Present:
- MARMALADING Buzz "Cut". Solomani Soldier from Seven – Shane
- Dr Paczki 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
- MARMALADING 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
by Ian
Nano Bots, Zhodani and Portals
Our group of space travellers are eagerly sitting in the lab as the expensive equipment charges up. Finely tuned motors steer the electron gun toward the nano-portal, suspended in the receiving cradle. The voltage climbs and as soon as a critical energy level is met, the electron stream starts to scan the portal.
Instantly, the tiny portal defends itself and reverse blasts an explosion. The team later determine was the equivalent of about 1kg of TNT detonated in the lab!
A super-heated blast expands out from the scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) and destroys the lab wall, sending glass and shrapnel all around the observation room. Luckily, everyone dives for cover in time and avoids any significant damage. The same cannot be said for the $1 billion-credit microscope. It stood significantly damaged in the centre of the room, while fire devoured the flammable materials.
The Imperium guards burst into the area and were reassured to see this was not another Zhodani attack. The university technicians and staff scrambled the fire extinguishers with the sprinkler system doing the rest.
An extremely pale looking Dr Faworki Knodel mentions the devastating loss to the University and how could they possibly recover? Their insurance excess alone could fund a small country.
"Vhere is the portal?" Dr Faworki asks? The party that were there all shrug "Dunno - sounds like a you problem?" (Spanner and Paczki were not present - the party members present were not smart enough to think through such problems).
An astute lab assistant who looked remarkably like Jamie, suggested an air extraction through a filter. The nano portal was 3 microns in diameter so the filter just had to be small than that.
The room was sealed as best they could and the air pumps started. It was going to take a few hours. Meanwhile everyone agreed that keeping four Imperium guards (and Sergeant Bates) around would be wise.
A short while later, Stella gets a comms from Dr Strangelove. Apparently the Zhodani ambassador (embassy is based in Vilnius) wants to meet with the Cauthon crew that visited Rose.
 |
| Zhodani Ambassador Anya Lukashenko |
The three are ushered in with no issue or unnecessary formality. They are shown to a comfortable meeting room and Anya enters. Introductions are made.
"Well, sank you for agreeing to meet with me" Anya starts. "Ve are very keen to work with you folk that visited the Rose planet and are now riddled with small portals. Ve can help research those and get zem removed".
Stella immediately employs her talented negotiation and diplomacy skills. "Oh, that sounds interesting? How precisely would you do that?".
"It would be nothing. We would just have to open them up and dig around a little...".
The conversation went to and fro. Nothing was agreed with certainty, but also nothing was left off the table. The Zhodani agreed to assist with the replacement of the scanning electron microscope if they could have access to a nano portal or two to study. While the Zhodani research facilities were not that good on Vilis, they were high quality (equivalent to the hospital here) back in Zhodani systems.
Anya denied knowing anything about the recent Zhodani train assault. Stella provided the images obtained from the police and security footage.
Anya asked Stella why Dr Strangelove was the head at the major Cauthon institute on Vilis? He was not well liked and known for being creepy and lecherous. Stella defended Dr Strangelove with a simple "He gets things done."
Anya was intrigued to find that Anton was one of the party that had actually visited Rose. She was keen to know as much as possible. Luckily Anton was not exactly a wealth of valuable information.
The three shake hands and depart via taxi. They watch for followers but see none. Eventually everyone meets up back at the University.
Dr Paczki Knodel then tries to determine the scale of the nano-portal and the explosion. Various math and beard stroking occurred. In the end, they knew that the scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) would have used 400 Giga Electron Volts of energy (barely anything).
A 3.6 metre full-size portal scaled to a 3.6 µm micro portal is a million times in one dimension. The portal-multiplier is about 100 (on planet Augustus in Zeta 2 system a 10MT device was put through and a 1GT explosion resulted). Assuming the explosion goes by the cube of the portal scale, this means we multiply the stream from the STEM by 1 million cubed and by another 100 for the portal-multiplier.
So, the 400GeV pulse yields 400x10^9 x 10^18 x 100 = 4E31 eV which is equal to 1.5 kg of TNT.
At some point the air pump signalled it had finished. The scientists examined the filter extremely carefully. Terrific news in that the nano-portal was indeed there! High fives all around, in particular that tech that looked like Jamie.
Dr Paczki Knodel was also brought an experiment he was working on that was making a nano-sized carapace shell out of his synthetic materials. A small egg shaped canister with screw cap was provided.
The group discussed the next actions:
- Descend to the underground testing facility with the nano-portal to try and scan the portal for radiation. The underground facility was shielded from the natural radiation closer to the surface that would have swamped any detection attempts.
- Descend to the underground testing facility with the nano-portal to try sending through the Dr Knodel carapace with a tiny custom bot inside
- Go to the main Hospital and help Spanner with understanding her genetic issues
The party and the scientists decide to scan for radiation as this is an easy test. Everyone heads down the long elevator decent to 100m below ground, then to a chamber that is shielded by heavy water. A scanner is placed near the small portal and at about 1mm, they detect a very weak radiation signal. The radiation that matches planet Rose. Hypothesis confirmed, but difficult to use the information as the scanner has to be literally beside the portal. The original idea was to try and use a scan to detect the portals. That is not going to work with the current technology.
Portal Pod Experiments
A day waiting is spent as the Hospital research technicians build a simple nano-bot that does a series of actions:
- Wait for 1 minute
- Unscrew a carapace cap from the inside
- Move to outside the capsule
- Take a series of photos
- Return to the capsule
- Internally roll the capsule 'back'
- Screw the lid closed
- Stop
With this all ready, the party move the portal and equipment to the nano-remote control lab. Anton, Knodel and Spanner put on the bot control caps and get ready to go. The bots are put into a syringe and delivered to the portal slide. They carefully make their way to the portal with Knodel leading a wheelbarrow that has his capsule on it. At this scale its an egg shape of roughly 1m x2m dimension.
They open one end and carefully place the programmed bot inside. They start the bot and a time and quickly screw shut the lid. The trio manoeuvre the pod to the portal and send the capsule through. There was a strong Gamma ray burst at the moment the portal was breached.
They wait the designed 5 minutes and the capsule comes back! Unscrew the end and the bot was there! The program had a green success status light blinking.
The explorers return to the syringe and are safely extracted. The tiny bot uploads its data and a series of low quality photos displays. The party members that were on Rose instantly recognize the photo location as the main Spire portal control room on Rose, within Spire City. It looks like the tiny portal exited around where the 128 bit mushroom control panel was.
Spanner Nano Mission
Everyone regroups and celebrates the success of proving that the carapace will work.
"What are we going to do now?"
Dr F. Knodel confirms he can direct the mission to a location where a fix can applied. Volunteers are called for and all but the group's Dr P. Knodel connect up to the nano-bot controls.
We zoom to the nano-submarine with Crash at the helm and the party are injected into Spanners arm.
Almost immediately the crew spot a nano-portal in the wall of the vein. The sub is parked and Spanner volunteers to cut out her own portal.
The bots are guided to a nearby 'body cell'. All but Itzy and Stella make it through the transition gate. Unfortunately they are stuck on the outside. As the inside team cut a hole to let them in, they notice three P53 proteins rapidly approaching to defend Spanner's systems.
"Fire missiles!" Anton directs as he cuts the wall. "Hmmmm, our only 2 missile fighters outside at the moment?". After a series of eye-rolls and forehead slapping, Crash, Anton and Spanner prepare to take on the 3 proteins, with Heidi as a backup. They have a short wait as the defence proteins close the distance.
As the Proteins rapidly approach, Stella squeezes through the fresh opening and has time to fire one missile! 20! She breaks her missile launcher permanently (for this trip).
Next Itzy comes though, has time to fire a missile and it goes wide.
The defence proteins arrive for the first combat wave. The party engage and suffer only minor hits. They cause significant damage and Stella supports Spanner to immediately destroy one of the 3.
They collectively clear the defence Proteins without further fuss and move off to the Nucleus. They approach the entry cilia channel and enter. Most make it but Stella and Crash take significant damage (6 and 4 respectively). A quick round of first aid to help and the group continue to the DNA strand where they follow the Professor F. Knodel instructions and replace a mutated section with a corrected section of DNA string.
As the cell starts to split and apply the correct programming, the crew speed back to the vein, submarine and portal. They carefully navigate with a successful pilot roll for Crash and easily make it to the extraction site and zap back to the syringe. Everyone leaves the nano-bot control systems without issue.
Dr P. Knodel's Tube
After a couple of days of healing, the parties Dr Paczki Knodel gathers the group with a new experiment.
This time he has a nano sized tube. This one has a screw cap at either end, but is much longer than the egg shaped prototype shell. The objective is to see if the carapace tube can stay in the portal and still protect the occupants through.
**Note that it was stressed that at NO time was the tube to be fully opened at both ends at the same time, therefore allowing a 're-pressurisation' event. Basically the tube is to be used just like an air lock.**
P. Knodel, Anton, Heidi and Spanner connect up and get ready to go. They target the SAME portal as the first test (Anton's portal). Off they go with the tube cylinder and bot at the ready.
They load the bot into the tube and push the tube half way through and unscrew their end. The bot is sitting there in the tube perfectly fine, test program count down proceeding perfectly. They carefully close their screw end again.
They wait.....
The bot is again programmed to open the other end, take a photo - this time they are keen to get a photo of the tube as it extends from the portal.
They test and when they assume the bot end is open, they cannot pull the tube back at all. It is locked solid.
When they know the bot is finished and can safely assume that the end is screwed closed - they CAN pull the tube back to the party side.
SUCCESS!
They return to the lab and download the images and see all the same things. The destination had not changed.
One more experiment. This time Sang's Portal. The same team performing the same actions. All went well. This time on return the photos showed a wilderness area that seemed to be near the mountains, close to Ben's cave area it seems. The photo looking back just shows the tube suspended in mid air. There is no visible sign of any portal exit.
It is clear the party have discovered a different kind of portal that is similar to the static portals that transport users to Rose, but this time:
1. Nano sizing
2. Mobile. Able to move around. The portal is ALWAYS perfectly vertical, but can be spun around 360 degrees, move vertically and horizontally.
Once everyone is back together, rested and fed they start discussing the next options. Looking to answer some of the following questions:
1. Do Ben Gunn's brain-dead Zhodani that were on Rose have nano-portals?
2. Does each human have only one portal or are they carrying many?
3. How can we 'detect' Portals without being 1 micron away from it?
4. Does Itzy want to be cured of his genetic mutations? Or keep them and take the chance that his groin does not become mushrooms like Anton's did?
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