Sereth can feel the thunk of the grapple securing itself to the nose of his cycle.  As Trav's vehicle surges ahead and the line goes taut again, it pulls his course back to true, and together the two are able to steer safely ahead until the coruscating walls of the conduit are left behind them.

As everyone gets their bearings, they notice that the glow of the cycle lights gives off a color that verges slightly more to the purple than it did on Earth's side of the aperture, possibly due to differences in the chemical trace elements of the ocean around them.  The basic environment sensors continue to show the water as being basically benign; none of the differences should pose any threat to the bikes or the suit.  (It's nothing that anyone would want to ingest for long, but the same, of course, could be said for normal Earth seawater.)

The sensors also are picking up a wide variety of sonic pulses.  It seems likely that echolocation is a commonly used sensory tool among the denizens of this sea.

And finally, Trav's radio is now picking up a carrier signal on one of the common UNIT emergency bands.  Its bearing matches the direction of the last communication anyone had from Colonel Rayburn.

Trav immediately does what she used to do when she and her band of magicians and mystics visited a new universe back when she adventured in R Space - her sonic immediately matches the base physics of N-Space against what is here. A cosmos will have certain universal constants - acceleration of gravity, the speed of light, how the time vortex functions, and other physics standards, which may vary from those of N-Space. She starts that program running in her sonic.

Upon getting the UNIT signal, she sends - "Colonel Rayburn, this is UNIT rescue team Trillby, please respond. We're picking up your band but we need your location. Repeat, this is UNIT rescue team Trillby, please respond."

If the gateway will permit passage of radio signals, boosted by Sweet Boy, then hopefully Speizo and the team on the TARDIS can receive them. "Trillby base, this is team Trillby. Can you hear us? We're getting the carrier signal from Colonel Rayburn's team, but nothing else as of yet. We're through, and everyone is all right so far. Sending telemetry now. Feed my readings into Sweet Boy for analysis - I keep a log file of universes I've visited. This may be a place similar to where I may have roamed and we may have some warnings of what to expect from the local physics. Have Chibi help you."

Taking the lead alongside Stan now, Smoke Alarm concentrated on steering the water-bike through the glowing-walled duck while Traveller rescued Sereth. Outlooking ahead, she could eyespy where the conduit twisted and turned, and relayed the changes to her team so they could be ready-steady to turn. She wondered how much further they had to go. The endless lights-out void of the great pool was one thing, but the ducks with the glowing shapes and whorls spiralling around seemed to be getting always smaller and smallerer. It was just an eyespy trick, but it made her feel rather unbold.

Stanley relaxes a bit now that everyone has safely made it through the anomaly. Hopefully the way back will be even easier, with the water flowing back to Earth.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:09, Mon 01 June 2015.

The first response Trav picks up is from the TARDIS.  There's considerable distortion, but it's unmistakably an Osgood who responds: "Reading you, Trilby, three by two.  Tele<crackle> streaming and error <crackle> running.  Standing by."

Some minutes later, there's another, clearer, signal.  "Blue Lacy, calling Trilby; Blue Lacy, calling Trilby.  Reading you."  The voice has some more gravel in it, but Trav can still recognize Joshua Rayburn.  There's a pause, and then a laugh.  "I'd ask if that's you, as I don't quite place the tone.  But damn, girl, who else would come barnstorming Davy Jones' locker after me?  Over."

Trav immediately texts back, "CONFIRMED, GOING TO TEXT TO SAVE BANDWIDTH. A scroll of weird circles and greek like text follows, as Trav sends instructions to Chibi, assisting the TARDIS team in synchronising the communications across a rift, which she has done innumerable times.



"Josh? Oh, Josh, is that you? You have to see the new face, Josh, I'm a hot blonde now! Listen, we can make all kissy face later. Give me your coordinates! We're here to take you and your team home! Blue Lacy, confirmed. Immediately feed us your telemetry and status, we've come to get you. Over." Trav hops up and down a little on her cycle. To her team - "If we're getting radio reception this clear, he can't be that far. Let's go!"
This message was last edited by the player at 13:19, Tue 02 June 2015.

Trav's read of the situation proves out.  A little basic triangulation gives her a fix on the location where Rayburn is transmitting from.  It's about a dozen kilometers away and about five hundred meters down, well within the operating envelope of the cycles.

As the group sets off,  Rayburn continues transmitting.  "Trav, you want to be getting a wiggle on, if you can," he says.  "It is not safe in this ocean.  You'll see it when you get close -- but the SPOT is messed up bad.  There are flat out monsters, here.  One of 'em wrecked us, and it was as much as Flynn could do to get us here."

"Oh, golly, Josh. It's been nearly 500 years since I've seen you, I've changed faces 3 times, safe is a weird word for me. Gotta warn you, Josh, fat bottomed girl has been gone. I mean, I'm still her, but you remember when I left looking like Belle from beauty and the beast and I came back wearing glasses? Like that. I'm that girl, but lots older, and different. A bit scarred." Boy, that was an understatement If Rayburn was a Colonel now, he certainly knew about UNIT's encounters with the Marshall in the 80s and early 90s. She never killed any UNIT men or women, but not for lack of trying.

"Josh, we rode on the back of a Triceratops together. I lived for 300 years on a planet with space wizards and dragons. My people with me, they're brave. We'll be OK."

To the team: "You heard the man. Their ship was probably attacked because some giant animal was bothered by electromagnetics or motion. Let's coast the cycles in on minimum power. Eyespy and outlook, Ware dangerous beasts.". Kang speak was both poetic and compact, and Trav fell into using it more often.  That purple haired version of herself she met in the Mathematician's paradox zone on Rifts Earth - Trav may have regenerated into a Kang.

OOC: That was an actual in-game event from the tabletop RIFTS game Trav was in.

'Brave and bold as Kangs can be!' Smoke Alarm chimed in to a no doubt puzzled Josh over the talkiphone.

'Outlook and eyespy. 'Ware cleaners. Eyespy you-are-here so we can trackback.' she agreed with Traveller, putting the water-bike electricky down low and outgoing at slow-poke speed, which she found a bit unsatisfying.

OOC: Hm, anyone wishing to eyespy can choose to use Awareness + Technology (sensors and sonar) or Awareness + Ingenuity.  Assume that the latter roll will be more difficult.

OOC: And still my better roll: 17
20:08, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 17 using 2d6+9 with rolls of 3,5. awareness(4) + ingenuity(3) + Keen Senses(2).

OOC: Sigh. Why bother?

00:45, Today: Sereth rolled 11 using 2d6+6 with rolls of 3,2. Awareness + Technology.

Trav isn't doing much better. While she's excellent with sensors, it's harder to interpret readings of an entirely foreign sea. Trav is holding her sonic forward, it's green light shining dimly in the murk. She adjusts it to scan passively.

OOC:11:30, Wed 03 June 2015: The Traveller rolled 12 using 2d6+8 ((2,2)). Forgot to add +2 for Sonic. Trav scans the murk, Awareness 2+Technology 6+Sonic 2=14
This message was last edited by the player at 04:40, Fri 05 June 2015.

Stanley looks around and does his best to try and spot anything that could possibly be a monster. That is easier said than done, in this dark and alien ocean.

OOC:
18:02, Today: Stanley Newton rolled 13 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 1,4. Awareness(4) + Ingenuity(4).

Smoke Alarm peers all around her as she motors forward through the sea.  She isn't sure whether her eyes are adjusting to the dark all around, or they're just conjuring up cleaners and boojums from seeing so much dark.  But there comes a moment when she looks out into the black and she sees all of it moving past her.  This isn't like seeing the head-lights from one of the other cycles catching froth and specks moving past; it's actually on her side where no one is, and it's like a whole huge wall shifting past her.

Then, on her cycle, Trav pings out with the sonic.  And the feed to her cycle sonar comes back with a return that is huge.  And moments later, the water all around everyone pulses.  Everyone's sonar screen flares white, and there's a THRUM that resonates through the whole of each cycle and each suit.

Trav realizes that using her sonic to probe an area teeming with echo-locating creatures nay have been like walking into a den of hungry lions and vigorously waving bleeding hunks of beef about....

Outlooking into the gloomy pool, Smoke Alarm was reminded of an old Kang knowhow: she who outlooks too long into the lights-out should 'ware she does not eyespy unseen things in the lights-out. Or something like that. Blinking, clearing her eyespies, she outlooked again, definitely eyespying a great big something sliding past. 'Ah, Trav—?' she began, right before everything went THRUM!.

Deftly, she recovered her seat on the water-bike, eyespied the sonar picture-spout, and used the talkiphone, her voice quavering with alarm 'Something big out there. Mayhaps big as a tower. And in-coming!'

Trav immediately turns her sonic off. "Crap. Gotta think fast."

Trav immediately digs into one of her pouches, and digs up a battered old Minmei doll. With the sonic, she quickly reconfigures it to match the sonic characteristics of her last sonic pulse. Then, she stuffs the poor small gatchapon into the barrell of her left turbopistol. She adjusts that, with with a PFFTS of compressed air and a bubble, it shoots off, pinging off that same pulse, but away from them, all while singing off a tinny MP3 English rendition of my boyfriend is a pilot.

Hopefully, the monsters will be as enraged at the sonic disruption as Minmei herself at the localization of one her greatest Japanese hits. Wow, that little girl was pissed.



OOC: Trav is spending 1 SP for resourceful pockets for a Minmei doll. She's then going to sonic the cheap speaker in it to send off an identical sonic pulse and fire it off away from the group, hopefully luring away the monster. This should be two actions, one for an Ingenuity+Tech+Sonic (I'll take a 'dont get the monsters more pissed' penalty') roll and the second for a Coordination+Marksman+Turbopistol-2 multiaction roll. This should all happen in the shooter phase, so the other PCs should take their actions first. How does that sound?
This message was last edited by the player at 19:18, Mon 08 June 2015.

OOC: Sounds like a plan to me.

What's everyone else going to do while this transpires?

OOC: ... standing on guard?

Cos that doesn't require dice-rolling.

OOC: Tootling along to see what happens and ready to speed away if we're attacked.

OOC: Waiting to see what happens, I think?
This message was last edited by the player at 06:37, Sat 13 June 2015.

I decided to generate Trav's rolls as stated and go ahead.  Hope that's OK with everyone; I may get back to regular posting this week and I may not. :(

After Trav prepares her decoy, she deploys it off into the blackness.  She's a little disappointed at the speed with which it departs, but as she has applied due foresight, the doll doesn't start pinging its signal until it is a fair distance away.

The results, to put it mildly, are dramatic.  There is a great swirl of current around the travellers as the leviathan attracted by Trav's initial pulse changes direction and kicks up a turbulent storm in the ocean.  In the beam of his cycle's searchlight, Stanley sees a graat fluked tentacle thick as a redwood sweep across his path in a spray of cavitation bubbles, but he manages to keep the vehicle stable.

Perhaps a minute later, there another deep THRUM cuts through the water, but this one is considerably muffled and does not evoke anything like the same spine-rattling vibration.  It seems likely that the pulse was sent out in a different direction, probably after the departing decoy.


20:23, Today: The Guardian, on behalf of The Traveller, rolled 14 using 2d6+7 with rolls of 4,3. Coordination + Marksman + Turbopistol -2.
20:23, Today: The Guardian, on behalf of The Traveller, rolled 24 using 2d6+16 with rolls of 4,4. Fixing up the decoy: Ingenuity(8) + Technology(6) + Sonic.

As the backwash hit, her water-bike suddenly bucked and spun like an old three-wheeled trolley. Yelping in alarm, Smoke held on tight and struggled for control, finally getting the tootling water-bike shapeship-and-sound. 'Is the pool-cleaner out-gone?' she asked via the swim-suit's talkiphone. She outlooked back over the shoulder to eyespy her friends, making safe-and-sure all were sound-and-safe after that. Only when all was a-okay did she lead them off again.

"I think so... I saw something big swim away." Stanley whispers through the radio. They have just been reminded that the predators around here are focused on sound, so he is trying to keep his voice down, even thought it probably doesn't matter.

OOC: Sorry to have been away. Gary, NP on taking the rudder.

Trav holds up her fingers in a hush motion, and she urges the team to let their vehicles simply coast on the current. She keeps her eyes on the passive display, as the Minmei song echoes through the briny depths, growing more and more faint.

"It's gone for now. Sorry, folks. It's been a while since I've adventured undersea. Captain Nemo would be dressing me down. Now, let's coast in. Turn off your engines, and let's swim in."

Trav makes sure the engine is off, and uses her own fins to carefully swim the bike the remaining distance to the SPOT, making sure that her comrades are also making good time.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:41, Mon 15 June 2015.