Chapter 1: The Course of Events
It is raining on the night of 21 October 2077 when an Army truck delivers the player characters (referred to as “the team” from now on) to the 128th Quartermaster Company National Guard Armoury in Santa Barbara, California. The armoury is an old two story structure built in the south west mission style, as mandated by the Santa Barbara city fathers, surrounded by a reinforced chainlink fence. The 128th is currently assigned to keep order and reinforce local law enforcement in the coastal region from Carpinteria to the Gaviota Pass.
Members of the team have been assigned to units that are already overseas and have landed here as transients while awaiting a transport berth. They are assigned to the care of Sgt. Rita Vasquez, who immediately puts the team to work cleaning up the armoury buildings. The town is under a curfew and is off limits.
On the morning of 23 October 2077 Col. Robert Morrow will arrive seeking a few soldiers to help him move some supplies to his laboratory. Col. Morrow is assigned to Vandenberg AFB and has top-level clearances. Sgt. Vasquez gives him the transients. Each member of the team will be issued a MAB P15 9mm with 4 magazines and a combat knife.
Col. Morrow has a fuel cell powered military issue Chrysalis Suburbaneer, an extra large station wagon. He will take the team to a heavily guarded warehouse in Ventura to pick up a variety of cases, crates, and containers that have to be packed into the back and onto the roof of the vehicle. The load includes rations, medical supplies, canisters of chemicals, and other unidentified items. While they are loading the cargo Col. Morrow will give each team member two Stimpaks (“just in case”). The drive back north is uneventful.
Col. Morrow is friendly, offering cigarettes and nukacola to the team. He will tell them that he is experimenting in methods of long term food and equipment storage. He plans to keep them overnight so they can help him pick up another incoming load of supplies and has barracks space arranged on Vandenberg.
Vandenberg AFB is a ghost town with only a few buildings in use and guarded by a skeleton crew of Air Police, with sentries at the gate and only a pair of jeeps to patrol the base perimeter. Col. Morrow drives into the base and turns into an alley with a loading dock located at the back of a 5-story building. After they park a group of looters will attack them and try to steal the cargo.
The ambushers will be concealed inside trash dumpsters or behind the corner of the building. They will keep out of sight, waiting until they hear the engine of the Suburbaneer shut down and the occupants disembark before they attack.
After stopping the vehicle Col. Morrow will enter the building so as turn on the motor that opens the heavy loading dock door, leaving the team to turn to and unload the vehicle. This is when the looters will attack. Col. Morrow will be dealing with a blown fuse on the door motor and will not participate in the shootout.
There are seven looters, each one has a different weapon: Ruger 1022 (3 mags), .38 DA revolver (2 speed loaders), .380 PPK (2 mags), switchblade, baseball bat, hatchet, and crowbar. Each looter is wearing misc. heavy clothing (DEF +1).
After defeating the looters the team will have to move the cargo downstairs in the elevator. They will stack the cargo in the storage room on top of the supplies that are already stored there and then take a break for lunch while Col. Morrow goes upstairs to a data centre. The team will notice that there are a lot of supplies, including weapons, stored here.
The underground lab has heavy steel doors that can seal off the elevator room. The team can only access the front office and the storeroom as all other doors are locked.
Suddenly all hell breaks loose. Alarms sound, red lights flash, and the computer seals the heavy steel doors that lead to the elevator and the exit, locking Col. Morrow out of the lab. It also unlocks the other doors inside the facility. The computer displays the words “Alas Babylon” and then starts repeatedly showing a cartoon instructing the viewers to strip, inject themselves with a green syringe, and then climb into a cryo-tube.
The team will find that beyond the formerly locked doors are a lab and a room with 24 cryo-tubes. Four tubes are already occupied. Three have name plates; Dr. Phil Stoakes MD, Dr. Angela Dumont MD, Sgt. Jack Toranelli (US Army Rangers). The fourth name slot is empty. Each empty cryo-tube has a green plastic syringe in a holder on the side. There is a small locker next to the bottom of each tube for personal effects.
The lights in the facility dim and go out, replaced by low watt red emergency lighting. There is nothing to do but get into the tubes. The last thing the team sees is the date read out inside their tube: 23 October 2077.
What is really going on
Col. Morrow has developed cryogenic technology for the Frozen Soldier Project, a plan to freeze military units and hide them deep underground so they could emerge after an atomic war and help rebuild the USA. The research has been completed and the technology is being deployed in secret bases. Col. Morrow’s lab, hidden deep in a reinforced basement on Vandenberg AFB, was supposed to be shut down but he has kept it going by calling in favours and stealing government supplies. He plans to use the cryo-tubes in his lab for himself, his family, and some friends.
Events moved faster than Col. Morrow had planned for and none of his friends arrived in time. Instead, he was stuck with 8 unexpected guests.