Actual Play

Volume 2 / Issue 3 (12/24/93)

Avoiding the iris scanners and the man-traps that normally would have barred us from the interior of the base, Donna led the way through what appeared to be a makeshift tunnel, labeled Falcatraz, into the first building. Fearful of Halon gas and other security measures he knew might still be in place, Adam insisted on stepping into the darkened room first. It was only after Martha; preceded by Donna and Sharon, stood up in what had been War Game East, did Chinky appear. A smelly, feral little boy of maybe eight or nine, Chinky; cautious yet unintimidated, ultimately led us to another part of the Command center where we were then confronted by the rest of his underground group. Three babies and thirteen children, the oldest of which might have been 15, all orphaned. We soon realized that we would all be dead except for the fact that they had never seen female Terminators. Come to think of it, neither had we. Convinced that we had not come to kill them, the children quicky warmed up to us and showed us their supply of stripped Cyberdyne equipment, mostly from Terminators. At this point, the Spinner informed us that Chinky and his gang all had 20 SP points each! Steve managed to fix an old CD player that was revered by the children and MIDNIGHT OIL suddenly boomed down the dusty halls. The children, oblivious to any attention the music might send their way, ran in all directions only to return with more CD's than the group had ever seen at one place, even the old Life By Design. Steve asked Chinky if they had any OpTubes and in one minute a Cyberdyne TerraFile; filled with gleaming OpTubes, lay at his feet. 

At that moment, the two Terminators whose vehicle we had stolen, crashed through the northern security door. The group didn't even have time to react before Chinky and six of the girls attacked the intruders in the most fearless and etficient display of self defense we had ever seen. Even Sharon was amazed. Both Terminators were disabled, and Chinky and some of the boys were already yanking circuitry, when Steve told them to stop. They obeyed. Steve and Martha succeeded in downloading files from both Terminators which indicated that the T-800's had been sent to search Falcon for OpTubes containing firing codes for orbiting particle beam weapons. While we scanned the data; realizing that these weapons had never been brought online, but easily could be, an androgynous child Chinky called the Rug, due to her low self esteem, slipped out into the hallway. Just as Martha announced that the OpTubes containing the firing codes were the very ones in the TerraFile, we heard a scream.

Rushing outside, we were confronted with what could only be a rogue Terminator; one who functioned autonomously, independent from SKYNET. Instead of tihe standard plasma rifles, his plasteel fingers held the Rug. No one had ever heard of a Terminator taking a hostage and a plan began to take shape in William's head. At his signal, Chinky and the girls rushed the stunned Terminator, freeing the Rug and once again disabling the machine without destroying it. Steve, under William's direction went to work on the de-activated skull. William, intrigued with finding the source of the Terminator's programming that allowed it to understand the value of a human life enough to take one hostage, was rewarded when Steve pulled out an OpTube from the Terminators central command array which even Chinky had never seen before. We all knew that we had found something of great importance, We also knew that it was time to take it and the kids back to Downtown Base. On the return trip, we watched as an HK launched from NORAD's south, entrance, raced east over our heads, and landed at Falcatraz. William grinned all the way home while Donna told the kids a story.

They had never heard one.

When we returned to our underground hideout, we discovered that THE BOOK himself, had called for a meeting of all three groups at the pavilion. We also discovered that as a result of our experience at Falcatraz, all our SP points had been increased to the maximum 20 points also. We immediately left with our new army; a force that would prove to be more powerful than we could imagine, and headed for the Garden of the Gods.