Present:
- 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
- Hoff Ende. Sword-Worlder Scientist from Winston - Kevin
- MARMALADING 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
Fleet Investigations
The Cauthon transitions to a safe, geostationary orbit around Fleet - again. The party are back at the moon with the gas giant dominating the sky. "Crash" Straker wakes up and an awkward introduction is made to Tulsi (the Zhodani contracted air-raft pilot) as she grabs the air-raft command keys. Crash decides to observe Tulsi and see how she goes.
The party relocate the source of the weak radio signal on the surface and grab vacc suits. Stella and Dr Knodel decide to stay on the Cauthon and work from there. There is full comms with the away-team so were happy to stay. Anton is a little weary after "entertaining" Tulsi for the trip - but still ready and keen to go.
The rest of the crew board the air-raft and descend to the surface. Tulsi pilots and navigates perfectly, with a graceful and perfectly executed descent.
Nearer the target location, the party see what is obviously a crashed Imperium Scout ship. It is this that is emitting a weak emergency signal.
They park the air-raft about 100m away. Leaving Tulsi on the raft, the rest moon-hop to the wreck. Fleet has 1/8 G gravity so big bunny hops are effortless.
The craft is in a site that is close to the base of a natural cliff side. Closing in on the ship, it is obvious that a new rockfall has appeared on the face of the cliff, starting about 10m from the moon surface. Not directly involved with the wrecked ship, but maybe seismically - fascinating none the less.
Carefully approaching and checking the downed ship, it is clear that the scout craft had hit the moon surface hard. The hull showed many broken parts, cracks and obvious breaches. There is nothing moving or activated. Totally dark and silent. Looking in from outside showed very little, other than layers of ice and dust that would support the idea that the ship had crash-landed and decompressed within a short number of minutes.
The scout ship signage showed the Scout ship handle was the I.S. Roakey. Stella and Knodel looked up the ship computer and the Imperium logs showed this ship as "active" but had not reported in for many months. This type of ship has room for 2-10 crew and six escape pods.
While leaning on the side of the hull, the party noticed that, looking up at the stars near where the source of the rock fall was, the distant stars "shimmered". It seemed that there was a colourless gas jetting from the cliff face?
"Hmmm. Better check that out after checking out the downed scout".
The engineers of the team, used the salvage gear from the air-raft to pry open the external hatch. As it graunched and cracked and finally opened, the party were now in what would normally be called the air lock. Absolutely no air to be locked in the Roakey.
As the ship is bent and broken, navigation is slow but the gang eventually get to the bridge. Nothing is working, however the strengthened black box was there and quickly recovered for later upload.
Looking for the other five, it seems that the escape pods had been used as they were no longer on the ship. A short while later the party consider the ship fully searched and nothing else can be learned. Certainly something to report back to the Imperium.
Sang then deftly climbs the ten meters to the gas 'vent' on the cliff face and sure enough - there is a cavity that has wind racing out at the rate of a stiff breeze.
Crash bounces up to join Sang as she tries to gather a sample of whatever gas that could be. Sang also confirms gamma radiation signal that matches Rose Planet is ALSO coming from the vent. After they gather the sample they decide to jump down in the low gravity. Just as they leap off, a large boulder spits off and the opening grows a bit. A strong wind accelerates out.
Anton climbs up and checks the situation and the rock wall is highly unstable, but enough to get a good look in. An amazing spectacle. After the smallish opening, there is a sizable cavern. The thing is, it is fully lit! There is a very strong light source on the far cavern wall, that looks surprisingly circular. Estimated 3m diameter. Sounds familiar. Anton summons the others. Not just because of the cavern and light, but the trees and grass that was growing in the cavern!
As the others get to Anton and look in, there seemed to be humanoid movement in the distance. Maybe three figures? The cavern was roughly 300m deep (to where the light was) and about 100m wide. Easily 40-50m high as well.
The team decide to regroup. They relocate a large boulder from the pile, and wedge it into the leaking hole. This works well enough with the main flow of gas (presumably at least oxygen now) slowing down remarkably. Enough to buy more time.
They head back to the Cauthon. Tulsi flies perfectly back and docks magnificently. Seems she is a reasonable air-raft pilot after all!
The Imperium Scout ship black box is located and uploaded and the logs examined. The gas is analyzed: is indeed a clean and beautiful Terran like air. Made up of Oxygen, Nitrogen and other typical trace gases. No wonder the plants were doing well. The air is NOT from planet Rose. That is totally different. There is no particular planet on the Galactipedia database that has this exact gas signature.
The logs from the scout ship showed that the pilot really stuffed up. As they approached the ground, the pilot managed to push the thruster to full instead of off. After the wreck, in the decompression and damage chaos, the five missing crew managed to get into the escape pods and fire them. Unfortunately, as all well-trained space-farers know, you NEVER fire an escape pod on the ground. They release via an explosive charge. It would be fully understandable if the five pods flew for a few dozen meters, smashed into the ground - killing the occupant instantly, then crashing across the moon surface out to about one km from the launch point.
As the party decide how to return, a couple of the more observant review the camera footage and observe the the three moving figures in the cave looked remarkably 'Zhodani'. Will be bringing Tulsi for sure this time.
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| The cavern |
After an uneventful trip back to the surface, the away party are at the rock plug and carefully remove it. The air rushes out again. Anon forces his way through the headwind and secures a pull rope for the others to follow. [Means that the dexterity roll that the members need to roll is safer!]
Everyone is through and they re-seal the hole with a rock that can be removed later. They head further into the cavern and notice a small camp of tents. The Portal provides plenty of light and air, and the team can remove their vacc suit helmets. The smell of fresh grass and shrubs hits them.
Dr Knodel hails the tents "Allo, allo?"
Three Zhodani women come out and great the team. They are Zhodani scientists:
- Armic Denisovna
- Poltorak Timubovava
- Matryosha Romanovna
They were tasked with tracking the Rose Gamma Radiation through this region of space. They had completed surveys of nearby systems:
- Garda-villis
- Choleosti
- Arkadia
- Saurus
- Margesi
They were supposed to go to Zeta 2 next (the party had been to Zeta 2 while ago - this was the portal that the Imperium nuked unsuccessfully. The portal is still there.)
While there were no hits from the other sectors, about two years ago the Zhodani picked up the signal in this sector (Villis) and tracked to this moon.
They tracked the radiation through a natural gap into the cavern and discovered the vegetation and portal light. They had been using their transponder to update the Zhodani home world, about six months ago the cave entrance collapsed and trapped them in. Unable to move the debris, they have been stuck until the recent rock slides and air pressure had dislodged the blockage. They have not sent an update for over six months.
They share the various things they have learned over the last two years:
- The Rose signature gamma radiation is coming from the portal
- The portal can be looked into, but is one-way FROM this side to the other side. No way to pull anything back again.
- The vegetation seems normal enough, but they are not here to study it.
- The portal has a metal ring that seems to be a titanium-iron alloy is visible.
- They sometimes get mist and the portal gets shrouded in cloud.
- The portal is roughly one km in the air and just out to sea from a long, rough coastline. A plain with mountains in the distance make up all that
- The daylight lasts about 12 hours and shifts to a night phase of the same length of time
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| Anton helps with feeding |
Everyone other than Anton and two Zhodani, moves to the portal and look through with binoculars. The air in their faces is fresh, warm and clear. At ground level seems to be a low technology village, with rudimentary roads. No sign of power lines, or radio towers or anything that would indicate
technology can be seen from this height.
The scientist asks if we could repair and get their messaging transponder working? Dr Knodel and others are reluctant to get full communications working and negotiate a relay to their ship. The scientist agrees and sets up a fibre-optic cable out through the rock wall to an external transmitter that
is pointed at the orbiting Cauthon (Stella still there).
The team gather up a number of samples from the Zhodanis and head back to the ship. Anton volunteers to stay for the few hours they will be away. They dock at the Cauthon after a shaky trip, and set up a receiver and accept the transmission from the scientists. However they KEEP the transmission stored on the ship. Holding that for a later decision to send (or not).
Studying the Portal
A plan is devised as to what to do next.
Dr Knodel decides to bring a newly built 'portal tube'. Sang helps and loads up with drone equipment and all sorts of scientific gear. They take extra vacc suits for the Zhodani in the cavern.
Again Stella remains on the Cauthon. This time Tulsi struggles and the air-raft lands heavily, breaking the inertial dampers. Crash glowers and grabs the air-raft command keys. Sang sets to repairing the damage.
"This is bad" she says... "but not beyond repair. Going to take me about 12 hours to get all this working again.". The rest make their way to the camp and catch up with a happy but ill-looking Anton.
Tunnel Test
While Sang is busy repairing the air-raft, stuck in a vacc suit outside, the party - led by Dr Knodel, head to the portal with all their gear.
The breeze coming through the portal is around 20 km per hour and the Drone can easily work against that. Will have a range of 2kms and enough power to last an hour or so.
The cigar shaped object is loaded up with the pre-programmed drone and the end poked through the portal. This time the Moon side party can see through the portal (of course) and can watch the progress of the drone for the first time.
The planet-side tube-end unscrews and the drone flies out easily. No sound comes through the portal, but there is a LED panel on the drone that transmits information back through, as well as recording locally.
The drone returns safely after 45 minutes and lands in the tube. Then of the tube closes and the party draw the tube back to the cavern.
Mission successful!
To fill in the time while Sang repairs the air-raft, the party send the drone through again in the dark period while it is clear. The drone grabs a night sky scan and returns successfully again. From the portal at night the party can see the distant village fires. The experienced navigators like Crash, do not recognize any of the stars or constellations. Seems totally new. Hopefully the recording scanned by the Cauthon computer notices something familiar?
Sang is finally done and the crew invite the Zhodani scientists safe rescue back to Villis which they eagerly accept! They have been here for far longer than they needed to be.
This time Crash pilots the air-raft with everything aboard and after a bit of a shaky trip and docking, they are all together on the bridge of the Cauthon. They upload the scans to the computer and samples are analyzed in the lab.
Drone Scan and Sample Results
The drone information uploaded and scanned:
- Gravity is 1G
- The air is terran and very clean
- Sun is standard yellow dwarf
- Plants are all standard, carbon based
The Cauthon Institute
Stella and the crew contact Dr Strangelove via encrypted communications and provide a full de-brief of everything discovered.
"Hmmm, you better be careful trying to bring the Zhodani scientists back. They will be arrested on sight". Tulsi confirms.
"But we have the permission papers!" the scientists protest.
"Sure, but that was from over a year ago. Things have changed. They will be arrested." Dr Strangelove calmly insists.
The group think on what to do. The decide to smuggle the three Zhodani but realize that the Imperium customs inspection know every nook a cranny of the Cauthon scout ship. The plan therefore, will be to try and get the inspectors to favour the group and NOT search the Cauthon too hard.
The party decides to recover the six Imperium bodies from the moon surface and return those. Crash and the crew head to the moon and search a 1km circle from the crash site. It works and they easily spot the broken escape pods and (what remains of) the corpses. They recover Ensign "red shirt" Smith from the main crashed ship and return to the Cauthon.
The bodies are carefully stored in the med lab, with respect and care.
Vilis
On arrival at the high port, the Imperium inspectors are overwhelmingly grateful for the return of their fallen crew. They quickly usher the group through Customs and happily receive the black box. The Zhodani scientists are easily passed through later, in disguise.
They all end up down on the surface of Vilnius at the Cauthon Institute and the Zhodani scientists secured in comfortable quarters.
The group collectively decides to destroy the Zhodani report. That never gets sent.
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| Anya Lukashenko Zhodani Ambassadress |
"Hi Anya, we have rescued three Zhodani scientists from Fleet. They are doing well and are currently in quarantine. Wondering how you are getting on with the scanning electron microscope?"
"Wonderful!" replied Anya. "We did not know they were there, but had been missing for a while. Good work. The EM is ordered and built and the delivery is well-underway and on schedule for a few weeks time. Quarantine will only be a few days, so we can arrange delivery to us!"
"Oh" Stella oozes persuasively "You don't understand... the quarantine could be a few weeks. You know. Better to be safe than sorry."
"WHAT???" Anya recoils. "What do you mean? Are you suggesting holding them as collateral? That will NOT be looked on favourably to our working relationship. AND we were getting on so well" she angrily responds.
Stella replies "Well, you know, we have to do what we have to do..."
"Fine. This will be remembered..." Anya finishes the call coldly.
I am so keeping that image of me feeding
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