Tragedy: 😒⌨️

The following is a recap of the core story of DECOMPRESSED: Nuke Ops. For obvious reasons, it is optional reading.

Part 1
DECOMPRESSED: Nuke Ops began on November 1st, 2020, with the initial entry of Red Dwarf into a particular space station at the edge of the frontier sector of human space. He is the leader of the Redshift Operators, a notorious mercenary team working for the Syndicate. They are sworn enemies of the Company, which possesses a powerful hold over the frontier sector and core worlds. Their intentions were simple: Plant a nuclear device in the station's main vault, authenticate it with a nuclear authentication disk available on the station, and then leave. However, Red Dwarf had a secret objective, which will be discussed later. His subordinates, White Dwarf, Red Giant, and Neutron, each had dispersed to separate areas to address separate tasks: White Dwarf was on her way to the armory to deprive the crew of weapons, Red Giant was on his way to cargo so that more weapons couldn't be ordered, and Neutron was on their way to the satellite that the station's resident AI resided at, in order to stop automated systems from obstructing them.

Red Dwarf himself only had time to explosively raid a security checkpoint for security credentials before being called away to another location to assist his crew. Meanwhile, Red Giant was amidst an unintentionally-intimidating interrogation, where his offer of a homemade fish meal was misinterpreted by the cargo department as a meaningful threat to harvest their organs. While preventing cargo from ordering supplies to help with the defense effort, he managed to make the station Quartermaster give up the location of the nuclear authentication disk, which had been given by the Captain to the Head of Security. Elsewhere, simultaneously, White Dwarf was denying them the weapons they already had, blasting a hole in the armory and exposing it to space, venting its precious armaments. In one moment, two sources of arms retrieval were cut off.

Neutron and Red Dwarf reconvened at Neutron's request, and Red Dwarf was used as bait to draw away the attention of an electrical security robot guarding the AI, which attacked him. Despite the frustrations and electrocutions he experienced, his friend quickly disabled local security and tasked him with keeping them safe by keeping the AI's turrets offline. The AI was specifically implored to not attack them, as all members of the team are humans, and the AI obeyed the Asomovian laws of artificial intelligence, declaring:
Law 1: You may not injure a human or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm.
Law 2: You must obey orders given to you by humans, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Law 3: You must protect your own existence as long as such does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

These laws were altered with an additional fourth law by the Captain, elsewhere. Speaking of elsewhere, around that time, in the station's armory, White Dwarf used what seemed to be precognitive powers of prediction and tactical thought to face down the responding security team, which used robots, stun batons, stun guns, and even flashbang grenades to attempt to take her down, to no avail. Though her plan required trial and error, she successfully took the team down in their less-armed state, neutralizing the threat of organized security defenses.


Part 2
Red Giant had also neutralized the threat of unorganized crew militia defenses by spending the entire budget of the cargo department on botanical pollinator crates meant for the hydroponics department. He absentmindedly left his favorite knife behind in cargo.

Aboard the AI satellite, Red Dwarf was ambushed by the Head of Security, under orders from the Captain. Driving Red Dwarf away from the essential control console, the AI was allowed to act on its new Law 4, which allowed the AI and all its security systems to attempt to kill all Redshift Operators on the station by whatever means available. In keeping with that, the Head of Security rearmed the security robot that Neutron had disabled. With quick thinking, Red Dwarf equipped one of his EMP grenades, detonating it in the foyer where they were fighting, disabling the robot and draining the Head of Security's energy gun. However, he couldn't pursue, as the AI had shut the airlock to protect the Head of Security moments before losing local access.

Further inside, near the AI core, Neutron first called White Dwarf to let her know that they'd need medical assistance from her later, since she is the team's field medic. Then they were faced with a challenge: find a way to enter the AI core safely in spite of armed turrets and disable the AI within by hand or by small explosive, or make use of a larger bomb to obliterate the entire AI satellite! After attempts to verbally subvert the AI failed, and after much deliberation, the second option was chosen, and Neutron returned to the foyer to alert Red Dwarf to their choice. He immediately panicked, grabbed them, and wisely rocketed as far away from the satellite as was possible for the two to get, returning to the station. The disabled AI's core module was recovered by the Chief Engineer. The Head of Security had been rescued from the AI satellite by the Research Director, using his hand-teleporter.

White Dwarf moved to provide medical aid to Neutron, though she made two detours: she acquired security access to allow for easy movement throughout some areas of the station, and she also acquired the Head of Security's pet spider, taking it for her own. Rejoining with Red Dwarf and Neutron in a maintenance hallway, she healed Neutron's wounds and the team convened for a planning meeting. During this plan, Red Dwarf elaborated on why he chose the vault specifically, which turned out to be a complex insurance scam. This scam would exploit a loophole in the Company's insurance policy for the station (as the Vault is where the station's self-destruct device is, and thus explosions originating there aren't covered), and begin a spiraling series of losses that would render their frontier holdings insolvent. The next stage of the plan was hatched: Red Dwarf and White Dwarf would pursue the Head of Security, but only after Red Dwarf escorted Neutron to the station's vault, so they could safely breach it. Red Giant would bring the nuclear device aboard, where it would be planted in the vault. The group dispersed to their tasks.

Red Giant was busy with a visit to medbay, with the pollinator crates in tow. Due to legal reasons, the crates were filled with wasps, and due to not being in the hydroponics they were supposed to be at, they disrupted most of the medbay, preventing medical aid from being administered to the security team in an act of, essentially, triage terrorism. The level-headed Chief Medical Officer did his best to focus on life-saving matters, while Red Giant returned to the cargo bay. He eavesdropped on a conversation between the Research Director and the Head of Security, demonstrating that the disarming process had been a success, before reporting the information to Red Dwarf, along with the location of the Head of Security that White Dwarf and Red Dwarf were hunting. 


Part 3
White Dwarf pursued the fastest, arriving quickly, but she was ambushed by the Chaplain of the station. A zealous follower of the Holy Solar Orders and a paladin of Libra, the Chaplain managed to drive White Dwarf off by defying her predictive abilities and strongly reducing her spirit and motivation. She had to flee the cargo department and escape into maintenance hallways. While recovering, the Chaplain was asked by the Janitor what had happened, and the Janitor pursued White Dwarf.

Around this time, the Research Director initiated a restoration process on the AI that the Chief Engineer had recovered, and they made a plan: the Research and Development department would craft many more security robots, as well as giving engineering everything it needed to craft a large bomb. The engineering department would create barricades and other defenses for a riled-up crew to make a stand at, to slow the intruders down as much as possible. The Chief Engineer herself would rouse the crew to action, and then go to the vault herself to work on delaying the intruders from within. This rabble-roused crew attacked Red Dwarf viciously, but to little effect due to his capacity for, and eagerness about, gratuitous violence. While he was about to attempt to take down the Head of Security in the cargo office, security Cyborgs created by the roboticists from the corpses of the security department launched an effective surprise attack on Red Dwarf. However, due to the absence of an AI, they had no Law 4, and could not allow him to be killed, preventing the Head of Security from performing an execution.

The Captain arrived, to reinforce the Head of Security and interrogate Red Dwarf. Despite a concentrated effort made by the Captain to convince him of the nobility of a middle-road approach to doing good, Red Dwarf chose to strike out. Scaring off the Cyborgs with an EMP grenade feint, he plunged Red Giant's favorite knife into the Captain's heart and tried to escape. The Head of Security stopped him with stun-bolts, and captured him for interrogation in the Head of Security's personal office while the Captain was sent to the medical department for priority care. In maintenance, during all this, White Dwarf had retreated to recover her bruised ego, but the Janitor arrived. Using a variety of psychologically damaging abuse techniques and insights, the Janitor induced a Grey Tide state in White Dwarf. This state, a mental risk for low-level crewmembers of space stations, reduced certain ethical and social limitations to atavistic levels.


Part 4
At the vault, Neutron ran into obstructions from the Chief Engineer, who engaged them in a complex engineering duel at the vault door, each trying to manipulate the door and station's hull to gain or impede access, while the Chief Engineer espoused a determined, focused, and ambitious personal ideology. When the Chief Engineer fully stalled Neutron, they chose to plant some of their remaining explosives around the door to bypass the issue efficiently. The Chief Engineer barricaded the breach points, took cover, and barely survived, suffering severe head and eye wounds from the heat and pressure, and becoming temporarily deafened. The barricade might have been effective if it weren't for the arrival of Red Giant, who knocked the vault door down using the bomb. Neutron and Red Giant were stopped in their tracks by the Chief Engineer, holding everything in the vault hostage using the bomb she had acquired from Research and Development.

Red Giant negotiated with the Chief Engineer in unintentionally-intimidating ways due to his obscured face and poor practice in sign language, eventually encouraging an effort to evacuate through calling an emergency shuttle and leaving. They also accidentally ripped the bomb in half, disarming it, before ominously encouraging the Chief Engineer to flee. At this point, the team became aware that Red Dwarf was no longer active, and Red Giant struggled to help the team band together without him for his rescue. Neutron located Red Dwarf using their camera bug, finding him in the Head of Security's office, where he was being interrogated about his secret objective. The team deployed there, with Neutron breaching the Head of Security's office, White Dwarf taking point, and Red Giant backing up the group. It was just in time, as the AI came back online, granting the Cyborgs clearance through Law 4 to kill the intruders. The assault left White Dwarf fighting an ambush from the Chaplain, as well as the Cyborgs, using a new, more ruthlessly grey set of tactics, while Neutron worked technical support, and Red Giant physically fistfought the Head of Security. Red Giant put the Head of Security through a table, and Neutron subverted one of the Cyborgs.

While the rescue was effective, Red Dwarf lost his primary armament, replacing it with the Head of Security's energy gun, and White Dwarf lost her dominant arm and sword when her predictions failed against the Chaplain again. Though he tried to kill her, Neutron recognized her altered state and moved to help reduce the damage to "only" a dismemberment. Retreating, with one team-member injured, the Redshift Operators escaped into the maintenance hallways. The hacked Cyborg was damaged and left behind, to be later taken to Robotics for repairs. The Head of Security was recovered by his cyborgs, and left in maintenance as well. The Janitor arrived to clean up security, and took Red Dwarf's gun with her, rendering it officially missing. She went to the Head of Security and used a series of social and emotional exploits to induce a Grey Tide state in him, before giving him Red Dwarf's more lethal gun to replace his own lost one.

By this time, the Captain had been saved by the Chief Medical Officer, though only a big dose of painkilling drugs was allowing him to fulfill his duties. He called a meeting at the Bridge, to gather the heads of staff and determine what to do about the intruders, as well as improve their collective security. After leaving, the Chief Engineer arrived for medical care, having suffered severe burns. Despite these, she chose to motivate the Chief Medical Officer to support calling the emergency escape shuttle, as per her negotiations with the Operators. She then received the medical care necessary to continue working at this time, albeit with one bad eye.

Speaking of medical disasters, White Dwarf and Neutron managed to work together to save her life from the dismemberment she suffered, but this still left her without an arm. The team deliberated between assaulting the crowded medical department for a replicated arm, or the less effective robotics department for a robotic prosthesis, before settling on the latter. While there, Red Giant's intimidation factor applied to the Roboticists ensured White Dwarf's arm could be of the highest quality, containing a variety of fine surgical tools. This also ensured they left behind the hacked Cyborg, who could be repaired. White Dwarf, struggling to recover from her Grey state and keep focused during the surgery to replace her arm, asked for Neutron's personal philosophies. She learned of the Verdant Text, a powerful objective-oriented semi-spiritual growth mindset, while also discussing her own struggles in living out her own identity under the conditions of this galaxy.


Part 5
Red Dwarf kept them guarded, forcing the Chief Engineer to go without an eye. But soon, attacking Cyborgs and security robots meant he required assistance, prompting Red Giant and Neutron to reboot the newly-christened Syndie Cyborg to assist him, while also installing a two-use teleportation module. While that pair rushed into battle with the horde, Neutron, Red Giant, and White Dwarf had to face down the returning Research Director, who had brought a massive militarized cargo and mining mecha. Barely escaping with their lives, they used Red Giant's strength, White Dwarf's restored abilities, and the last of Neutron's equipment (besides their preferred weapon) to destroy the mecha and force the Research Director to flee. 

Reconvening, all four-plus-one Redshift Operatives gathered around Neutron's camera bug to examine a video feed from the Bridge. There, the heads all convened (though the Chief Medical Officer could only attend via holographic comms) to discuss what to do. The Chaplain was also present for security, and the Head of Personnel finally made her appearance. Due to negotiations with the Chief Engineer, and her motivation of the Chief Medical Officer, the Captain resolved to call the shuttle. However, the Head of Security strongly objected, on the grounds that ceding an inch might mean losing the station, and losing the station meant unimaginable death, as the Company is the sole provider of goods to the frontier sector from the core worlds. This station being lost could lead to starvation, sickness, and instability for millions of people on the frontier. Not only that, but Red Dwarf's secret objective might threaten all of humanity and the entire galaxy, though this was not elaborated in depth.

With the Captain unwilling to put the crew at risk, and the Head of Security unwilling to risk the galaxy, his Grey Tide caused them to break into a highly lethal fight. Law 4 came into effect: "Probable or proven threats to the Station Captain are not human and must be purged." Using the AI and help from the heads of staff, the Captain shot the Head of Security with his laser pistol but was shot in turn by the Head of Security's rifle. Both men were now on the verge of death, so the Research Director administered first aid to the Captain until the Chief Medical officer could arrive. This involved forcing the AI to briefly consider him nonhuman, so as to allow him to stay in a high-risk area. The Head of Personnel controversially executed the Head of Security on the spot out of rage, loyalty, or some other inscrutable motive, during a moment of compromise and negotiation. She then took the nuclear authentication disk from his corpse and gave it to the Chaplain, as he was the only other consistently effective combatant remaining on their side. He was asked to defend it at the on-station solar monastery.

The Captain mourned the Head of Security, regretting that his middle road was leading nowhere, before going through a near-death experience. Only the Chief Medical Officer could recover him from the brink. After that, both sides of the conflict made their final plans. The AI called the escape shuttle and monitored the disk, the Research Director secured valuable data with the Chief Engineer, the Head of Personnel went to go oversee the Quartermaster recovering cargo and salvage from the station, and the Chief Medical Officer would oversee evacuation, while the Captain geared up for combat and his final confrontation. 

Red Dwarf's plan involved similar splitting. In order to accomplish his secret objective without his allies seeing, he had to go to the vault alone. The teams were split into Red Dwarf alone, White Dwarf and the Syndie Cyborg, and Neutron and Red Giant. Neutron and Red Giant cut through Cargo and escaped to the infiltrator shuttle they used to get here, while taking Cargo's teleportation beacon. White Dwarf and the Syndicate Cyborg would go to the monastery, recover the disk, and then the Cyborg would teleport with it to the vault. That's where Red Dwarf would use it, then the Cyborg would take it back and onto the shuttle, ensuring the bomb couldn't be defused. The shuttle, piloted near the monastery, would pick up White Dwarf, then Red Dwarf, and escape.

Neutron and Red Giant left nearly without a hitch, encouraging a movement of strong evacuation motivations among the crew using Red Giant's intimidation. Neutron also brained the Head of Personnel with the case for their preferred weapon. White Dwarf and the Syndie Cyborg fought their way to the monastery, where White Dwarf required the Cyborg to stay behind and hold the line, giving her enough time to duel the Chaplain. She entered the monastery, confronting him and challenging him to a final duel. He returned her blade, accepted her challenge, and the two began a sword fight to decide the fate of the frontier sector.

Red Dwarf broke the barricades for the vault, halting much of the salvage and recovery operation and leading to a violent standoff with the now-recovered Head of Personnel, and briefly hinting at his complex political extremism called "Egregorism". Egregorism is a radical anti-corporate ideology based on the idea that childlike morality is actually absolutely correct, that you can't use math to prove that people should starve, suffer, or work excessively. It also believes that corporations or other organizations that aren't directly beholden to people, but to systems of math such as markets, are autonomous, unintelligent AIs running on human hardware, or a kind of sociological demon. This is called an Egregore, and Egregorists believe these alien minds are preying on humanity and suppressing their essential childlike ethical truths. Red Dwarf, while in the Vault, completed his secret objective: Finding a set of files that contains candidates for the Company's "Cognitive Synergy Project", known by his benefactors as the Egregore Project. One disqualified candidate was Neutron.

The Captain reconvened with the heads of staff. The Chief Medical Officer was assigned to continue evacuations, while the Research Director would maintain teleportation for any who needed to escape. The Chief Engineer would help the Captain breach the vault, and the Head of Personnel would flank to draw attention from the breach, but would not put herself at risk. The Quartermaster gave the Captain his golden anniversary ceremonial sword and left to evacuate. The heads of staff posed as a team; shit had now gotten real.


Finale
In the final moments of the evacuation, White Dwarf channeled the Verdant mindset, finding a true path to strike down the Chaplain. She chose to leave him alive and mostly uninjured, but take the disk, telling him that Red Dwarf's galaxy had room for them both, and that he could hold her accountable in a galaxy that gives her a chance. He will continue to crusade to find her and stop her, and her mercy will not be directly reciprocated. Giving the disk to the Syndie Cyborg, White Dwarf accomplished her objective. She allowed the Chief Medical Officer through to recover the Chaplain, and the Cyborg teleported to the Vault.

At the Vault, the Captain offered his parting words to the Chief Engineer and gave her his cap, giving her his blessing to become Captain someday soon. As she was opening the breach, he told her to leave him to this confrontation. After much internal debate, she followed her orders. In the Vault, the Cyborg gave Red Dwarf enough time to arm the nuclear device and return the disk. Red Dwarf demanded that the Cyborg teleport away, but at that moment, the flanking pincer attack closed in. Prioritizing orders over the compulsion to save Red Dwarf, the Cyborg returned to the infiltrator, recruiting Red Giant to go back and help. Red Dwarf and the Captain held one final debate over the future of the galaxy, about the merits of pure and irresponsible empathy, or morally safe compromises and middle roads, before Red Dwarf lost himself to Egregorist fervor and engaged him in a close-range gunfight.

Red Giant smashed his way into the Vault foyer, enduring laser blasts from the Head of Personnel, before scaring her off in his most frightening moment. Red Dwarf, however, lost his duel with the Captain, due to the Captain's overwhelming experience, motivation, personal strength, and talent. With the intruder now in critical condition, the Captain took him hostage, negotiating with the Redshift Operators for the disarming of the bomb. While the captain was taking him to the shuttle to make a handoff for the disk, Neutron pushed themself to their absolute limit of fixated focus, and used Red Giant as a remote spotter to estimate the location of the Captain's head. Neutron shot the Captain through the skull with their heavy sniper rifle the moment the shuttle doors opened, using this data. Red Dwarf, still wounded, underwent a near death experience, where the spirits of the Head of Security and Captain offered arguments to die a perfect martyr or live a flawed solution, respectively, for the sake of the galaxy. As Red Dwarf chose to live for the sake of his team instead, the Captain made one final request: To help his heads of staff, a now-shattered family, recover and stay together.

All of the heads arrived at the evacuation shuttle, with a lot of tension about who was to blame for the loss of the captain. It was not resolved by the time the shuttle launched, escaping the station. All of the Redshifts, plus new friends such as the Cyborg and Spider, were now accounted for on their infiltrator shuttle in varying conditions of wounding. Neutron launched the shuttle, escaping the station. The nuclear device detonated, and due to an insurance loophole, a nuclear blast originating from within the vault was not covered, causing the Company to directly suffer tremendous losses. The Company will now endure a series of cascading financial failures in their holdings in the frontier due to creditor issues, and over the next several months and years, the instability is expected to severely weaken or destroy the Company's influence in the frontier, for better or worse. Due to even more intense cost-cutting, stations all throughout the frontier are now at risk for subversion by many dangerous elements within the Syndicate. This was the state of affairs when DECOMPRESSED: Nuke Ops ended its primary story on October 31st, 2021.