"If we aren't going to try and take the weird robot," Pablo said, "then close the door. If it detects us and thinks we're the enemy, I'm quite sure it can get out of its little storage cabinet all on its own."

"If it can't, then we're better off."

In reply to Pablo Esteban Ryzov (msg # 249):

Nodding, Vonon inputs the command into the drone handheld unit to order the closing of the door into the robot chamber. Once the door is closed, Vonon speaks up.

"Okay, so, the doors we've checked - airlock then weapon/tool locker then suit locker then robot locker. Now, more-or-less directly across the passageway from the robot locker is a door with a symbol that is almost identical to the symbol on the door to the robot locker - only, where the robot door has a single triangle pointing down on the right side, this other door has a single triangle pointing down on the left side."

"Is that an indication of similarity, I wonder? Maybe we'll find a robot behind this door, also, but a robot of different functionality."

"Okay, if everyone is ready, I'll have the drone open that next door..."

Sam looked back at Vonun and nodded, then turned back to keeping watch down the corridor.

The drone is able to close the door with the robot without it activating.

It then opens the next door, and the image it transmits is a room full of electronics. There are racks and banks of equipment and circuitry. None of it is immediately recognizable, although it appears to be transistor- and integrated circuit-based, rather than vacuum tubes.

"Zoom in on that" Khea shouts in the communicator while trying to get a good look at one of the circuit boards.
"This is the first time we can get a good look on their technology. Can you scan those parts? Or are they reflecting like the hull?
She holds her computer directly in front of her helmet to get a better look for a few second before putting it away.
"Have the drone wait there, I am coming over.".
Khea takes her toolkits, both for mechanics and electronics and sprints, as well as her vacc suit allows her to, over to the storeroom where she examines the circuits to at least recognize if they use a known type of technology and what they might be for.

OOC: heaiftouaw rolled 8 using 2d6+2 with rolls of 4,2.  Figuring out Alien tech. Edu 1 Engineer 1

In reply to Kheaiftouaw (msg # 253):

"Interesting..." Vonon says, considering the contents of the two chambers, "The symbols on the doors are identical, just reversed left-to-right from each other. Behind one door is a robot, behind the other is a room of electronic-filled cabinets."

"First impressions, people, what are the differences? I see one room having 'mobile' electronics versus the other room having 'non-mobile' electronics. Anyone have any other observations?"

"They could be spare parts for robots, so basically their insides."

Oddly, the room between the center sliding rack and the walls seem a bit too narrow for anyone to actually go into the room to work on the circuits, which probably explains why the rack slides out.

Khea has a bit of difficulty in figuring out what the circuits do, until she first realizes that there is a built in redundant circuit to it, and secondly, realizes that the components aren't all made by the same manufacturer. She can't help wondering if the inconsistent coloring and coding is intentional, or perhaps these aliens don't see color the way she and the Humans do.

As far as she can tell, this whole room is full of shields circuitry. The redundant circuitry seems to echo redundant shielding, and each of the four 'racks' handles a separate external shield, but there is two special functions--transferring one shield control to another side, and a rotating shield system.

The technology is strange, but not inconsistent with function. There is signs of the boards having been repaired several times.

Sam glanced over her shoulder back at the others "I dunno what it means, guys, I'm leaving the figuring out to you. I'm just on overwatch. All good your end Pablo?"

Pablo was doing his best to keep an eye out in all four directions... six, if you count ceiling and floor. There was some small consolation in that the drone would probably trip any security system before he did.

"So far, so good, Sam," Pablo replied. He knew the video image transmitted by the drone was just as good as seeing it himself, or so they claimed, but there was something about seeing it in person. He couldn't quite explain it, but the drone only saw what was there, not what might be there. Maybe it had something to do with flat-screen imaging compared to 3D binocular vision.

Going through several boards and stacking them on the floor Khea radios
Looks like whoever owned this ship were scavangers. The scout was probably not the first ship they stole from.
So keep an eye out for items that look like they do no belong. We are likely dealing with the items from several alien civilizations.

"Okay, then... let's try the next door," Pablo says, backing up as Vonon directs the drone to the next door.

"Do any of those things look like they've been damaged... say, by intense gravity? Remember, we're sitting in a massive gravity well that this ship is apparently generating. Admittedly it's only one-gee, but maybe that's the leftover?"

In reply to StarMaster (msg # 260):

OOC:
May be we just request Gamemaster that we carefully open all the doors one by one, at least in one corridor segment? Otherwise we will be opening one door per month :)

OOC: That was always going to happen, once you established a procedure, which you now have.


The drone opens the next door along the outer side of the hallway. Except for a few odd items in the room, it has the appearance of some sort of living quarters. Two of these items have the appearance of triangular-shaped trashcans. They are two interlocking three-sided open-ended pyramids, one inverted from the other. In this way, the open one isn't trying to balance on one of its points, but is braced by the other one.

Although more artistic than practical, the odd part is that they are padded on the inside.

There is no bed nor any chairs in the room, but there are an odd series of bars hanging from the ceiling and protruding from the two side walls.

Following the information about the bars in the living quarters, Sam starts checking out the corridor more carefully to see if there is anything similar along it - eg suggesting they may be used for movement

No, the corridor doesn't have any similar bars in it, nor did the cargo/docking bay.

The next three doors open to identical rooms... or nearly so. There are minor differences, such as things place in a slightly different location. In the last one, it has layout that is the mirror image of the first one.

There's one more door at the end, in the same wall.

Sharik had remained fairly quiet while following the order that Vonon had given to continue to record their sortie.  She kept her positioning quite carefully near (but not too near) both Vonon and Pablo while not getting underfoot.  She seemed most familiar with the two - and all three of them must have had some level of CBQ training as a matter of course.  Her movements near Pablo were actually very practiced; apparently, they had actually worked in close quarters tactical situations before with each other.

Recordings were easy enough given her abundance of portable electronics; the HUD projected on the chromomorphic lenses of her mirrorshades also tied into the sensor grid on her tailored vacc suit.  Naturally, like both her customized p-comm and wearable computer the sensor grid had a visual sensor feed for real time monitoring.  As such, the triangulation, spatial compensation, and image compositing integration software to process the multiple feeds into a single holographic stream had been perfected a long, long time ago.  The diminutive ex-operative had kept pretty quiet as a matter of course.  Her training in observation and recording generally was served best by not narrating or interrupting the input data stream with her voice.  Much Shar might like the sound of her voice, since she was closest to the microphones on her electronics it never behooved her to speak much.

Still, the presence of living quarters and the room that might have been an alien exercise room prompted her to agree with Pablo.  "This area looks lived in." the youthful-appearing socialite agreed quietly, "All too familiar in function and yet the venue and circumstances are disturbingly exotic..."  Her voice trailed off as she contemplated the potential reasons that the anomalous gravity well would be so targetted in its manifestation.  With trappings that were too recognizable in function for coincidence, but missing areas that needed to present, Sharik urged the others to press on.  "If there is an armoury and living quarters, could this be a control room of some sort?  Either engineering or a bridge?" she mused aloud, "It's either that or a gym..."
This message was lightly edited by the player at 01:19, Sat 17 Feb 2018.

While the others were busy with chasing ghosts and admiring furniture Khea switched from trying to figure out the spare parts to ransacking the place, carrying as much of them as her bulky vacc suit allowed it back to the ship and then gets the guns they found a few rooms before and also stows them.
"Call me when you find something interesting. But in the meantime I seem to be the only one concerned about profiting from this find."

"We all want more money," Pablo responded, "but our first priority is being able to get out of here. To do that, we need to make sure there's no gravity pulse that will kill our jump efforts."

He moves down the corridor to the next door that the drone is going to open.

Sam looked at Khea and laughed slightly "Thats coz your taking the short view. I think our plan is to check this ship out thoroughly and then take everything. Not grab what we can carry now and scoot."

Sam keep s moving forward on overwatch mode.

In reply to Samantha Kilgore (msg # 268):

"Yup, that's pretty much the plan, alright." Vonon nods agreement with Sam, "With the exception of a couple tons of metals that Sir Walter got, the cargo holds on the Longshot are looking pretty empty. I think..."

"Anyway, yeah. Once we've finished looking into every nook and cranny aboard this overly gravitic lump, we stuff everything that isn't nailed down aboard the Longshot - I'm afraid that's probably going to include stripping your scoutship, too, Serge - and when we have the last valuable circuit board and drop of fuel, we'll float away for a couple of days, then finish the jump to Duncinae."

"That's The Plan, anyway."

"There's a plan in there somewhere," Pablo concurs, "but remember, the Scout ship isn't Serge's... it belongs to the Scout Service. I thought we were hauling it back for him... them."

"We mount it on the Long Shot dorsally, just like we did with that ship we rescued."

Opening the doors isn't quite automatic for the drone; it has to go through a lot of frequencies before it finds the right one, since, apparently, the magnetic frequencies aren't close to each other. It finally gets the right combination, and the end door opens. It's more electronics, but other than a certain strangeness to the layout (such as components on the floor and ceiling, as well as the walls and the center rack), it all appears to be a huge computer. Or maybe dozens of connected smaller computers.


While this is going on, Walter is monitoring from the bridge. He doesn't really know what he and the remaining crew could possible do to help if something goes wrong. He's pretty sure the Long Shot's weapons would barely dent the hull of the pyramid ship.

And then the alarm klaxon's sound! It's the proximity sensors! Another ship has suddenly appeared out of nowhere, about 10,000 meters off the starboard bow.

The sensors register a jump-space exit.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:21, Mon 26 Feb 2018.

+++Inbound craft gang, identity unknown!+++ Walter hollered over the relay to the other crew members as he started scanning the intruder.

<<<Gregory, Valeska, get to the turrets and await orders>>> he added over the intercom.

19:49, Today: Walter Zeller rolled 5 using 2d6-1 with rolls of 3,3.  Sensors (-1 after mods due to untrained, 8+).

Walter has no problem reading the sensor scans, particularly the visual ones. The ship is clearly a 200-ton Free Trader.

As is normal, it isn't under power when it drops out of j-space, but it still has the vector it had when it entered j-space.

It's not actually on a collision course; the sensors merely reacted to its proximity before they could determine its vector.

In another second or two, the sensors pick up the ship's transponder. It's the Starshine out of Drexilthar, owner/captain of record is Morgan Randolph.