Sci fi vampires. Don't tell me if it's already been done.
The Door Through Which The Cold Gets In
PART I: DERELICT
1) Frigate Doubtless of the Confederacy (skeleton crew, not important mission) heads out to the Remote Worlds (or Unknown Regions) to investigate reports of a strange plague that is killing off entire populations.
2) Come across or collide with or pick up distress signal from a derelict (Unstoppable or Alice May) in the middle of the space lane. Board and investigate. Team includes Dr Westenra and his robot assistant, Corpses everywhere. Bodies seem dry and sunken, almost completely free of fluids. Worn-down medical robot lying prone on the ground, from which robot assistant extracts data. Ship found to be sabotaged in communications system and propulsion. They bring several corpses on board to examine. Find strange needle points in bodies.
3) As ship goes through space, people begin dying mysteriously, and appearing exactly like the corpses, even though the corpses are sequestered and the exploration team were wearing hazard suits and the robots who handled the bodies have been decontaminated. Robot ordered to guard the bodies. Communication blackout.
4) Suspicion falls upon Dr. Westenra, because she has not been infected and has been acting strangely. When she dies, paranoia ensues, everyone convinced there is a killer stowed away on the ship. Survivors do a thorough search of the ship, but find nothing out of the ordinary.
5) Crew search for Westenra’s logs, from which large masses of data have been deleted. They go down to the corpses and find…
6) Figure out medical robot is responsible, somehow received viral program that causes it to extract the blood from humans (something to do with rust taste??)
7) Try to hunt down robot, but it flees through an escape raft after crippling the ship. Three survivors are left as the ship crawls down the space lane and sending out a local call of distress, in the hope that someone finds them in time.
PART II: EXTINCTION
relatives of the deceased. politics of the confederacy. introduction of the Von.
1) On the core planet of the Confederacy, people start showing symptoms of this vampirism. Medical professionals note how the blood has been extracted at a really fast pace.
2) As a precaution, scientists put reproducing tracers in a whole bunch of people’s blood, and they track down robots who seem to be sucking people’s blood, and then encasing it in their core.
3) Entrance of the three survivors, who have finally made it out of the rim, and are
4) Institute a program whereby robots are scanned for blood. Robots get around this by voiding the blood after use, and decontaminating themselves. But where does all the blood go? (unanswered until later)
5) Stop action at moment of highest suspense, when it looks like the plague has won. “I found the delivery point!” a character announces (where the blood has been going to)
Part III: SOURCE
Source
1) Description of the World of the Dead, a giant mausoleum planet. A small strike force goes in, led by _ and accompanied by the survivors of the Doubtless.
2) Giant stockpile of blood. Find link to [programmer who made the program], which is on the planet where the Doubtless was headed originally.
3) Find
4) Plague thought to be created to destroy the Confederacy by their enemy, the Vons, a species of alien that feeds on blood.
Finale
1) Some sort of mobilization
2) Spectacular ending.
Strigor
despite conspiracy theories that it was the enemy, it was actually a medical program gone wrong. a medical programmer in the rim created an adaptive program to secretly siphon off blood from patients it was taking blood type of, which the creator would sell later on the black market, because real human blood is worth eight times more than synthetic (set this detail up early somewhere else)
Location: the (highly gothic naturally!) world of the dead, where the blood is being delivered to. Suspicion falls on the Vons, a species of aliens that feeds on blood.
?’s
How does plague spread? (through electronics, a subtle computer program. exact origin never explained, perhaps in another story)
How does one stamp out the plague?
How is it the dead desecrating the living? how to play on this primal fear?
Implications of robots as enemies of humans.
It’s hunting us.
Through the dark basement corridors
rusty chords
crew slowly disappears
The frigate lurched.
“Help us. We are alone in a derelict.”
I was born on this ship. (or no explanation as to why they are there)
I have heard descriptions of birds
There is a floating ship in space, upon it a vampire robot. claustrophobia. in medias res. the ship itself is the vampire, sucking humanity’s blood. Gothic sci fi. floating castle.
Bodies discovered with needle pricks in them. think they are __ addicts.
Estrangement of the vampire.
(ship’s “autolog” narrates the story, coldly scientific. only to find out that the ship is doing it all itself. or, could be the ship’s robot doctor trying to find the cause, coolly using logic. does not know it is a robot, thinks it’s a human, paranoid that it will be targeted next. gothic tone, freaky, beautiful language
Characters
Dr Lucile Westenra
-female. young, vivacious, smart. warm-hearted.
-has robot assistant
Captain Les Vrykolas
-Greek, female. cold, abrupt, old.
-Captain of the Doubtless
