Star Fails III -- Payday in the Frozen City

The Crew
Jason Slade, big damn hero
Gold-Gold-Mauve, gun-amoeba
Squishy, nee-"Greenie," eukaryote bullet-sponge
Grug-Ugh-ng, turret puncher
Private Kipley, man of action
Skrillix, squid misanthrope

by Steve Burg

Deep beneath the ice of Iota Cancri VIIIc lies a nameless, dead city. The crew crouched in the dark, a third of them blissed out on alien chemicals. Grug-Ugh-ng took the lead once again, and decided they would wait out the effects on their compatriots. After a few hours nervously watching the dark tunnels Jason and Kipley shook off the effects and the crew set off again. The ancient complex was eerily silent and heavily damaged, collapsed tunnels stymied their progress. The team might have given up were it not for the heroic leadership of the captain ordering Kipley to dig his way through. Progress went much faster from there, and the party was able to ambush a pair of harmless spacecats before being ambushed themselves by rogue defense turrets at the bottom of a stairwell. The automated defenses nearly killed Squishy, but the crew was able to pull him out of range and patch him up with Science! They both exploded a few seconds later under a barrage of bear and laser fire. Those sentries proved to be the last active defenders of the ruins, with only unstable ceilings, ancient diseases, and poison gas standing between the crew and a cache of ancient artifacts. The crew made off with an ancient statuette, a hologram, a mysterious hollow cylinder, some drugs, platinum coins, and a parachute.

Kipley, by the inestimable +Ron Power