Present:
- Buzz "Cut". Solomani Soldier from Seven – Shane
- Dr Detlef Knodel. Sword-Worlder Scientist from Seven – Darryl
- Stella Cauthon. Solomani Rogue from Seven - Richard
- Anton Tositova. Solomani Gunner from Entrope - Ian
- Sang "Spanner" Hoang. Sword-Worlder Mechanic from Winston – Jeff
- Hoff Ende. Sword-Worlder Scientist from Winston - Kevin
- Heidi Vasovagal. Solomani Scientist from Seven - Steven
- Itzy Ende. Sword-Worlder Soldier from Winston - Chris
- Jon "Crash" Straker. Solomani Pilot from Seven – Jamie
- NPC: Scurry. Drone Gunner from Winston
by Andrew
Zeta 2 Prime is a major Imperium base in the Zeta 2 sector. When the party's corvette Cauthon arrived a few days ago, there was an Imperium heavy cruiser, three destroyers and five corvettes docked at the high port. During the two days they were down on the surface checking out the empty Cauthon institute there, another five destroyers arrived with seven more corvettes.
Planning to leave for Entrope, they headed out into low-grav space, one light-minute (18 million km) away from Zeta 2 Prime, and started the fuel burn to charge the jump capacitors. This process takes an hour.
After five minutes, a message arrived.
"This is Commodore Rothman of the Imperium heavy cruiser Sputnik. Cease your jump preparations and return to my ship to dock."
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| Commodore Rothman |
On board, they were ushered to Commodore Rothman's Ready Room to join him, his adjutants with some other jobs-worths and yes-men.
The Commodore came straight to the point.
"There have been some anomalies on a local planetoid," he said. "As representatives of the Cauthon Institute, I require you to investigate."
Planet Augustus. 10% gravity. No atmosphere
"We will send a corvette The Painted Lady with you for military support. They will stay in orbit while you do your science."
"Why should we do this?" said Stella. "We aren't connected to the Cauthons."
"You yourself, Miss, your surname is Cauthon. You claim to be a relative of Matt Cauthon, the founder of the Cauthon Institute. Your ship was given to you by the Cauthon Institute. Your ship is even named 'Cauthon'. That sounds pretty 'Cauthon Institute' to me."
"Touche," observed Anton.
Half a day later, they were in geostationary orbit around Augustus.
Preliminary scans of the surface showed nothing, but Heidi and Knodel's Science station spotted an anomaly. A large source of X-rays. When the high-res optical scanners were focused on it, they spotted a red dot.
To the air-raft!
They all headed to the surface in the air-raft flown by the new pilot Jon Straker. All were dressed in vacc-suits: Anton and Itzy at the front. Next row Buzz & Hoff. Then Heidi & Spanner.
Knodel and Stella stayed on the Cauthon. Stella didn't want to break her nails or muss her hair in a vacc-suit.
Down on the ground, they explored the portal. It was like the one in the Cauthon tunnels (beneath the Cauthon Institute in Seven on 728-907) which came out next to the red lake. It was a three metre circle of what looked like mercury, but on its side. There were several desiccated and frozen husks of slishers lying in front - 12 in all.
There was no sign that the slishers were trying to get back through or moving out; just lying there. If this portal was like the Cauthon tunnels one, then it was known that you could pass through FROM this direction - just not get back the other way. Or be organic matter - and be dead; they were well dead.
They took a slisher husk back to the air-raft. Then headed back to Cauthon in orbit.
Knodel dissected the husk. His preliminary conclusion was that it has been here more than one year but less than ten.
They then contacted the Corvette, who sent down a squad of marines to secure the site.
Doctor Knodel wanted to send a nuke through the portal. So they contacted Commodore Rothman back at the fleet, and after a brief discussion, he gave the authorization for a ten megaton device.
So the Imperium military engineers set up a rail to launch the nuke through the portal. The nuke itself was a silver car-sized object.
The group watched the site from orbit in the Cauthon with their high-res optical telescopes.
The ground crew withdrew to safe range and the nuke, with a timer, was launched through the portal. Almost instantly, a black pod (no spikes) came back through the portal. It was so instant that it almost looked like the two objects crossed at the barrier.
A panicked message came up from the Corvette over the party's radio from the ground troops: "Advise?"
Everyone in the group all spoke at once:
"pod contains aliens, it must go back"
"unscrew the pod"
"don't let the end unscrew"
"the pod offers no threat"
"open the pod!"
"blow it up"
"throw it back"
The Painted Lady Corvette Captain, also watching this unfold, yelled out "What do they do? Just one of you speak!"
Everyone in the group all spoke at once again:
"unscrew the pod"
"don't let the end unscrew"
"open the pod!"
"blow it up"
"throw it back"
They could then hear panicked firing and shouting from the surface marines over the radio. Lots of shouting.
Suddenly, there was a bright flash, centred on the pod. Bright as the sun. The radio-chat instantly turned to a high-pitched white-noise whistle.
It was so bright that the high-res telescope CCD arrays burned out.
When new (not so high-res) optics were focussed on the planet, there was a big hole around the portal site, which was now glowing red with boiling lava.
Sang immediately went outside for a space walk to get the sensors replaced on the high-res scope. Her original conclusion suspected that this wasn't an Imperium nuke. The blast was wrong. And it was very intense. If it was a nuke, she estimated that the power would be 1000 megatons - 100 times what was sent through.
And the X-ray source still there.
Straker did some calculations on the back on an envelope.
"I think it's a wind kite," said Straker.
"Why do we care about this?" said Stella.
After seven hours, the entire Imperium navy joined the group in orbit.
Stella invited the Commodore and his team on board the Cauthon. For a meal catered by her Michelin ranked chef Wayne Belly.
"My experts say the portal is still there," began the Commodore. "The explosion time was roughly the same time as the timer that was on the nuke. But how would they know we're gonna shoot a nuke through?"
"K-vantum entanglement?" posited Knodel.
"Did they just send something back just to spite us?"
"I sink it was automatic. Like automatic defender."
Later on.
"Any of you know the scientist Gnostic Hands?" said the Commodore. "His writings mentioned a Ancients' garbage chute. Got steeper and steeper. Could this portal be the tail end of one of them."
"But why does it glow pink?" asked Sang. "The garbage chutes were always dark on the inside."
The Commodore then took Hoff to one side: "I want to destroy this from orbit. Is that a good idea?"
Hoff didn't want to commit to an answer.
"Then speak to your science friends. I need some advice here. We can't have this portal standing here. We can bring in a battleship or a dreadnought. Is that a good idea?"
"I do not sink more powerful veapons vill help you here," said Knodel.
The rest of the party disagreed. "It wouldn't hurt."
It would take six weeks minimum - both to send out X-boats with a message, and then have the battleships arrive.
The next morning, the party planned to go down on a air-raft and hover next to the portal: Sang, Hoff, Knodel, Straker, Anton, Itzy, Buzz.
Straker flew the air-raft down next to the portal itself - which looked unscathed. But he hit some turbulence from the lava and suddenly jolted the craft.
Buzz and Knodel, not known for the zero-G skills, fell out. Knodel had plugged the seat-belt into an adjacent socket. Buzz was too much of a man to worry about seat-belts.
They fell thirty metres - the fall was broken by lava.
Straker made up for his jolt and dived the air-raft down to rescue them. The vacc-suits thermal protection was enough to stop damage in the short time, but the suits were ruined. So, back up to the Cauthon.
The party scorned their pilot and asked for "an expert" from the Commodore. He sent over a second air-raft pilot, Betsy Driver.
She flew down to the portal again. Just her, plus Sang, Anton, Knodel, and Itzy. Here, they conducted some experiments. Shooting different things through the portal.
- Fires a single shot - no change
- Then 50 cal. - no change
- Then 50 cal burst - no change
- Grenade through - no change
- Lightning bolt - no change
- Bigger bolt - big x-ray burst (1/400th of the energy of the lightning bolt)
The portal was originally on the side of a hill. After the explosion, there was no hill behind it, so you could fly around behind it. Looking from this side, the portal could not be seen. A rock thrown this way just goes through. No one was brave enough to try it themselves.
Back in the Cauthon, the group decided that they had exhausted all experiments here. So they advised the Commodore to do the same as the troops in Seven: build a structure around the portal, when the lava had cooled.
The Commodore's Adjutant noticed that the Cauthon had four hard-points. So he offered to fit Imperium weapons to these hard-points. The group was happy for this to be done. Anton was the best gunner of the group, so he got to choose:
- One twin-missile launcher.
- One anti-missile launcher
- Cannons
- Cannons
The Commodore then gave them a set of missions:
- You are headed to Entrope. There is a Cauthon Institute there in the city of Kingston. I would advise check in there first.
- This Entrope Cauthon Institute is the only one in the Sword Worlds. So more Cauthon Institutes in the Sword Worlds would be good.
- I believe you have contacts in Winston. That (Sword World) system has been interdicted by the Zhodanis. Currently, we can not even send Imperium ships to the Winston system. The Zhodanis have some super-weapon there which takes them apart. So, setting up a Cauthon Institute there would be a good "foot in the door".
- There are no Cauthon Institutes in the Darrian Confederation. After the fall of Winston, those pointy-earred mouth-breathers have ejected our diplomats, so a Cauthon Institute in maybe Zamine or Mire would be useful.
The Cauthon got refuelled and headed off into jump-space for the two-sector hop to Entrope.
During the week's travel:
- Sang's invisibility manifested a few nights. Periods of a few hours during the night, her body would go invisible.
- Anton still pissed formic acid.
- Itzy senses were still amplified.
- Dr Knodel worked out that the slisher husk died two years ago.
- Sang discovered the Imperium dead-man explosives planted in a few places on the Cauthon. These would trigger if ever disconnected and blow a hole through the bulk-head. It was standard design for Imperium ships used as a safety measure should a ship ever be captured.
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| Sydney Walsh |
Here they visited the X-Boat Corporate offices and re-united with Sydney Walsh. As he was now working for the Cauthon Institute, Anton's X-boat employee contract was terminated.
There was a big sheaf of letters for Hoff and Itzy from Contessa Ende. She was having a whale of a time, now governess of Winston.
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