Threats from within.

[Boss]

Despite now being alone, time was still a concern. Myles had let me know he was done just a few moments before, and I began my task. I had the harder job. This wasn't to be a simple bomb.

I gathered a few of the more innocuous looking devices and disassembled them, extracting a small circuit board from several, a transceiver from one, and a power cell from another. Some of the tools actually operated as advertised, including a small soldering gun. This I used to construct the control unit and power routing controller. The toolbox also held several yards of cabling, which I ran between the main generator, the controller, and the transceiver. The soldering gun also served to open a conduit into which these went.

I put the control unit and power cells into the laser itself, replacing a suspiciously regularly scorched board. Once I had everything in place, sealed up, and looking almost exactly as it had before, I called Myles. "I'm done here. Give me a few seconds to wake McCullough and fabricate something he'll believe, then we'll demonstrate this one and get off this rock." He assented, and I bent over the prone form of the man.

I had to use the stun gun on him again, a lower setting this time, to get him to wake up. "Ungh...Wha...Whahitme?"

"Take it easy, Norm. You grabbed a charged conduit. I was able to get it off you before you got turned into a crispy critter, but you're going to be a bit disoriented for a bit still. Just relax and you should be alright. Is there a break room or something down here where I can set you up?"

"Um, yeah...This way." I got him to his feet and helped him back down the corridor.

---

Just go play the game and have fun dammit.

all in all the conclusion is that disco doesn't need antagonist factions, it doesn't need phantoms, it doesn't need nomads, it doesn't need coalition and it doesn't need many other things, no AIs, the game is hijacked by morons to confuse the game with their dickwaving generic competition games mixed up with troll-of-the-day.