OOC: This is my understanding of the boarding party as it stands.  Dr. Keefe can come, but may not be very useful.  MGT rules are pretty brutal to unskilled people in vacc suits at this tech level and Dr. Keefe has no vacc suit knowledge whatsoever.  If Thera's character isn't coming, her player can control Doc or Dagala for the boarding so no one is left out of the fun. :)

Jacques inspects everyone's vacc suit in the passenger lounge to verify they are all in top working order. He is quick, but by the time he is done, most everyone in the boarding party has begun to sweat.  It may be the bulk, heaviness, and clumsiness of the suits, but the unknown situation they'll be facing soon may have something to do with it too.

Suzain is still drifting, silent and dead.  Occasionally, a bit of debris drifts loose from her damaged turret.

Gypsy Moth's launch is crowded with five suited personnel.  Jacques powers her up.

Jim was sporting a distinctly unhealthy pallor visible through his visor.  He muttered to himself as he fidgeted with his suit, "..it just had to be spinning - with no gravitics for crying out loud.. and with everyone gun happy.. "

All the military gear around him was definitely not improving his mood.  He wasn't buying the pirate theory - what pirate would leave themselves so vulnerable as to not have the power plant at least warmed up, especially with an armed ship nearby?  No, he was more concerned about the lack of apparent physical damage to the Suzain.  Though quarantine would be a lot easier if they could setup shop inside Suzain...

Jack checked and double-checked everyone's suits as quickly as he could, making sure safety patches were accessible, comms and seals were working, etc. He didn't like Doc's looks, the man seemed queasy, but they didn't have a much of a choice at this juncture.

Stowing the gear for safety as well as quick deployment, Jack was just settling in to the launch's pilot couch when the railgun went off and Suzain's turret took a hit. "Bloody hell, Thera!" Jack breathed. "A warning would have been nice."

After making sure Thera's itch had been scratched, Jack eased Gypsy 2 out and away from her mooring. "Hayden - should we check the scarred area near the cargo bay or head directly for an airlock?" He took his time, drifting easily, setting up a sensor relay from the Moth so they would have all the info the bridge was getting.

"If we want to board via the aft airlock, we can probably check out the damage on approach." Hayden said.  The aft airlock would also give them quick access to lower engineering, where they could assess the state of the life support system, and quickly move on to the power plant if necessary.

"Copy that," Jack said, easing Gypsy 2 into a smooth spiral around Suzain. He kept the comms open so the Moth would know their strategy and send any pertinent data to them as it occurred. As they were approaching the aft airlock of Suzain he slowed and held the launch at approximately 100 meters, scanning the damaged area around the cargo handling mounts.

"100 meters out, visual scans coming online now."

Jack relayed the visual feeds from Gypsy 2 to the bridge of the Moth and keyed them to the launch team's suit feeds as well.

OOC: 23:49, Today: Jacques Keveloh rolled 9 using 2d6+2 with rolls of 1,6. Sensors/INT - scan Suzain from launch.

Danica takes up position as the Launch's copilot.  She might not be able to astrogate worth a darn, but in the Launch that was unnecessary.  And while the Gypsy 2 might be Jack's baby, she knows that she can handle it well enough (especially under adverse or 'heightened' situation.  And in such cases (or rescues, like this one), back up is always welcome.

It also affords her a front row view of Thera's theatrics.  Danica watches quietly as the dorsal turret of the Suzain was perforated at close range.  Dani exhales slightly knowing that she tacitly authorized their gunner to do so - a mistake that she chides herself not to make again.  Everyone's a little jumpy, she notes to herself mentally.  But Danica expects that nothing will really come of Thera's action - any crew still in the turret is likely already dead before it was shot.  If not, she will answer for her actions later.  They must merely deal with what they can now.

As they spiral in towards the Suzain under Jack's direction, her passive position allows Dani the chance to survey any damage (new and old) and to try and see if any of it makes any sense.  She studies the various feeds that the Gypsy Moth and Gypsy 2 can give them.  Her fingers instinctively go to the screens as she focuses on various portions.  "Hmmm...." she notes absently. "Here.  And here..." Dani adds to the commentary, but to no one in particular.

[OOC:  Just in case:
  00:20, Today: Danica Moreau rolled 11 using 2d6+5 with rolls of 4,2. Sensor/INT: scan Suzain (as necessary).
  00:21, Today: Danica Moreau rolled 14 using 2d6+3 with rolls of 5,6. Investigate/Int Check - as necessary.]

In reply to Danica Moreau (msg #6):

The new damage to Suzain is pretty straightforward.  There is a neat 5.5cm hole in her dorsal turret.  The impact has buckled the turret plating as well.

The damage to Suzain's cargo mount might have occurred had she taken off or re-entered planetary atmosphere with the cargo bar rigged.  Why anyone would do that is a mystery.

There is no other apparent damage to Suzain.  The aft airlock iris valve is closed and appears intact.

"Perhaps they took off in a hurry." Hayden speculated as he went aft to grab the iris valve opener.  The unwieldy contraption was a cross between a corkscrew, and hand drill, and a spider, and while slow, they were quite useful for opening or closing iris valves during a power outage.

"Once we dock, I'll crank her open with Dani providing cover." Hayden said in to his vacc suit comms.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:22, Mon 16 Jan 2012.

"Roger that." Danica notes dutifully (if ever so slightly playfully), "I'll be ready on your mark, Mr. Marks."  Her tone is serious enough, and while it is not forced or gallows humor, it underlines her ease with the set of people she is working with and familiarity emotions and tensions these types of dangerous circumstances bring.  Even if, she is not familiar with the exact set of circumstances here.

"I'm lowering the gravity." Dani notes over the common crew commline, as she ratchets the internal inertial compensators in the launch down - pushing the artificial gravity down to about one third gee.  She figures that it will help the boarding party transition to the (likely) weightless circumstances on the Suzain and will help to ease any carrying burden that the bulky vacc suits might impose.  Dani, for one, finds the suit slightly restrictive given her rather slight frame.

As Jack eases the Gypsy 2 into position, Dani gives him the thumbs up and unstraps herself from the copilot's seat.  She pulls her laser rifle from its tie-down next to her console and makes her way into the hold to follow Hayden in preparation for boarding the Suzain.  She moves purposefully through the iris from the bridge, planning to meet Hayden at the airlock.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:30, Mon 16 Jan 2012.

Jack eased Gypsy 2 into a docking alignment against the aft airlock of Suzain. Once they were in position he gave control of the launch over to Dagala and headed towards the airlock, grabbing his laser rifle and keying its HUD into his vacc suit.

When Dani cut the G-comps Jack smiled and welcomed the new freedom of movement. He had always loved zero gravity, even in high-stress situations. He wasn't really a natural but he took to it easily. "If you start lose orientation, try to put a hand on the nearest surface and hold on to it," Jack said to everyone but really for Doc's benefit. He wanted the man to have a chance at doing his job rather than careen around the corridors inside Suzain. "You might bounce around a bit but you'll have a frame of reference and a better chance of regaining control."

Jack fell into line behind the others, waiting for the hatch into Suzain to be opened.

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #10):

As Dagala took control she voiced a query.
"If you find everything normal in there, do you want me to pull around and syphon some fuel into Suzain's launch? Just thinking it might be a quick way to get you some power aboard."

OOC to Ref: Assuming this action is feasible? I would imagine it would be a fairly routine operation - easier than mid-air refuelling in an atmosphere, I'd think.

Jack hesitated at Dagala's question, double-checking his rifle's link to his suit.

"Not a bad idea but let's see if she has any fuel left first. If we have to get out quickly I'd rather the route be the same we entered by."

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #12):

OOC: Refueling Suzain's launch from Gypsy 2 would be fairly straightforward, but it would only provide power to Suzain's launch itself.  The launch's powerplant is not configured to feed power to Suzain herself and even if it were, it would only be enough juice for weak lighting, computer, and maybe short-range comms.  No way Suzain's launch could power Suzain's life support.  Rigging cables and connections to provide power from Suzain's launch to Suzain's electrical system would take 1-6 hours.

Suzain's iris valve is unlocked. The first thing Hayden notices as he cranks open the iris valve to Suzain's aft airlock is the rush of atmosphere from the launch into the ship.  Your first thought is hull breach, but you quickly realize that the lack of heat on Suzain has caused its' atmosphere to freeze.  As the warm air from the launch hits the frozen nitrogen and oxygen crystals on the airlock's bulkheads, deck, and overhead, they sublimate to gas.  The effect is like a miniature weather system in the confined space of the airlock.  The air from the launch quickly cools, leaving surfaces slick with moisture.

Clearly, this ship has been without power for several days, at least, for so much ambient heat to have bled out.

The next thing you notice is the single hostile environment vacc suit in the airlock.  It appears normal and undisturbed, but lonely.  Typically you'd expect a half-dozen regular vacc suits to be stowed in this airlock as well, not just one.  There are empty bins for vacc suit equipment, some of them labelled with names you recognize from Suzain's crew manifest.

In addition to Hayden's cold light lantern, emergency luminescent strips add a very faint level of lighting to the space (enough to tell what space you're in and where the exits are only).

The inner iris valve is closed and looks undisturbed.

As Dani reduced the G-comps, Jim flinched, causing himself to begin floating slowly upward.  To which responded by clutching his medikit with both hands and instinctively dipping his head out of fear of striking the ceiling.  Causing him to spin forward.  His faint "shit .." over the common crew commline comes around the same time as Jack's advice...

Attempting to take it, he threw out his right arm and struck the ceiling, adding a new vector to his spin - which he eliminated by latching onto his seat back.  His helmeted head was now at the bottom of his seat, but at least he was facing the airlock as he arrested his motion and he still managed to retain his medikit with one hand.  His personal drone hovered nearby, unaffected, one would say almost disdainfully, had it had been equipped with an AI.

As Hayden worked the hatch, Jim slowly crawled his way back into a more or less upright position, and observed the interaction of Suzain's frozen atmo meeting the launch's more temperate one.  He also spied the lone HE vacc suit...

Having regained some composure, or at least his wits, his questioning voice came over the commline, "Did her lock still have air?  How about that suit?"

He sent his probe through to check out what it could...

Dani allows her eyes to adjust to the dark for a moment.  She can feel the air buffet her vacc suit slightly as it rushes past, but her concentration and hold on her laser rifle doesn't waver.  The barrel of her laser rifle casts back and forth as she continues to visually scan the gloom before her.

The barrel and her eyes lock onto the doctor's floating probe for a moment as it pushes by.  Then the ex-Army officer returns her gaze back into the airlock.  "Unlikely a breach." she ventures over the comm, "Nothing obvious in the lock.  It looks very cold, which the sensors told us previously."  She states flatly, "Only one suit here.  Anyone on-board not in one is freeze dried."

Before anyone moves into the airlock, she warns the others, "Watch your footing; plenty of ice and moisture on every surface."  Dani taps Hayden lightly on the shoulder with her left hand to let him know that she is alert and ready to move when he is.

Hayden moves into the airlock slowly, and studies the HEV suit.  "Free HEV suit.. all of ours are emergency models by the way." The seasoned merchant's true colors were showing now.  Marks offered to pass back the suit to any willing taker in the launch.  Space bugs be damned, a good Pathfinder HEV suit was valuable.

Returning to the task at hand, he prepared the iris valve opener for the next door.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:29, Tue 17 Jan 2012.

Jack cast a knowing eye over the HE suit when Hayden's light played over it. "I'm sure it's in fine condition but I'll inspect it more closely when time allows."

He took up a position complementary to Dani's line of fire and readied his rifle.

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #17):

I assume from the mention of torches that there is no light spill from the Launch airlock because the outer hatch is re-closed? Dagala would close it as a matter of course, unless instructed to leave it open.
Don't want Queenie rushing in, do we? :)

Doc inspected the suit to see if it had air remaining...

OOC: Didn't assume everyone rushed into the airlock - but can see closing it after in case of explosive gas in the ship, or other contaminants.

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #19):

The power cells and life support canisters for the HEV suit have been removed, but the suit itself looks to be undamaged and in working order.

Hayden cranks open the inner iris valve far enough to peer into lower engineering.  There is much less of an atmospheric exchange this time because the air from the launch has already been diluted and cooled in the airlock.

Hayden's torch plays around the workstations and machinery of lower engineering, casting eery, ghostly shadows.  The atmosphere here has also frozen out, leaving free floated frozen nitrogen and oxygen crystals, like a light zero-G snowfall.  It also gives the machinery a frosted appearance as many of the crystals either formed or have drifted into contact with the various surfaces in the space.

You don't see any movement other than the swirling and sublimation of frozen crystals in the newly injected air, nor do you see any bodies or signs of struggle.

There are also no footprints or other marks to indicate anything has disturbed the tomb-like silence in here since the atmosphere froze out.

Just like on Gypsy Moth there are two workstations in lower engineering.  Neither show any apparent signs of having power.  The life support machinery and jump drive are also on this level.

Also just like Gypsy Moth there is a hatch leading forward and an iris valve in the overhead to upper engineering.

Hayden left the valve opener by the door, and took up the boarding shield, moving slowly through the engineering space.  He moved forward carefully, keeping close to the port wall.  At the end of the compartment, turned and continued across to the starboard side, stopping at the forward hatch to examine it.

OOC: if the hatch is closed, Hayden will keep moving and try to clear the whole compartment.  He'll inspect the life support system only after ensuring that there is nothing else in the room.
This message was last edited by the player at 09:02, Thu 19 Jan 2012.

As they move forward, Dani continues to scan back and forth, painting her field of vision with both her eyes and the barrel of her laser rifle.  Given her training with survival suits, she can't help but notice that the tanks and batteries are missing from the HEV even though she only afforded a rather cursory glance as the doctor touches the suit.  "Moving to the inner hatch," she narrates dutifully for the non-boarding crew.  "There's only one HEV in the lock. Batteries and tanks cannibalized."

Once the inner lock is open, she halts for a moment to take stock and then starts forward again the crystals under foot making only the most muffled of sounds.  "No signs of any crew in lower engineering.  Everything is powered off." she states rather flatly.

Dani points with the barrel of her rifle to the hatch leading to upper engineering. "Up and through?" she prompts.  It seems to her that going through upper engineering and the crew section would be the fastest way.  And likely the only way, since there would be no access by elevator.   "Presumably, we need to get to the bridge, where the only residual heat was being picked up by sensors, ASAP..."

In reply to Danica Moreau (msg #22):

The magnetic grapples on your suits work as advertised, allowing you to walk more or less normally in zero-G.  The walking motion is a little unnatural and slower than normal walking.  You are certain the muscles in your shins and calves will ache tomorrow.

The hatch leading toward the passenger section is closed but not locked.  It appears intact.

You don't see anything obviously wrong with the life support system other than the fact it has been exposed to extremely low temperatures.  The aerobic bacteria used to convert waste are probably dead and any fluids in the system's pipes surely frozen.  Once power is restored it will probably take several hours to coax the water and waste systems back to life, but ventilation should be much quicker to restore.

"Up and through," Hayden nodded in agreement with Dani.  Returning to pick up the valve opener, he reoriented himself by putting one foot on the wall, and shifting his weight and footing so that he was effectively walking up the wall, compared to the normal level of the ship.  This was the kind of fun you could only have in zero-g environments.  Waiting for everyone to get into position, he started in on the hard work of cranking open the valve to upper engineering.

Jack kept one eye on the hatch into the passenger section and the other on the hatch Hayden was cranking open, positioning himself near the forward workstation about half way up the wall.

Jim is glad of the magnetic boots, but it is still grueling work, and disconcerting when it comes to balance.  It doesn't help that he is trying to look everywhere at once while in the confines of his suit.  The thought of walking all the way to the bridge this way is not a happy one.

"Uh, ok .. ", he replies to the plan to proceed up, while he crosses in front of Jack.  He attempts to open the forward hatch leading to the passenger area, ready to send his probe in for a peek.

The walk across engineering has him really dreading the trek across the ship ... "By the way, did anyone think to look into the bridge from outside?"

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #26):

Hayden cranks open the iris valve to upper engineering enough to get a look around.  Similar to lower engineering, it is dark and cold.  Nitrogen and oxygen crystals are adrift and have also settled on the surfaces in upper engineering.  The powerplant, maneuver drive, and fuel purifiers are clearly dark and not operating, but don't appear damaged.  Both workstations are also completely dark.

There are no signs of anyone in upper engineering, alive or dead, nor does the space seem to have been disturbed since Suzain lost power.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The hatch leading forward is somewhat recalcitrant, having frozen in place, but Doc manages to get it open by applying some force.  Your lantern throws cold, white light down the deserted passenger passageway, causing leaping shadows in the lounge beyond.  At a glance, all the doors in the passageway appear closed and you don't see any obvious signs of violence or any signs that the area has been disturbed since the atmosphere froze out.

Jim sends his probe on ahead as he steps in his awkward fashion into the passenger section, specifically to investigate the port airlock hatch.

"Hmm.  Don't seem much like she was attacked by another ship, does it?," he speculates as he steps into the passageway.

"I mean the only damage we've seen is that port cargo bar .. gonna check out this port airlock ..."

OOC: Jim checks for signs of forced entry of the port airlock hatch (Probe tool DM not applied, but assume X-ray feature used if deemed applicable):
11:50, Today: Dr. Jim D. Jones rolled 9 using 2d6+4. Mechanic/INT.

”Yeah, they must have been attacked by something from the inside.. not another ship, but something else,” Hayden said to Jim as they moved through the compartment.  Hayden readied himself behind the shield and began moving toward the front of the ship.

In reply to Hayden Marks (msg #29):

OOC: OK, is it Doc's intention to move through the workshop, port vehicle bay, port labs, to the port cargo airlock?

OOC2: Hayden, not clear, are you moving forward on the upper level or following Jim on the lower level?

OOC: Doc is checking the room 22 hatch into the passenger section first...  if its closed.  Otherwise the one leading to port side #16 cargo airlock.  In other words, the only entrance I see leading from the port side cargo area - the one with the damaged cargo bar.

Ultimately he's more interested in the bridge area, but he is concerned that the backstory they have been following does not seem supported by the evidence...

Presume Hayden was going up ... Doc isn't overly concerned about meeting armed enemies (maybe a bad idea, but certainly IC) ;)

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #31):

OOC: There is a typo on the lower deck legend for FRPS Suzain.  #16 is the port vehicle bay.  #14 is the cargo bay, where the damaged cargo mounting was seen. To investigate the port cargo bay would require going through the workshop, vehicle bay, port passageway outside mission storage, and the port labs.  Or, one could EVA.

The iris valve to the workshop is indeed closed.

OOC: I'm moving foward on the upper level.

"Hmm, no sign of forced entry leading from the cargo bay with the exterior damage," Jim stated over the comm as he headed back to Engineering, his probe trailing.

"The nature of the 'attack', if indeed there was one, is indeed seeming rather peculiar," he added in response to Hayden's statement.

Doc returned to his position in the party as they advanced into the upper decks following Hayden's lead.

OOC: Doc is only interested in the potential point of entry coming from the part of the ship that exhibited external damage and if it appeared to have been forced or tampered with - a more thorough investigation would take lower priority to locating survivors...

Dani continues to cover Hayden and the hatch as he opens iris valve to Upper Engineering.  She doesn't match his physical orientation, admittedly disconcerted by the lack of 'up' from her inner ear.  She points her laser rifle straight up towards circular opening.  She has very little experience or training in microgravity, though the others know that her body control is excellent.  It is likely that physical regimen that has helped her keep it together this far.  The others can hear an deep, measured exhalation before her quiet homily is broadcast over the common crew line, "Once more into the breach, dear friends..."

She does glance once in the direction of the doctor and his foray towards the passenger lounge, a slight frown plays on her lips even though it is partially hidden by the visor of the vacc suit.  But, Danica makes not move in that direction at all, instead she continues upwards on the ladder to Upper Engineering; she continues to point her longarm at the opening, albeit with only one hand as she works her way up the ladder.

In reply to Danica Moreau (msg #35):

As you move forward through upper engineering, you notice one small detail: a frozen cylinder of ice protruding up from a metal mug near the forward workstation.  Apparently, someone left a cup of coffee here before the ship lost power.

Hayden forces the hatch into the crew living area (#9 and #10).  There is considerably more "snow" here as frozen crystals swirl about in the mustering area.  Something must have disturbed this area recently.  A crease in the bulkhead adjacent to the dorsal turret's ammo storage area (#1), gives an indication that it was Thera's handiwork that dislodged the frozen atmosphere crystals here.  You don't see any obvious breaches in the hull, though, so perhaps the effects of Thera's shot are limited to the turret itself.

The galley and lounge area is neat and clean, showing no signs of disorder or sudden interruption.

The hatch to the dorsal airlock and door to ship's locker are closed.  Unlike the other doors you've encountered, the door to the ship's locker is locked.

Interior doors lead to the three crew staterooms in this area and a hatch leads forward.

"How do we look on radiation Jim?" Hayden asked.  He thought the doctor had brought along a rad-counter.

"Looks like they either went into trouble expecting it, or had time to prepare when it showed up.  Doesn't look like they were surprised.  Perhaps whey they say that they were attacked, It's got to mean they personally… not the ship." Marks said, looking around the galley.

”But what can attack a person and not the ship?” Hayden asked out loud, as he moved into position to enter the crew stateroom area.  On the ground; lots of things.  In space… well that's a more difficult proposition.

With the shield in front, he opened the hatch and continued to press forward, slowly, to the bridge.

Jim double checked his suit's personal rad indicator, then smirked, "Yeah, radiation still exists."

He appreciated Hayden keeping him a little distracted.

"Maybe they were compelled to let assailants on without a fight. But, to be here without any fuel would have required some, er, extreme .. persuasion .. or a set of highly unusual calamities.  Or madness from more than one of the crew .."

Jack was glad to see Doc keep his little side trip short and even more glad he had kept his mouth shut when the man went off in the opposite, as it were, direction. Let it go, Keveloh, he chanted internally. He kept near to Doc and kept his rifle ready and breathed a little sigh of relief when Doc rejoined the group.

Jack kept a watch on the hatch into the passenger section until he had passed through the iris into Upper Engineering. As they passed through the galley area he harrumphed in agreement with Doc's mention of madness in the crew.

"It's very likely indeed someone could have cracked under pressure," Jack murmured, watching the doors to the crew staterooms as they passed. "These long missions can be hell on the psyche," he continued, remembering his days on Pioneer. "Maybe some one lost it, went homicidal or some such."

He tried to keep his voice neutral but it was a thing they all had to face at one point or another. Anyone serving on a vessel in deep space ran the risk of any number of mental breakdowns, but especially in the Pathfinder service... He fell back into line, rifle trained back into swirling ice crystals of the crew lounge area as Hayden kept the group moving forward.

Her visor bobs up and down slightly, as she visually responds to Jack and Hayden's musings.  It seems to her that the less overt violence they see, the more insidious the circumstance become.  "The crew of the Suzain obviously felt compelled to close up shop, whereever they had landed, and return post haste." she ventures then pauses for a moment for a breath before adding, "Ignoring standard jump procedures and while running low on fuel ..."

"I think," Dani chimes in over the common channel, "that Doc is going to need to be ready to deal with either unwilling or delusional patients or highly virulent pathogens."  She lets out a heavy sigh; and though the barrel of her laser rifle doesn't waver.  Also, Danica doesn't cut the mike as she blows an errant strand of hair from her face.  "Or both" she adds quietly as she continues following Hayden down the the main hall.

"I got plenty sedatives to administer, but if this is a result of craziness, then you feel free to sedate them anyway possible..."

Jim pinched some ice crystals in his hand, looking at them reflectively.  That distress call didn't make no kind of sense, especially with frozen atmo in abundance and all sorts of ways to thaw it, even sans power plant fuel.

"I'm a doctor - not a shrink and not no bouncer, either ^[damnit!]."

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #41):

There is more swirling "snow" in the forward crew passageway, probably also from the impact to the dorsal turret.  The lift is on this level.  The doors to sickbay, the admin office, and staterooms in this area are closed.  The hatch leading forward to the bridge is also closed.

As your lights play forward on the hatch leading to the bridge area, you notice it may have been opened since the ship lost power.  Looking more closely, you see traces of footsteps in the frozen crystals.  They lead to the forward, port stateroom in this area and return to the hatch.

Hayden motions to the port stateroom, then moves foward toward it.  He tries to open the door, his gloved hand quick peeking out from behind the shield to gain entry to the stateroom.

Upon seeing the disturbances outside the bridge hatch, Jim remarks, "Hmmm... unless I missed something, doesn't look like anyone would have made it down to the lower level since the atmo froze."  Looking at his comrades and the hatchway they had just come through, he adds, "I mean, we would have at least seen evidence on the hatches, right?  And why close them after?"

"So that beggars a question - as our crier for help stated she was using fuel cells from the air raft and already in a suit."

While Hayden tried the door of the port stateroom, Jim approached the bridge hatch.  "Maybe we should have checked the air raft bay ..," Jim kept on as he looked down at his medikit [No, that wouldn't be smart...], then back at the hatch. "Guess we should try knocking - someone may still have atmo in there."

With that he tried to kick the hatch with his magnetic boot.  Which didn't work out so well for the Doc in the low G...

One foot on the deck, one high up on the hatch, clinging to his medikit, his body mostly horizontal, "Damnit! .. Someone give me a hand here!"

OOC: I'm reading the Ref's post as we are outside the forward-most, port-side stateroom labeled 5, rather than outside room 3 which is adjacent to the bridge. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Also assuming the corridor is really only wide enough for one person in a vacc suit so Jack is stuck at the back of the line.

Jack faded to the starboard side of the passage, as high up the wall as he could quickly get, hanging back about 5 meters from the door Hayden is about to open (just forward of the door to 7, Admin Office). He readies his rifle for a shot into the port forward stateroom, hopefully high enough to fire over the top of Hayden and his shield if need be. As Doc gets himself tangled up at the forward hatch, he murmurs, "Dani, I've got us covered if you'd like to help Doc..."

With Jack moving into position to cover Hayden, Dani begins to slide towards Doc.  At first, she merely moves to cover him.  But when it becomes apparent that he is stuck, she tilts her head slightly and startes to shuffle towards the iris valve.  She raps on the door once, since that was his original intention, knowing full well that it is likely there is little atmosphere likely on the other side to carry the pressure wave, at least that was according to the IR signature in the bridge and the fact that the powerplant and thus, life support systems had been (presumably) offline for the better part of a week, at least.

Then with the laser rifle held in her right hand, Danica moves to held Doc release the magnetic grapple on the foot that is caught on the face of the iris valve.  "Calm down, Doc." she suggests, trying to keep her voice even, "Stop fighting with yourself."  Her fingers run over the sides of the  boot to look for where the manual release for the grapple may be.  She intends to merely deactivate the grapple for a moment to allow the doctor to regain his balance.

OOC: Oops, I really got turned around there - thanks for the saves!  I was literally thinking of a whole different deckplan, though I recall looking at the Suzain's right before posting (<sigh> I will claim space dementia!).

"Shit, er thanks."  With Dani's help, Jim was able to right himself, though awkwardly in the confined space.

As he gets his bearings, he realizes his further mistake, "Oh, that's not the Bridge hatch, is it?"

Dani merely nods to Doc as he thanks her.  Then she edges back towards the door that Hayden and Jack are covering.  She watches from the opposite side of Jack, figuring that a crossfire, if necessary, would be a good thing.

A simple, "Not yet." accompanies a short shake of her visor and helmet when he asks about the bridge.  Danica adds quickly, addressing his semi-rhetorical questions though she does not move her gaze from the door, "We'll be at the bridge soon enough."

In reply to Danica Moreau (msg #48):

OOC: To reply to a player's question about the boots, let's say the boots are smart enough to interpret the flexing of a given shin or calf muscle as a signal to detach, to minimize the amount of thought/control the wearer needs to expend on it.  A manual release is also reasonable.  Does that work for everyone?

Danica's knock on the hatch leading to the nose elicits neither sound nor response.

Hayden eases open the door to the stateroom.  Your lights illuminate the small space enough to easily determine there is no one in it, unless they are crammed in one of the wardrobe lockers on the bulkhead.

Despite the covering of frozen crystals, you can tell the stateroom is neat and clean.  There are no holos or pictures on the bulkheads, no towel or grooming articles near the sink, no sheets on the bunk, or any other personal effects except the following.  The only indication that it was occupied for this journey are three pieces of luggage strapped to the bunk.  A note has been pinned to the largest piece of luggage.  It simply says, Guy and Laurie Eubanks, followed by an address on Espiaux.

A single line of bootprints in the atmospheric frost leads from the door to the luggage and back to the door.

"No one in here.. just some luggage," Hayden says, repeating the names he saw on the tags for posterity.

"Let's try the bridge," he says, turning from the stateroom and heading forward again.

Jack falls in at the back of the line again, immediately behind Doc. "Hayden, just a moment please." Jack slung his rifle and hunkered down near Doc's feet.

"Doc, if you flex the triceps surae¹ in a circular motion," Jack said, checking the suit's calf areas for damage or failure, "the boots will release. Also," he went on, quickly examining the ankle and heel areas, "there is a manual release at the talocrural joint."² Jack slapped the release and checked that it had indeed disengaged, then re-engaged it.

He readies his rifle, taking up his rear guard position. "My apologies, Doctor. I should have explained a few things on the way here." To Hayden, "We're set."



OOC:
1 - Calf muscles
2 - ankle
Jack has Medic-1 so I figure he can get away with that ;)

Dani nods curtly to Hayden, her helmet and visor moving up and down slightly, as she acknowledges him, "Right."

She pushes the barrel of her laser rifle upwards to allow the shuffle of personnel by her to the forward iris valve and then resumes her ready position behind Hayden as he starts to work on opening it.  She only cast a short, momentary glance to ensure that nothing is coming up behind them, while Jack is occupied with Doc's suit for a brief time.

Danica rolls her shoulders slightly to relieve a bit of tension that has built up and then nods again to Hayden.  "Ready, when you are." she acknowledges.

"Thanks.  No apologies necessary, afraid my suited experience has exclusively been in gravity wells .. quite ingenious, actually," Jim replied while looking down and experimenting.

Looking up, he remembered what they were about, "Oh yeah, uh, set."

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #53):

Hayden opens the hatch to the nose of the ship and you survey the short passage leading to the bridge.  The doors to the pilot's stateroom and sensor equipment room appear undisturbed, as does the hatch to the bridge itself.  Hoever, the iris valve in the deck leading down to Suzain's launch looks like it may have been opened since the ship lost power.  One set of bootprints leads from it to the hatch you have just opened.

"Let's check the bridge first, then the launch.  I don't want to crank open a hole in the floor then have to crank it closed it if we need to perform rescue work on the bridge." Hayden said, moving to the bridge hatch to open it.

"Ah, yes .. doesn't look like anyone's been in or out.  So perhaps now would be a good time to knock first?," Jim queries sheepishly, while agreeing with addressing the bridge hatch first.

"Unfortunately, with no heat readings, the footprints, and the luggage tags, we can at least suspect to find the Astrogator has succumbed below," he sadly adds, mostly for the benefit of those monitoring.

OOC: @ref, presume we would have noticed if the 'footsteps' were not suited ones.

Jack hung back a bit, near the open door to the Eubanks' stateroom, keeping an eye down the crew corridor while Hayden opened the bridge hatch.

To Doc's comment he murmurs "I would be glad to find anyone from the crew at all, at this point..."
This message was last edited by the player at 17:26, Sat 28 Jan 2012.

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #57):

Hayden forces open the hatch to the bridge.  It probably hasn't been opened since the atmosphere froze out.

The bridge, like the rest of the ship, is silent and dark.  A thin blanket of frozen air covers all surfaces in here, giving the bridge an eery, winter feel.  You don't see any signs of struggle or alarm.  In fact, headsets for the bridge consoles are neatly stowed in their pockets under the consoles, notebooks and pocket reference materials neatly put away in mesh bags on the side of the workstation chairs, restraints buckled and their loose ends stowed, and cabinets shut.

You don't see any notes or messages to indicate what happened to the ship or the crew.

"This is getting creepy," Hayden said, looking around the bridge.  After a brief pause, he moved back through the hatch and positioned the iris valve opener to open the valve to the launch.  With a sigh, he started to crank and open the valve in the floor.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:33, Sat 28 Jan 2012.

Dani nods and then quietly concurs with Jack, "Well, there should be at least three somewhere..."  and then with Hayden, "But it is very creepy."  But she knows that won't stop her from continuing - even if she fears more and more that the mission is becoming strictly a salvage and post-mortem (in more ways than one) on the Suzain and her crew.

She pauses at the pilot's station for a moment, but does not disturb anything.  And then follows Hayden back out to take a look in the Launch.  The three crewmen from the transmission must be there...

In reply to Danica Moreau (msg #60):

Hayden cranks open the iris valves leading to Suzain's launch and the sight that greets you is considerably different than the other areas of the ship you've seen so far.

The first thing to catch your eye is the vacc suited figure sitting with its back to the starboard bulkhead.  It is not moving and is covered with a thin layer of frozen atmo.  It is not armed, but is holding something in its right glove.

Next to the single figure are three vacc suit life support canisters and a similar number of power cells.  There are also numerous empty food and water tubes (designed to be be consumed while in a vacc suit) around the figure.

There also appear to be dozens of empty food containers in a transparent plastic bag on one of the launch's acceleration couches.

In the aft portion of the launch are several bulky objects you recognize as fuel cells for an air/raft or similar vehicle.  The fuel cells look to be jury-rigged into some part of the launch's electrical system.

The launch itself is obviously powered down and the atmosphere has frozen out, indicating it has been without power for at least a week or more.

Jack could tell immediately something had changed when the hatch to the launch was opened. He moved to join the others at the iris opening into the small craft.

Hayden floated down into the launch.  He used his cold light lantern to assess the figure in the vacc suit - he didn't have much hope that he or she would be alive.  Marks also examined what the figure might be holding in it's right glove.

In reply to Hayden Marks (msg #63):

The figure in the vacc suit is dead.  Absent a source of heat, the fluids in its body have frozen, bloating and distorting its features.  It is probably best any next of kin are spared seeing the condition of the body as it is now.  Before she froze to death, though, the occupant of the vacc suit was likely female, though difficult to positively identify.  Based on your recollection of the holos in the crew manifest, this may be the body of Claudette Eubanks, Suzain's astrogator.

She is holding a small hand computer in her right glove.  The battery is drained on the hand computer, but you can recharge it to full charge from the power cell on your vacc suit in a matter of minutes.

Unlike the ship, the life support system in the launch is fairly rudimentary.  The craft was neither designed for long-range missions nor prolonged habitation.  Therefore, it has no potable water unit.  Judging from the number of empty ordinary water bottles you can see in the launch, the figure in the vacc suit was living in the launch for several days, perhaps a week or more, before donning the vacc suit.  She then looks to have lived in the vacc suit for a few days more, expending one power cell and life support canister after another, watching the launch around her grow colder and colder and the atmo freeze out, until she ran out of power cells herself and subsequently froze to death, alone in the darkened confines of the launch.

Hayden considered the dead Pathfinder for a few moments.  He tried not to think about the stoicism it would take to meet death in this way, or the madness it might inflict, but to little avail.  Taking a knee with a deep sigh, he carefully and respectfully removed the hand comp before passing the unit back to Jack.  One of the teams former Pathfinders would find the unit more useful than he would.  Taking in a deep breath, he stood up, resolved to continue the search – hoping to find someone they might help.  Without a word he grabbed the iris valve opener and began working to open the aft Launch valve.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:50, Tue 31 Jan 2012.

As she followed Hayden down into the Launch, Dani's brow furrowed even though she knew that no one could see it through her visor in the dimly lit gloom.  She remained quiet and continued to cover Hayden, scanning the area as necessary, as he investigated the single visible body.

As Jack made his way down into the launch, Danica gestured to him pointing him then her eyes, then towards the forward part of the launch.  It didn't make sense to her for Jack to wait and cover her and Hayden at this point.  "Only one body here." she noted quietly into her comm, "the original transmission seemed to indicate at least three present ..."

She added as an afterthought, "It's not looking good..."  Of course, whether she meant the situation at large or the status of the one particular body that had been found was, of course, not known.

Taking in the conditions, JIm took Hayden's silence to indicate no joy regarding the occupant of the suit.  However, he bent to observe for himself.

"Probably female .. expired some time.  Was that a hand comp?"

Jack took the hand comp from Hayden, his laser rifle floating in the frozen void of the launch as he patched the comp into his suit for recharging. He stood quietly near the corpse for a moment then murmured an old Pathfinder saying, "The doors of the sky are thrown open for you..."¹

Catching Dani's gesture as he gripped his rifle, Jack grunted in agreement with her statement, vague as it was. He turned to examine the pilot console. "Hayden, at this point perhaps we should split up. I can check the upper staterooms while you finish the lower deck?"



OOC: 1 - meant to be akin to 'they've gone to heaven' or something similar

"Sounds good," Hayden said in response to Jack.

Jack and Jim went up on deck to check for some survivors.

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #68):

Hayden gets to work cranking open the launch's aft iris valve and its twin in Suzain's forward bulkhead.  Suzain's lower deck lounge is considerably more spartan than Gypsy Moth's.  However, it shows no signs of disorder.  The space shows no signs that anyone has been through it since the atmosphere froze out.

The various doors, hatches, and iris valves leading to the probe drone bay, forward airlock, fresher, laundry nook, starboard vehicle bay, galley, and lower deck stateroom passage are closed.

The launch's flight log indicates its last flight was on day 318/5741.

The hand comp achieves a partial charge fairly quickly.  It soon becomes apparent that Claudette Eubanks was a an avid diarist but indifferent archivist.  There is at least one entry for every day from Day 250/5741 until Day 006/5742, three days ago.  Each entry is labelled with the date and time it was recorded, but no further information indicating topic, importance, or such.

"Doctor, let's clear the upper deck. I expect the rest of the crew will be... expired... in the low berths if you'd rather go there but there's safety in numbers, no? Besides, the sooner we get through this coffin the sooner we can get her turned back towards Box 2."

Jack pulled himself quickly up the ladder into the bridge area, waiting for Doc to join him. His emotions were getting the better of him and he was feeling a little edgy.

What happened to you poor souls? Whatever it was, it wasn't pretty. And it wasn't apparent. That's the bitch of it, Jack, isn't it? Get it together.

He related the extent of C. Eubanks' comp entries to his crew, noting there might be more there to examine later, once their investigation of Suzain allowed for it. He examined the bridge proper while he waited for Doc to join him.


Jack was sad 'cause things were bad -
who were the connivers?

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #71):

Thera had been getting edgier too, watching the progress on her monitor, whilst keeping a weather eye on the outside of the ship and the possibility of a bogey pacing the Suzain somewhere out there in the black.

She couldn't hold her tongue any longer, and she commed the crew.

"Guys, if you think we're no longer in a situation where every second counts, wouldn't it be an idea to interrogate that handcomp and see if you can learn what attacked the ship by reading about it rather than stumbling into it? At least read the first and last entries and see if you can get some idea of what's happened."

OOC: There are low berths?

"Uhmm... I'm all for speeding this up, but how are me and Jack gonna open the hatches?"

"We should continue the search for others before writing everyone off, and I am still curious about that anomalous heat signature we picked up, but why are we continuing to handicap ourselves?"

"From what we've seen there is no direct attack damage to ship systems - hell, there's still an atmo.  Why don't we see about getting juice to her so we can open things easily, not to mention have lights, grav, feeds and access to her records?"

Danica chimed in after both Thera and Doc.  "Yeah." she noted rather dejectedly.  "It's looking more and more like a post-mortem and salvage." she stated flatly, only to follow it with a rather plaintive sigh.  "Let's keep the Gypsy Moth at safe distance for the moment - but we will likely need to rig some sort of fuel transfer between the Moth and the Suzain.  So, T, get Nino working on that."  She rolled her shoulders for a moment to relieve some buliding tension.  Likely she would have rubbed her temples or her eyes if they had not been fully covered by her vacc suit's hood, visor and helmet.

"I agree with T, we'll want to know if Ms. Eubanks' diary entries have anything obvious in them denoting what we might be up against." Dani noted flatly, "Jack, could you check the first entry, the last couple, and anything around the Day 318 or so ..."  Her laser rifle was back at the ready, as she trailed Hayden through the lower level areas.  "Hayden and I will continue our sweep." the raven-haired ex-FRA officer continued, "You and the good doctor can wait in Engineering.  We can't get any of the Suzain's systems started until we get some fuel on-board, but I don't want the Moth exposed to anything obviously avoidable given the time constraints."

OOC:  Nope.  Cultural prejudice against low berths has kept them from being installed on any FRE ship, even exploration ships like this one where they would make a lot of sense.

In response to Danica's direction regarding fueling, Nino's harsh voice cuts in on the comms circuit, "Roger, First.  We've got about fifty meters of hose here we can use, but we'll need to bring the Moth in close and it'll take a couple of solid EVA hands to rig everything up."

OOC: Setting up a fuel transfer in space will take one, preferably two, people in vacc suits about 10-60 minutes, depending on their skill and experience.  Relevant skills are: pilot (for the approach), vacc, zero-G, and Engineering (Powerplant) OR Mechanical.  Aside from bumping on approach, probably worst thing that can go wrong is someone falling off the ship, but it would take a major screw-up for that and is pretty easily mitigated with lines and/or thruster pistols.  More likely complications are: excess time to set up or a leaky seal.

OOC2: The fuel transfer itself will probably take another hour or so, depending on the amount transferred.  Once Suzain has a modicum of fuel onboard, coaxing her powerplant back to life, assuming the only thing wrong with it is fuel starvation, should take a couple hours.  Then you could progress to life support, maybe a half-hour or so to restore ventilation, but warming Suzain up to the point the atmosphere sublimates, so there's something to push through the ventilation system, will take several more hours.  Had the crew of Suzain depressurized the ship before it lost power, like one typically does when entering combat, then restoring the atmosphere would be quite a bit easier.

In reply to Nino Stern (msg #75):

Thera listened carefully to the exchange.

"What bothers me is we still don't know what attacked the ship and how - for all we know it could have been a biological or chemical attack and the frozen atmo is the only thing holding it in check. A dead ship is probably a safe ship. My vote would be against shaking the hornets' nest until we know what we're up against. Nino, do we have the kit to rig up a direct power feed rather than a fuel transfer? just enough to get the Suzain's computers running so we can access the logs?

OOC: Thera would know more about this than me - I'm thinking either a cable linked across, or a portable generator, or a link from our launch to the Suzain's power grid??

"As far as I can see, there should be no need to fuel the Suzain at all, we could fuel her launch and recover the crew in that - it's not like we need to jump. If it's a matter of salvage, stake our claim and come back later, properly equipped for salvage rather than a last minute emergency rescue. Suzain's adrift on Newton's First. We know exactly where she's gonna be a thousand years from now - we're not going to lose track of her."

"I'm of the same mind," Hayden said.  "And biological viruses are not the only kind of viruses," he added, looking over at the handcomp now plugged in to Jack's suit.

"We shouldn't get ahead of ourselves until we know what happended here.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:51, Thu 02 Feb 2012.

"Uh guys, we have still not ruled out the possibility of any survivors holed up somewhere - nor addressed that anomalous heat reading," Jim announced.

"I am most certainly not recommending re-instating atmo, refueling the ship, nor activating all the systems - especially before we have discovered the source of that heat reading, " he added in exasperation.

In response to Thera he continued, somewhat huffily, "I also did not make any foolish recommendation that we stop wearing suits or ignore the anti-contamination protocols we setup."  Adding for Hayden's sake, "Including not interfacing comps."

"But, given our current rate of progress - why don't we run a power feed so we can access data systems, get some light and open doors the proper way.  We've a lot of ship left un-searched at the moment."

Jack stopped what he was doing as the debate about their next actions started to wiggle in through his memories of Pioneer and the crew members of this ship he once knew. He felt stupid mentioning low berths when none were here and he could tell that it was seeping into his voice as he spoke.

"I have to agree that powering up some support systems would make this job a hell of a lot easier," he said. "Perhaps we can run a line from Gypsy 2 and draw just enough to engage the workstations, doors and safety lighting."

At Dani's prompt, Jack began reading the last few entries of the Eubanks diaries, making sure that any sort of networking protocols were disabled before he opened the files on the comp.

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #79):

OOC: All ships and small craft have the ability to receive power from outside sources.  It is not uncommon in large ports to shut-down the ship's powerplant and use cheaper port provided power.  Ships and small craft also have emergency or casualty fittings for power that can be set up to receive or provide power, but setting those up requires some amount of time, maybe 30 minutes to an hour.

Gypsy Moth could easily provide enough juice to power everything on Suzain, but would have to move in close.

Either launch could only provide a limited amount of power.  Computers probably, life support no, gravity no, doors and iris valves yes - but there is not separate circuit for those so someone would have to carefully manage providing power to individual sections of the ship as the search party moves through.  The powerplant on the launch just isn't very big compared to the ship itself.

Battery backups for computers, the transponder beacon, or comms on Gypsy Moth could be cannibalized and installed on Suzain.

"Thank you, Chief." Danica noted over the common channel to Nino.  "We aren't ready for it quite yet.  You might also want to be ready with a power umbilical - to see if we can't start warming systems up while refueling, if and when it comes to that."

As she continued to follow Hayden through the lower deck of the Suzain, Dani noted matter-of-factly over the crew channel to Thera.  "T, if we don't turn this bird around, there won't be any salvage - claim or not.  It took us five days at maximum to get to her and match speed.  If we let her go any further out-system, I don't think that anyone including us will be able to get back to her easily.  They would have to do a stutter jump or some such crazy short-range j-space transit to catch up to her ..."  She continued to move forward following her friend with the barrier shield.  But it was rather painful; her legs were starting to feel the exertion of constant push-pull motion to catch and release the magnetic grapples.

Jim checks out the hull-side couch in the lounge area, even searching under the cushions and using his drone's X-Ray feature to scan it.

"Hmm .. we still haven't found the source of that port [forward] heat reading .. if Hayden will open the aft hatch (rear lounge), Jack and I could see about getting some power from Gypsy's launch while you two go check out the bridge more thoroughly [esp port ammo locker] and get the computer back online..."

OOC: I count ~20 hatches left to open - do they all require Hayden?

Jack looks up from the hand-comp, scanning about for a manual hatch opener. He leaves the bridge and floats back into the launch, searching the airlock area and the small craft itself for a hatch opener as well.

"Probably wouldn't take us long to run a line from Gypsy 2 and open all the doors. Then we could shunt it to computer systems... or at least a bridge workstation. At that point we should know if we can bring the Moth in and start to turn this thing back in-system."

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #83):

OOC: I thought I had posted this already, but I guess not.  Sorry all.  Internal doors and hatches do not require any type of tools to open, just a little muscle.  The iris valves can be cranked open in a few minutes with an opener, or can be forced open.  Forcing an iris valve open can damage it, though.

Suzain's launch has an iris valve opener in it.  The airlocks and engineering spaces may also have iris valve openers in them somewhere.

As stated by the players elsewhere, Hayden cranks open the iris valve from the passenger lounge.  He and Danica proceed into the lower deck passageway towards lower engineering.  Hayden begins opening the iris valve to the workshop.

Hayden and Danica, once Hayden gets the iris valve to the workshop open a few centimeters, you can see that the workshop is in a similar state to the rest of the ship.  No signs of disorder or violence, no people, cold and dark.

OOC:  I'm not clear what Jack and Doc are going to do now: return to Gypsy Moth's launch and start trying to rig power to Suzain's electrical bus?  Explore the upper deck? Stay with Hayden and Danica?

Doc heads to the launch, "Ok, I'm gonna get some power hooked up from the Gypsy 2, I could probably use a hand Jack." (pun)

OOC: Jim has electronics, but no Zero-G (which actually might be more applicable considering the hookup sounds like just plugging in the right connectors).  After (assumption)  he'll search the upper deck port forward starting with that turret and ammo storage...

"Nothing in the workshop," Hayden said over comms.  ”I’m gonna invent a motorized one of these things and make a million credits,” Hayden said as he knelt down at the next valve and began cranking away to open it.

Danica continues to tail Hayden, covering him as he works.  As she inspects the workshop through the partial open hatch, it is primarily down the sights of her laser rifle as she sweeps the area with the longarm.

"Millions." she agree amiably, if distantly with her old friend and life-long merchant.  Apparently, you take the merchant out of the market, but can't take the market out of the merchant.

With the ordered and pristine workshop behind them, Danica brainstorms aloud once more, "I don't get it.  So, who tidies up for a coming apocalypse?  People that are resigned or happy about their Fate?"  Even though the rest of the crew can't see it, they can hear the raised eyebrow, "Part of being a trained Pathfinder?"
This message was last edited by the player at 19:55, Sun 05 Feb 2012.

"Yeah, one hell of a neat scout ship...," Jim mutters, "and I don't get they still have atmo. I mean they got O2 to burn and even water vapor - why go out without using it."

Of course, Jim has a hard time comprehending that others may lack his knowledge.

"Hey Jack, what's that damn diary say?"

OOC: I got it - its the G-32 Paxilon Hydroclorate! :)

OOC: Edited to fit with Ref's diary post below

When Jack found the video entry in the Eubanks diary, he took a risk and patched the hand comp into his vacc suit feed so everyone could see and hear the last entry.

When Eubanks finished her plea, Jack gave up scrolling through the diary, forcing himself back to the tasks at hand. He locked his rifle into its magnetic sling and slipped the Eubanks hand comp into the large thigh pocket of his vacc suit, unplugging it and shutting it down. Dani's question came across as he grabbed the valve opener from the launch and headed toward Gypsy 2 with Doc.

"Hardly. A trained Pathfinder would have put the ship on a collision course with Box 2... if that was at all possible."

Jack moved towards the launch, valve opener in hand, making sure Doc was able to keep up with him.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:08, Fri 10 Feb 2012.

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #89):

Jacques quickly scans Claudette Eubanks holo journal for the last week.

It becomes apparent that Suzain used the bulk of her powerplant fuel to power a second jump-2 right after having made one from system 0821 to deep space.  A risky move due to the variability in jump duration.  If the first jump had been even a little longer than normal, Suzain would have been trapped in deep space.*


As it was, Eubanks alludes to Suzain's powerplant going dead due to fuel exhaustion less than two hours after Suzain initiated jump from deep space towards Espiaux.  That was also apparently when Eubanks moved into the launch.  Eubanks living in the launch until it ran out of fuel then shifting into a vacc suit appears to have been deliberate and premeditated.

She does make a reference to "the others" at one point, saying that she hopes they are still okay.

Her entries between Suzain's emergence from jump space and her death are mostly of a personal nature.  Eubanks' last journal entry show her as an attractive woman in her mid-to-late twenties, visibly cold, in a vacc suit.  The entry simply says, "My last power cell for the suit is about gone.  I never thought it would actually end like this.  Asher and the Doctor are probably going to die as well.  (chokes back tears)  If their families ever hear this... I promise I tried my best to save them.  Oh God, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." (transmission ends)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the workshop, Hayden inserts the iris valve tool into the fitting on the iris valve leading to the port vehicle bay.  It may be his imagination, but there doesn't seem to be as much "frost" on this bulkhead.  The first part of a turn opens the iris valve a couple millimeters and Hayden and Danica are stunned to see a weak ingress of gas.

From the lack of force of the ingress, you estimate the pressure in the port vehicle bay to be less than a couple tenth of a bar.  As the atmosphere expands and cools upon entering the workshop, it nearly immediately freezes out, leaving fat orange-brown crystals floating through the workshop.

"What the..." escapes Dani's lips and slips out over the common crew channel.  She catches herself mid-sentence and then her left hand moves to tap Hayden's shoulder to try and stop him from continuing to open the iris valve.  She then motions counter-clockwise for him to close things back up - even though she is sure that he is probably already ahead of her.

"We've got something in the port vehicle bay." she notes dutifully, even though with the video feeds, Danica is pretty sure that the others can see most of what she can.  Still, grainy video might not allow them the resolution necessary.  Not that she knows entirely what she and Hayden are seeing.

In reply to Danica Moreau (msg #91):

Thera is monitoring the audio and video feeds closely.
"Good call on closing up again, Dani," she says.
"I've been thinking, if several crew members were alive after 'whatever-it-was' happened, why weren't they together? Nobody wants to die alone. If they could get together, they would. So something must have kept them apart. There must be, or have been, some danger on board that prevented them from coming together. And Eubanks must have believed it was still effective, and capable of harming someone in a vacc-suit, right up until the moment she died, otherwise she would have gone looking for the others. Everything points to some hazard that a person in a vacc-suit - like you guys - shouldn't tackle.
"I think search and rescue should be abandoned in favour of hazard identification and containment - it's standard practice.
"Another thing puzzles me, too; why wasn't Eubanks in communication with the others via helmet feeds like we are? [OOC: I assume it would puzzle Thera, it puzzles her player.]
"What just came out of that doorway? Any way you can get a sample and run checks on it?"

As they made way to the launch, Doc tuned into what Jack was viewing, remarking at the end, "Well, appears our mayday transmitter was Ms. Eubanks and sounds like the other two souls on board were the pilot and the medic." [Aaron Asher and Laura Vipperman]

"Didn't know any of those folks .. sounds like they lost all their engineering talent, though she could have been referring to one of the mission specialists, I suppose.." he mumbles mostly to himself before adding in a louder voice, "You guys remember hearing about the FRS Framea back in '40?  Navy was all hush-hush and close lipped about it.  Heard they might be pulling some unauthorized exploration rimward - even named the subsector 'India' or some fool thing.."

"Ah here..," Jim projected a star map [visibile from his feed].


[Note: Ignore the partial UWPs, they are my own 'speculation' - ref provided blue and GG symbols only]

As Hayden cracked the port vehicle bay hatch and Dani made her announcement, Doc returned his attention to their vid feeds.  "Partial pressure?," Jim asks, then catches the dark [orange-brown] crystals refracting in their suit lights, "Whoa - is that blood?"

"Snatch some and melt it," he requests of either of them. [suit's heat exchangers?]

Hearing Thera's speculation, Doc replies, "Well, it sounds to me like maybe Ms. Eubanks was trying to give the other two more of a chance .. and maybe the others didn't have suits .. and that she blames herself for something ...As to 'standard practice' - you've been watching too many holo-flicks, Thera - we didn't come all this way to 'abandon' anything," Jim adds gruffly knowing Thera has no formal Pathfinder training.  Though he doesn't totally discount everything she said, continuing, "We need to get eyes past that hatch.  Lets just seal the workshop hatch so any partial pressure can be retained and the rest of the ship doesn't get exposed."

Jim acts to go back to Hayden and Dani, before pausing and looking back at Jack and his weapon - realizing that everyone but him seems more focused on personal safety and fear of the unknown than rescue.  And maybe that's wise at this point - those dark ice crystals in Dani's feed might not be a good sign.

"How about we rig power to open the iris, and send my probe in?"

---

OOC: Hope you don't mind the image Ref.

References:
From my PC thread: unofficial India Subsector (to rimward, straight down from Espiaux subsector) and rumor about FRS Framea and Navy secret missions
From Halowon Setting Info & Background: 5740-074 An unusually powerful storm over a gas giant damages FRS Framea.  She limps home and spends three weeks in drydock over Espiaux.  Two starmen are wounded.  Uncharacteristically, the FRN refuses to comment on FRS Framea’s location or nature of her operations at the time of the accident.
From Box 2 (Espiaux) 1200 Day 003/5742: '... Three souls onboard ... I am in suit, have about four days life support left.  Others have a few days more. ...'
From IC: Insystem Espiaux Day 003-008/5742: Several crew were 'doctors'

Seeing the atmo escape, Hayden reversed his effort, cranking the door closed.

"Yeah, I'm not touching that." Hayden remarks on the orange crystals.  After pausing for a second, he wondered off, leaving the valve opener connected, but with the valve resealed.

"Where did we put that tool kit," he mumbles.

On realizing what was happening on the deck below, Jack stopped in his tracks.

"Hayden, I can go for the toolkit or power umbilical and get there faster on my own," he said, turning to Doc. "Doc, you should go back to them immediately and get ready to check out that compartment."

With that, Jack lays down the valve opener, pushes himself off and begins to travel as quickly as he can back towards Gypsy 2, essentially flying down the corridors as safely as he can.

"Hayden, if you can open the iris to lower engineering from your side, I'll be able to meet you there with the toolkit and we'll have a direct route to Gypsy 2 open."

OOC: Pretty sure the toolkit is back in the launch. Jack has Zero-G skill and a decent DEX so should be able to move fairly quickly - but he's not going to risk a suit rupture so discretion is the order of the day here.

OOC: FYI - Jim was on his way to the launch (Moths Gypsy 2) to use his Electronics skill while Hayden & Danica were opening and investigating the workshop, so I presumed he was pretty close or there by the time of the orange crystals.. with or without Jack along with him.  Open to re-locate as necessary - question being are we still pursuing power options?

Opening the port vehicle bay iris would cool/release that area unless the workshop iris is closed (ala airlock) - so either some of us 'trap ourselves' in, or we remotely power and control the bay iris (with drone option).

I presumed at least Electronics and Computers would be needed (Jim has both, but weak on Computer) and that launch batteries and power umbilical would be limited (power and length).  Also not sure if connect up has external attachment requirements (EVA).

@Ref
- what skills are appropriate for powering from launch (Gypsy 2)?
- for remotely opening iris valves?
- reach of power umbilical?
- options for portable power source (batteries from launch)?

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #96):

Hayden rumages around Suzain's workshop briefly before finding what he's looking for.  He carefully examines the borescope and checks its' functioning before kneeling next to the iris valve leading to the port vehicle bay again.  Hayden cranks open the iris valve just enough (and is greeted with another modest ingress of atmosphere) to push the narrow end of the borescope through and turns his attention to the device's small display.  Fortunately, it is simplicity itself to link the borescope to the vacc suit's AV feed so everyone can see the input.

The borescope's camera wasn't made for wide-angle or depth perception work, having been designed to tunnel into machinery and pipes, and the resulting image is a bit "wall-eyed".  Regardless, it isn't hard to pick out the major details.

The first thing that catches you eye is the ATV.  A standard, fusion-powered All-Terrain Vehicle, the ATV is built to be durable, tough, and liveable (for visual reference see the iconic diagram in CT bk3 or imagine a civilian version of a LAV-25 or Mowag Piranha).  Suzain's ATV is floating about 1.5m in the zero-G port vehicle, tilted about thirty degrees to port.  It's nose is on the port bulkhead of the bay and its' back end is close to the aft bulkhead of the bay.  That it isn't properly secured to the deck is an egregious safety breach.

The ATV itself is in less than mint condition.  Each of the ATV's eight solid rubber tires has been ripped to shreds and large chunks of each tire appear to be missing.  It is extremely unlikely the ATV could move far or fast, or possibly not at all, with its' wheels in this state.  The right front corner of the ATV has been crunched in some sort of wreck.  The right side and underside (the two sides towards you) have been scored somehow with shallow, but long scratches.  The communications antennas look to have been sheared off and the windows scored and scratched.

The bay is layered with thin wisps of an atmosphere, thickest closest to the ATV, and thick orange-brown crystals swirl about.

The bulkheads of the vehicle bay also look to have been scratched and scored.  Various bits of debris, bits of metal, pieces of cargo tiedowns, electrical cabling, and such are also floating about.

Something brown-blackish, about 6cm long, 1cm around and semi-hollow, floats by the camera.  It doesn't look like any part of a starship you recognize.

"Damn..." Hayden said, looking at the ATV.  ”Everyone seeing this?” Hayden asked, making sure the video feed was streaming properly.

”What were you saying about sending your drone in Jim?” Marks asked rhetorically.  He sure as hell wasn’t going on there without a bit more information on what these Pathfinders had encountered.

"And what was that?" he added, watching the brown-blackish object float by the borescope lens.  He let one hand drift down to the hilt of his laser pistol, just to make sure it was still there in case he needed it.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:04, Mon 13 Feb 2012.

When Hayden's video feed comes through, Jack stops immediately, watching the borescope images.

As Hayden questions what they're all seeing, Jack pushes himself through the upper deck to rejoin Doc.

"I can't tell through the feed what that thing is... What's the call Hayden? We can keep heading to Gypsy 2 for power or tools or come to you with the drone."

"I'm thinking we send in the drone at this point.  Use the workshop as a buffer airlock like Jim said.  I really don't want to bring the Moth or Gypsy 2 in any closer until we are certain that whatever did that to the ATV is not hanging out in another compartment on this ship, waiting for its next snack."  Not that I want to be any closer either.. Hayden thought, but didn't say. He imagined some Quickdeath* like creature, or perhaps a mythical dragon had attacked the ATV.  He looked over at the ballistic shield, very much glad he had brought it along.  Whatever it was, this was the domain of the Pathfinder, not a retired merchant.

*bonus points if you can name the RPG that is from.

"Damn.  That's disturbing," Doc replies in response to the feed, "Wonder if the exterior damage we saw is consistent with that?"

"We'll work on getting power and control of those iris valves .. take some time, though, if anyone want's to check on the starboard side..."

After a pause, "Damnit!"

OOC: 08:45, Today: Dr. Jim D. Jones rolled 7 using 2d6+3. Eng/INT - Rig power.
Ouch!  Unless that was an easy task, Jim just screwed something up!

[@Hayden - *Star Frontiers, IIRC]

"Oh, yeah." escaped through clenched Dani's teeth, the tension in her voice creeping in slightly, as she responded to Hayden's question about whether everyone was getting the video feed.  She had already been casting furtive glances at the boroscope; and she adjusted her grip on her laser rifle more than once.  Definitely creepy, she acknowledged to herself.  Danica tried to reign in the more destructive impulse she was having.  If it weren't a fact-finding and potential rescue, she would have likely suggested  scrotched earth; but that wasn't the case.  So, destroying the Suzain without more evidence was not allowed.

"Well, I don't think that it was a pathogen that did that to the ATV..." she confirmed.  While that didn't rule out a foreign disease or virus as an added complication, they obviously needed to be careful that whatever attacked the ATV might still be present.  And unless it was a twenty foot tall germ (with claws and teeth), then to her the ATV attacker took immediate priority.

"Do we have any spare batteries, then?" Dani asked as she tapped Hayden on the shoulder, "Either you or I can start jury-rigging power to these doors."

"Or..." she prompted after a pause, "Is it better to clear the rest of the ship, while the others bring up the grid?"  She was ready to follow his lead either way.  But, Dani definitely was not going to have both she and Hayden working on the doors at once - that was just inviting trouble in her opinion.  If something went wrong and the iris to vehicle bay opened prematurely without some sort of cover or back-up, then things would go to hell in a hand-basket far too quickly.  It didn't matter that time was of the essence and the two of them working simultaneously would be much faster.

"For the time being," she noted, "we can leave the boroscope in place with the feed running.  Just in case..."

In reply to Danica Moreau (msg #102):

Jack and Doc are in lower engineering (based on quickest route) when Hayden routes the borescope.  It doesn't take long for the two them, working together to lay out thirty meters of emergency power cable.

With Jack making sure the cable is properly secured and not rubbing on anything between Gypsy 2 and the workshop, Doc attaches the cable to the power grid in the workshop.  All in all, the work takes about fifteen minutes.  However, when Doc flips the breaker, the iris valve remains stubbornly still, open about 5mm (just enough for the borescope).

The scene in the port vehicle bay doesn't change while Doc and Jack are working.

OOC: Do Hayden and Danica want to do anything while Doc and Jack are rigging power or just wait for the others?

Hayden keeps an eye on the borescope while power is being connected.

As Hayden continues to watch the boroscope, Dani shoulders her rifle for a couple of minutes while she hunts down any available small container in the workshop area to try and capture either from the air or by collecting from a surface where it has accumlated any of the small orange brown crystals that came from the vehicle bay.  She is careful to try not to disturb the  stuff with her hands if possible - using any available tool from the workbench to harvest.

Once that is done, she secures the container down to the workbench and resumes her ready stance near Hayden, the borescope, and the iris valve.

In reply to Danica Moreau (msg #105):

OOC: Is it possible to load some rapid search software from Gypsy 2 onto that handcomp (rather than transferring the handcomp data to our machines) so that we can extract info from it rapidly? If so, Thera suggests doing so.

I'm thinking that a pathfinder who is in life-threatening danger from an attacking entity, and having called for rescue, will, over the following week with nothing better to do, describe the danger to her rescuers somewhere. I would have painted a warning on the wall! There's got to be some description of the problem somewhere.

WORKSHOP

"Double Damnit!"

Between the stress of unfamiliarity with Zero-G, and the distraction of his interest in the dark crystals, Jim's success at junctioning into the power grid was less than, ah, stellar.

Seeing Danica collect samples, he's reminded of her competence in other areas.

After flipping the breaker uselessly several times in frustration, he comms, "Uh, Dani, maybe you could check this over .. damn thing must be busted," click, click, click, " .. for the life of me I can't believe that didn't work." Click, click, click.  [He's a doctor, damnit!]

Doc's Medkit sits nearby as his drone hovers ready...

OOC: Placed Jim's location at the top as this has proved very useful in several other games (non-Trav) involving space ships.

Note that Ref has placed us in the Workshop to directly power the iris.  Not exactly what I had in mind (i.e. no 'airlock' and more physical exposure ;)  Seems we could just open the iris (manually) enough for the 0.3m drone to go through...

"Good idea, Thera. Let's see what happens..." Jack said, re-patching the Eubanks hand comp into his suit system and letting it power up. He set up a quick search with several pertinent terms such as attack, ATV, vehicle bay, cargo arm, fuel, life support and the like.


OOC: 12:06, Today: Jacques Keveloh rolled 11 using 2d6+2 with rolls of 5,4. Computer/INT: search hand comp for more clues.


"Perhaps we should crank that iris open just enough to send in Doc's drone," he murmured as the search routine cycled. "Dani and I can cover with rifles and we could get a better look inside that compartment."

Dani nods to Doc, and notes dutifully, "Roger that, Doc.  Let me just finish up here."  She completes her current task, tying down the sample to bench to secure it after collection.  Then she moves towards Hayden and the borescope.  She taps him on the shoulder gently and extends the laser rifle to him - the Army grunt in her doesn't want all four of the people in the workshop to be preoccupied and someone not standing watch in some manner.  The other person with the laser rifle is busy with the hand comp.  And well, what Dani knows of the good doctor is that he is better with putting things back together than wanting to take them apart.  Plus, Hayden is already watching the borescope and trying to keep an eye on what is inside...

Whether or not Hayden takes the longarm, Dani then makes her way to the area that Doc is doing his work at.  She kneels before the panel and surveys the damage.  She knows that he is handier than her, in general; so, mainly what she is looking for is just something simple and easily overlooked.  Unfortunately, she can't really make hide nor hair of what Jim is really trying to do.  Danica shakes her head.  "This doesn't look right..." she ventures rather thoughtfully, "but I don't see anything inherently wrong here., either..."

She starts to put a hand out towards the mass of wires, but then pulls her hand back.  "Perhaps we should try to tap the internal video sensors in the bay and power those instead.  They should be on an independent loop.  And then we don't have to open the door yet..."  She shrugs and stands, "I can't think of what else to do here."

[OOC: Ugh.
  14:16, Today: Danica Moreau rolled 7 using 2d6+3. Engineer (elec)/Int check - Rig power.]

"Yep .. damned busted low bid die used on the primary coupling probably..," Jim mutters when Danica's results are the same. [Pun!]

"We might could rig the internal vid to interface with a hand comp, but powering them and a workstation off just the launch might be tricky...  hell, we can't even get a damn door to open."

In frustration Jim tried to kick the power panel, but in the null-g, only managed to fail (and briefly flail) at that as well.

"Hell, guess we should be thankful we've got power in our suits and the drone .. still be nice if we could power up the logs or sensors, but maybe we're spending precious time."

"Hayden and Jack are for using the drone as our expendable eyes - at this point I can go for that, even if we can't properly setup an airlock."

Jim looks to Dani as he sends the drone to hover above Hayden, ready to deploy.

OOC:
@Ref - assume drone feedback, at least, can be shared via AV feeds.

OOC: If you want to connect launch power to Suzain's power grid further upstream then failed rolls mean you over draw the launch's electrical system, resulting in the launch losing power....


OOC2: Yes, drone video feed can be sent to other suits and to Gypsy Moth.

Jack watched with a grimace on his face as the search routine ran. He was beginning to feel like they were running out of time.



OOC: Sorry I jumped the gun. I see posts and if something is not addressed I figure it a was a wash. I'll wait a bit longer from here on out.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:29, Thu 16 Feb 2012.

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #112):

OOC: We'll move ahead shortly.  Everyone has stated actions for the current time period except Hayden.  Jacques (data search), Danica and Doc (second attempt to rig power), and Thera (remote assist power) have stated further actions.  I just want to give Hayden a chance to state an action, even if its just waiting for the others, before we proceed.

Apologize for the delay, but part of the nature of RPOL where the Ref can't just look at a player at the table and say, "So, what is your character doing for the five minutes while the others are doing X?"

After a short search, Danica finds a small hydraulic oil sample bottle that looks clean.  She carefully scoops up some of the crystals and seals them in the bottle.

She and Doc, with running commentary from Thera, check the power alignment but can't find anything wrong unless there's something wrong with the iris valve itself.

Jacques furiously enters several search terms into Eubank's handcomp, starting with attack, then ATV, then moving on to others.  He gets a cluster of hits in the few days after 322/5741.

Hayden kept watch on the door and borescope while the others went about their tasks.

OOC: No worries, part of the nature of PBP, and sometimes I miss things as well.  What do you guys want to do now?

OOC: I want to know what clues if any are on the handcomp and then send that drone in! ;)

OOC: Send in the redshir drone...

Once the drone was in position, Hayden cranked open the door and let it move through.  Once it was clear of the iris valve, he cranked the door shut again, leaving only enough room for the borescope.

Having been unable to help Doc with powering the doors, Danica went back to ready stance and guarding the opening.  She had retrieved her laser rifle and since time was ticking by, Dani figured that the best thing she could do was be ready when they cranked the door open manually to fit the drone through.  So, by the time Hayden made ready to manually crank the iris valve open, the ex-Army marksman was already covering the hole, sighting the opening down the barrel of her laser rifle.

She was shaded slightly on the side that Hayden was cranking.  That afforded her some opportunity to cover him as well, since he was not in a ready position to cover himself while working the valve opener.

Jack scans through the cluster of hits that the search routine spits out, looking for something about the vehicle bay they were about to open. When he sees the drone being readied he murmurs, "A second," and quickly readies his rifle, activating the heads up display.

He drifts to a kneeling position that compliments Dani's, letting the hand comp hang in his peripheral vision in the cold of the workshop. "Ready," he said as the drone slid past Hayden.

As Jack raises his rifle, Doc moves back to let his armed cohorts have a clear field of fire (or at least so as they are less likely to shoot him), before he re-concentrates on the drone.

"AV should be on, uhm, Channel 6.  Holler if you see or hear anything interesting or want to focus on something special."

He'd setup up a feed from the drone's AV, with the X-ray outlining feature active.  With the drone's position overlaid on the 3D deckplans of the Suzain and the drone's internal RT mapping, he commands it through the iris valve when Hayden makes an opening.

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #121):

OOC: Jacques' most recent post, msg #120, just saved me from having to figure out how to present Hayden, Danica, and Doc with one set of information, Jacques with another, and Thera with both since the events on the handcomp and the events in the vehicle bay are both likely to be pretty attention absorbing.

Hayden kneels by the iris valve and begins cranking it open the 30cm (12" for those of you still in the stone age, ha) necessary for the drone to float through.  The resulting opening is just barely wide enough for two people to effectively peer/shoot through without spoiling each other's view/shot (I presume those two people are Danica and Jacques at the moment).

when Hayden cranks open the valve, the thin push of atmosphere becomes a weak puff, then stops as pressures equalize between the bay and the small workshop.  Pressure in the workshop is now a little under 0.1bar, according to your suits, and some of the atmosphere freezes out into fat orange-brown crystals upon entering the workshop, more evidence that the vehicle bay is warmer for some reason.

No sooner is the drone in the vehicle bay, literally maybe a half a meter past the iris valve, than movement under the ATV catches your attention.

Something is definitely there.

It crawls towards you/the drone/the iris valve hugging the underside of the ATV.  Long claws scrabble for purchase in the zero-G, digging into the remnants of the ATV's tires for some sort of traction.  It is difficult to make out the exact details in the darkened bay, but you a body, roughly the size of a suitcase, mottled ochre and brown.  Patches of what could be thick, short, black fur, or even small anenome-like tentacles line the back ridge of the body.  A multi-partite mouth, like a crab's, is on the end towards you, flanked by what might be two feeding claws.  Attached to the body left and right are possibly eight larger, longer limbs, the foremost of which end in wicked points.  Stretched out, you guess the creature's span is at least two meters.

Whether it was drawn by your lights, or by vibrations, or simply by chance is unknown, but it is clearly coming towards you.

You don't know why, maybe it's the scene itself, maybe it's the ghost of a trilling sound at the edge of your hearing, but something makes the muscles around your ears and jaw involuntarily tighten and sets your teeth on edge. 

Hugging the underside of the ATV, the creature is nearing the near side of the vehicle, a little over one meter from the iris valve.
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:55, Mon 20 Feb 2012.

"OH! That is interesting," Doc proclaims, his curiosity aroused more so than any element of fear.  At which point, he also notices that the view from the Drone contrasts to his personal view, which is somewhat obstructed by the arsenal his companions have aimed in the direction of .. his drone.

Doc quickly commands the drone to elevate above the iris, heading for the aft ceiling corner of the inside wall.

"Damn, didn't think to bring a Tranq grenade," he mutters, followed by, "Hey, anyone else's face feel funny?"

"Holy shit!" Hayden says, looking at the vicious looking creature.  He glances up quickly to see if Dani or Jack look like they will fire. He's prepared to crank the iris valve shut, but not if it means getting a laser in the back.

Dani doesn't like an unidentified something getting in close proximity to her or her companions.  Neither Hayden nor Doc appears to recognize the creature (beyond being a creature), nor do they appear to be able to offer any additional opinions on its behaviors.  They don't need to do - for Danica's purposes, the movement looks both deliberate and aggressive.

She sees Hayden start to cast a backwards glance over his shoulder at her and she takes that as her signal.  His words barely register in her ears.

Time slows for her as her training kicks in and her vision tunnels, focusing down the barrel, and the breathe slows, matching the blood pumping in her ears in time with her heartbeat.  As she exhales, her finger starts to depress the trigger of the laser rifle.  Dani can feel when the bottom of the breath occurs and that is when the laser rifle fires.  She doesn't try anything fancy.  Danica targets center mass (at least, of the mass coming towards them...)

[OOC:  Attack whatever it is coming at us:

  22:22, Today: Danica Moreau rolled 9 using 2d6+5. Attack: Energy Rifle/Dex Check.

Meh.  Rolling like crap lately.  No range DMs taken into account.  Nor did I account for any potential hindrance by the vacc suit or cover due to the ATV or iris valve.]

Jack was paying too much attention to the hand comp when the creature started moving. He jerked a little, squeezed the trigger and breathed "Damn it!"

OOC: sorry gang :((  23:57, Sun 19 Feb: Jacques Keveloh rolled 6 using 2d6+4 with rolls of 1,1. Energy Rifle/DEX+HUD: Fire at creature.

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #126):

Jacques looked up and was taken aback by the proximity of the creature.  He instinctively jerked back as he shot, inadvertently elbowing Danica's shooting arm and sending a laser blast narrowly over Hayden's head.

Jacques laser shot superheated the metal over the iris valve, sending small spalls of liquid metal into the overhead, where they stuck and hardened immediately.  The damage is largely cosmetic, however.

OOC: Jacques, took a couple liberties interpreting the results of your snake eyes and Danica's roll, but kept the results fairly benign.  Hope you don't mind.

Jacques elbow knocks Danica's aim off at exactly the wrong moment.  Instead of hitting the creature in the center of its' mouth, Danica's shot catches it where the right front foreleg joins the rest of its' body.  The limb is blown off cleanly.  The creature starts convulsing and thrashing about violently.  In its' thrashing, one limb passes through the opening in the iris valve up to the first joint and hooks against it, lodged in the opening.  It is maybe 20-30cm from Danica, Jack and Hayden.  Up close the limb looks oddly fleshy, indicating an internal skeleton instead of the exo-skeleton you half expected.  It is mottled ochre and black, and dotted with small black tentacles.  Unlike the hardened spear-point ending of the limb that was blown off, this one ends in a flat, rough walking pad.  Other limbs beat futilely at the valve, the ATV, and the bulkhead and deck in the vehicle bay.

Doc sends the drone "up" in the zero-G environment of the vehicle bay, taking it out of the firing line.

In reply to Referee (msg #127):

Thera is watching the feeds carefully and, being free from personal danger, more coolly than her companions. "Guys, that thing's not alone. There's at least another one in there. It's crawling over the ATV toward you. Either get that hatch closed or or beat a retreat fast. Maybe if you can make sure the hatch is closed enough that the creatures can't get out but you can fire in... Can you jam the shield over the gap and crank the thing shut from behind it?
"There seems to be a faint light coming from the ATV, it might indicate survivors - or a nest. Doc, can you get some readings from the drone before the creatures rip it apart? See if you can check if the heat's coming from the ATV, and whether the ATV is sealed.
"You remember that little brown-black cigar thing that floated past the borescope? I'm wondering if that brown-black mother's had babies. There could be a nest of them in there, and some small enough to pass through small holes. Watch yourselves.
"Damn! One suit of Battledress could solve this," she says, half to herself.
With an after thought, she peers at the creature. "Is that thing fleshy? If so, it ought to be susceptible to a hard vacuum. There's a big difference between 0.1 bar and zero. Can we power the bay door? Crack it open to space and see if those things explode?"
This message was last edited by the player at 07:09, Wed 22 Feb 2012.

Hayden felt as if he were trapped between Scylla and Charybdis, a literal space monster on one side, and laser rifles blasting away wildly on the other.

”Check fire,” he said, leaning forward and cranking the iris valve closed as fast as he could.  He didn’t feel great about being around this things ‘foot’, but at least the spiky thing was gone.  Cranking hard, he hoped to sever the damn thing off.  Iris valves normally had sensors to prevent such injuries, but the manual valve opener had no such safeties.

With the situation hopefully contained for a bit, Hayden responded to Thera’s observation.

”More of those things?” he said, standing up and catching his breath.  Listending to the rest of her comments, he added  ”I’m all for sending these bastards to hard vacc, but I’d hate to kill off any survivors stuck in the ATV without pressure or vacc suits.  Not sure if the ATV still has integrity at this point.  Maybe some more recon is in order.  In the mean time, I’m going to go find a cutlass and never leave mine on the ship again!” he added, now rummaging through the workshop area.  He was mentally berating himself for bringing the wrecker but leaving his butcher’s blade behind.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:23, Wed 22 Feb 2012.

In reply to Hayden Marks (msg #129):

Thera only hesitated a moment.
"If our guys are exposed to 0.1bar, they're dead already Hayden. The human body isn't as robust as those things seem to be."

"What the Hell!," Doc exclaimed, backing up and nearly tripping over the inboard hatch as the firing commenced.

"That thing didn't even attack us!  And you guys damn near hit Hayden!," he yelled as he regained his footing.

Before he is finished with his outburst, he sees the other, slightly smaller creature, scrambling atop the ATV.  Thinking quickly, he activates his drone's holographic projector - placing an image of himself, sans vacc suit, several meters from the drone and hopefully visible to both the creatures.  Opening the audio pickups, he momentarily allows their own voices to emit from the drone, a rather disturbing sound given the low pressure.

Seeing Hayden closing the iris valve with callous disregard to the appendage in the opening, he begins, "Why don't we all ..," before clamming up as he listens to the others discuss attempting to kill the unknown creatures and instead concentrates on what is happening in the vehicle bay...

Danica offers some resistance given her stance and experience as she is jostled by Jack.  Still her shot goes slightly wide, much to her chagrin.  While still potentially effective (at least short-term), Dani isn't pleased by the distraction or the near miss on Hayden and her tone lets that be known.  "Pay attention, Jack." she admonishes simply, "And watch your line."

Even though she knows the answer, since he is still mobile, active and vocal, Danica asks "Hayden, physically, okay?"

Dani listens to Doc's beratement and then complaint silently, remaining rather still in her kneeling position.  With iris valve closed, she stands stiffly and looks in the direction of the doctor.  "Diplomacy." she states simply and rather deadpan; only a tinge of incredulity creeps into her voice over the comm.  "Seriously?" escapes from her lips, and then here is a pause and an audible exhalation.

"Okay...." the pilot notes haltingly, as if trying to process many things at once. Danica has plenty of military tactical experience, though diplomatic missions are not really her forte.  "You can try it, Doc."  She motions to Hayden and Jack to clear the workshop area, "But we're not putting anyone else in potential danger."  She glances at iris valve, to make sure one of their two openers is still there.

Dani doesn't sling her laser rifle, but continues to hold it with both hands.  "We'll be watching the video feeds from just outside the workshop." Danica notes as she starts towards the far end of the workshop, shepherding the others towards the exit as necessary, "You know where to find us."

"Diplomacy!?  For the love of .. what the hell you going on about?"

"The projection?  It's called distraction, damnit!  Creatures attacked, especially without provocation, tend to respond non diplo-matic-ally!"

There was certainly nothing diplomatic about Jim's response - it was obvious he was rather unimpressed with both Danica's shoot first (and miss!) approach as well as her misinterpretation of his response.  But he apparently agreed with the exit strategy, as he was attempting to step backward to put his vacc suit booted foot over the threshold in order to exit the workshop.

"You expect they speak Anglic?  I certainly ain't planning to chat up some shot up beasts over a cup of Alsace tea!"

OOC: Haha - didn't actually catch what Dani was talking about, myself, at first!

Hopefully the iris is closed .. though, while the 'cosmetic' only damage is encouraging, there may yet be a 'severing a limb with a slow closing iris and muscle only' issue.

Jack's first thought was of Hayden, if he was actually stupid enough to shoot their captain. When the man calls for standing down and cranks the iris shut, Jack fades away from the hatch, heaving a sigh of relief.

"Sorry, Hayden." When Dani makes her comment to him, Jack replies with a simple grunt, the tone saying it all. I know. It won't happen again.

Jack listens to the various exchanges, rifle in one hand, Eubanks comp in the other, scanning the search results again.

"I wonder, Doctor," Jack said, his tone sober, "who was attacking whom? Despite my best efforts, I think Hayden would have been hurt if Dani hadn't knicked that thing."

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #134):

Hayden cranks on the iris valve tool as quickly as he can in the bulky vacc suit.  The appendage slips out of the opening before Hayden gets the valve shut.  It is questionable whether the creature put it through the opening intentionally or if it was an accidental by-product of its' pain convulsions.

Hayden gets the valve shut without incident.

Following is seen through the drone feed:

The vehicle bay is fairly large, but so is the ATV.  With one creature under the ATV and another atop it, there isn't a location in the bay from which the projection would be visible to both creatures.  Unless Doc states otherwise, I'm assuming the projection is atop the ATV, near the back end, visible to the second creature.

The wounded creature slips from drone view under the ATV.

The second creature does not overtly respond to the hologram.

When human voices emit from the drone, the creature raises itself as high as it can in the narrow space (a little over 1m) between the ATV and the overhead, its spear-like forelimbs scraping the ceiling of the vehicle bay and its small feeder claws working furiously in front of the multi-partite mouth.

"Well, they sure aren't exhibiting overtly aggressive behavior," Jim replies skeptically, observing the creatures responses, adding gruffly, "and not sure they could have done worse than if you guys had succeeded in shooting up Hayden."

"At least in their current state - perhaps they were a lot more aggressive and effective when the atmo was normal," he added in a more conversational, speculative tone.

"Must admit they look like they might take one's head off."

"Maybe Thera's on to something.  Hmmm .. that uninjured one seems to be affected by sound.  At any rate, while they seem to be containable, we do need to at least see inside that ATV and the rest of the ship..."

Jim moves the hologram closer to the roof-top beast the sound off, while moving the drone closer to one of the scored and scratched windows, trying to get a better look inside and taking advantage of the x-ray outlining feature.

"It wouldn't be strange for a Pathfinder crew to bring home a sample of a new life form..." Jack said, riffing on Thera's idea in the soft glow of the handcomp. "Maybe this crew didn't realize what the next stage of this thing's life cycle would be."

This message was deleted by the player at 06:26, Thu 23 Feb 2012.

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #136):

With the immediate danger to her friends over, Thera turned her mind back to rescue.
"Guys, there's a partial atmosphere in there at the moment, and it looks like the ATV may be in contact with the bulkhead anyway, I'm wondering if you might get some response from any survivors by hammering Morse Code on the walls.
"Jack, did you get anything useful from that handcomp about the attack on the ship?

OOC: I'm curious, what did Doc mean by "Maybe Thera's on to something"?


OOC: Edit. I just tried to delete a duplicate post but I can still see it, so not sure if it worked. <shrug>
This message was last edited by the player at 06:29, Thu 23 Feb 2012.

"Don't worry about it," Hayden said, the excitement of the moment now fading.  "Might need your help when we get back to the ship to clean this vacc suit though," Hayden said with a laugh, hopefully bringing some levity to the situation.

Listening to Jim's observations, Hayden bit his tongue, preferring to hear the results of the drone scan.  As an experienced spacer, Hayden considered an armed stowaway (or confinement escapee) moving toward you as overtly aggressive behavior, but to each his own.  The important thing now was to figure how where the other members of the crew might be.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:36, Thu 23 Feb 2012.

OOC: Wow, Thera - I just deleted half my post where Jack grabs a random tool and starts banging on the walls... wanted to give Doc's drone a chance to see more. Guess I'm a bit gun-shy right now ;)

"Of course," Jack says in reply to Hayden's joke about vacc suit cleaning. "I expect to win that detail in spades."
This message was last edited by the player at 06:49, Thu 23 Feb 2012.

Dani stands with her laser rifle cradled in crook of her left elbow, her right hand off of the trigger for the moment.  She stands as the video feeds from various sources are displayed to her.  "So," she ventures idly, "is that clawing behavior in response to the audible sound a cry for air and help or an eating gesture, Doc?"  Danica has her suspicions, obviously tempered by her own past military experience, but wants a more expert opinion.

"And..." she prompts after a pause, "are you willing to bet your life on that?"  Her voice is an equal mix of edginess and (slightly forced) levity.  The latter perhaps a bit more on the gallows humor related side.

Dani notes simply, "We may not have a choice of too many options with respect to dealing with those things in there.  Especially, if we are need to get to that ATV to help any survivors, presuming there are any."

She glances at Hayden and Jack for a moment.  "We also need to secure the rest of the ship." Danica reminds the others, "I don't think that we can turn power and life support on until we are sure there aren't more of those things - or anything else unwanted - around.  It would be potentially deadly to assume that there are only those two that we have seen.  Eubanks must have been scared of something..."  Her wary and business-like tone make it relatively obvious that Dani is worried.  To her, it was telling that other Pathfinder team was abandoned (or killed) by or because of these things and that the remaining member of the crew, that was still active and unhurt, effective limited herself to the Launch - creating the possibility that the entire ship was compromised in some way.

OOC: @Ref: Would REALLY like to know what else is on the Eubanks hand comp, if anything. Feeling frozen depending on what Eubanks has to say.

"They double-jumped," Jack says as Dani's thoughts fade into silence. "The velocity and vector, running out of standard ops fuel..." Jack saves the search results and skims back through the the available logs of the Suzain ship ops. "I'm starting to think they purposely sacrificed operational fuel in order to do a second immediate jump, to here, to Espiaux..."

Jack gets caught up in a furious moment of exploring the Eubanks computer, gradually fading to a frustrated curse. "That could explain the systems shutdown and obtuse vector... Imagine, they have to get home, no time for wilderness refueling, roll the dice and jump - again, under duress. Someone will pick up the distress call - some one like us. But why would they bring those things home? Why not just push it out an airlock?"

"Hell, maybe its a mating call," Jim responds to Dani.  "I'm not willing to needlessly risk anyone's life - even if I get spooked.  I just want to find our people."

"No reason not to power systems .. if we could," his irritation at failing to get power just to the iris, is apparent.  "But I agree, from the looks of that ATV, would be reckless giving those things life support."

To Jack, "Suspect that ATV damage might be cluing us into why those creatures weren't forced out the locks... the astrogator's journal may indicate why they double jumped - if she screwed up and put them in empty space, they may have had little choice."

"But that's just lots of speculation."

"Maybe we should send the video we have on these things back to Box 2 and let them look it over.  Perhaps they have some idea of what these things are and how to deal with them.  At the very least, I think we have some information to report now." Hayden said over comms.

"Good idea, though that would take some time^," Jim replied, "also, we might want to update the Reims.  Though I don't expect much help from the Navy..."

Jim made that last sound like a general statement regards all things Navy.

OOC: ^ - don't recall how many AU's we are out (>5?), but comms would be delayed by a round trip that takes ~8 1/3 minutes per AU each way (IIRC, ~500 light-seconds per AU).

OOC1: You are a few light-hours, round trip, from Box 2 so there will be a considerable time lag for any information sent.



OOC2: Yeah, I know.  It's been a busy week.  I intended to update yesterday, but was too wiped out.

While the others are focusing on the creature, which is continuing to crouch, push its sharp forelegs against the ceiling and small feeder claws are moving, Jack pulls up the journal entry immediately prior to the hits on key word "attack" and the journal entry immediately afterward.

322/5741 0033 standard

The face of an attractive young woman in her mid-twenties, the same woman who spent the last days of her life freezing and alone in Suzain's launch before becoming the corpse there now, is centered in the display.  She has dark hair in a bob style, a prominent nose, and dark, lively eyes.  The background appears to be her stateroom.  Her tone and body language are upbeat.  "Hey guys, shift just ended.  We're still here 0825 four gamma* and it is still awesome.  No new species since yesterday, but even the half-dozen we've found are incredible.  Everyone is completely psyched about the first methane-ammonia life forms found in the sector.  Skipper had the ship hop a few klicks today.  The science team will be bringing one of the big fungal towers aboard as a specimen in a few hours and she wanted to get us closer for that.  Aaron got to do that hop, not my day I guess.  I want to stay up and watch them bring it aboard, but know I need to get some rack time before my next watch.  Still, I got to be there when they found the ugly-pedes.  Once in a lifetime mission and I'm on it.  This is everything I wanted when I joined."  //transmission ends//

324/5741 2106 standard

Suzain's bridge is clearly in the background of this entry.  Claudette looks haggard and distraught.  Her tone betrays severe trauma and stress.  "God, where do I start?  Ship is outbound from the system.  Dropped a probe to let Pioneer and the tanker know what happened.  Aaron and mission lead are trapped in the ATV.  There are about a half dozen of the things Rolo was calling Trills and a bunch of the little ones in the vehicle bay and I can't do anything to get them out.  Deidre is in the ATV too, but (Eubanks' voice breaks and she wells up) Aaron said she died of her wounds earlier today.

Everyone else is dead or gone (She takes a couple breaths to compose herself but it doesn't help much).  The science team was bringing a specimen into the cargo bay.  Tara and Xey were supposed to be on security, but...  A bunch of the Trills were around and charged without warning.  They dragged off Laura and Tomir.  The others got killed and some of them got into the lab and killed Rolo and Ahrens too.

Skipper mounted a rescue mission right away.  She didn't hold anything back.  She took everyone in the crew and the science team except me.  Lead was crazy about rescuing his brother.  He almost pushed everyone into the ATV.  They followed Laura and Tomir's trackers into Spider Valley.  Rolo said the Trills don't have any territorial instinct, but they went crazy.  Aaron says they killed dozens when they rushed the rescue team.  Only Aaron, Deidre, and Doctor Sargant, who was driving, made it back into the ATV.  Deidre was already wounded and Skipper was impaled from behind lifting her up into the vehicle.

(Claudette wipes freely flowing tears from her eyes)  I'm scared.  The Doc and Aaron say there's no way the aliens can get out of the vehicle bay and even if they could that they'd die in our atmosphere.  The external door won't open and I can't cycle the air in the bay.  I've tried.

Almost everyone is dead.  But, if I can get the ship home before the ATV runs out of power, then at least I won't have been totally useless.  Eight weeks.  Eight weeks to get home or they die.  //transmission ends//

* - should mean the fourth moon of the fourth planet of the 0825 system

Jack routes the computer entries to the common channel.

"There's people in that ATV," he says simply. "We have to try and get them out."

Jack puts the handcomp in his thigh pocket and sets his rifle in its magsling. "We're knocking on the wrong door. We could fight these things for hours or we could try to open the bay doors and get the ATV into our hold.  And space those things while we're at it."

"Damn," Jim says as he spins the drone on its center axis to take in the bay doors to see their state before returning it to trying to examine the interior of the ATV.

"Moving that ATV might endanger any survivors and take a bit of time, not to mention spacing the Trills may not be so easy," Jim replies to Jack's suggestion.

"We must go faster.  I'm no expert, but wouldn't this workshop make a good ambush point?"


OOC: Ref,

- is the Trill still reacting after audio is off (turned on only momentarily)?
- did the drone reveal anything inside the ATV (had moved to peer in)?
(re: msg # 131 & 136)

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #149):

Thera frowned. "Sounds like these Trill things are sometimes passive, but can turn without warning. Having just shot one of them, I'd reckon we should take no chances on their current temperament. I'd say first thing to do is see if we can communicate by Morse code - either by pounding on the walls or by flashing a light from the drone into the ATV. Those things seem to react to sound, so maybe flashes would be the better first step.
"Depending what we learn, I reckon the next step should be to try to open the bay door, though if Eubanks is right and that won't work, I reckon it's an EVA job to bore a hole in the door from outside - we only need a small hole to see if zero atmo will kill those things - and then get our guys out of the ATV. I would not, repeat NOT, bring the ATV aboard our ships, no matter what. We don't know what might be lurking on it or in it - Fungal Towers??
"If Suzain's crew have no suits, get them out with rescue balls - and keep them in quarantine until we reach Box 2."

OOC: Ref, is the location of the ATV compatible with the heat reading we got from the Suzain as we approached? If not, where was the heat source located?
This message was last edited by the player at 17:13, Sat 25 Feb 2012.

"Damnit! Of all the blasted stupid .. !"

"Prisa!  We got possible survivors in an ATV who may still have working comms - see if you can punch through to anyone.. please."

OOC: Doh!  Reading Ref's post above, something struck me as funny, but I didn't catch it earlier:

quote:

Aaron and mission lead are trapped in the ATV. ... The Doc and Aaron say there's no way the aliens can get out of the vehicle bay ...

Thus, they must have had comms from the ATV.  Looking at the cast sheet, looks like Prisa has the highest comms (uh, 1) and she was described as 'alert and intelligent', plus she is on the ship (> comm power) - so figure she might be our best first shot.

Also - why didn't Prisa Claudette open the cargo bay doors (she obviously had power to jump)?  The creatures seem to be doing ok at 0.1 atmo ...

EDIT: Oops, meant Claudette on that last - which is for the group, not the Ref.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:51, Sun 26 Feb 2012.

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #151):

The ATV would explain the heat reading detected earlier.

Prisa acknowledges, "Roger, I'll try to raise them on all common channels."

Doc rotates the drone right and left to get the loading ramp and aft iris valve, respectively, in view of the drone's camera.  Both are closed and look intact, though you'd need a closer view to be certain.

He then lowers the drone to peer into the ATV.

The creature lowers its forelegs and the feeder claws stop moving as quickly when the audio stops and the drone moves down towards the ATV window.

From this window on the right side of the ATV (forward), you can see lights on the vehicle's control panel and no evidence of frost on the interior, indicating the vehicle still has power and heat.*  You don't see any people, but they might be further back in the vehicle, towards the living area (you can only see the forward part of the interior).  You do not see any evidence of aliens inside the vehicle either, though there is a laser carbine on the flat ledge in front of where the comms equipment is located.  The comms antennas have been sheared off the vehicle, but it should still be able to send/receive higher frequency bands.  You see lights on the comms panel, so it has power, but can't hear through the airtight skin of the vehicle whether or not Prisa's hails are audible inside the ATV.

* - ATV is fusion powered, which produces plenty of waste heat, but no exhaust and very little vibration compared to other forms of power.

You do notice something odd on the outside of the ATV.  It looks like half of the shell of a crustacean or similar life form.  Black-brown and thin, it is slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes.  It kind of reminds you of the shell of a horseshoe crab.  It is curved and ridged, but lacking any body substance other than the shell itself.  It lacks legs or anything from where you might guess the front of the body was.  It is sliding in slow, zero-G motion along the upper skin of the ATV.  It was probably resting somewhere and gotten stirred up in the recent commotion.

Suddenly, the creature's foreleg smacks into the drone, sending it spinning.  The drone's grav units work to compensate, but you're expecting the video feed to die at any moment as the creature follows up its attack.  Oddly, nothing further happens.  The drone steadies itself, and you see the creature moving away, scuttling over the far edge of the ATV and down, out of sight, on the left side of the vehicle.  The drone seems fully functional, though the strike may have left a mark on its casing.

Prisa reports, "I've tried the standard hailing and distress frequencies, but no joy.  I'll start going through the others now."

Danica is quite quiet while the diary entries are fed through her video display.  Her laser rifle goes from the checked position in the crook of her left arm into a much more ready position while the others, discuss options.

"The workshop," she agrees with Doc, "could be a reasonable ambush point."  Dani adds, "However, the number of the enemy is unknown - though limited to somewhere on the order of a half dozen.  And we have yet to determine if we can effectively draw them out.  Keep trying with the drone, Doc.  But we also need more recon, Doc - we have only seen two of those things and the logs say there should be at least double if not triple that..."  She also adds, "And, ultimately, we need to secure the zone around the ATV.  We, as a group, are not that agile in our current circumstances - trying to set up effective cover support will be virtually impossible.  So, we need to eliminate those things. Dead."

"Eubanks did note." Danica posits as she verbally brainstorms, "That an oxygen atmosphere should kill them - though we don't know how fast."  She purses her lips, "However, she also said that she was having problems with life support to cycle atmosphere and with opening the cargo bay doors.  So, transferring the ATV - assuming that it can hold pressure for transfer - may not be feasible."

The ex-Army officer doesn't like the mission parameters as they are shaping up.  They need to get to the ATV, which means eliminating (mostly likely by force), the defending enemy.  Their enemies strengths (and weaknesses) are relatively unknown, as are their exact numbers.  She lets out a measured exhalation that is audible even over the common channel, and summarizes, "relatively unknown number of aggressive, hostile alien species of relatively unknown physical capabilities to be eliminated in expedient manner."  It is pretty obvious by her tone, that doesn't relish a frontal assault as the first option.

"Maybe getting power and life support on at this point are the weapons that we need..." she posits.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:44, Sun 26 Feb 2012.

Jim listens to Dani while he concentrates on handling the droid, adding when she is done, ".. or an armed droid?"

Then, "Prisa, the ATV's exterior antennas are gone, but the interior panel looks powered."  Prisa may have already seen that, but Doc figured it wouldn't hurt mentioning.

Jim backs the droid away from the ATV to keep a clearer view of the situation and make it at least a little less vulnerable.

"We're knocking on the wrong door," Jack reiterates. "The logs say there's a 'bunch of little ones' in the vehicle bay and I am willing to interpret 'bunch' as more than the two big ones we've seen. The damned little shelled thing we just saw in the drone feed is probably a teen-age version of what Dani just shot."

"I propose two things - one, we EVA and try to open the bay doors from outside. That spaces the creatures and lets us snag the ATV into our secure hold. Or two, we refuel Suzain from our launch, just enough to power the bay doors and necessary subsystems. Which lets us space the creatures and capture the ATV into our secure hold. Both options expose the creatures to hard vacuum for enough time to kill anything we could conceive of and we can stretch it out if need be."

Jack rummages in the workshop and finds a random tool, something heavy and metallic, and drifts towards the iris valve. "Thera, you're right to say that SOS options will be limited to what the doctor's drone can accomplish, since the ATV is floating and unable to receive vibrations..." Jack pounds out a quick SOS with the tool and then repeats it, checking the borescope readout and watching Doc's drone feed, looking for signs that the creatures might be responding to his banging.

Hayden wasn't an expert on military matters, so he kept his mouth shut about the possibility of ambushing these things.  But he wasn't enthusiastic about the option.

Thinking through the scenario described by the handcomp, he began speculating out loud.

"Ok, so if these things die in our atmosphere, then at the time the ship lifted, they should only be in areas of the ship that were filled with local atmo."

"The ship would have had an N2/O2 atmo in her other compartments right until she ran out of fuel.  So any 'loose' creatures would have been exposed to an nitrogen-oxygen atmo for several days. And we haven't seen any evidence in the rest of the ship of these things.  That's not conclusive but somewhat suggestive that they are contained in those areas where local atmo was present."

"Just thinking out loud at this point..." he said, his mind racing.

"So these are methane-ammonia creatures.  Does that mean what we are seeing for atmo in there is methane-ammonia?"

"We don't know how long of an exposure they would need to nitrogen-oxygen  in order to kill them."

"There is .1 bar of pressure in there. Ship atmo would have been 1 full bar."

"Something prevented the atmo from being cycled into those compartments."

"And we know that methane in the presence of an oxidizer is highly combustible."

Nodding to Jack,

"So evacuating that atmo to hard vacc could be useful.  Removes a potentially explosive substance from the ship and hopefully kills the creatures."

"If we can't figure out how to exploit the existing atmosphere to our benefit, then we should evacuate it.  But I'm wondering if we could introduce a small amount of oxidizer, say a couple of tanks of O2, then strike a match, and flash-burn those things in situ.  Without damaging too much of the ATV or too much of the ship." Hayden concluded.
This message was last edited by the player at 09:42, Mon 27 Feb 2012.

"I'm not to keen on igniting the vehicle bay... or exposing the ATV to hard vacc - but maybe we could just pump the atmo out?"

OOC: the iris valve could be opened just enough for a hose... workshop/ship should have hose and pumps and the launch's power is still available.

The borescope is no longer fed into the vehicle bay because the iris valve was shut after the encounter with the Trill.

The view from the drone doesn't detect any reaction to Jack's banging.  One more of the small, black and brown half-tubes drifts by the drone.  It is about the length of a cigarette, with a slightly larger diameter.  It is mostly hollow.



Suzain has installed air pumps easily capable of drawing all the atmosphere out of any space on the ship (part of the life support system).  However, you suspect they would draw more power than the launch's small power plant would provide.

Gypsy 2 also has air pumps, since the entire cabin has to function as an airlock.  A hose would have to be found and rigged from the launch through all the intervening doors.  Finding a hose that wouldn't present contamination issues (like a fuel hose) is not a certainty, as the ship's designers may not have anticipated a need to move atmosphere from one space on a ship to a different, distant space without power and without allowing the atmosphere to permeate the intervening spaces.

A third option is if the vehicle bay has an emergency cycling mechanism.  Although moving atmosphere from one space to a different, non-contiguous area on a ship may be considered an exotic requirement, the possibility that a powered-down ship may need to use an airlock (to EVA to take a fuel hose or to abandon ship) is not.  Thus, it is standard for all airlocks to have an emergency system sufficient to empty the airlock in the absence of power.

Gypsy Moth has such a system in all her personnel airlocks, as well as the two aft airlocks.  Suzain might have such a system in her vehicle bays.  If she does, the controls might logically be placed near the ramp door controls, forward starboard in the vehicle bay.  Such controls typically have to be operated locally.
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:21, Tue 28 Feb 2012.

With a tilt of the head, Dani looks slightly askance at Jim and asks, "Doc, if you don't want to expose the ATV to vacuum, what do you plan to replace the atmosphere with when you pump it out?"  Given that they are on a cold ship, where the local atmosphere has frozen out, unless they plan to heat the ship back up - there isn't much to replace it with.

"The ATV should be able to take the lack of pressure." she ventures, "As Jack says, it might be just more expedient to get the cargo bay doors open, if we can..."

Even though the Doctor appears to be disenchanted with lighting the methane, Dani concurs with Hayden, "I wouldn't expect the Trill to necessarily be fire proof - it is unlikely that oxygen is readily available in their native atmosphere.  There should be primarily cosmetic damage to the bulkheads or the ATV, if anything - were we to merely ignite the methane and ammonia."  The way she figures it, the skin of the ATV should be able to take the heat from the explosion as well.  If the ATV has already lost integrity, then it is unlikely that the passengers inside remain alive.  They would be in environment or vacc suits and potentially would have been in the same predicament that Claudette Eubanks was in - though with the ATV's powerplant intact, Danica does suppose that there is a greater chance that they are still alive.  In any case, the video feed from the drone does not appear to lead to the belief that the ATV has been compromised as far as Dani can tell -so, that is not really a worry to her.

Ultimately, she is satisfied with any of the atmospheric (or lack thereof) options for trying to kill the Trills.  The only option she is ready to curtail is one that entails a frontal assault - her limited assessment is that the Trill have a distinct advantage in that fight:  close quarters, the enemy has superior numbers and melee capabilities, and her team has limited mobility and atmospheric constraints.  Three strikes and they are out.  Danica shakes her head as the projected encounter plays out - and it is not favorable for the Moth's team.  She would give such an attempt less than a 10% chance of success and even that would probably require a 50% casualty rate.

Jim responds to Dani while controlling the drone to try and get a view of the ramp door controls (if he reasonably can without running afoul of any critters or trapping the drone...).

"Yes, reducing pressure could risk the integrity of the ATV, but we wouldn't be able to get anywhere near hard vacc - which is several orders of magnitude more likely to compromise the ATV.  Not to mention it doesn't involve the extreme thermal stresses."

"We can observe and halt or reverse a controlled atmo pumping - or change out if we can get some nitrogen - while exposing the ATV to vacuum is a one way street and possible death sentence to any survivors, not to mention exposes us to the risk of other surprises..."

"Burning the Trill may or may not work - heck, hard vacc may not work - they look pretty evolved for survival and have managed in there for a while.  It might be real damn hard to tell if they are neutralized regardless of what we do... besides igniting the methane is just as likely, if not more, to compromise the ATV."

Jim tries to shrug, which doesn't work too well for him in zero-g.  It goes without saying that he doesn't account for more assured options of verified Trill-kill - like ship weapons - since he entertains the notion their might be survivors in the ATV.

"Same holds for the atmo changing, but at least the pathfinder scientists thought it would kill them."

Jim thinks a bit more, not real happy with their notions so far - thinking out loud...

"Hmmm... what if we punch some fire holes in the [workshop] wall?  Think you could hit them without compromising the ATV, if we can figure how to lure them over?"

"Or, if we could pull that ATV against the iris ..."

"Let me know when we have a plan," Hayden says.  "Shield's here in case you need it."  He heads off to get his gear for ambush or EVA.

In reply to Hayden Marks (msg #161):

Thera listens to the discussion.
"If we can get the bay door open from the outside, there is one way that we don't need to make sure the Trill creatures are neutralised. Throw a magnetic clamp at the ATV and tow it out of the bay, then perform our rescue mission in space, well away from the creatures. I see no reason to suppose that those things are adapted to maneouvre in space, even if they can stand the lack of pressure. If you can't remove the hostiles from the target, remove the target from the hostiles..."
"If one or two creatures cling to it, we just plink at them with our guns until we've removed them all."

Dani listens to Doc brainstorm for a bit before responding.  "No," she states flatly and deliberately, "No punching extra holes in the workshop walls at this point."  She is pretty sure that Jim didn't have the breath of experience that she did with longarms.  And Danica amends her mental list - she would seriously consider almost any scenario proposed except a full frontal assault in close quarters with the Trill and blindly firing through small holes into the vehicle bay in a vain attempt to randomly hit the enemy that might or might not be near by - Doc still had not proved that he could get the Trill to react in any meaningful or directed way.  So, 'luring' them was still questionable.  Both of her verboten scenarios were still liable to have incredibly low success rates as far she could tell; so, Dani didn't intend to be party to either one.

Not to mention that drilling holes would produce uncontrolled atmosphere exchange.  Unless the atmosphere was already exchanged out.

"And unless you have developed an incredibly potent telekinetic ability or your drone has, Doc." she ventures, slightly wryly, "I am unaware of a way to move that ATV from here."

"At this point, if we aren't going to try and open the bay doors and space the creatures.  And if we aren't going to try and burn them in situ." she ticks the items off on her fingers, as Danica continues to speak, "Then, I believe that we are going to have to try and swap out the atmosphere."  The ex-Army officer turns to regard the others in the room, before continuing, "To do that, I believe the most effective way will be to get the Suzain up and running.  Get fuel and power her up.  And then get her life support systems up; those systems were designed for this space and that exact task.  And once up and running will do the job much faster."

"But before we power up," Dani notes, "I believe that we need to secure the ship.  There are still portions that we have not yet explored.  Who is to say that there isn't something else on-board that we need to be aware of?"  Dani hefts her laser rifle and grabs the barrier shield.  Then she comms Hayden directly to meet her in the lower lounge engineering to continue their sweep of the lower level - and in particular the starboard side cargo, vehicle bays and laboratories.

"Sounds good," Hayden said in reponse to Dani's request to link up and sweep the lower level.  He doubled back to meet her, grab the shield, and continue to search the ship.

In reply to Hayden Marks (msg #164):

Doc maneuvers the drone closer to the forward starboard part of the bay.  Through the drone's camera, he can see the vehicle bay does have an emergency atmospheric cycling system.  It is a pull-the-pin-andpull-the-lever type setup (similar to a fire extinguisher) and is located right next to the ramp controls.

The electric cabling running to the ramp controls is missing most of its' insulation and some of the wiring is broken.  It also appears there may have been a small electric fire in the control box at some point.  Like on Gypsy Moth, the ramp motor itself should be in the overhead above the ramp.

The pressurized gas piping for the emergency atmospheric cycling system appears to be undamaged.

OOC: OK, my understanding is that Danica and Hayden are proceeding together towards the starboard vehicle (air/raft) bay.  Unless someone states otherwise, that's what they're doing.

What are Jacques and Doc going to do now?
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:27, Thu 01 Mar 2012.

Jack watched Hayden and Dani head off deeper into the ship. "Well, Doctor - seems it's up to the two of us."

He quickly went to retrieve the second valve opener. "I'll be right back."

When Jack returned he hunkered down in front of the iris. "An EVA at this point is probably not a great idea. So if we have to get rid of those things before we can access that ATV, I think your idea about holes is the best we've got."

Jack set the opener then readied his rifle. "You won't like this idea, Doc, but we need to get in there. If you can use your drone to draw out the Trills then I'll pick them off through a hole big enough to shoot through but small enough to keep them in the bay. Once those two bigs one are done I'll go in and cycle the atmo manually. Then we can see if anyone in the ATV is alive enough to respond to SOS taps."

He made ready to crank open the valve. "Whenever you're set," Jack murmured.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:02, Fri 02 Mar 2012.

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #166):

Thera quickly pipes up, "Jack, the recording said there were about six of those things in there, not two. And so far, we have no idea what those cigar tube things are capable of. I'd advise against going in there, especially without backup."

"Doc, can you get that drone to knock Morse on the ATV?"
This message was last edited by the player at 18:43, Thu 01 Mar 2012.

Jim listens to everyone as he focuses on using the drone, then responds to Dani, "Right...", drawing it out, "No holes in workshop .. exchange atmo.  Got it."  His response was perhaps less than convincing.

To Jack and Thera, "Er, yeah, I agree .. I don't think I like the idea of you exposing yourself so much .. correction, I definitely don't like that."

Thinking a bit, he added, "Sorry Thera, I wouldn't trust myself that much with the drone - might knock something loose .. and even if we get no response, we still need to get into that ATV."

"Jack?  You mentioned EVA .. Hayden's Wrecker might allow us to punch a hole in the bay door .. its not as good as a valve, but would avoid rapid decompression and we could cover it if needed.  Lot safer than you risking your neck in there."

"If we use the launch .. bring Moth's cargo drone with a cable to pull the bay door open after depressurizing, from the launch's safety.  Then dock using the drones to move it [ATV], if the airlock still works well enough.  We'd need the launch and stuff from the Moth*, but we can bring Thera over as well."

"How about it?  Any holes in that?"

---

OOC: No holes in workshop - 'exchanges' atmo - no telekinesis... ;)

*Not sure if Hayden brought The Wrecker - assumed its still on the Moth.

@REF ->

• Assume manual cycling only works from inside?
• Cargo drone works in orbital highport ops and vacuum worlds?
• Not clear on orientation of ATV - sideways, or is front fore/aft?

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #168):

"Yeah, we still need to get into the ATV, but I'm still hoping to get something out of the ATV - like some real-time information that might give us a handle on eliminating the hostiles."

"I hear you, Thera. But two, six or sixteen to me is irrelevant if the idea is feasible," Jack says, standing up. "But I gather no one will think it's feasible..." he adds as Doc begins speaking.

Jack listens, watching the drone feed as Doc goes over an EVA plan. "Well, I mentioned a similar idea a few minutes ago and it didn't stick. In fact, the others have gone deeper into the ship so I won't entertain starting a launch op until they're back and ready to leave anyway."

Jack sighs. "But using the wrecker and cargo drone is a definite refinement... Could work..."

At Thera's last comment Jack says, "Indeed. And every minute we do nothing is a minute less they'll be able to say anything..."

Jack begins rummaging around the workshop, looking for nuts, bolts and small metallic things that have some heft to them. "Prisa, any response from the ATV by chance?"


OOC: Sorry, do Jack and Doc have a flashlight of any sort with them or just suit lights? Or is there one in our launch?
This message was last edited by the player at 05:19, Fri 02 Mar 2012.

OOC:
- Correct, manual cycling only works from inside.
- Yes, vacuum has no effect on cargo drone.  Zero-G will seriously decrease its' effectiveness since it is built to lift and carry.
- ATV is facing forward, canted a few degrees to the left, tilted a few degrees to the left, and floating about a meter off the deck.

In reply to Referee (msg #171):

Thera is still going through options until something sticks.
"Doc, if there's a brake on the bay door motor, can the probe nudge it off? Once the brake's off it'll be a lot easier to open the door."

"Give me that light, Doc."

Jack takes the cold lantern and then slowly cranks open the bay iris a few centimeters. He begins steadily flashing SOS at the ATV's windshield. If he can't hit the windshield itself he'll aim for an area of the bay that would be visible from inside the vehicle.

After a few minutes Jack takes a handful of nuts and bolts and throws them as best he can at the ATV, attempting to make a few clinks and pings on the metal of the vehicle. Then he resumes the SOS flashes.

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #173):

Jacques cranks open the iris valve a few centimeters and begins flashing the torch/flashlight at the ATV.  There is no discernible response.

OOC: Please note there will be a limit to the velocity Jacques can impart on a nut or bolt when wearing a bulky vacc suit and having to get the object through a "few centimeters" opening in the iris valve.  Hitting the ATV less than 2m away will be no problem in the zero-G environment, but the "ping" or "thunk" the objects make will be that of a toss, not a MLB fast ball.

After throwing five small objects, you see movement underneath the ATV.  It is a Trill.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Meanwhile...

Hayden cranks open the iris valve to the starboard vehicle bay.  This bay is smaller than its counterpart, only big enough for an air/raft or similar light vehicle.  There is an air/raft in the bay, secured to the deck with standard nylon cargo straps.  Several panels are open on the air/raft and it looks like all its power cells have been removed.  Otherwise the air/raft looks undamaged.

The bay itself is similar to the other spaces you have seen on Suzain so far (port vehicle bay and launch excepted): clean, layer of atmospheric frost on surfaces, undisturbed.

An iris valve lead aft to where the starboard labs should be.

In reply to Referee (msg #174):

Thera, her attention divided between the two groups (but not incapacitatingly so, Ref) ;)
comments to Jack:
"When that Trill loses interest again, maybe you could find a pole that you could use to knock on the ATV. You could listen for vibrations along it from a return knock, too. Just don't put your head at the end of it when you're listening, we don't want a Trill using it as a spear."

In reply to Referee (msg #174):

Since the ATV bay, Hayden had taken to pausing after opening each valve a few centimeters to check for exotic atmosphere, before opening the valve fully.  He did the same at the valve for the starboard labs.

Dani dutifully continued to tail Hayden as they made their way into and through the starboard vehicle bay.  She was only dimly aware that Jack and Doc had actually reopened the iris valve from the workshop to the ATV's vehicle bay, her concentration focused primarily on the task at hand, completing the sweep of the ship.

Jim handed Jack his light, and watched him crack the iris open...  while he thought back to Thera's statement concerning possibly getting useful info from inside the ATV, before being briefly distracted by the floating ice crystals just outside his suit.

"Thera, I don't think anyone remaining could be of any help - they were well bleeding incompetent enough not to be able to get out when equipped with a near fully functioning ship."

"Jack, leave off, close that valve and come with me.  We've a perfectly working emergency atmospheric cycling system - the ship."

Jim picks up his medikit and  heads out of the workshop - in the direction of the fore airlock.  "We've already contaminated the ship's atmo - so why not open an airlock and use the iris valve to control purging the rest of the ATV bay's atmo."

Jack watches the Trill, trying to get a sense of its motive and whether it's responding to the lightly plinking nuts and bolts or to the regular flashing of the cold light. He's tempted to take a shot at the creature but then the Doc starts talking.

Jack stands and cranks the iris valve shut. "I'm disappointed that no one seems to think it's pertinent for us to establish a secure perimeter and try to rescue the last of this crew immediately. And I'm not sure what route to open vacuum you think will vent the atmo in there. But at least position your drone so that we can maintain a watch for a response from those poor bastards."

He grabs his rifle and checks that the Eubanks comp is secure in his pocket. "Lead on, Macduff..." he murmurs, offering Doc his cold lantern back.

"The drone ain't going nowhere Jack - Maker knows whether those things can't figure how to open an iris valve ... but I assure you, I think rescuing any of the survivors is pertinent.  Hell its the most pertinent reason for us to be out here..."

Obviously Jim's own opinion, as it probably differs from the folks who sent them on this mission.

[Jim heads to the still closed valves leading into the lower deck fore airlock (#18) - assuming nothing else has halted the mini-party...]

"I think you might have the right of it exposing the bay to vacc via the bay door, but it entails certain hard to define risks and no telling how much time we have.  We might have folks trapped in a dangerous box - we need to think outside the box..."

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #180):

Thera frowns in puzzlement for a moment at Doc's words, then pulls up Suzain's schematics whilst following Doc's movement. She mock-smites her head.
"Doh! of course. Good thinking, Doc. We can get vacuum in the vehicle bay with no risk to ourselves, and since our own atmo is frozen out, we won't lose that to space, so we can still warm the ship up and breathe later."

Thera's words make it finally click in Jack's head. "Of course! Apologies, Doctor - for some reason I wasn't grasping what you were saying. Makes a lot of sense."

Jack grabs the valve opener. "Ready." He slings his rifle with a glance at the iris holding in the Trills, adding "I hope we don't have to crank that open too wide to get the desired effect..."

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #182):

Doc and Jacques begin opening a path from the forward airlock, passenger lounge, passenger passageway, and workshop. (I am proceeding from the understanding that the valve to the ATV bay will be the last one to be opened).

There is no pressure difference between inside the ship and outside at this point, and Jacques is certainly experienced enough in vacc ops to take sensible precautions, so opening the foreward airlock's outer valve is routine.

The Trill meanders about briefly on the starboard side of the ATV, paying no undue attention (that you can tell through the drone's feed) to the drone.  It then retreats back to the port side of the ATV, out of view from the drone.

It'll take Doc and Jacques a little longer to open three valves and return to the workshop than it takes Hayden and Danica to open one and poke around the starboard labs briefly.  So...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hayden opens the iris valve to the starboard labs slightly, to check for atmospheric pressure differences.  There are none.

Cranking the valve the rest of the way open, Danica and Hayden notice the starboard labs are in a slightly different state than the crew areas of the ship.  Unlike the clean and orderly crew areas, the lab is, well, messy.

The space, one of the largest on the ship, shows no overt signs of violence, but it does appear that it was left in a hurry, and no one cleaned up afterward.  A mug drifts very slowly across the lab.  One of the cabinets along the bulkheads is partially open and what might have once (a couple hundred degrees Kelvin warmer) been a bagel hovers a few centimeters above a frost encrusted lab table.

A frozen block of fluid on a lab shelf on the port side catches your attention.  The frozen block of fluid is a yellowish color and has split its container in freezing.  Suspended within the "ice" is a biological specimen.  It looks like a cross between a tarantula and a horseshoe crab.  The body is about the size of a pack of cigarettes.  The legs are maybe 15-20cm long.  It is a deep brown and black color and covered in short purplish hair or tentacles.  It does not have eyes that you can discern and its' mouth isn't visible, probably being on underside of the body (you are looking at the top).  It is labelled:

Mission Specimen: 0825-003
Scientific: not assigned
Colloquial: Trill (male)
Age: unknown
Collected: 1400 EST, 320-5741
Notes: Collected live


To the left of the specimen is a dry specimen container.  Inside is what you recognize as part of the leg of a creature like the ones you saw in the ATV bay.

Mission Specimen: 0825-002
Scientific: not assigned
Colloquial: Trill (female)
Age: unknown
Collected: 1245 EST, 320-5741
Notes: remains of hindleg(third pair?), gathered near feeding area


A second dry specimen container has what looks like dead, dessicated, indigo colored brain coral.

Mission Specimen: 0825-005
Scientific: not assigned
Colloquial: fungal tower
Age: unknown
Collected: 0645 EST, 321-5741
Notes: part of pseudo-fungal, gathered near primary valley


There is a handcomp on a desk near the specimens.  there are also plastiglass door cabinets containing row upon row of small tissue, fluid, and chemical specimens.

Looking aft, the aft part of the labs may contain more specimens or items of interest.  It is tough to tell for sure in the faint light of your torch.

Dani edged warily towards the lab bench and the specimens.  She tried to keep her laser rifle at the ready as she quickly pocketed the handcomp.  The muzzle of her laser rifle darted between the darkened area of the lab and frozen, seemingly unmoving specimens as she tried to keep both covered as she weighed the necessity of keeping both potential hazards in mind.

She cast furtive glances at the labels, taking in the words but not dwelling on them too much.  As she read the labels, Danica spoke the words aloud so that anyone else that might be catching the visual feed would have some narration as well, "Trill, male... Trill, female... Psuedo fungus."  For posterity, if necessary.  Dani noted to herself that they weren't very inspiring as last words, if it came to that.  But then, there wasn't much she could do about it now.

The gun-toting pilot of the Gypsy Moth gestured to Hayden, letting him know that she was ready to continue.

In reply to Danica Moreau (msg #184):

"So, if I'm reading this right, the Trills that were harmlessly wandering around the camp turned inexplicably hostile as soon as the science crew began kidnapping and dissecting their children?" Thera observed wryly as she took in the video feed.

"And the first thing we did when we saw them was blow the legs off one of them - so much for First Contact.

"However, I doubt if we can recover diplomacy at this stage. I think all we can do is report our observations, rescue our people if possible, and turn it over to the authorities to fix the diplomatic relations, if possible.

"Not that I'm blaming you for taking that shot, Dani, the Trill looked like it was coming for you, I'd have shot first and asked questions later myself - well, I did, didn't I?" she said, sheepishly.

Hayden looked for something in the lab to shove the male trill into.  For all he knew, the thing might wake up when the heat came back on.  The container and fluid might be the only thing keeping it dormant.  Even a garbage bag would be better than letting it dry out.

Once that was done, he hoisted the shield and valve opener and continued with Dani.

In reply to Hayden Marks (msg #186):

Hayden finds a lockable cabinet large enough for the male Trill specimen.

Moving aft, Hayden and Dani explore the aft part of the starboard lab.  Unlike the forward section, this part of the lab appears more given over to geological and chemical apparati.  You vaguely recognize a spectrographic analyzer, high-speed centrifuges, and other chemical devices that might be useful to determining the exact composition of atmosphere, soil, and mineral samples.  There are large trays of mineral samples in one cabinet and gas tubes in another.

You are now at the door to the starboard cargo airlock.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Meanwhile....

Jacques and Doc have both iris valves in the forward airlock, the valve connecting the passenger lounge to the passenger passageway, and the starboard valve of the workshop fully open.  Once the port iris valve is opened, there will be a complete path from the port vehicle bay to the vacuum of space.

Once they are back in the workshop, Jack sets the valve opener in its wall socket and readies his rifle, engaging the HUD.

"You'll have to do the honors, Doc," Jack says, taking up a position in the starboard valve of the workshop (Short range to port valve). "If we have to crank that open wide and those things get panicky I want to be able to hold them in the vehicle bay."

Jack takes aim at the center of the port valve. "Ready."



OOC: this of course assumes that cranking open the valve places Doc off to one side of the opening, to fore I figure by looking at the deckplan... please advise if this is not the case as Jack would take a different tack if so.

Observing Hayden's and Dani's discoveries via their feeds, and listening to Thera, Jim remarks, "It does seem that some very questionable calls were made to this point... at any rate, given the diminutive size of that frozen Trill specimen, we might need to be extra careful exposing them to vacuum."

Jim is not too clear as to who he thinks made 'questionable' calls - and who might be endangered.

As Jack and he prepare for operation 'suck atmo', he responds to Jack.

"I've no intention of opening the valve wide, Mr. Keveloh.  At least till we deem it prudent..."

Jim makes use of the drone to ensure nothing untoward is happening in the vicinity of the valve before stepping forward and attempting to open it.  He only cracks it a mere centimeter, while making a production of staying out of Jack's field of fire.

"Any rapid decompression could result in loss of hull integrity of that ATV or sucking a trill too close for comfort," he adds logically, followed up more defensively, with, "Besides, that 'baby' they found looks like it might fit through a fairly small opening."

Jack keeps his rifle trained on the opening Doc has just made. "Of course, Doc," he says quietly, watching for any signs of movement beyond the valve. "Just a precaution, no need to worry," he continues with humor in his voice.

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #189):

OOC: The attachment point for the iris valve opener is indeed to the side of the valve.

As a further note, the 1cm opening would be hard for Jacques to hit cleanly with his laser rifle, much less to see through from across the room.

Cranking the iris valve open one centimeter rewards Doc and Jacques with a slow, but steady, ingress of freezing methane-ammonia.  The 0.1 bar pressure differential isn't enough for the transfer to be violent in any sense of the word.  At this pace, draining the atmosphere from the vehicle bay will take some time.  At some point the 1cm aperture is likely to be blocked by one of the many pieces of debris drifting loose in the vehicle bay.

For now, though, the bay is relatively tranquil, at least as seen through the robotic eye of doc's drone.

Jim steps back as rapidly as his suit and lack of zero-G experience allows, bumping off the workbench as he looks keenly at the escaping stream of slushy bay atmo, "Uh.  This could take some time," he remarks sheepishly.

Looking around the workshop, he spies a spanner latched but ready for use.

"Keep your eye on that hole," Jim requests of Jack, intending Jack to keep more than his eyes aimed, "I'll try to make it a bit bigger."

As if that is some kind of feat after the others have already managed it just fine to date. However, Jim decides to attempt to use the spanner to put some extra distance between himself and the iris opening... which he attempts to crank just another centimeter in diameter... [And here we go... :)

23:11, Today: Dr. Jim D. Jones rolled 8 using 2d6+4 with rolls of 3,1. Mech/INT: Jury opener (git e't attempt).

Just for the record - I did roll a 5 about half a dozen rolls back <insert eye roll>

"Cargo airlock comming open," Hayden says, cranking the valve opener a bit to check for gas, before cranking the iris valve open enough to shine a light through.

In reply to Hayden Marks (msg #193):

OOC: Interruption from another time-zone.

As Thera watches the hatch cranking operation, she warns against opening the hatches fully. "Guys, could you open those valves partially rather than fully, so if anything goes wrong, like Trills starting to rip valves apart, you can dash through and fully close them faster?"

OOC: If Trills are bigger than people, it would be ideal if the opening size were sufficient for people to crawl through, but not Trills.

As they prepare to open the final valve, Thera again makes a suggestion. "Is there some form of mesh or net in the workshop that could be taped across the opening to prevent those cigar things from coming through? And maybe a stick or something that you can use to poke debris away from the hole if it starts to get blocked."

OOC: There's a formula for flow rates etc, that I can't recall just now, and IIRC it uses maths that I'm no longer comfortable with, but as I recall, a half-open orifice should empty a chamber almost as fast as a fully open one - the main differences in time to fill/empty are with very small holes. In any case, the bottle-neck of the flow will be with the bay hatch, regardless of how wide the other openings are.

Edit: Yep, a quick google confirms that the precise maths is too complex for me to handle these days, large holes use a different calculation than small holes, the flow through a small hole is roughly the fourth power of the diameter (double the hole size, the flow increases 16 times), as the pressure drops so will the flow rate and, as usual, what the Ref says trumps all. :)
This message was last edited by the player at 07:54, Sat 10 Mar 2012.

Passing by the geological survey equipment, Dani nods; her helmet moving up and down slightly to Hayden's statement about the iris valve to the starboard cargo lock.  "Roger that.  Covered." she responds, as Danica's grip on her laser rifle tightens slightly as she steadies the longarm up to and sights down the barrel at the center of the valve as it opens.

From her position above and behind Hayden and his shield, Dani allows him more than enough space to position himself and his torch to allow him whatever view he desires.

Jack grimaces at the Doc's reticence. "Give me something to work with, Doc - I can't see anything."

At Thera's suggestion of a net to catch errant creatures Jack murmurs, "I'm hoping that's not necessary, Thera. Exposing those things to vacuum should incapacitate them, at least enough to check the ATV. Then we can collect them later. Or space them..."

Jack keeps his rifle trained on the minute opening, but is ready to assist Doc if he needs a hand with his spanner rig. "Prisa - any response from the ATV at all?"

Jim responds to Thera and Jack as he attempts to open the iris a bit more, "Yeah .. hopefully .. uhm."

The Moth's 'above average intelligence', 'expert' mechanic seems to have taken micro-grav for granted once again, as he rather clumsily manipulates the spanner...

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #197):

Doc appears to be trying to use mechanical advantage to work the iris valve opener without having to get close to the valve itself, but it just isn't quite working for him.

Gas continues to flow out of the bay, but the small size of the aperture is a constraint.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With Danica's hawk eyed alertness hovering over his shoulder, Hayden takes a deep breath and slowly begins cranking open the door to the starboard cargo bay, the last space left unexplored in this part of the ship.

The cargo bay shows no signs of violence, but is instead cold and lifeless,like the rest of Suzain.

The only noteworthy item in the bay is a shipping container, which appears to have been converted into a makeshift specimen container.  A small plastiglass window welded into the door of the container is frosted over.  A few quick wipes with your glove allows you to point your torch into the container and illuminate the monster inside.

It is long, at least ten meters, its' body folded back over itself to fit into the container.  Dozens of pairs of legs, barbed at the joints, jut from a dark, multi-segmented body.  The head has no visible eyes, but is instead dominated by double mandibled jaws.  The jaws are large and look powerful, like they could easily cut a human sized figure in half.  The creature's body is burgundy red and streaked sable.  It is covered by birstles on its' ventral flanks, but is hairless and sleek on top.  It is also covered by a light layer of orange-brown crystals.

It looks motionless, frozen, and dead.

"++Damn.  These things get bigger.  Makes an air/raft look small.  Is it the same type as the others, or something new?++"  Hayden's right hand returned to the pistol, out of instinct more than conscious thought.

When Hayden's hand goes to his sidearm, Danica starts to reposition herself to take a more expansive look into the bay.  Thus far, she has been concentrating on the immediate area around the portal, just in case.  When the size of the Trill in the bay becomes more apparent, she whistles, the commlink carrying the sound quite well. "++Wow.++" she acknowledges taking in the size of specimen in the limited light.  "++I guess that we are keeping that door closed and secured.++" Dani muses publicly over the common channel, but more rhetorically herself, "++Not worth taking the chance that thing is just 'sleeping'.++"

She ventures idly, "++Looks pretty similar to the others - though science was never my strong suit.++"

The muzzle of her laser rifle twitched slightly, though it was still pointed into the bay.  Danica wasn't taking any chances, the thing wasn't moving and looked dead, but Dani really didn't know the capabilities or tolerance of the Trill.  At least, not to the extent that she was willing to gamble by letting her guard down.  It seemed to her that might have been one of the issues with the ill-fated Pathfinder team.  They may have done something to provoke the Trill and not even known it until it was much too late.  For example, capturing an alpha of the group might have been just such provocation.  Her eyes narrowed as she continued to survey the specimen in the starboard cargo bay.  "++Unless we think those things can get much bigger...++" the Gypsy Moth's pilot brainstormed aloud, "++We could have a hive queen or some such here.  The capture of which might incite violent behavior in the other colony members...++"

Doc is briefly distracted by Hayden and Dani's discovery.

"They do seem to exhibit remarkable capacity for survival - maybe variants of the species dominate their biosphere," he joins in the speculation before refocusing on the rescue mission, "but if any of Suzain's crew are in that crate, well we can probably leave them be .. I'm more worried about the critters in with that ATV."

Frustrated with his lack of success with the spanner, Jim sets it on a nearby bench, not realizing it will just float around...

"If you two are done with your tour, perhaps you could lend us some support here..."

With that, Jim decides to 'risk' cracking the iris opening another centimeter while observing through the drone's sensors...

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #201):

Jim's timing is good.  As he approaches the iris valve crank, a small piece of debris wedges itself in the 1cm opening partially blocking it.  Jim cranks the iris valve open another centimeter, allowing the small bit of electrical insulation to float into the workshop.

Now with a 2cm opening, the flow from the ATV bay increases somewhat.

Jack stays quiet as the images from Hayden and Dani play across his visor. There didn't seem anything to say about a bigger, nastier looking Trill, even if it did seem incapacitated at the moment.

"I'm tempted to come over there and crank that thing open myself, Doc," Jack says bemusedly as the tiny piece of debris clears the iris and drifts across the workshop.

"I've got the opening covered - please crank it open a bit more so we can have some chance of getting in there before our suit tanks empty out. Another decimeter and that chamber should evacuate in just a few minutes."

Jack let his eyes focus on the drone feed for a moment, looking for signs of reaction to the slightly increased atmospheric venting, then resumed his aim at the valve's tiny opening.

"I would remind you, we've know idea what that ATV can take," Doc replied testily - implying his primary concern was for potential survivors, or at least that is what it sounded like he was trying to do.

However, he began cranking the iris valve open further - with the apparent intent of adding a good ten centimeters to the orifice's diameter while he worried over the integrity of the ATV and his vulnerability near the expanding hole.

"Understood, Doctor... I suppose I'm feeling that's a risk worth taking..."

As Doc cranked the iris open further Jack focused on the reticule of his heads-up display, looking for any signs of movement in the vehicle bay as the opening slowly widened.

"Thank you, sir..." Jack murmured. "Care to join me over here near the exit?" There was a smile in Jack's voice as he carefully watched the iris.

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #205):

Doc cranks open the iris valve another 10cm and he and Jacques notice a significant increase in the outflow.

About a minute later there is motion in the vehicle bay.  A trill appears atop the ATV while another can be seen scuttling from under the ATV.  They appear agitated, but are not moving towards the iris valve.

Dani resumed her ready kneeling stance with partial cover from the barrier shiedl.  She glanced at Hayden, before her gaze locked back on the open portal that looked out onto the starboard cargo bay and frozen 'Grandma Trill'.  Her left hand tapped him lightly on the shoulder, as Danica prompted him, "Are we done here?"

"If so," she ventured, "I suspect that we should rejoin the others in the workshop.  It looks like they are planning another frontal assault..."  Dani glanced at her oxygen tank monitor and rolled her shoulders slightly to relieve some of the tension.  She let out a bit of a sigh (or maybe more of a grunt) as shifted her weight in prepartion for standing again, she noted mentally to herself, I'm getting to old for this and paying for it. There are going to be some sore muscles tonight...

Jack chuckles at Dani's remark. "Not to worry, my good pilot," Jack says over the comm, keeping his rifle leveled on the iris opening. "We're in a strictly defensive posture..."

Jack trains his reticule on whichever Trill may be in his sights, aiming for a head shot if possible. He keeps his finger off the trigger for the moment but is in a ready stance should one of the creatures make an aggressive move for the iris.

"But we could certainly use your help examining this ATV in a few moments."

"Yes .. I'm getting anxious myself to get to that ATV," Jim says as he leaves the valve opener in place and carefully steps back from the iris valve, following Jack's suggestion.

Observing the agitation of the beasts and Jack's careful aiming and listening to Dani's comments, he adds, "I think they are aware we are killing them... I wonder if they are holding back out of fear, or if Thera had the right of it when talking about a nest?"

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #209):

The trill atop the ATV clumsily pulls itself forward on the ATV, using both the ATV itself and the ceiling a meter above it for footholds.  Somehow it seems to notice Doc's drone, hovering near the starboard side.  The trill turns towards the drone and begins working its' way in that direction.

The trill underneath the ATV is not visible to Jacques through his sights.  It is not in a direct line from the rifle, through the 12cm hole, into the vehicle bay.  The trill under the ATV is moving awkwardly in the general direction of the iris valve (and should be in Jacques sights once it gets closer) but it isn't clear that the creature understands the iris valve as the cause of the loss of atmosphere.

It is difficult to tell, because you don't have much of a baseline for "normal" trill behavior, but they might be disoriented.

"Hmmm... too bad we couldn't have lured them into the workshop," Jim remarks, "obviously they will kill, but I suspect they were provoked..."

Speaking of which, the attention the drone was getting had him moving the drone slowly to get some more distance from the trill atop the ATV, as he continued to observe the vehicle for any signs of integrity failure such as he might be able to perceive.

"Damn, I just realized, we should have brought some rescue balls .. don't we have some in the launch?"

"Hm, good thinking, Doc. We should have four in the launch. Ms. Aksina, could you get the rescue balls from Gypsy 2 ready and place them in the airlock? Once this chamber is clear I'll come get them."

"Jack, Dagala," Dani chimes in over the common channel, "I think that we are pretty much done on this side.  Hayden and I can grab the rescue balls on the way over to the workshop.  There's no need for your to break defensive formation."  She glances over at Hayden for confirmation, but starts to stand from her kneeling position behind him.

In reply to Danica Moreau (msg #213):

"Roger that, I'll have the rescue balls waiting."

"Yeah, I don't think we are going to find anyone in this part of the ship.  Let's pick up the rescue balls and head on back." Hayden said, agreeing with Dani as the two made their way back to Jack and Jim via the launch.

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #211):

Hayden and Danica are enroute to the launch to grab rescue balls.  I'll let you know when they get to the workshop.

Doc artfully eases the drone into the triangular area formed by the up-sloping loading ramp at the forward end of the vehicle bay.  The trill parallels it as best it can in the zero-G, without losing its grip on the ATV.  It appears to be in an attack crouch, its belly just a couple centimeters off the top skin of the ATV, but the drone is just beyond its' reach.

The other trill, the one that was under the ATV, is lost from Doc's view as he maneuvers to avoid the first trill.  IT is not, however, lost for long as it is now firmly in Jacques' sights.  The creature's "face" (the front end of its' body, just above the mouth) is about a half-meter from the hole in the iris valve.  Jacques, you can't see whether its' limbs are reaching for the hole or not, but to be where it is at now, it would have had to leave the "cover" of being under the ATV and made a deliberate move towards the iris valve.

Doc and Jacques, your teeth are once again on edge and a shiver goes down your spine.  It's like there's something just on the edge of hearing...a keening.

Jack worked his jaw as the keening started, troubled that it made clicking sounds when he moved it.

"Doc, that... sound... do you think it's an attack? Or communication?..." Jack's tone of voice made it clear he felt it was an aggressive move, an attack they didn't understand.

He let his finger rest on the trigger of his rifle and aimed for the trill's face.

"It could be some form of attack .. or a prelude to an attack ..," Jim responded hesitantly, ".. or just a warning."

Upset at his uselessness he adds, "How the hell should I know?"

But Jack's questions have him thinking about what little he's heard about behavioral traits.

"They do seem to be working as a team though - not mindlessly focusing on a single threat. I wonder..."

Once again he activates the drone's holographic projector - emitting a realtime holo of Jack in his suit.  He puts the projection close to the paralleling Trill, but a meter or so in the direction away from the drone.

With the holo going, he activates the audio, directing it in the vicinity of the hologram and allowing the remaining atmo to convey his voice.

"Hey!  Over here damnit!  Yo!"

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #219):

The trill atop the ATV does not respond in any way to the hologram.

The trill near the iris valve has reached the valve and is beginning to feel around the hole with its' small "feeder claws".

Jack took a moment to aim at the trill in the iris valve, letting his breath calm and trying to block out the keening and Doc's noisy antics. He placed the HUD reticule on the creature's face area and squeezed the trigger.



OOC: 23:05, Today: Jacques Keveloh rolled 10 using 2d6+5 with rolls of 3,2. Energy Rifle/DEX+HUD+Aim: Fire at trill.

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #221):

OOC: Wow, I guess you guys are all saving your high rolls for when you really need them.  Fortunately, I'm ruling you have +3 for aiming (since it is a pretty static setup and you've had plenty of time to prep) instead of only +1.  So, that's just enough to overcome the -4DM for cover (12cm is a pretty small hole).

Jacques laser blast hits the creature, nicking one side of the hole as well.  Superheated bits of organic material explode off the creature's body around where the laser hits, spraying into the vehicle bay and the workshop.  The area above and to the right of the creature's mouth is cratered.  It floats back from the iris valve. One hind leg appears to have caught in something on the deck, pinioning the creature's body such that it is swaying, anchored by that leg, about a meter from the valve.  It is completely motionless, except for small, spherical droplets of fluid, the color of syrup, floating free from the wound.

"Well .. that's another way to get their attention," Jim stated after Jack's successful shot, sounding resigned to killing the creatures.

"Speaking of which.  Prisa you awake?  Anything from comms?"

He left the holo and voice pickup on, but focused on observing the goings on in the bay.

"Stay here, Doc."

Jack kept his rifle trained on the trill he just shot and walked carefully across the workshop. He stayed about a meter from the iris and took a closer look, careful not to let any floating fluids adhere to his vacc suit.

After several moments observing the shot trill for signs of activity, Jack crosses to the valve opener. "Keep an eye on the one up top," Jack says, rifle in one hand pointed at the iris, cranking open the valve to about half a meter with the other.

Once the valve is opened more, Jack readies his rifle and keeps it aimed at the iris, making his way back to Doc.

"Thera, can you check on Prisa? We need to know if there's any kind of comm activity coming from that ATV."



OOC: Any change in the keening?

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #224):

OOC: Yes, the keening stopped when you shot the trill.

Prisa reports, "No response to hails on any frequency."

Hayden and Danica have grabbed four rescue balls from the launch and are on their way to the workshop.

The trill atop the ATV begins clumsily working its way back towards the port side of the ATV.  Soon it will disappear from the drone's view.

Jacques cranks the iris valve open further.  The weak flow of atmosphere increases, pushing the corpse of the trill he just shot towards the valve.  It won't be long now until the bay is completely devoid of atmosphere.

"Damn.  Thanks Pris."

Jim watched Jack open the valve further, responding to his request as he watched the drone's feed, "Looks like the top one is retreating."

"Hate to say it, but suggest you try to shoot it before it does - we are killing them anyway."

Eyeing the floating Trill Jack had just shot, he added unhelpfully, "But be careful, we can't be certain the floating one's dead..."

OOC: Is the one on top different from the one Dani shot earlier?

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #226):

Listening to the conversation, Thera chips in:
"Don't forget there may be more of them, guys. That report mentioned maybe half a dozen."

"Copy that, Thera. Doc, I'm inclined to wait until the bay evacuates. Then we go in with rescue balls."


OOC: If Jack has a shot at the Trill on top of the ATV from outside the bay he'll take it, spending a minor action to aim.

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #228):

OOC1: Different trill from the one Dani shot.

OOC2: No clear shot at the upper trill.

OOC3: ATV has its own (tiny) airlock.  ATV airlock door on left side (away from you).

In the few minutes it takes for the rest of the atmosphere to flow out of the bay, Danica and Hayden arrive in the workshop with the rescue balls.

Indications are that the vehicle bay has less than 0.0001bar pressure.  Dirty looking orange-brown "snow" swirls around the workshop and out into the passageway.

Inside the bay itself there is no motion except for the last vestiges of rocking from the corpse of the trill that Jacques shot.  There are no other trills in sight.

"Pathfinder's lead the way," Hayden said to Jack and Jim with a wink. "Saw that on a recruiting poster I think."

"Of course the Ozawa brochure read, make money and live to spend it." Marks said with a laugh.

OOC: Hayden's carrying rescue balls in lieu of the shield at this point.

Dani trailed behind Hayden with two more of the rescue balls in tow.  Her laser rifle was slung over her shoulder, given her load.  She smiled at Hayden's joke, though her visor hid it; a slight chuckle did escape her lips over the comms.  She cleared her throat in an attempt to cover it.  "The FRA recruiter told me," Danica noted rather deadpan, "that I would get to visit exotic new places and people within and without the Federation."  Then she added after a pause and a slight snort, "He merely forgot to mention the part about blowing those places up and killing those people..."  Her tone is, at least, half-joking.

"Uh, Doc..." the Gypsy Moth's pilot ventured, "Do you want to take these?"  She extended her arms with the rescue balls.  "Or do you want to provide cover with the laser rifle?" she prompted rolling her shoulder so that the laser rifle on her shoulder bobbed up and down a bit, indicating that he could take that instead.

"'Finder's recruited me by rescuing my ass," Jim replied relaxing a bit in the humor.

Taking Dani's balls, Jim added, "I'll stick to that role if you all don't mind..."

OOC: I crack myself up... :)

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #232):

OK, there's still no movement visible through the iris valve or the drone's feed.

To get by the trill that Jacques shot, you will have to push it out of the way somehow.

To get to the ATV's airlock you can go under (1.5m clearance), over (1m), in back of (1m), or in front of (2m) the ATV.  Since you're in zero-G, there really isn't an orientation issue whichever way you go.

In reply to Referee (msg #233):

"I assume you guys are going to recce with the drone before you set foot in there? take a look around, nudge old possum there..."

"Indeed, Thera.  That was my plan - and to see if the airlock looked serviceable," Jim replied.

"Also giving them a moment.  The Trill seemed to have survived for some amount of time on just a tenth pressure - and shown quite some vigor to boot."

Having observed no undue signs of pressure loss from the ATV, Jim sent the drone to the underside of the abused vehicle, to traverse lengthwise and observe the wheel wells.

Jack chuckled as the others quipped about the services. It seemed everyone was loosening up - himself included - now that they were able to finally do what they had come here for.

He eased further into the workshop to allow the others through, keeping his rifle aimed at the iris. He was relieved that a single shot had incapacitated the trill; indeed, it seemed to be dead.

"Once we're ready, I'll go in first to clear the way - and claim my catch." Jack sounded light-hearted but focused. "I vote for taking the route around the front of the ATV - more clearance means less chance of a suit tear. So Doc, once you've checked underneath perhaps you can send the drone around front."

"Sure thing, Jack.  Though I'd like to get a peak around the other side before you risk that," Jim replied, his tone serious once again.

"That recording indicated more Trill than the three we've seen, and, besides, the airlock might be totally unserviceable...," Jim began, trailing off in thought.

"Hey, maybe we should try pushing the ATV against the outer bay wall - if we can find something to safely push with from here?  That would work in this blasted no grav, wouldn't it?"

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #237):

Jim guides the drone under the ATV.  It takes a few minutes to guide the drone into all the narrow spaces necessary to verify that there are no unpleasant surprises lurking under the ATV in the wheels wells or other underbody crevices.

One thing you do notice is that, although all the atmosphere has frozen out, not all of it has frozen solid.  The skin of the ATV is covered with a brownish "dew", indicating that, whatever the chemical composition of the atmosphere in here was, it has a liquid range between solid and gas at these low pressures.  There is no dew on the deck or bulkheads of the bay, or any other surface for that matter, also indicating that there is still some level of heat in the ATV.

Peering out from under the vehicle to the left side of the ATV (the one away from the iris valve), the drone feed captures the forms of four trills.  One is missing a leg, and its' body appears cut up and mutilated.  It is clearly dead.  Two others are floating motionless, their legs splayed out. The fourth, slightly smaller than the others, is also motionless and is attached (clinging, stuck, or simply adjacent is unclear) to the ATV's primary heat-exchanger.  The heat-exchanger is where the excess heat generated by the ATV's power plant would be vented, and would logically be the warmest place in the frigid bay, if the ATV's powerplant is running.  The heat-exchanger is midway between the ATV's airlock door and the back end of the vehicle.  The trill there is curled up, dead spider style, and isn't moving.

The ATV's airlock door looks intact.  As you recall, the ATV's airlock is a tiny, one person affair.  The old joke about it is that it's too small to change one's mind in, much less one's clothes.

You also notice that the forward left corner of the ATV is touching the the port bulkhead of the vehicle bay.  Although going in front of the vehicle has the most clearance in front of the vehicle itself, that way is blocked as soon as one rounds the left front corner of the ATV.  (picture a smaller rectangle inside a larger one.  rotate the smaller rectangle until the upper left corner touches the larger rectangle.  That's the ATV inside the vehicle bay.  Make sense?)

Lastly, can I get a recon check from anyone who wants to try (including Thera or Dagala).

"Hmmm... five of six accounted for, or do I have the count wrong?"

Jim has the drone rotate in place to visually sweep the entire lower bay, including the 'stuck' Trill Jack shot, as he brings it back toward them in order to send it over to the top of the ATV to check for any missed Trill.

Danica handed Jim the rescue balls, allowing him to have some.  She unshouldered her laser rifle and readied it for action.  She flipped the safety and even through her vacc suit gloves could feel the light vibration, the old familiar hum, of the solenoid powering up.  She took a deep breath and made ready to follow the others into the cargo bay.  Like Hayden, she seemed to presume that the Jack and Jim would lead the way.

"Unknown, Doc." she noted dutifully, "Your count is right, but the precise number of Trill that should be present is unknown."  The ex-FRA officer advised, addressing the entire boarding party, in a tone that was authoritative and insistent, "Keep alert.  In my experience, there is always one more enemy than you are expecting.  And that is the one that gets you."

She watched the video feeds carefully, as Doc moved the drone up and around the ATV to get the lay of the land.  Dani purses her lips reflexively as she watches.  "Hmmm..." escapes her lips, but nothing else follows for the moment.

[OOC:  23:22, Today: Danica Moreau rolled 8 using 2d6+2. Recon/Int Check - Drone ATV feed.]

In reply to Danica Moreau (msg #240):

Thera and Dagala view the video feeds looking for anything of interest.

09:05, Today: Thera Santorini rolled 4 using 2d6. Recon Drone feed.

09:06, Today: Dagala Aksina rolled 13 using 2d6+1. Recon Drone feed.

OOC: Thera dropped the ball there, but clearly Dagala has her eye on the ball. (Ok enough ball-gags - oops I did it again...)

After Dani handed Jim his balls...

...her reply and subsequent hmmm-ing had him shooting her a quick glance, wondering if she had succumbed to something or was just remembering past nightmares...

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #242):

In reply to Referee (msg #243):

"Guys, have you noticed that those two splayed out trills have puncture wounds to the head? Looks like maybe these things turn on each other when they're wounded - or maybe it's a mercy killing. That mutilated one that Dani shot the leg off doesn't look like a mercy killing, though, it looks like it's been savaged to me."

"Ah - keen eye Dagala.  An aggressive species to be sure...  though I wonder if those head wounds may not be so much mercy killings as survival of the fittest, or even indications of self sacrifice to sustain another?"

OOC: In an attempt to needlessly use up all the bad rolls ;)

13:27, Today: Dr. Jim D. Jones rolled 7 using 2d6+2 with rolls of 4,1. Life Sci/INT: Wound reasons.
Not sure if Dagala's effect would count as an assisted task, but the difficulty of such speculation certainly isn't routine...

"Perhaps those wounds are from the crew, before they locked themselves in..." Jack murmured, not believing it as he said it. "Though if the trills did attack one another, they've certainly made our job easier."

Jack kept his eyes on the drone feed, slapping the releases on his rifle's back pack and slipping it off his suit. He let the weapon and its power source drift in the zero gravity of the workshop, pulling his snub pistol from his holster.

"We know there's one more in there still kicking, somewhere up top. Once we find it with the drone I'm ready to go in and see if I can draw it out. They don't seem adapted to zero G so hopefully we'll have a bit of an advantage there..." He checked the snub and chambered a round then looked across the frozen workshop to Dani. "Ready for some bug squashing?"

He chuckled. "By squashing I mean precisely placed laser fire from the iris..."

As the Droid headed for the ATV top, Jim picked up his medikit, awkwardly juggling his balls [sorry, it just came out] as he under-compensated for the lack of gravity.

"Well, I'm ready to do some rescuing," he stated, not bothering to clarify who he might be rescuing.

Dani merely interjected into the speculation about the Trill, "Humaniti isn't the only species we have found that turn on their own."  Unfortunately, it seemed to her that every sapient species did it, and many pre-sapient and non-sapient species also seemed to engage in sociopathic and cannibalistic behaviors at various points.  She rolls her shoulders slightly, before continuing, "Especially when limited resources and survival are involved."

She nodded to the Gypsy Moth's navigator.  "Ready when you are." Danica acknowedged Jack simply in response to his query about killing any more living Trill.  She sighted the hole in the iris with her  laser rifle and made ready to move forward with the others.  Her gloved finger was conspicuously held near but not on the trigger of the longarm for the moment.  The edges of Dani's mouth curled up slightly, though no one could see it, given her visor.  While she was not that good in microgravity, given a bug hunt, Dani was in slightly more familiar territory with respect to the immediate mission parameters.

In reply to Danica Moreau (msg #248):

You do not see any trills atop the ATV with the drone.

"Where did the damn thing go?" Jack muses aloud when the drone doesn't reveal the trill. He hunkered near the iris, pistol ready, looking through the slightly open valve for signs of movement on the near side of the ATV.

"Maybe it's suffocated... Hayden, care to do the honors?" he asked, ready to enter the vehicle bay.

Hayden quickly cranks the valve all the way open, before moving out of the way and behind everyone.

Jack's expression watching Hayden hustle to the back of the line would have been comical if anyone could have seen it through his visor. He figured Dani had a smirk on her face too and he instinctively shot her a look as if they were on the bridge of the Moth instead of in a dead ship wearing plasteel helmets.

With the valve open, Jack took his time to inspect the area immediately inside the iris, looking for any sign of trills lying in wait.

"Doc, let me know if anything pops up in the drone feed, I'm going to shut it out of my visual so I can concentrate." He punched a couple chord keys on his forearm readout and waited for any of the cigar-shaped things to drift away from the iris before he took a small step into the vehicle bay.

With the barrel of his gun Jack reached out and poked the nearest extremity of the trill he had shot, a quick, hard stab to try to jar the thing into activity before ducking back into the workshop.

If the trill responds Jack will shoot it point blank with his snub pistol.

If the shot trill does not respond, Jack will check the ATV side of the iris again before moving in to try to dislodge the creature. He keeps his feet under him at all times in case he needs to quickly push back through the iris.

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #252):

The trill does not react to being poked and you are fairly certain it is dead.  It's body requires little effort to push out of the way, though it is still caught by one of its hindlegs in a tiedown point on the deck of the bay.

Jacques works quickly to twist the creatures body so that it will tend to sway away from the iris valve and out of your way.

You see no movement in the bay,apart from swirling "snow" and minor debris while working.  One small brown-black, cigarette sized object floats by.  It occurs to you that it might be a leg bone from one of the small trills, like the specimen Hayden and Dani found in the starboard lab.

Having cleared the iris, Jack took a breath. "Right. Well, here we go..."

Jack flattened himself and turned his back toward the deck plating. With his pistol held ready in front of him, he slowly pulled himself along the underside of the ATV with his free hand, headed for the vehicle's airlock on the far side. He kept a sharp eye out for movement of any kind.

When he reached the port side of the ATV he let his pistol continue to lead the way over the edge and up toward the top of the vehicle. He waited there, his body under the ATV and only his eyes and gun arm poking out, inspecting the trills near the heatsink and looking for the one he thought might still be active.

Dani's visor turned slightly as Jack glanced at her.  A slight smile did play on her face, Hayden's attitude was understandable and pragmatic, if a bit comical to her.  She held her position and did not let Hayden stray too far behind her, it would not due to have something sneak up on them from above for example.  She held her laser rifle up and at the ready, scanning the opening, and then as it widened, the area behind it.  She continued to move the rifle barrel with her sighting to try and supply the required cover fire, if necessary.  Her sights were firmly locked on the dead trill when Jack set about poking then moving it off to the side.

As Jack moved in, Dani made ready to follow after Doc.  She glanced back once or twice to ensure that Hayden was following close by.

Once inside the vehicle bay, Dani quickly scanned the corners of the bay, sweeping them with the laser rifle sights, just in case.  She had seen the video feeds from the probe, but trusted her own eyes much more readily.  Only once that preliminary scan was done, did she move any further into the bay.  Danica tried to keep mental tabs on where the Trill were that they knew about whether they were free floating bodies or not.

"Right," was all Doc said in response as he focused first on the Drone's feeds and secondly on getting himself and his load through the iris and into the killing bay... while sending the Drone down the backside of the ATV and on around to the airlock side.

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #256):

Jacques crawls under the ATV.  It is warm to the touch, compared to the frigid deck, and slick with liquid.

Jacques and the drone get to the far side of the ATV.  The situation there is unchanged: one mutilated trill missing a leg, two splayed out trills floating with a puncture wound near the mouth of each, a smaller trill curled up around the ATV's heat exchanger.  It is also motionless.

Jacques is about a meter from the ATV airlock, with the drone hovering near the corner of the top of the ATV.

A hand-written note has been adhesed to the inside of the small airlock window.  In neat handwriting, it reads:

To any who find us,
Sorry about Dr. Paquette in airlock
Nowhere else to stow her
Wake Asher first!

In the smallish bit of window not covered by the note, a vacc-suited figure is visible.  Through the faceplate you can see the several weeks decayed remains of a human female face.  From your memory of her vids, it could be Deidre Paquette.

In reply to Referee (msg #257):

"Shoot each of those Trills before you get within reach, Jack. Just to be sure."

"Yeah, but don't shoot the ATV - especially that heat exchanger!", Jim is quick to reply.

"Hmm, that clinging creature might have prolonged the interior heat - regardless, let me try 'prodding' it, as Thera says," he added, maneuvering the drone to nudge the motionless trill from the side opposite Jack.

Jim pointedly doesn't comment on the note, nor the dead female.  There wasn't much to say.  He still held the medikit and his, er, limp^!, rescue balls ready, hoping to find them of use, but not critical.

OOC: We need a tool to open the airlock?
(^!What could I do - 'uninflated' is not really a word!)

Jack read the note to himself, holding steady so his vid feed could resolve it and send it to the others, then watched Doc's drone nudge the curled up trill. He had his snub trained on the creature, aiming for its head and mouth area.

If the trill is active, Jack will shoot it. "Thera, I appreciate the concern but these others already have holes in their heads..."

"Doctor, I have a corpse to send you. Stay on the other side of the ATV and I'll pass her underneath to you. Then send me a rescue ball and I'll go in."

Jack holstered his snub and planted himself securely between the bay wall and the ATV. Then he opened the airlock.

In reply to Jacques Keveloh (msg #260):

The curled up trill doesn't react in any way to being prodded or dislodged from the heat exchanger.  Unlike its' mates, this one doesn't have any visible wounds.

The airlock door isn't locked and Jacques opens it easily.  The first thing he notices is the 1.0G standard gravity in the airlock, another sign the ATV still has power.

The vacc suited woman is clearly several weeks dead.  The air has been evacuated from the airlock, but anaerobic decay has not been good to her.  Her vacc suit is in bad shape.  A large square section has been cut out of the abdomen of the suit and smaller sections have been cut out of the arm and legs of the suit.  A makeshift bandage appears to have been applied to Dr. Paquette's midsection, probably indicating that someone tried to save her.  Jacques doesn't have the same medical skill as Jim, but even he can tell from the size of the bandage that this woman would have likely needed an ER, or at least a cryoberth, to have survived.  It may have taken her several hours to die, though, and you hope the ATV had proper pain-killers or her slow death would have been agonizing.

Jacques tilts the body towards him, careful to limit contact as much as possible. It is easy to lever her into the zero-G environment of the vehicle bay, and from there to gently push her down to Doc.

The inner door of the airlock is frost free and warm, or at least less cold through the heavily insulated gloves of your vacc suit.  The gravity in the airlock is a welcome relief to your exhausted calf muscles.

The interior of the ATV looks to be in decent shape, though from this view you can see where one of the drawers near the deck may have been kicked rather violently.  You can see most of the way towards the front of the ATV (your left), but not all the way into the back where the small eating area and bunks are (your right).

"Afraid I only tend to the living, Mr. Keveloh," Jim replied as he awkwardly pushed the corpse out of the way - Jack's cam view had shown him everything he was interested in knowing of the dead crew member.

Shorty he appeared at the airlock, awkwardly handing Jack a rescue ball over the gravity gradient.

"Hopefully we will be needing both balls, Jack.  And my services - to wake the living..."

OOC: That was not meant as a ball joke!

Danica started pushing the free-floating trill bodies away from the group with the end of her laser rifle.  She figured that they would be better out of the way than anywhere near them.  Even if they were dead and not moving of their own volition, obviously, in free-fall it is a bit tricky and Dani doesn't have much experience with it - but, at least, she started them on a trajectory away from the boarding party and the ATV.  Where they might finally end up, only Ifni knew.

Dani shook her head slightly as she was passed the body in the airlock.  "Not a great way to go..." she muttered softly over the common crew link.  The ex-FRA officer had seen plenty of people die in her time (a fair number of them under her command), but it didn't make her immune to the finality of it.  She searched for any quick way to secure the body to either the ATV's outer skin or the floor of the wheel bay; activating the corpse's magnetic grapples if present and still working.

Then she waited, rifle at the ready.  Dani wasn't necessarily expecting trouble, but she also knew that the ATV would be cramped quarters; so, she wasn't going in any time soon - too many cooks in kitchen and all that.  She quietly split her attention between watching the video feed from Jack's suit, and anything unusual around the ATV in the vehicle bay.  Danica rolled her shoulders once or twice to try and keep them limber and the tension in them low.

OOC: Forgot to make clear - presume the airlock only has space for one, so Doc would have to remain a target in the bay till Jack cycles thru.  Then he would enter, as appropriate.

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #264):



OOC: Correct Jim.  Only enough space in the airlock for one at a time. 

Jack muttered an indecipherable sound of sympathy as he pushed the corpse under the ATV toward Doc. While the others were dealing with free-floating bodies, Jack climbed into the lock and inspected the damaged drawer for any sort of indication of what he might expect once he went inside.

He took the rescue ball from Doc. "Copy that. I'll let you know once I'm in and have re-secured the airlock."

Jack rested the ball on the floor of the vehicle's lock and closed the outer hatch. He waited for the indicator to go green then he opened the inner hatch and stepped into the ATV, rescue ball in tow.

Jack sealed the inner hatch and threw quick glances all around, looking for figures - in vacc-suits or not. He quickly examined the control area of the ATV then headed into the back, the quarters area. Noting the green indicator light he said over the comms, "Come on in, Doc..."

As Jack moved deeper into the ATV he kept his eyes open for anyone or anything that would indicate someone named Asher.



OCC: 11:23, Today: Jacques Keveloh rolled 9 using 2d6+2 with rolls of 1,6. Investigate/INT - check ATV drawer.

Jim was in the airlock, medikit and balls rescue ball in hand, as soon as Jack had the inner hatch dogged.  His drone remained in the bay near the heat exchanger hugging Trill.

"Sure .. Damn, full gravity!  About time something worked on this blasted ship."

Doc had felt the tug of the ATV's grav plates, but till he entered the airlock was unaware it amounted to a full G.  Despite what Jack's cam feed was displaying, Doc's attention focused on the airlock status indicators ... did the ATV still have full atmo?

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #267):

The drawer appears to have been a very solid kick by a booted foot.  Whose or why is unclear.

The control area of the ATV appears to be in order.  Nothing looks damaged or out of the ordinary.  A quick glance at the ATV's fuel gauges reveals that the vehicles has about four days worth of power left.  CO2 filter levels indicate the ATV has at least two weeks worth of air left.

The interior of the ATV is tidy, though there is an unsecured laser rifle on the comms panel desk and a reddish-brown stain on the floor of the ATV that looks like someone put some effort into trying to scrub out.

In the living area of the ATV there are two figures occupying bunks.  Both are supine and are wearing crew suits.  One is in a lower bunk (about thigh level).  He looks to be in his late forties or early fifties. There is no nametape on his suit.  The other is in an upper bunk (about chest level).  He looks about thirty.  The nametape on his coveralls reads "ASHER".

Neither mans opens his eyes or responds to your presence in any way.

OOC: Doc, you're in the airlock and will be in the ATV momentarily.  Danica is in the vehicle bay near the airlock.  Hayden can be in the vehicle bay or workshop (as he desires), once his player gets back from the flu.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:56, Sun 01 Apr 2012.

In reply to Referee (msg #268):

Even before she saw the gauges on the video feed, Thera had been puzzling.
"Guys, those gauges tell us that power is likely to be the first thing to fail, so why are the crew wasting it on gravity? Humans can cope for weeks, even months, in ZG. Something feels wrong. I'd advise extreme caution. Not sure what of, but..."
"Maybe there's a little one loose in there that they're trying to keep down, or something."
This message was last edited by the player at 06:14, Sun 01 Apr 2012.

Jack listened to Thera's pondering, also wondering why the crew here had decided to keep gravity active and potentially waste other more pertinent life support. "I don't know, Thera... nothing's right about this whole damned situation."

When Jack saw the men in the bunks, he stopped. His hand instinctively brushed his snub but he saw the name Asher and took a breath. "Okay, team... here we go..."

Jack stood and examined the men and their surroundings as best he could while disturbing as little as possible. "I'm wondering if they've taken heavy sedatives to reduce their oxygen consumption..."

"Hmmm...," Jim responds to the speculations.

As he waits for the airlock to cycle, Doc replays recordings from their sojourn - allowing the late Claudette Eubanks' voice to be heard over his comm:

... cell for the suit is about gone.  I never thought it would actually end like this.  Asher and the Doctor are probably going to die as well.  (chokes back tears)  ... Oh God, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. ...  Aaron and mission lead are trapped in the ATV.  There are about a half dozen of the things Rolo was calling Trills and a bunch of the little ones ... Aaron said she died of her wounds earlier ... if I can get the ship home before the ATV runs out of power, then at least I won't have been totally useless.

"Possible doctor Talun and the pilot didn't expect to be out this long .. and survive," Jim concluded, adding, "Don't worry Thera - we are being cautious - and I see no reason to turn off the gravity."

"Perhaps Dr. Talun might not have been sure of whatever he intended doing in a non-standard gravity.  Regardless we'll know better if we can talk to him..."

As he left the airlock to head for the living area, "Jack, seems likely Talun left the note - see anything else he might have left?"

---

OOC:
@ref - does Jim recognize Dr. Talun Sargant from Jack's feed?

Assuming he gets there - Jim will examine the bodies:

• 05:40, Today: Dr. Jim D. Jones rolled 11 using 2d6+4 with rolls of 1,6. Medic/INT: Examine crew.
  Holy crap - a natural roll higher than 5!  Must report Dice Roller failure... even a 6 to go with my 1!
  No worries, saving snake eyes for the revival rolls...

Older man is, I presume, Mission lead, Dr. Talun Sargant - a well-known planetologist and known to Jim - and the one whose brother they went after.

No doctor in RL - but would have to have gone beyond a simple 'sedative' unless they just went under in the last day or so - or these guys have a ton of hair and really long fingernails and are fairly dessicated, not to mention having awful bed sores... ;)

In reply to Dr. Jim D. Jones (msg #271):

OOC: Hopefully RPOL doesn't plan on staying with this color scheme for long.  IT's a bit tough on the eyes.

As Jacques is inspecting the two men, Doc joins him.  To both men the signs of fast drug are obvious.  Their heart rates and breathing have been slowed to the point that signs of life are difficult to detect.  Asher's heart rate is steady at one beat every 19 seconds, within normal range for fast drug. Dr. Sargant's heart rate is erratic, one beat every 14-23 seconds.  This could indicate a potentially serious medical problem.

If clinical evidence weren't enough, the autoinjector containing an empty fast drug ampule on the clock tray in Asher's bunk clinches it.

Jacques, you find a Pathfinder issue snub pistol tucked under Asher's pillow.

Hayden waited in the workshop, watching the progress on his video feed. He also kept an eye out for any critters that might try to slip out of the bay and into the workshop.  He was otherwise quite content to leave any 'close encounters' to the former alien contact professionals.

Jim sets his rescue ball down along with his medikit as he arrives at the bunks and quickly makes to ascertain the state of the immobile men.

"Thank god.  They're alive," Jim declares for the benefit of the others.  "Fast drug," he adds with a nod to Jack.

His cam shows a closeup of Dr. Talun's neck as Jim deftly inspects it - his gloved hands focused around what appears to be an injection point.  "Asher seems nominal, but Dr. Sargant was administered an overdose - and rather ineptly I might add.  Missed the damn carotid by millimeters," he states while backing away.

Jim opens his medikit and removes an ampule and an autoinjector along with a small device - noticing the snub pistol as Jack discovers it. (via cam)

Standing he looks at the two men, "Hmmm... from the look of things I'd say Asher gave Talun the injection and then himself.  That could be rather strange given the note we saw - and I can't see Dr. Talun advising Asher to inject him in the neck instead of an arm, nor with an improper dose."

"It almost looks like either Asher was worried about Dr. Talun or Asher was up to something strange," he elaborated.  "Jack, you're better with computers - this is a survey vehicle, it would surely have recorders that might tell us something useful.  You want to give it a shot?"

"These two can hold for a while - might be better to try to revive them under more ideal circumstances - where we have more support if either of these two cracked."

Dani nods to Doc's assessment of the situation, "I agree, Doc.  Bag'em while they are down for the count.  We can revive them on the Moth under more controlled circumstances."  She glances about the vehicle bay warily, "We should secure the rest of this bay and the port side of the ship and get then see if we can't get the Suzain powered up, turned around and taken back to Box 2."

The Moth's pilot addresses Nino, "Chief, do we have everything we need to transfer fuel to the Suzain when necessary?"  She knows that the Moth is not yet in position, but that will be taken care of in a bit.

She starts to move Paquette's body, pushing it towards Hayden and the open iris to the workshop.  "Should we stow this body with Eubanks' in the Launch?" Danica notes off-hand.  Danica tries to be respectful of the dead in her actions, but she is business-like.  They do have plenty to do before the Suzain can be restarted and redirected.

"Jack, Doc." Dani prompts, "Do we need to move or reposition the ATV to better facilitate transfer of the two men back to the Gypsy Moth?"

In reply to Danica Moreau (msg #275):

Nino's deep voice answers immediately, "Affirmative, First.  Me and Prisa are ready to go."

OOC: Once the two are in rescue balls you should be able to evacuate the ATV to vacuum and take them out the back door instead of trying to get inflated rescue balls into the ATV's tiny airlock.

Jack merely nodded in agreement as Doc assessed the situation. He also checked the snub from under Asher's pillow, ejecting the clip and slipping it and the gun into the empty thigh pocket of his vacc suit. "For what it's worth you're reading my mind, Doctor," Jack said, looking over the men of Suzain. "I wonder why they kept their boots on when they knew they would be down for weeks?... and the gravity... and why was Eubanks in a vacc suit and these two aren't?..."

When Doc asked about surveillance feeds from the ATV, Jack murmured in agreement. "Indeed, I would hope there are logs. But they may not have had enough time to activate a 24/7 protocol... or if they did crack up, someone may have wiped them..."

Jack looked around as the radio chatter turned to moving the unconscious men."You know, this ATV is a perfect rescue ball. We could probably give it a push and send it straight into the Moth's cargo hold."

Jack turned and moved into the control area, looking for a fuel gauge and a computer terminal. "Or, if this ATV has enough fuel, we could leave them in here and turn the whole damn ship..."

Suddenly Jack stopped. "Doc - how long do you think these two have been under?"

"No telling from just an external examination, Mr. Keveloh.  Such would require a blood draw and analyzing platelet morphology and sedimentation.  Any logs might tell use just as accurately," Jim replied.

"But you've a good point on not moving them," he continues, returning the stuff he had removed from his medikit, adding, "Let's get them setup in the rescue balls, unsealed, just in case.  After we get the med bay powered, I can see to stabilizing Dr. Talunt."

Rising with a rescue ball in hand and looking at their dirtied suits, "In fact, if we can arrange refueling without airlock docking the Moth, we won't have to decon her, just the launch.  Assuming Pris and the gang can manage the Moth, we can ride this bird back to Box 2 if we transfer enough supplies..."

Jack listened to Doc, scanning the instrument panels. "Well... I for one do not feel the need to spend the week headed back to Box 2 on Suzain," Jack said wryly. "Gypsy 2 will suit me fine if quarantine is necessary. And I sincerely hope it isn't."

Jack pulled his hand comp out of his sleeve pocket, looking for a patch into the ATV's computer. "Does anyone know how to drive an ATV? More to the point - can some one tell me where the damn fuel gauge is?"

"Afraid of ghosts Mr. Keveloh?," Jim asked, slightly amused - he certainly couldn't see spending a week in a launch with a perfectly good ship available.  "Hopefully quarantine won't be required, but decon will, and someone has to take the Suzain in.  Hate to needlessly contaminate the whole lower half of the Moth - we just got her."

Jim preps his rescue ball - sliding the open carcase under Dr. Talunt.  He leaves the fuel gauge question for others.

OOC: @ref - how we doing on air?

There is a standard connection on the ATV's powerpanel for Jacques to link his handcomp, or you can just use the ATV's computer itself.

Dani noted calmly, if a bit curtly, into the common crew channel, "Stay frosty, Jack.  I can drive the ATV if necessary."  She continued her vigil outside in the vehicle bay, adjusting the grip on her laser rifle slightly.

"But is that going to be necessary?" Danica prompted, "Or are we going to attempt to power up the Suzain fully and restore atmosphere on-board?  I suspect that we are going to have to, if we are going to turn her around and take her back to Box 2."

Dani glanced at the O₂ gauge on her suit, more a force of habit.

In reply to Danica Moreau (msg #282):

Everyone has about three and a half hours of air left.

In reply to Referee (msg #283):

Dani's words trigger a thought for Thera.
"Can we restore power without restoring atmosphere? I'm just thinking ZA is our friend if any more of those Trills are about. I wouldn't like to think any of those lab specimens are going to revive - especially that big mother. If we refuel the Launch as a safe room for the prize crew, maybe we could bring Suzain back depressurized?"