Sometimes, people really don't think things through. Would Orbital Decay (Patrick Sweeney) be a better adventure and better introduction to the Transhuman Space setting if it leaned into its potential to be a comedy of errors? Maybe, maybe not, but there's a strong argument to be made that there is less of a bright line between sci-fi horror and farce than one might otherwise expect.
Oops. Our biotech corporation did a teensy-weensy bit of unethical genetic engineering in our second-hand space station, far away from the legal oversight of Earthbound authorities. And oops. A tiny little mistake in our super-soldier virus led to it being contagious through biting. And gosh darn it, wouldn't you know, that's the same transmission vector as our (still work-in-progress, remember) depression-causing crowd control virus that unfortunately makes people fly into a berserk rage instead of its intended effect. And you're never going to believe it, but both viruses, along with our flesh-eating nanovirus, somehow managed to escape containment. Why, if you were to model this scenario with some sort of generic universal roleplaying system, you could probably just use the stats for supernatural fantasy zombies for the affected personnel. Funny how that works out.
Oh well, there's obviously only one thing to do - send a group of mercenaries up to investigate the out-of-contact space station. Then, naturally, we'll double-cross the mercenaries by sending a ruthless spy disguised as a company representative. And of course, we'll double-cross the spy by secretly installing a puppet implant that allows her body to be controlled by an AI program. And, should some series of implausible events happen where the shuttle pilot crashes the transport rocket into the station in a misguided attempt to stop the viruses from spreading (I guess she thinks that they'll burn up in the atmosphere rather than partially survive in air pockets in the coolest part of the wreckage and subsequently infect terrestrial investigators), I should think it goes without saying that we'll betray the AI by refusing to send a rescue vessel. It's the perfect plan. The only thing that could possibly thwart us is if terrorists from Mars show up at the last minute, lured by the rocket pilot's quarantine broadcast, under the inexplicable assumption that a space station where at least one deadly bioweapon escaped containment is the perfect place to find an easily weaponizable virus. But surely, they would not risk their lives and health on the long-shot bet that we, like, had some extra viruses that were still in containment. Why, if that happened, the surviving mercenaries could activate the station's self-destruct system and fly away on the terrorists' spaceship, potentially exposing our perfidy to the world at large. . . eh, fuck it. Worst comes to worst, we'll give 'em like $5000 or something. It'll be fine.
Okay, so I committed to the bit longer than was entirely wise, but really, Orbital Decay is a perfectly serviceable adventure. Maybe sometimes people who fail to entirely think things through are the source of horror. You never get eaten by biopunk zombies when things are going well. I'd say it's only real flaw is that, as a GURPS: Transhuman Space adventure, it doesn't do all that much with transhumanism. I guess the puppet implant and the supersoldier count in that regard, but it's kind of detail on background. With the company spy, the PCs may defeat her too early or too late and her implant never comes up. And it's an open question whether the PCs are going to want to do the detective work to find out about the virus' backstory while they're actively being attacked by zombies. I mean, biotech horror in space is plenty interesting on its own, but it barely scratches the surface of what Trannshuman Space can do.
Maybe you could rework things a bit. The PCs are brought in by the Martian police, to help solve the theft of an infomorph ghost from long-term storage. The lead suspects are Negative Growth (the anti-terraforming terrorists who conveniently show up in the third act to give the PCs a way off the station), who may have been interested in this particular intelligence because it was the most recent back-up of a scientist who was rumored to be working on experimental bioweapons. But it wasn't actually a theft, it was a defection, because the infomorph was remotely activated by the scientist, who could think of no other way to evade the Terrel-Dieskau corporation's communications blockade than to commit suicide and then the terrorists, the corporate agents, and the PCs all converge on this derelict station that has been taken over by biopunk zombies . . .
I don't know. It needs some work, I'll admit. I guess it speaks well for the adventure that there is enough of a base to build off of. In true GURPS fashion, there are some sidebars talking about how to adapt Orbital Decay for other genres and settings, so I can't be entirely mad at it for not being hyper-specific. Specificity is kind of the antithesis to the GURPS ethos.
Overall, I'd say "sure, okay." I think a more comic, satirical interpretation of the adventure's events would do better for a cyberpunk story, and that's probably the most interesting way to run the adventure, but GURPS: Transhuman Space is explicitly "cyberpunk without the punk," so there's no great harm in running it completely straight.
Ukss Contribution: My favorite thing about this adventure is the Terrel-Dieskau corporation's baroquely layered treachery. There's just this long ladder of people who are absolutely shocked that the people on the next rung found them expendable. It's almost enough to take the sting out of the PCs getting betrayed (I'd actually put them at the second rung, and they really should have been expecting it, considering their mission is transparently aimed at betraying the scientists and technicians aboard the space station).
But is that a setting element? Is it a trait you can give to an organization or a location? Would it not feel extremely goofy in practice? I guess we'll just have to find out.
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