The Romulans aren't in this room or even in this facility. Only one had come through, and Eclipse had driven that one back through the portal.

Maribel had stepped through the portal to wherever it was that the Romulans were, but then Eclipse had pulled her through the portal to the Iconian facility before it shut down again. She managed to grab her tricorder as that was happening.

"A bit disorienting, isn't it?" Seleya says to Maribel.

"Happened to me, too. I was on the Mongoose one minute, took a step, and here I was."

"It's not a problem if you are expecting it. And, yes, this is an Iconian facility. Apparently just like we use transporters, the Iconians used these portals or gateways or whatever you want to call them. As near as we've been able to tell, if you don't have a set coordinate put into their computer, it activates randomly."

"You saw all those flickering planes that looked like windows? Each one isn't a window to another location but a doorway. Presumably, you can stabilize it if you find one that's a location you want to go to."

"It looked like the Romulans were as surprised as we were. They may have thought we were responsible for the portals and, in their inimitable fashion, tried to take control of it."

"Anyway, somewhere in this facility is one of the gravity beam generators that keep the planets in stable orbits. We've been trying to find it."

"What she said," Alex added.

"I'm Alexander Xavier Hawk, but everyone just calls me Alex. Except the Captain, of course."

"Oh jeez, I forgot to introduce myself!" She bows slightly as she speaks, "I'm Lieutenant Maribel Hanson, Doctor of Astrophysics and Quantum Mechanics, Head of the Mongoose's Physics Department, for those here unfamiliar with me. It's a pleasure to meet you all."

"Now then, this 'gravity beam' sounds very interesting. I would very much like to study it. This gateway too! I've always wondered how the Iconians made these things work." She draws her datapad from it's pocket and talks quietly as she writes, "Set, reminder. Ask, the captain, how, long, we are, staying, in the system, to study, this, facility." She replaces the datapad for her phaser and tricorder again and stands there scanning the gateway platform until the group starts to move on.

"Hi, Maribel," Koram says to the Science Officer. "We've met before."

Science and Engineering worked together a lot--Science theorized and Engineering built the devices to make it so.

"In theory, the Captain is probably planning on staying here in this system until he's uncovered all of its... secrets. I'm sure that's going to be a lot--there's 101 planets!"

"Like this one. It's not a habitable world, and there were certainly no signs of habitation on the surface. The only reason we're here is that our sensors detected the gravity beam as it altered the course of one of the nearby planets. So, yes, I'd like to examine that device as well."

"Any device that can emit a beam of gravity that can push or pull a planet out of orbit over millions of miles is something I want to get a hold of!"

"As for the portal... I got some decent readings this last time off the control panel over there so I might be able to figure something out. The power level suggests that the portal may only work within this super system... rather than be interstellar in range."

"Oh, and Eclipse detected some sort of robot behind that fourth door over there. We haven't opened it yet."

Although technically, as Captain of her own ship, Eclipse out-ranked Logan, but as far as the Away Team was concerned, he was in charge. But he'd no more ignore Eclipse's advice than he would fail to ask for it.

"Okay, Maribel, now that you're here, please assist Koram in figuring out the portal,
he directs. "I'd rather not have any more surprise visits from them. On the other hand, if Koram's estimate of the power level is accurate, that means the Romulans are somewhere else in this system. It's possible that the Mongoose couldn't detect a Romulan ship if it was cloaked--for that matter, can the portals work through a cloak? That'd be great--but why are the Romulans here? They wouldn't have visited this world if they never detected the gravity beam."

"Pacomio and Alex, you're with me. Eclipse, would you mind helping us explore this last room?"

"Seleya... just keep an eye on the portal... and the rest of us. If that robot behind the door is aggressive, we may need your medical assistance real soon."

With that, he heads over to the last door.

"Yes sir!" Lt Hanson turns to Ensign Val as she begins to circle the platform, scanning with her tricorder as she goes. "Let's see if we can't find some sort of interface with this thing, like an access panel or control terminal or something."

OOC: What kind of roll would we have to make to find an access point to the gateway? Should Koram and Maribel make separate rolls, or should Koram roll with Maribel's help? Maribel has Collaboration (Science), Science 5, and focuses in Astrophysics and Quantum Mechanics.

“Sure thing, bwoss,” Starbird replies, following Lt. Commander Keth.  “Er, I mean… yes, sir.”

You ain’t home, He reminds himself for the ten billionth time.

"I found a control panel over here on the wall," Koram says as he leads the way over to the 'side' door.

"Eclipse teleported us to a store room back through there which led to what we think was a work room." He indicated the door in the middle of the wall to the left of where they were standing. The door in front of them was in the middle of the side wall. The panel was on the wall just outside the door.

"This is where I got the reading this last time the portal activated. There's clearly a pattern to it, but I haven't had a chance to analyze it yet."

"I haven't seen any other way to access the machinery. The platform appears to be seamless. If they can create these kinds of portals, though, it occurs to me that they might have tools that do the same thing on a smaller scale that would let them open a portal in the side of the platform to make repairs."

Maribel continues looking at the platform while she replies to Koram. "Maybe, but it seems impractical to me." She looks up at the control panel Koram pointed out, let looks over to him, "Let's take a look at this control panel then, see if we can't figure out what it controls."

She walks across to the panel and begins scanning it with her tricorder. "So did y'all find anything interesting in the other rooms?"

18:41, Today: Maribel Hanson rolled 13,15 using 1d20,1d20 with rolls of 13,15.  Scan the control panel. Reason+Engineering=14.
OOC: That looks like 1 success to me, assuming I'm rolling against the correct stats.

OOC: Those look like the correct stats to me! I'm rolling the same, though I don't necessarily have to, to assist Maribel. I only get to roll one die, though.

Reason 4 + Engineering 11 = 15: 11:49, Today: Koram Val rolled 9 using 1d20 ((9)).

I doubt if two successes is going to be enough, so we might want to consider using Momentum or Threat. I was leaning towards Threat to invoke the 'security robot' behind the other door, since our own security wants something to shoot at.


Koram watches Maribel as she analyzes the readings he took, making a suggestion here and there.

"Look here at the side bars," he says. "That looks like it could be a power indicator. The right one could be the amount of power available while the left one might be the power that was being used... or maybe that was needed?"

"There's no way of knowing where the Romulans were, but my guess is that they were somewhere else in this system. There's no indication that the Iconian gates could span thousands of light years. Hundreds, yes. And it would make sense that they'd want to go between the various worlds in this system."

"I don't know what the power levels indicate, but we might be able to extrapolate them from what it would take to move a world with a tractor beam. It's bound to be a dedicated system. I don't know if the Mongoose has the power to do that, but its power is distributed over dozens of systems. We can reroute power, of course, but I'm pretty sure there's no way to reroute all of it into, say, our tractor beam. I don't think the tractor beam could be made that powerful anyway without a major modification."

Logan and Pacomio move down to the other door and stand to one side while Eclipse and Alex stand to the other side of the door. The other doors opened just as you approached it, so everyone stays to the side until Logan steps in front of it and then quickly steps aside as it starts to slide open.

No one is in an immediate line of sight to see what's in the room, but a moment later, a robot floats out. It's a gleaming metal cylinder with a domed top floating about a foot off the ground. The dome clearly has a sensor area but the cylinder is featureless other than the lines of access (?) panels.

The dome rotates to the left toward Logan and Pacomio. An unseen speaker issues sounds that you readily recognize as a language but it's incomprehensible.


Meanwhile, Koram and Maribel are trying to figure out the control panel. Based off of just the one-time scan, the Difficulty is 4. You can roll 2 more dice for the Threat. You can also roll up to 3 more dice if you want to use Momentum.

Pacomio keeps his phaser rifle trained on the thing’s dome, ready to blast it should the need arise.

Maribel stares at the panel for a minute or so, watching the lights softly change every few seconds. "Maybe...     no, that doesn't make sense. Aaaaa..." She runs her hand through her bright red hair in obvious frustration. "Come on, Mari, it's a control panel, it has to do something. How do we tell what?" She paces back and forth for a moment before stopping mid-stride and raising her head. "Duh! Occam's Razor you goober!"

She steps back to the panel, her finger hovering above one of the buttons as she decides which one to press...

OOC: May I use a point of determination to invoke my Value "Every question has an answer, I just need to find it" to get another die that has rolled a 1, for 2 extra successes? I would like to use Momentum then, to roll two extra dice for the 4th success.

Yes, that'll work. However, you've already got 2 Successes... one from Maribel and one from Koram who's assisting. Determination will give you 4 so no Momentum needs to be spent.


There could have been any number of other things that the readouts were displaying, including the physical status of the current location or the potential destination. There's nothing showing on the panel at the moment--you've been examining the sensor recording that Koram made, which included a visual image.

Considering that the physical parameters would need to include gravity, air content and pressure, temperature, probably a micro-organism indicator, and who knows what else the Iconians might have considered important, there doesn't look like there's enough lights to display all that, but there could be a secondary screen for those things.

No, the most logical explanation is that these are coordinates being displayed. What system they are using isn't clear, of course, but if those are buttons on the console that can be pushed, then you think you can probably call up that location again.

You can also identify the activation button. As near as you can tell, the system seems to be set to scan the entire super-system for... something. There's no indication what, but perhaps life forms, though there must be a secondary condition it scans for.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:49, Sun 22 May 2022.

Logan didn't understand what the robot was saying as the universal translator wasn't working. Well, to be honest, it was on the Mongoose and as long as the ship was in communication range, then the comm badges could access it. So, either the ship was out of range, or this facility was blocking the signal somehow.

"Greetings. I am Lieutenant Commander Logan Keth of the United Federation of Planets," he replied to the robot hoping it could do its own translation. "We are peaceful explorers."

He decided to leave it at that to see if it could understand him first.

Dr Hanson looks at what she believes is probably the activation button for a few moments, pondering whether she should touch it or not. "Hey Koram, what exactly was happening when you took this scan? I think these glyphs might be coordinates of some sort, and this looks like it might activate the system. I kinda want to touch it, but I don't want to open a gateway to the Romulans again."

She glances over to the robot and her hand slips down to hover over the pocket where she keeps her phaser, but she doesn't grab it yet.

She looks back to Koram, "My gut tells me that this system may be scanning the system looking for something. I'm not 100% sure why I think that. If I'm right, though, it's probably worth finding. I mean, if the Iconians were looking for it, it's gotta be interesting, right?"

"You definitely don't want to push the 'activation' button if that's what it is," Koram cautions. "Though if there's no coordinates set, I doubt if it would do anything... unless, as you guessed, it randomly opens a portal to somewhere else in this system."

"We should try to figure what kind of coordinate system they use, though it's probably some sort of standard judging by these readings. Three pair of coordinates to pinpoint the destination, maybe a distance or range, though if the coordinates are that exact, that would be automatic."

"It could have something to do with the allocation of power."

"If it's scanning the system, it's looking for life forms is my guess. That's how Seleya got here, you got here, and the Romulans got here. Although, now that you mention it, I think I saw a similar platform at that Romulan site. That would mean they've got an Iconian gate there, too. Which makes sense--it's how the Iconians got around the system, rather relying on starships."

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea." She withdraws her hand.

"Now we're in a bit of a pickle then, huh? We can't safely open any portals without understanding their coordinate system, but we can't decipher their coordinates without enough data, and to get data we would need to open multiple portals to record which coordinates go where."

She holds her chin and absent-mindedly taps on her jaw as she thinks for a few moments. "Would the Mongoose's database have any info on the Iconian writing system and language? Is the Mongoose even within comms range?"

Dr Hanson taps her commbadge. "Lieutenant Hanson to USS Mongoose, do you read?

Pacomio muses on the possibility that the machine is scanning for joints that could be knocked off.  They’d love a machine like that back home.

At Logan's words, the robot emits some sort of ray at him. Half expecting it, Logan manages to dodge out of the way. Nothing seems to happen to the wall where the ray strikes, though.

"One of my previous hosts studied Iconian and some of the related languages," Koram replies. "It doesn't make me an expert, though."

"Woah! What was that?" he reacted to the robot's ray. He trained his tricorder in that direction. The ray itself was already gone, but he hoped he'd detect some residual energy or some signal from the robot itself.

"Woah!" Maribel steps back in surprise, drawing her phaser and turning to aim it at the robot.

"Was that an attack? I was paying attention to the panel."

Confused, Pacomio also trains his phaser rifle on the robot, ready to make it sleep with the fishes.

"I don't think that was a sensor scan!" Logan says as he fires his phaser back at the robot.

He's pretty sure that's probably a bad idea, both because it probably won't be successful and because there could be repercussions.

Control 12 + Security 1 = TN 13

16:50, Today: Logan Keth rolled 11,7 using 1d20,1d20 ((11,7)).

That should be 2 Successes, which is all that is needed for a ranged attack. Whether it has any effect or not remains to be seen.

17:03, Today: Logan Keth rolled 4d6 ((3,4,1,2)).

Damn. That's only 3 damage. He's going to burn 3 Momentum to add 3 damage. He probably wouldn't need them for a Klingon or a Romulan, but against an Iconian security robot...