Munching on his sandwich, Shamus, begins an inventory of all the engineering "consumables"..Ie fuses/tubes/red dewhickies, etc...

OOC: JTime on our hands....

Not really sure what the "lords" want...Shamus examines the escape pod...and how it might be modified...

It's definitely reusable. It could stand to be cleaned, and it needs restocked with air, supplies and fuel. Some sort of launch device would also be helpful.

The only other option would be to alter the transponder.

Shamus is reading a tech manual when the ship falls out of jump...He immediately moves to the engines to see what happened.

  Entering the engineering area Roland moved to join Shamus." Need a hand?"

The alarm signaled a 'misjump'. Emerging from J-space one hour early could have put the ship inside a planet, or at least in an immediate collision situation.

That one hour short jump was nearly a .6% deviation; .1% is the acceptable maximum.

The ship coming out of J-space early could have been a misjump, but apparently that's not the case. Or, at least if it was, it was a very 'tiny' one.

However, there are three things that could have caused that. The first is an astrogation error. The computation generated an erroneous number.

The second is that there is something wrong with the J-drive.

The third possibility is that the ship entered a gravity field. Although the sensors indicate that the ship wasn't close enough to the gas giant for that, the engines are showing signs of that very thing.

Shamus will run checks on the drives and also trying to figure out, if it wasn't the engines..what was the cause.
21:15, Today: Shamus O'Donnell rolled 9 using 2d6+2 with rolls of 2,5. Engineering check +2.

Internal sensors show that the spindizzy in the J-drive developed a 'wobble' when it came out of J-space. Normally, everything is synched such that the drive shuts down the instant it's back in N-space. In this case, it took an extra second for that to happen. That's how the wobble occurred. What caused it never appeared on the sensors--at least not down here in Engineering--but the only thing known to cause that is when a ship drops out of J-space because the field hits a strong gravity well.

Shamus guesses that there is or was some sort of gravitic anomaly in the area. It might have only been momentary.

Shamus, intrigued by the event, breaks out his "The Schwarzschild gravity fields guide for Dummies".

Calls the bridge...

FYI: If you've ever seen the Jodie Foster movie, Contact, I picture the inside of a J-drive engine looking something like the machine they build. In technical jargon, it's a precessing magnetoscopic gyro... but the engineer's slang term is 'spindizzy'.

When it's spinning at the extremely high speeds needed to do a hyperspace jump, it is easily affected by strong gravity. Safety measures shut it down instantly when that happens, or else the imbalance would tear the engine apart.

Thus a gravity field produces a noticeable 'wobble' in one of the spinning loops. If the gravity is only temporary, it'll self-stabilize again, but the effect has still been interrupted, which drops you out of J-space.

It's all right there in the book Shamus is reading! :-D

makes sure everything locked down and gets strapped down himself...

"it's never the atmospheric turbulence that bothers me." Roland Grumbled as he strapped in." It's that ground based turbulence ya run into once in a while that gets me."

when he heard the com he unbuckled and replied."Confirmed, Gearing up and heading to the airlock.... "

  he headed back toward his quarters, stuffing the unlit cigar back between his teeth and Looking damned serious as he moved.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:50, Wed 27 Aug 2014.

Shamus will monitor the engines, watching for any problems.

The engines are running smoothly. The fuel is 99 and 44/100 pure hydrogen so power is at optimum.

Shamus will proceed to count the bladders and figure out exactly how many tons of fuel we have (+whatever is in our fuel tank).

Roland came down to engineering to hep out still sealed in his armor." Where ya need me?"

He asked as he picked up his tool kit and looked around the room.

"Everything's working fine, just trying to get a total count of fuel tonnage we have."

"Hope it's enough, we could be waiting here a while if it isn't.' Roland commented as he looked over the displays."the records we picked up said the station started suffering problems... If it had anything to do with the things they brought aboard running a diagnostic might be a good idea....we may have picked up some hitchhikers."

The diagnostic turns up no problems.

Fuel capacity is at 57%. It's enough for a Jump-1.

Shamus will continue to monitor the engines, hoping that Roland's warning would be unneeded.

Shamus, who's keyed into the ships comms, overhears the conversation.

Private comms on ship, "It might just be me, but, I thinking he's dropping hints...perhaps the bad guys are already there..."

"this is one of the few routes short range ships can take to get back to friendly space." Roland spoke up as he heard Shamus speak to the Bridge intending his words for Shamus not the bridge."I'd have at least a few gunboats if I were the other guys."

Eating a processed ham and cheese sandwich, offering one to Rol, "If you're doing an invasion, right...you jump into as many systems as you can and send out non-jump ships to take on defenders...isn't it a bit strange not to find any imperial ships here?"

Kraig replies on the private line; "If the bad guys were here I would expect them to have a squadron at the gas giant as well.  They would have nabbed us there if they were going to do so.  Let's hope I'm right..."