In reply to Blake Renfield (msg # 10):

"We'll be wearing Vacc Suits until we're certain the atmosphere is breathable and there are no pathogens or toxic chemicals. Don't worry, we have good sensors.

"You guys can have the honour of going first. But we can find some other volunteers, if you prefer."

She looked at Ken. "We have located various surviving surface structures that might have airlocks. Bear in mind even the outer structures are armoured and reinforced. Many ship and small craft bays were blown open and are still radioactive after thousands of years. There are intact vehicle bays but the doors are so massive it will take a lot of time to cut through the bay doors so that will be a last resort. Boobytraps are a definite concern!

"M-Drives appear to also be damaged. None of the power sources appear to be near the stern. There's no really big ones like you might expect, but clusters of smaller ones. Fusion plants in the 1MW-250MW range with a few 1GW units. Standard power outputs for small starships. Mainly located along the central fore-aft axis."

Linus nodded, taking all this in. Meanwhile he brewed some more coffee and passed it around.

Blake gets a refill from Linus.  Ahhh Neva, first in and first to leave.  If we come running back, you'ld best not be lollygagging either.  He raises his refill in her direction.  As for bars, ladies first. as he waves his arm motioning her to move ahead ...

In reply to Blake Renfield (msg # 15):

Neva grinned and moved toward Linus and took some coffee.  She liked coffee almost any way.  When she was indulgent she would add creamer and sugar and flavors but on the ship she had it mostly straight up.  It was easier.

"Thank you Blake. When I have cause I can haul ass better than some and don't believe in lollygagging.  It's hazardous to my health."  She stopped and took a sip of her coffee before continuing.  "Besides I like how I look now. No backsliding."

Ken listened to Lorain's explanation carefully.  "With a scattering of small power sources still running after all these years I'd say the chances are very, very high that there are survivors.  They've not managed to get the drives running again by all evidence so that might speak of a big loss of technology or organization or both."  He shrugged.  "What makes you think that the outside entrances will be booby trapped?"

In reply to Ken Jenkins (msg # 17):

Lorrain replied, "the mem-cards we recovered from the Sky Raider small craft indicated either the Sky Raiders who evacuated or the Sky Raiders who stayed, possibly both factions, spent a lot of time booby-trapping and destroying as many entrance points as they could. It wasn't really clear why. Perhaps to prevent being followed by the "stay-behinds" or a return from the "outcasts". Or maybe they feared an invasion by others.

"Nonetheless, we don't intend on taking any chances. "Lucky Jack" is an expert in demolitions and has experience in disarming explosives and booby-traps. The obvious landing and entry points are a last resort.

"As for who, if anyone, is down there, survivors are a possibility. We were excited to detect power sources, sure, but we can't determine if there's life although that makes it more likely. It may not even be human life. There was a Vilani outpost on a moon that remained active for over a thousand years, through the Long Night, maintained only by robots and drones. If there are human survivors they are probably descended from the Loeskalth (Sky Raiders) but they could be much more recent interlopers, like the local Vlazdhumecta, Zhodani or even Solomani and Vilani. Pirates, settlers, refugees, who knows?

"We would sure like to examine their power sources. Fusion requires hydrogen gas. Is it solid? Liquid form? These require keeping temperatures down to 14 and 20 Kelvin, respectively. This ship would have passed through regions of the Interstellar Medium warmer than that so active power would have been needed to store the hydrogen. As the Bussard ram-scoops appear non-functional we are probably looking at water in ice form, gathered when the mother-ship passed through star systems. We are also not ruling out some other form of power generation. From records we believe this vessel might have encountered Ancient technology on its journey through the Rift, Spinward Marches, Forveven and Far Frontiers sectors. All known to have Ancient sites, most of which were undiscovered by the First Imperium."

Can we trace it back to starting location ??  Some system with large asteroids ??

In reply to Blake Renfield (msg # 19):

"This asteroid is not particularly big. It has a diameter of 10km. Compare that to Ceres in the Terra system, which has a diameter of 945km, ten times as large. It basically could have come from any system with an asteroid belt. Or it could have come from a gas giant's "Trojan asteroids". Again, in the Terra system the gas giant called Jupiter had collected over a thousand asteroids over 1km in diameter in its Trojan points.

"Where did the mothership originally come from? The Loeskalth Empire. They are only known from ancient First Imperium records. If I had to guess I would say their homeworld was Unuv in the Sallounn subsector, in Gushmege Sector. But we haven't been able to confirm this conclusively without more research. It's only recently that we conclusively connected the Sky Raiders to the Loeskalth.

"That's something like 120 parsecs away, almost 400 light-years. An incredible achievement. We can only chart its approximate path. It is presumably only capable of Jump-1 but unlike other starships it can cross interstellar space at sublight speeds.

"Unlike most minor human races the Vilani Imperium encountered in its early history the Loeskalth put up a good fight. There is evidence that they used similar asteroid mega-starships before being contacted and so had a spacefaring tradition to build on once they acquired Jump technology from intermediaries who in turn stole it or bought it from the Vilani."
This message was last updated by the player at 10:08, Sat 18 Feb 2017.

Ken considers the answers.  "Well, booby trapping the exits would make sense giving the conflict-filled history of the Loeskalth.  We'll just have to go in through a side entrance.  I would think that the smaller entrances would be less likely to be trapped compared to hangars if they were afraid of pursuit."  He thinks a bit as Lorain continues.  "After 1,000 years and no ramjet to gather hydrogen you'd think they were short of fuel even with efficient fusion power sources.  It doesn't seem like there are any signs of active space travel so even if they did pass through a system they would have had no way to gather ice."

He nodded; "Did the Sky Raiders take captives?  If so there may be mixed populations onboard.  But do you think that others may have come here after the refugees fled?  Why wouldn't they have come back and reported?  Or perhaps they were attacked and could not flee..."
This message was last edited by the GM at 08:53, Sat 18 Feb 2017.

In reply to Ken Jenkins (msg # 21):

"If criminals have visited, they would have no reason to advertise their position. But we haven't seen any evidence that others have visited the mothership and returned. No valuables have turned up, no new Sky Raider artefacts save the ones in archaeological sites like Mirayn and Qarant.

"Also, if they stayed here we'd have seen some ships. So far, nothing. The bays are locked shut.

"If you want to have a look at trying to gain access using secondary personnel locks, that sounds fine. We'll leave it to you to decide the point of entry.

"Let me know what you're ready to go."

Once we have an initial interior map, professor.  If an emergency arises, I would like to know what may be inside and where.  If they need some time to do that, OK.  Time to review any equipment we will be taking along.

Ken frowned as he considered Lorain's comments.  "It definitely sounds like we are the first here then.  We'll want to make the best of it."  He looked at the map that had been put together. "I'll try to find something that is isolated from the landing bays and possibly less likely to be trapped.  It may bring us into a less important area but I don't think that starting slowly will be a problem given the risks we may face if the vessel is inhabited and the residents are hostile."

He thought for a moment.  "We'll want to take a smaller party down and make a breach and then transfer equipment and personnel once we have a beach head so to speak."  Ken looked to Blake. "Can we do a deep radar scan and try to image the interior?"

In reply to Ken Jenkins (msg # 24):

She shook her head.

"Our radar will penetrate a few centimeters to a metre or so down, through the looser "regolith" (covering of rock dust, rock fragments, debris, etc.)).

"But it will not penetrate into the interior of a nickle-metal body. We have taken other readings with a densitometer that indicate empty spaces inside, but again not a real map.

"There are clusters of air locks near weapons emplacements that are separated from the vehicle bays. We can try there."

Linus grinned.

"Well, when do we start exploring?"

He had sandwiches and hayboxes all prepared, ready to make sure folks didn't go hungry.

Everyone will have inertial locators and body cams.  core samplers, collection containers, etc.  Blake will then turn to the specialists If we could have a briefing from you guys in an hour ??  Suggestions on what to take, look for, etc.  Please assemble a list for us.

Blake will comm the captain and navigator requesting that they join the briefing session for their input.

I think we can get storage opened for us to draw equipment while the profs do their thing.

I think we can get storage opened for us to draw equipment while the profs do their thing. Who wants to help with the gear pulling ??  We can pull as they add to the list, pocket comps and data pads will be needed.  NPCs can help prep the survey ship we will be using or drawing gear.

Ken nodded.  "I'll help.  As well we'll want to prepare charges in case we need to breach the air locks and portable air locks to seal off our breaches.  We should be prepared for full on trouble with a full load of gear."

In reply to Ken Jenkins (msg # 29):

"Sounds good, we can be ready to have one of the cutters take you over in an hour.

"Oh, Ken, you mentioned fuel. The Loeskalth used fusion power, of course. Now, water ice will last indefinitely, like, billions of years. So ice from water they collected thousands of years ago is probably still present. But it still needs to be cracked to provide hydrogen, which takes power in and of itself. There might be solid hydrogen ice as well, but we don't think the mothership is cold enough for that, or liquid hydrogen.

"The records from the Sky Raider craft references some kind of "new" or unknown power source found in their travels at some point. They probably did pass through the Islands Clusters in the Rift, which is suspected to be an Ancients site, and they could have visited many other Ancient sites through the Spinward Marches and Forveven sectors, as well as Far Frontiers. So we can't rule that out although the records we recovered were hardly complete or thorough."

3D maps from the Densitometer and of neutron sources were printed up for reference.

Ken listened carefully.  "Everyone pack your personal gear and gather here in thirty minutes.  We'll want to brief our plan of approach and review the 3D maps before we make our final decision on an entrance location." He frowned slightly as Lorain continued about fuel and power.  "Was there anything in the tech that we did found that would indicate any unusual power generation capability?  I don't remember mention of it but I was probably drowsing in that part of the presentation.  Anyway we'll want to bring power adaptors that will hook into their systems to charge our own equipment." He smiled at the last.

"Are there any hints as to what they may have found and if they put it into service?"

"How long do we intend the initial visit to be?" asked Linus, who was thinking about what food he needed to take along. Exploring could be hungry work!

In reply to Ken Jenkins (msg # 31):

"The warcraft we found was standard technology. Either copied from the Vilani or native-grown. Nothing special and to tell you the truth, kind of primitive and not even of a starfaring level of technology. Lasers and missiles are good for raiding less-developed and primitive cultures but that ship would be no match for a First Imperium SDB.

"We didn't find anything other than a single mention about finding some kind of unusual power source somewhere in the Rift in a personal journal. It was only recently we came across it, and for obvious reasons we didn't want to spread word around so it wasn't part of the general briefing. That's why you probably didn't hear about it. If it's Ancient technology you can imagine how valuable that would be! Of course this entire find is of immense historical and monetary value as it is but there's just something about the Ancients that seems to drive people crazy."

She printed out the maps and made sure everyone had a personal electronic copy.

"Here are the maps. While they might be of some value the problem is you don't know if there are direct connections between these power sources, and what the areas of variable density mean, if anything."

In reply to Prof. Lorain Messandi (msg # 33):

Neva sat back and looked over the maps that Lorain provided.  She wasn't sure what those areas meant either but it was still good to have maps.  Neva took another sip of her drink and then rotated the maps various ways to see if it would make more sense.  Sometimes, although it was a long shot, if the maps were looked at a different angle they could make more sense.

Ken thought for a bit before he replied.  "The maps will be helpful even at this level of detail.  We can combine the information with our inertial locators to build up a map as we go as well as at least seek out the power sources.  I'd think the most important places on the ship will be around the power generation equipment.  With the main engines not working the power for life support and everything else will come from those stations."  He shook his head about the mention of the Ancients.  "You were right to keep the Ancient connection quiet Lorain.  We'd be swamped if people thought that there was some link to that tech."

Blake comms Lexi to see if she is one of the pilots.

In reply to Blake Renfield (msg # 36):

"Yeah, I'm definitely going! Wouldn't miss it for the world." She smiled at him. "Gotta go get the cutter prepped. See you in a few!"

With that, she was off to help in the preflight checks.