feeling as the three leave the door and head in the other direction. Eventually she realizes that they’ve been walking back in the direction they came longer than they went the first time, as if the distance had somehow increased or, more likely, if they’d gotten lost and taken a wrong turn at some point. While continuing down the only open route, Watson gets another eerie feeling and notices the tunnel lights behind them are starting to go out. The feeling intensifies and Watson looks back again to notice lights much closer going out now. Alarmed, she alerts the other two as the darkness gets closer. MacKenzie fires a shot down the corridor but seems to hit only empty air. However, the darkness reacts to the attack and seems to accelerate its advance, snuffing out more lights. The three break into a run and, finding the direct route blocked, take an abrupt turn down a side passage that hadn’t been noticed before, entering a smaller corridor with a very different, earthy feeling to it. Seeing a bright light at the end of this tunnel, the three continue running as the darkness closes in behind them. They run through the light and emerge on the other side, falling into a shallow pool of ice cold water in a dark room, which appears to be a junk-filled basement of a large building. The three look at the wall behind them and see that rather than a passage is only a solid brick wall. 
Deciding things are still too dangerous to waste time questioning it, they start looking for an exit and see a stairway in the opposite corner of the room. As they start sloshing towards it, however, they hear something else fall into the water behind them. They stop moving and start searching the water. Seeing something moving towards them under the surface, Gehring suggests climbing the piles of junk to get out of the water rather than running, evidently wanting to get a look at whatever was chasing them. He and MacKenzie manage to climb up onto a tower of stacked desks easily, but Watson has a harder time and only gets up about halfway before something grabs her from under the water. 
Nearly disabled from the pain of being touched by whatever is grabbing her, Watson struggles as she’s dragged underwater. Gehring hops down from the desk pile and starts stabbing at the thing attacking her with his knife, but he fails to harm the thing at all, and Watson begins to slip into unconsciousness from the pain and drown. The creature then lets her go and grabs Gehring, who suffers the same fate of being dragged into the water. While Gehring fails to wrestle with the creature, MacKenzie enters the water again and pulls Watson’s head up from under the surface, saving her from drowning just as Gehring passes out. MacKenzi faces the creature alone, trying to shoot at it with his rifle at point blank range, but is annoyed to find that the monster somehow seems to be completely unfazed by the gunshots. He too is taken under, but just before he passes out and drowns, another blinding flash of white seems to knock him out instead.
MacKenzie wakes up some time later in a dilapidated bed soaking wet, and is relieved to see both Gehring and Watson sitting with their backs against one another on the floor nearby. He wakes his teammates up, noticing that they too are soaking wet but still alive. The other two come to, and note they appear to be in something like an old dorm wing. The three briefly question what just happened, but decide not to think too hard about it and take a rest, as they have not eaten for about two weeks. While resting, MacKenzie takes a look out the window and recognizes some of the skyline outside, determining that they’re currently located on a recreation of Deadman’s Island.
Back on the island with the reactor, the process of bringing it back online reaches its final stage. The reactor reengages and begins supplying power throughout the station, though the first technician immediately notices something is wrong with the power distribution. The station windows begin to open up, letting light back into the space station, and the two techs worriedly report that they didn’t do that. The first tech then panics as he realizes that someone is diverting the reactor’s power to the FTL module. Alarms begin to ring from the city across the sea, and lighting can be seen beginning to form outside the station’s hull through the now open windows. The Pilots tell the techs to shut the reactor down, but the other one insists that doing so would require weeks of effort to restart the reactor fully and insists the Pilots go to the station’s control center to stop whoever is causing all this. While discussing their options as they exit the reactor’s control room, they are attacked by the Suit from the shore earlier. The second technician is instantly vaporized by a plasma bolt from the Suit, causing the first to flee back into the building in terror. Locke attempts to follow him, but finds the door the man went through a few minutes ago somehow now opens to an endless void of metal scaffolding. A battle follows between the enemy Suit and Locke, Frieden, Wolfe and Agus. With the ACC Suits easily gaining the upper hand against their outnumbered opponent, the battle is suddenly interrupted by the sky changing color to a deep red, and the consistency of the sea surrounding them to become black like tar. A giant blob-like monster with eyes, teeth and tentacles pulls itself out of the sea and joins the battle. 
The ACC Suits eventually manage to slay the blob monster and destroy the enemy Suit, and a moment after the sky returns to normal. Locke goes back into the reactor building to look for the first technician, only to discover that the man was electrocuted to death trying to cut the control room’s power lines with a fire axe in an attempt to stop the FTL transition. Locke attempts to contact the corvette but receives no response. The blob on the beach meanwhile dissolves away, revealing the form of Basilius to be inside of it. 
With both technicians dead, the Pilots decide their best course of action is to fly to the station’s control tower. None of them were told where this actually is, but this is not a problem for them. Basilius wakes up on the beach after the Pilots leave and comments on how weird the situation is.
Foster eventually wakes up again, much to her own surprise, and finds herself lying next to a fountain in a park (the same one that Elizabeth was in a couple of days prior). Confused as to how she got there, she deduces that she was left for dead by the rest of her team, but can’t figure out how she got to be above ground. She decides to focus on accomplishing her given mission and heads away from the city to one end of the station, where she knows there will be either a spaceport or a control tower of some kind. She spots tracks left by Israfel on the way from the city and realizes there is a large force of Pilots onboard with her, but reasons that they definitely must have come by a ship in that case, meaning she can potentially capture the vessel and take out the Pilots when they’re at their most vulnerable.
Back at Deadman’s Island, MacKenzie, Gehring and Watson see the sky change color and lighting begin to flash. Captivated by the sight, they stare at the lights in space for some time before realizing that the landscape around them has changed, and they seem to be in a dark, cold void. Gehring suggests maybe they should do something about this, and MacKenzie agrees that they should definitely do something about this. While continuing to stare at the sky, Watson finds herself pulled back into familiar space, though at a different location than before. She is in fact in the same park that Elizabeth was in (and just hours ago, Tora as well). Noticing she’s being watched by something she can’t see but can somehow sense, she reacts fearfully to the strange things happening all of a sudden. A voice tells her to remain calm and use her radio to ask for help, saying that someone will definitely answer her. She does so, and her call for help is heard by Frieden, who diverts from the rest of the group to pick her up, assuming her to be a sane survivor from the city. Intimidated by the power armored Pilot and shocked by the paranormal incidents happening around her, Watson stays as quiet as possible.
Elsewhere on the station, Jeanne-Amandine Lepen exits the ruined frame of her borrowed Suit, the Black Lancer, and continues on foot, confused as to why the trip to the space station was much shorter than expected. After some wandering, she encounters MacKenzie and Gehring standing awkwardly in a corridor facing one another. She calls out to them, and the two men turn to face her in unison, announcing themselves to be lost and in need of help. Confused and suspicious, Jeanne gets closer to the two, but the moment one of them makes a grab at her she smacks Gehring in the face with the hilt of her saber. The skin of Gehring's face breaks to reveal the flesh underneath to be black and sludge-like, and the flesh of both men suddenly fly off their bones and stick to the corridor walls, leaving their skeletons standing. The two skeletons attack her, but Jeanne takes them out easily with her saber. She closes her eyes and says a prayer for MacKenzie and Gehring, only to open them and see the corridor completely empty, with no sign of the bones left on the floor or skin on the walls, as if the whole thing was an illusion.
Meanwhile, onboard the corvette, Anna begins experiencing manic episodes and locks herself in her crew cabin with the artifact recovered by Wolfe. Suddenly, gunshots are heard as the squad of Tactical Dolls brought onboard for security start attacking the crew. Four crew members are killed while the rest manage to hide, and the Dolls retreat to the corvette’s aft section rather than hunt the crew down. Han Nu, at that moment in the terminal outside the corvette, reboards the ship and engages the Dolls in a gunfight, managing to destroy three of them while the last two retreat further into the ship. As she shifts focus to evacuating the crew, she sees an unconscious Anna floating quickly out of her room, along with the artifact. Bewildered, she tries to stop Anna, but something invisible pushes her away. She slashes at it with a knife, revealing the invisible thing to be a Mothman. Horrified by coming face to face with an inhuman monster, Nu shoots at the Mothman with her rifle, causing it to disappear again, leaving Anna and the artifact behind. An explosion from the ship’s aft stuns everyone, and Nu immediately suspects the Dolls are attempting to sabotage the ship’s engines. The artifact abruptly disintegrates and Anna stirs awake. She seems confused, but suddenly locks eyes with Nu and tells her that Nu should be the one feeling guilty for Lenn’s death, as the entire reason she was executed was due to Shi-er’s machinations. Nu cracks up emotionally and runs away from Anna to take care of the rest of the Dolls, who grins and leaves the ship.
The explosion goes off as Foster is attempting to hack the wiring of the ship’s airlock to get inside, unaware of the battle going on inside. Stunned by the blast, she is startled to see the Mothman appear out of thin air on top of the ship’s hull. Foster is able to sense that the Mothman isn’t an Engineer creation - at least not one from her generation, and assumes it to be some kind of alien. The Mothman gives vague answers, claiming to be running out of time to stop something. When pressed for details, the Mothman quickly explains that the station is swinging like a scale between two points of reality, with the arms of this figurative scale acting as a bridge allowing things from one side to cross over into the other. The Mothman mentions others onboard the station, leading Tora to ask what happened to the rest of her team. The Mothman replies that one was rescued and the other is still somewhere else on the station, and the odd numbers confuse Foster, as there should be three others besides her, not two. The Mothman seems to reconsider, then admits that there were two others it was aware of that it left behind by what it now realizes was an accident, stating that it couldn’t tell if they were self-aware or not. Foster guesses it’s probably talking about MacKenzie and Gehring and asks that it bring them back here like it did with her. The Mothman says it doesn’t have the energy to spare anymore and that there are more important things it needs to be focusing on before disappearing again. Annoyed, Foster determines the AC spaceship to now be crippled and decides to head to the other end of the station to see what she can do from the control center, while also making a detour to try and see if she can recover the equipment she lost during the encounter in the tunnels and hopefully finding out who the mysterious fifth member of the Federation’s team is.
The Pilots fly to the other end of the station and see the only building that could be the station’s control center. The center appears to be guarded by peculiar-looking Tin Men and some kind of burning creature wielding two swords. Frieden drops Watson off at a safe location by a pond before joining the other Pilots. A brief battle takes place that sees the odd Tin Men destroyed and the burning creature defeated. With an important-looking enemy destroyed, the Pilots determine their mission to be concluded and go back to the corvette. Along the way, they meet with Basilius. With Nu tense and unresponsive, the crew explain to the Pilots that Anna ran off during the attack. Everyone decides that the mission is concluded, and the damaged corvette begins its return trip to Earth.
Taking the station’s internal train line, Foster manages to return to where she lost consciousness and recovers the weapons she dropped during the fight. She unlocks the door sealed by Watson from before and is irritated to find that the robot and all of the supplies she’d brought had simply been abandoned by the rest of the team. She repacks everything and reactivates the robot, then returns to the train. Along the way, she finds a confused Anna wandering the streets on the surface and, noting that she’s the first person Anna’s come across on Libra not wearing robes and a mask, decides to restrain her rather than kill her. Although Anna seems to be out of her mind and is unable to answer any questions, Foster finds her ID and realizes she’s an AC officer. She decides to take Anna as a prisoner instead, reasoning that the Federation would consider her a valuable target.
Watson, after being dropped off by the pond by Frieden, walks in the opposite direction of the battle through a forest and comes across a mounted police station. Seeing movement by one of the second floor windows, she sneaks inside to take a look around. On the second floor she finds a dark room with three men in robes waiting, one wearing the robes like the ones fireball-shooting cultists from earlier, and two men in body armor with knives. The lead cultist greets Watson and tells her she’s special. He alludes to the odd senses that Watson has been feeling since coming to the station and offers to help her train her power by teaching Watson the mysteries of the cult, then offers her a piece of gum-like substance. Watson takes the gum, then tries to run, but finds the second floor exits locked, and the three cultists quickly corner her. Desperate for a way out, Watson eats part of the gum and is able to blow the cultists out of her way with a gust of wind. She runs downstairs and out of the building, and the cultists decide to perform a ritual rather than chase her themselves. Watson reenters the forest just as something huge starts chasing her from the police building.
Jeanne exits the underground tunnels relatively close to the control center and notices the signs of the recent Suit battle around her. She makes her way to the control center and encounters an AI hologram. The hologram acts erratically and seems to barely be paying attention to her, but mentions that it “did not expect to come back” and that everyone wanting to return to Earth so badly would have their wishes granted in seven hours. Confused by the vague statements, Jeanne tries to get the AI to cooperate, but is interrupted as something large hits the building. Jeanne heads from the control tower back down to the floor level, where she runs into Foster. Although warry of one another, they’re both joined a moment later by a heavily winded Watson, who just manages to find somewhere to hide before a giant, four-armed creature attempts to force itself into the building after her. Foster tells the other two about the train station within running distance of the control center and blinds the monster with a flashbang grenade. The three run under the giant’s legs and make it to the train with the monster close behind. Jeanne secretly recognizes Anna restrained inside the train from her time as a Pilot, but Anna doesn’t seem to recognize Jeanne and behaves pleasantly despite her restraints.
Foster announces that the rest of the team is gone and the Pilots seem to have abandoned the station, leaving their commanding officer behind. Jeanne tells her what the AI mentioned about seven hours until the station “returns” and suspects that the AI might be intending to try and make the station disappear again with the FTL module. Foster relays what the Mothman told her about the station being filled with “holes in space” and declares original mission to capture the station to now be over, with the new objective being to escape. She explains that the extreme paranoia and vanity of the station’s builders means there is probably a shuttle of some kind docked in one of the government buildings for private use, and that at this point it’s their only option for escape. She cites some documents she recovered from the control center as her lead, but says that the monster is probably still chasing the train and that they’ll probably have to fight it off if they want to escape. The three then take the last few minutes of the train ride to prepare themselves for the battle, with Jeanne taking one of the submachine guns Foster brought with her, and Watson taking up the plasma rifle. 
The train arrives at its destination in the middle of the city, and everyone gets off, following Foster to the government building she thinks a shuttle can be found at. After running several blocks, a group of knife-wielding cultists appear again. The group takes them out easily, but the attack is followed up by archers from a nearby balcony. Anna takes an arrow and runs off, and the Federation agents are forced to let her go while they try and dislodge the archers. Foster irritatedly notes that a marksman or machine gunner would have been useful for an encounter like this and stresses that they can’t afford to be pinned down with the monster not very far behind them. Watson manages to fire off some extremely well-aimed shots with her revolver and forces the archers to back off long enough for the group to keep moving. The four-armed monster finally catches up to the group, and they pour everything they have into taking the creature down while they have clear shots. The monster reacts by picking up and throwing a car at Watson, who narrowly manages to avoid being crushed to death. Jeanne takes some plastic explosives from the MULE and runs up to the creature, attaching the explosives to one of its legs. She manages to barely clear the blast zone but takes a slash across her back while trying to get distance. Jeanne detonates the explosives, blowing the monster in half and finally finishing the fight.
Foster administers first aid to make sure Jeanne doesn’t bleed out from her wounds before resuming searching the city. Although without Anna’s ID they lost whatever privileged access she may have had, Foster is confident the computer she brought with the MULE should be able to crack the security between them and a ship. The three manage to find a shuttle eventually and successfully escape the station.
Unknown to all parties onboard, the station had begun moving towards Earth after the reactor was reactivated, using the effect of the ‘alternate space’ to accelerate a trip that would have taken weeks or months to only a few hours, with the intent of crashing the station onto the planet. This is why Jeanne arrived far sooner than expected despite leaving days after the first team. With the colony drop imminent, there is no way of stopping a disaster from occurring.
Several hours later, Anna regains consciousness after passing out at some point. Having also regained her senses, she sadly realizes she has been left behind by everyone. The space station’s interior temperature has risen considerably to the point of becoming debilitating. Exhausted, overheated and low on blood, Anna initially simply waits to die, until a voice asks her to stand up. She somehow manages to get back on her feet and starts walking, following the voice to the control center. She manages to use her ID to access the station’s administrator controls and triggers the station’s disassembly, causing the 1km by 1km sections of the space station to come apart just as the station begins to approach Earth’s atmosphere, lessening the devastation caused by the colony drop by a significant degree.
Afterwards, MacKenzie and Gehring both reappear in their respective homes, completely oblivious to where they'd been or how they got there. The shuttle that took Jeanne, Foster and Watson off the station flies a pre-programmed route to Tokyo. Shocked to find the space station following them back to Earth, the Pilots onboard the corvette quickly deploy to assist in breaking up the station to further mitigate the impact of its fragments across the planet. The ACC records Anna as having died after deserting her commission and get to work planning a press release explaining what happened.
Category:PACYOA: TE
Category:Mission Record
Category:Literally Who Missions
Category:Space