Jump 157: System Shock

Jump 157: System Shock

Location: Reactor Level, Citadel Station, 2072
Age: 24
Identity: Drop-In
Drawbacks: [+500] Roughnecks, Cloak And Dagger

[50/1500]   Skillz That Pay The Billz
[100/1500]  Pipeline Kenjutsu
[250/1500]  Digital Pipe Compliance
[550/1500]  Bug On The Wall
[1150/1500] Secrets Of The Mind
[1250/1500] Bureaucrat-Fu
[1350/1500] Trustable Face
[1450/1500] Electric Monk
[Free]      Pipe
[1500/1500] Laser Rapier
[Free]      MFD Game Player

Welcome to Citadel Station! Where everyone is paranoid, everything is trying to kill the survivors, and the United Nations Navy Marines have been sent in to kill absolutely EVERYTHING. Shades of Black Mesa much? If only I had a crowbar, but I do have a pipe. Also a laser rapier. It's not quite a lightsaber, but it'll do.

And so I put together a to-do list. Number one, power. The largest way to help deal with all this nonsense is, of course, to sabotage the reactor. Oh, there's still enough power going to make sure the station doesn't lose gravity - SHODAN's cyborgs and creations would definitely do very poorly in zero-G - but aside from essential systems, most other power draws are kaput. SHODAN somehow has an auxiliary power supply for herself, so cutting her off entirely isn't viable, but it does impact other things. Her robots and cyborgs, for instance, are now running on a finite lifetime instead of being able to recharge. And incidentally burning out the mining laser, overheating its circuits until they fuse, so that it can't fire.

Number two, move up systematically and clear everything out. From the reactor level to the medical level, removing the mad AI's capability of easily converting any more captured humans into cyborgs. The way is blocked, but let's be frank - when you have a laser saber, you can ensure that any obstacles are sliced to ribbons. And from there to the research level, stripping out circuits, plundering equipment. From there to the maintenance level, the sabotage there now cutting off the ability of any of her bots to repair damage, ascending level by level to clear her nonsense while trying to make sure any survivors aren't under threat. Even if their 'help' would kill any normal person. Honestly, poisoned medical supplies? Drugged rations? Sabotaged and damaged weapons? Not something that makes me think well of these idiots.

Reaching Storage... I was hoping to find supplies here, but instead found that what hadn't already been claimed had been destroyed - by the same marines who were trying to kill me even as they fended off the security bots. Having their attention split, though? That just makes it easier for me to deal with them, because I am not in the mood to deal with such shenanigans. I don't stop to worry over this - I grab what I can and keep moving, ripping and tearing my way up past the hangar deck (and making sure that potential methods of egress are kept intact) and keep ascending. Mutants have flooded the executive deck and are purged as a matter of course, though it seems they had finished the last of the marines who'd made it this far. The groves are jettisoned, two falling into Jupiter's gravity well while the third heads out into deep space.

From there, I ascend to the engineering section. The communication systems are sabotaged, as a preventative measure, and then it's on to security upstairs. It seems that I found the reason I had relatively little resistance though - SHODAN had gathered the majority of the cyborgs and robots on the station to this level, hoping to arm them and stop me. While it did not work, it was an admirable attempt. The cyborg Edward Diego is informed of the magnitude of the error he made by way of being de-limbed and dragged upstairs, and being used as a flail to destroy mutant cyborgs and, in the end, bashed to pieces against SHODAN's core. But while her core could survive being bashed with her cyborg's inert corpse, it couldn't survive the earth-shakers I left on a timer as I took an express trip to the reactor deck. And the station couldn't survive the reactor overloading, atomizing the whole thing.

At least the other survivors left me one last shuttle to escape on.