Synopsis

Vultures Are Circling, And NT Is Burning was the third public round of 35 Below. It was the first round where the crew would interact with outsiders, in the form of the NSS Perseverance’s crew.

20th November, 2054. Lunaport. The crew of the NSS Perseverance prepare for boarding. Six are not like the others.

9th February, 2055. X4-6A Orbit. Six Syndicate Infiltrators awake early from cryosleep, and start sabotaging the remaining pods. Some are shot. Others have life support cut. Other crew awake. A fight breaks out. The Infiltrators seal themselves in the Bridge. The autocaptain has not been relieved. The autocaptain has not been relieved.

On the surface, the dull morning is shaken by the by the arrival of the NSS Perseverance streaking across the sky, falling apart as it enters the atmosphere over Banshee Pit. A rescue mission is organised immediately, hoping to rescue surviving crew or at the very least, recover the NSS Perseverance’s survival equipment.

Six survivors are found picking apart the wreckage of the ship, dragging a welded-shut crate of supplies behind them, they make their way back to the colony. Minutes later, strange transmissions are picked up by the crew’s radios. Security determines them to be of Syndicate origin, and begins to hunt down the transponders responsible for them.

After realising that covertly transmitting the colony’s data through the transponders isn’t working, the Infiltrators start taking hostages, demanding to know what Nanotrasen has discovered about this place. The crew insist that they don’t know. Expedition groups begin to be attacked, hostages are no longer taken.

Security, however, outnumbers the Infiltrators, and though the fights are long and bloody, Officers eventually subdue and execute the Infiltrators after their names are disclosed by the NSS Perseverance’s flight recorder. The final blizzard rolls in over an exhausted but triumphant colony.