Brigade Models: "Early Risers"

The crew of Pioneer Station went into the hiber pods as scheduled at the end of May. The plan was for them to remain in sleep mode for a month while the planets of the Gliese-876 system did their synchronised dance.

Previous accidents on other stations had led to some rigidly observed protocols around hiber sleep when entire crews go under. Crew members from the same discipline are assigned berths in different compartments – imagine if the entire maintenance team perished due to a power outage in their assigned compartment, leaving no one to fix the clogged toilets (or worse, a leaky reactor) when the rest of the crew woke up. So key crew are scattered around different compartments, and hopefully at least some will wake up! The compartments themselves are distributed around stations rather than being concentrated together, so that a single system failure doesn't affect all of them at once.

The eight crew members in Hiber-D all gradually came to as the lights slowly came on, dimly at first to give their eyes a chance to adjust. As the lid of his pod cracked open, Michael groaned, blinked a few times, rubbed his eyes and glanced over at the readouts. He sat up, rubbed his eyes again and looked more closely. Surely that wasn't right – they should have been under for 32 days, but it was only June 10th? Why were they awake now – and why was the compartment empty? There should at least be a Janebot waiting for them, ready with towels, coffee and toothbrushes, and if any of the crew had shown signs of distress during their sleep period then the medical droid might be there too. But they were waking up alone, and there was no coffee for Madiwa, so she was going to be cranky.

The rest of the early wakers stirred groggily. Madiwa predictably looked around for her caffeine hit, saw none and swore. In the absence of any medical droid, Whitman checked everyone's readings for signs of hiber sickness. Helen walked towards the door – "I'm going to hit the head" she said, and palmed the door switch. She began to walk out as it slid aside, but as she took in the corridor outside her eyes widened. The mechanic suddenly ducked as something whirred over her head and clanged off the far wall. She jumped back in the compartment and hammered on the switch three times, triggering the emergency closure mechanism. The door slammed shut as something else shattered on the outer face.

She turned to face the rest of the crew. She was as white as a sheet, but in a relatively calm voice she told them "There are three Janebots walking down the corridor waving chairs and clubs, and one has just thrown a wrench at me. Braman appears to have ripped a conduit off a wall somewhere and is swinging it like a baseball bat. And I swear I saw Nurse Ratched wearing a crew smock running towards the comms center. The Autocrew has gone nuts!"

We met some of the Autocrew last time – here are a few more. But there's something not quite right with these

The LNH-047 Science Droid is an android designed to help in the research side of the station. It is capable of performing quite complex lab tasks, and the wetbrain gives it the ability to help the science team figure out the ecology and geology of the two rocky Gliese planets. It has a hardened exoskeleton which can withstand the conditions planetside and is ideal for sending to the surface to collect data and samples. Only Dr Whitman knows why the Pioneer's LNH is nicknamed Braman.

Janebots are general purpose helper droids which are found in numbers on just about every planet, ship and installation. Although they have wetbrains, they are simple designs and are cheaply mass-produced by the thousand (at least, as cheaply as a sophisticated artificial intelligence android can be). They are not designed to specialise in anything in particular, they just make life easier and more comfortable by doing the mundane stuff. They fix drinks, fetch snacks, wash, clean, make beds and are on hand for every little task. Need a pen? Ask a Janebot to fetch one for you. Shower drain clogged with hair? Janebot will sort it out. Identical in appearance, they are distinguished by their variously coloured clothing, and crews often name them after these colours – so the Pioneer Janebots are known as Amber, Rose, Jade, Violet and so on.

And we met the VCS-060 Medical Droid last time. This one has appropriated some crew clothing, possibly by forcibly removing it from its former owner first, and seems to have picked up a bonesaw along the way.

Each figure is available individually, or we have a set which includes these five figures plus the heavy duty, medical and security droids from the last release – so eight figures in total.