Mid-West Campaign
Session Eighty-Eight

Friday, 10 August 2001

Agent Malkin spearheads the investigation into the dead bodies. He decides the obvious place to start is with the decomposing contents of Alton's Fridge and returns to Broken Bow. Agents McPike, Steiger and Clint Stone check into a motel.

Saturday, 11 August 2001

The three LA-based agents brainstorm what to do next in this case. They are at a complete loss until (as if her memory has been jogged by an omniscient outside source) Steiger remembers their passing suspicions about Doctor Pines's wife. She is the spider at the centre of a social web of her own making. They return to Broken Bow to interview her.

A few hours later the three are sitting in the parlour at the Pines house, taking coffee with Sheryl Pines. She comes across as the sort of effusive hostess that any desert-welling physicist would be proud to have as her wife. McPike and Steiger become very sick from the coffee, although Clint Stone is knocking it back quite happily.

To any man with an ounce of common sense it would be obvious that Sheryl has poisoned Joe and Elise. Clint Stone is not that man. Genuinely believing that Sheryl is a trained nurse he rushes to the kitchen to get a first aid kit, and leaves the woman to 'ministrate' to his foaming colleagues. Stone doesn't realise anything is wrong until he grabs the first aid box and notices a strange box concealed behind it: a box that has "bomb" written all over it.

Rushing back to the sitting room Stone discovers that Sheryl has already made a run for it. Not knowing how long he has before the bomb explodes, Stone throws McPike over his shoulder and rushes from the building. Dumping the senior agent in a safe place he runs back in for Elise. It is at this point that the house explodes.

The first thing McPike knows of what is going on is when he is brought round by paramedics. The whole area is swarming with emergency services. Elise is badly wounded, unconscious but still alive. Despite his wounds, Stone is conscious and gives a report to McPike before they are all whisked away to hospital.

After extensive interviews with the disbelieving police, the unwounded McPike checks himself out of hospital and returns to the radiological institute. He is taken to a prison block to interview Doctor Pines who was immediately detained by base personnel. McPike meets Lt Goodspeed who conducts him to a secure room with a glass panel that looks in on the bare cell where Pines is held. McPike conducts the interview through speakers.

McPike's interview technique is ask a rapid-fire series of brutal and blunt questions, and to continue without mercy until the subject is reduced to tears. Dr Pines reveals that he met his wife at a conference six years ago in Germany. She worked as a US translator at the Berlin embassy. At the time he was working for a group that specialised in military explosives. It seems obvious that Sheryl Pines is some sort of spy. McPike says that he has seen the same sort of thing in Caspar.

Goodspeed has heard about McPike's work in Caspar. It seems that some scientists from that are working at the Radiological Institute at present. It is late and he offers Joe a cot for the night.

Sunday, 12 August 2001

Not wanting to investigate alone, McPike springs the severely wounded Stone out of hospital and pair go looking for Sheryl Pines. With no leads to go on the pair drive aimlessly around the air from abandoned ghost town to abandon ghost town. Eventually this drives Stone nuts and he claims to be a fantastic tracker who can work out where Sheryl went from her house. They return to Broken Bow.

As luck would have it, Stone pulls off the track of his life and the pair follow Sheryl's footprints to a neighbour's house. They find a deceased elderly couple. The old man appears to have strangled his wife. This all seems to confirm the teams' theory that brain bugs are involved. There are fresher tracks heading out of the back of the house to the garage.

The pair hire a helicopter and go looking for Sheryl. They notice an enormous depression in the ground at the back of her house - almost as if something that weighed 400 tons had been sitting there. The accelerator had been hidden just twenty miles from the institute in Pines's back garden! McPike applies a little logic to the situation. If the bugs could have transported the accelerator more than twenty miles then they would have done. Maybe they can only move it in twenty-mile hops, in which case it cannot be too far away. They expand the search in the helicopter and discover an enormous camouflaged spacecraft, deep in the desert. It is probably a pinnace-class vessel.

A beam of green energy shoots out of the ship and hits the helicopter. McPike and Stone dive out in time, but the helicopter crashes in flames (killing the pilot). The spaceship now rises up into the air. The agents can see the accelerator is slung beneath it. It hovers for a moment, then tries to land on the agents and squash them flat. Fortunately, the agents dive out of the way and the ship misses.

As it rises up again, Stone grabs hold of the accelerator and is lifted into the air. McPike pulls out his phone and tries to call the institute, but his calls are being jammed. The ship fires again, barely missing McPike. He runs under the vessel where he cannot be shot, and grabs hold of the accelerator when it makes a third attempt to squash him. However, as he clambers up, Stone loses his grip and falls.

However, the ship must be running low on power, because it cannot escape and has to come to land a little way off. McPike immediately enters through a hatchway and Stone rushes over to follow. McPike finds himself in a long corridor. Suddenly, Sheryl Pines emerges from behind a far corner. She starts to deliver an ultimatum, but McPike shoots her.

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