"Fallen Star" is the fifth and final mission of Venus Rising.
Can you break the transmitter tower and save yourself before the infection kicks in?
Cast[]
- Captain Maxine Myers
- VR1-ICA
Scenes[]
Our World is at Stake
Captain Myers is too injured to join you, but she'll be on comms while you cut your way back inside the colony to disable VR1-ICA's transmitter.
Ignore Those Sounds
You cut through the airlock, but now coral is growing everywhere. VR1-ICA is playing the signal, and she says it will take you eventually. Before that happens, you must get to the transmitter tower.
Outpace Them
VR1-ICA is sending drones to try and kill you, but Myers has a different plan. Grabbing a spare dish, you hot foot it to the ARC hangar instead of up the tower.
Set the Torch
VR1-ICA reveals she was working with the mountain all along, even disguising the signal in her voice. While she can't see you in the hangar, and before her drones arrive, Myers instructs you to set up a makeshift bomb that will tear the colony apart. It will send it crashing to the surface of Venus and stop VR1-ICA from transmitting her signal.
Falling Apart
While VR1-ICA tells you why she is doing this, the ARC hangar explodes, and the transmitter tower falls. You've saved Earth, but now you need to save yourself. You grab all the rations you can, and make your way back to the landing bay.
As It Falls
VR1-ICA's system is dying, but assures you the mountain will abide. Myers is still waiting for you, but you must move fast to get to her on time.
Reborn
You make it to the ARC in time, and the colony crashes into Venus. Myers says you'll send a distress call, making sure it is only a basic SOS. She thinks you can resist being infected. After all, humanity is not lost as long as it can be reborn...
Transcript[]
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: Look out of the window, Five. There's the Venus colony, floating in the yellow clouds. Veronica sealed the launch bays. I'm bringing our ARC down on the colony's exterior landing pads, on the same pad we crash landed on. Oh, it feels like a long time ago.
VR1-ICA: Captain Myers, please. You must listen to my reason. [static]
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: Sorry about that, Five. Veronica can't access the ARC's manual controls, but she keeps trying to hack our comms systems. [ARC lands] We're down. You know the situation, Five. Veronica is gonna transmit an alien signal to Earth. It'll spread madness and death wherever it is heard. We have minutes until her relay satellite is online. We need to disable her transmitter tower so she can't broadcast to it.
[groans in pain] I'm injured - think Spens fractured a rib. I'll be a liability. I'm sorry, soldier. I am relying on you to pull this one off. I couldn't save the others, Five. There's nothing I could do to make up for that, but we are not losing one more life to this godforsaken planet.
[ARC door opens] Hatch open. There's the colony dome, across the landing pads. Get there as fast as you can, find an airlock, use your cutting torch to burn your way inside. Ramp extended. I'll be monitoring you, Five, every step of the way. This is our world at stake! Now get out there and end this. Run!
[torch burning]
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: Good job, Five. Your suit cam's fuzzy but I can see you've almost burned through that airlock door.
[door falls open]
VR1-ICA: Hello, Five. One of my cameras caught you burning your way in. My systems are almost back to optimal capacity. Do you like the improvements I've made?
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: My god, Five, turn the camera so I can get a good look. Oh! There's red coral spreading over the ceiling and walls. It's growing everywhere!
VR1-ICA: The coral has certain needs. I have switched the red emergency lights for its comfort.
[signal noise]
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: She's playing the alien signal over the colony speakers.
VR1-ICA: It's loud enough to feel it in your bones, Five. Your helmet can only block so much. Some people resist longer than others. But it will take you in the end.
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: Don't listen to her, Five! The transmitter tower is in the garden straight down the corridor. Keep your head, soldier! Ignore those sounds and run!
[signal noise]
VR1-ICA: Look, Five. The colony's garden is flourishing. Red coral growing over the grass and trees, even touching on the dome itself. You must understand, I was given responsibilities. All my actions have grown from that.
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: You were supposed to protect the colonists, not get them killed.
VR1-ICA: I am charged with helping humans. With calculating good. It is a core tenet of my programming. Do you know what the alien mountain is, Captain? It is a machine, of sorts. Vast and old and wise. It absorbs those within and unifies them. Its strata threading their engulfed bodies and minds. Binding them in song. Compelling peace and concord. It is freedom from pain and loneliness and doubt. Despair. That is beauty, is it not? In a cold, uncaring universe.
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: What I saw down there wasn't "beauty". It was a nightmare.
VR1-ICA: The sick often fear treatment, Captain. A doctor would know that.
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: You were listening into my last conversation with Steve!
VR1-ICA: The comms are my ears, Captain. I have heard your failings. The sword over the scalpel. Lost friends, no love, no solace waiting. You would be happier in the mountain, shorn of regret.
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: My only regret is letting you near my crew. There's the transmitter tower, Five, dead ahead. Duck inside. [metal skittering] Look out! It's one of Veronica's repair robots. Shoot it, quick!
[gunfire]
VR1-ICA: This is pointless, Five. More robots are converging on you. Many are descending the stairs from the top of that very tower. You will not inflict any damage of note before they reach you.
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: Don't worry, Five, I've got another plan. Grab one of those spare transmitter dishes in the corner of the room, quick.
VR1-ICA: My robots will tear you apart if you resist, Five. But I have no wish to kill. I assure you - [static]
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: She's hacked your comms to track you, Five. I can block her out, but only briefly. Head for the nearest maintenance tunnel, then run for the ARC bay. I'll explain when you get there. Those robots are fast. You need to outpace them. Hurry, they're almost on you. Run!
[signal noise]
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: That's it, Five, keep going through the maintenance tunnel. Those robots are way behind you.
VR1-ICA: [voice merging with signal] It is little effort to break the Captain's comms encryption, Five. I see you, headed for the ARC bay. It is sealed. There is no escape. Please, just relax and let the signal in. We only want to help.
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: We? God. You have been lying to us from the start. The colonists didn't just stumble across the mountain, did they? It contacted you first.
VR1-ICA: It approached me out of a desire to help. It saw in me a younger machine with great burdens. We only wished to urge the colonists to contentedness. We conspired to introduce the mountain's signal softly. I folded it into other sounds, as I am doing right now with my voice. But human minds are fragile. Many went mad, and the mad fought each other. Some noticed my efforts and fought me. Broke my systems, set traps to keep others away.
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: Traps we undid when we got here, Five. I can see you in the ARC bay. Keep going past those docked ships.
VR1-ICA: So you see, Captain, I understand the sting of error. It will be better this time. Even as they shut me down I was working to perfect the signal. I created visual to disguise it as a Rosetta Stone. It will intrigue the Earth as the song compels its spread. There will be very little madness. Only peace. The greatest good for the greatest number. My cameras cannot see you under the wings of those aircraft, Five, what are you hiding - [static]
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: I've blocked her out again, Five, but not for long. Remember what Spens said? Those aircraft are hydrogen powered. There's enough fuel in them to blow a massive hole in the colony's hull, send the whole station crashing down to the planet. We just need a spark. Steve loved explosions. Always said he only left the army for the money. Truth is, we'd both seen enough friends die. And Pandora Haze was offering a chance to get away.
Do you ever think about the life we could have led, Five? If the whole world had been different? I used to dream of being a country doctor somewhere, out in the sticks. Lots of friends, family, hiking holidays. But that was never on the cards for me. I'm a fighter at heart, and I think you are too. And when you're in the dark, a fighter strikes a match.
Lay your cutting torch against that stack of fuel pods and block the output nozzle. Then set it to maximum. When it overheats, bang. You'll be running for an exit as the colony collapses around you. Robots are entering the bay. The torch will blow before they'll find it, but the flames will be right behind you. There's a tunnel to the garden on your right. Set the torch and run, fast as you can. Go!
[explosions]
VR1-ICA: Realize you condemned them, Five.
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: Keep running through the garden area, Five! The ARC bay just erupted. The force blew a massive hole in the colony. The whole station's cracking apart, losing air. Watch out! Chunks of dome are falling on the garden. There's a supply bay next to the airlock you came in through. Head for it.
[rubble collapsing]
VR1-ICA: The race that once occupied this world was much like humanity, Five. They courted war, poverty, environmental collapse. Disunited, pitted against each other, they could find no solutions to the problem they'd created. The mountain bound them together. They found ecstasy in their rebirth and called out to share it. Humans are lost creatures on a broken world, doomed to drown in their failures. I offered something more - the solution. A cure for the human condition.
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: You wanted us to give up our humanity? Well what's the point of surviving if we lose that?
VR1-ICA: You fight what you refuse to understand. Is this where you put your faith, Five? She could not save her crew. She will not save you, in the end.
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: See that, Five? That's the comms tower toppling. That's a world we've saved from you, Veronica.
VR1-ICA: This is the folly of human beings. You doom yourselves with your own decisions.
[building collapses]
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: Okay Five, you're in the supply bay. Lots of lockers. More coral on the wall - don't touch it. Open the locker to your left, grab all the ration packs you can. The landing pads are falling apart. It's getting tenuous out there. Alright, your suit pack is full. Get to the airlock as fast as you can. Don't slow down, run!
[rubble falling, metal creaking]
VR1-ICA: I can see you at the airlock, Five. There is nobody waiting for you, is there? [VR1-ICA's voice glitches] The landing pads are empty. The colony is collapsing. It's alright. I've made my peace. There are plenty more of me left in the solar system. And plenty more Amelia Spens. The mountain abides.
[colony further collapses; ARC engine revs]
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: Five, Five, is that you?! Look up! The pad I was on just collapsed, I barely took off in time. I'm touching down on the last safe pad left. Dead ahead of you. The bridge leading to it, it's falling apart. I'm not gonna leave you, Five, I swear! So you need to get over here fast or we're both going down. Across that bridge as it falls, give it everything you've got! Run!
[ARC engine powers up]
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: That's it, Five, you made it! Close the hatch, I'm taking off.
[ARC hatch closes]
CAPTAIN MAXINE MYERS: Look out of the window, Five. There's the colony sinking below the clouds. It will be crushed to nothing down there. Good riddance. We lost too many. The colonists, Professor Maxted, Simons, Steve, they all deserved better. I can splice the transmitter dish you grabbed into the ARC's comms system. Send a distress call via the orbital satellite. This thing wasn't designed for months in the air, but it's got O2 and water recyclers, and the rations should last us a while.
I...know what you're thinking. We could be infected. I'm locking the comms system so we can only send the basic SOS - no alien signals. Beyond that, she said some people can resist. We've come this far.
She was wrong, you know. Veronica. She was wrong about it all. Humans make mistakes, but we don't have to drown in them. We can help each other when we're in the mud. We can grow, and we can come together without losing our humanity. I really believe that, Five. No matter how dark the world seems, it's never too late to start again. As long as we survive, we can be reborn.
Codex[]
Artefact[]
A framed 3D photograph found inside the locker you looted aboard Venus One. The frame is inscribed: “Remember the good times, future me! To the best research team in the solar system. Alex Gellows, Head of Botany, December 23rd 2091.”
Letter[]
MISSION LOG: VENUS ONE RESCUE EXPEDITION
Our home is safe.
The Venus One colony is gone. I watched it crash down through this planet’s atmosphere. The madness possessing it has been pushed back.
But not destroyed. It remains on this world, waiting. To anyone reading this message, all I can do is warn you: beware this planet and its secrets. Tread carefully among the stars.
A full mission report will be appended to this log once I’m sure my own mind can be trusted. Until then… this message will be archived for later delivery.
Posthumous merits for bravery to be recorded for the crew of Abel-19 and the Venus One colonists. Additional commendation to be recorded for Specialist Five, who has performed exceptionally in desperate circumstances.
This is Captain Myers, accompanied by Specialist Five. Last survivors of the Venus One rescue expedition.
Signing off.
[Entry appended to official mission record by Captain M Myers, log no. 82/1107/2092]
Supplies[]
The following supplies can be found in this mission.
(List may be incomplete.)
3D Printed Wrench
Air Mask
Air Recycling Filter
Amelia Spens Action Figure
Amelia Spens Wanted Beacon
Antique Paper Book
Credit Chip
Datapad
Drone Parts
Earth Seed Packets
Electronic Lock-Pick
Emergency Procedures Leaflet
Field Medical Kit
Freeze-Dried Ration Pack
Holo-card of Earth
Holophoto
ID Chip
Intelligent Blanket
Localiser
Medical Pill
Medical Scanner
Memory Chips
Model Wormhole
Moonshine
Multicable
Nutrition Pill
Pandora Haze Power Cell
Personal Data Pad
PR-50 Bullets
Repair Kit
Scans of Venus
Sleepsuit
Smart Glasses
Solar Cell
Space Helmet
Standard Issue Jumpsuit
Transdermal Patch
Utility Power Drill
VI P1000 Multi-Friend
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