+++It appears to be a Free trader that just jumped in. Will update+++ Walter said over the relay as he flipped a switch to open one of the hailing frequencies.

+++Captain Walter Zeller of the Longshot to Free trader Starshine, beware of the navigation hazard in the sector, it already seems to have damaged a scout recently.+++ he added.

"And thats why you take the items immediately instead of waiting. You never know what happens next.

The klaxons aboard the Starlight woke Brayln just in time for the sudden lurch from J-Space and loss of gravity to throw him from his bed. In a panic, he rushed for the emergency vacc suit in his quarters. "Captain! What happened?" He called into the vacc suit's comm as he snapped the helmet on.

In reply to Brayln Adone (msg # 276):

Since he was serving watches on the bridge, he had the ship's comms channels patched through his vacc suit's communicator. He heard



+++Free Trader Starshine to Longshot. Understood.+++

Immediately, he toggled back to the crew channel. Captain, I've got some experience patching systems together, I'm on my way to the engine room.

When Brayln gets there, if Verner Rask or Morgan Randolph are already there, he will assist them. Otherwise, he will use Mechanic to check what systems he can. Priority to restoring gravity/life support and flight control.

14:01, Today: Brayln Adone rolled 9 using 2d6 with rolls of 3,6.  Mechanic roll to assess damage from misjump.

"Blast this creaking heap of Vargr dung!" Morgan exclaimed as the misjump klaxon's shouted.  He didn't blame Verner; he'd done every thing he could to get the engines over the neglect that Ralmithane had put them through.  But Verner was new at being an engineer.  Really, he was doing a smashing job for somebody who previously didn't know what a jump engine was.  Maybe now that they had a steward and could take on paying passengers, they'd be able to get far enough ahead on the mortgage payments that they could afford to put in at a shipyard for some serious maintenance.  Assuming they survived this little disaster.  Acknowledging Brayln over the ship's comms, he replied, "I don't know what happened, but I'm on my way tot he bridge to find out.  You and Verner take a look at the J-Drive and see how screwed we are."  Hopefully it wouldn't be damaged beyond repair, whatever malfunction dropped them out of J-Space.

When he got to the bridge and examined the comm log, he was surprised.  "Walter, you old dog, I'd ask how you're doing, but clearly we're both having a really shitty day.  As you've been here longer, any idea what the hell that thing is and why it's putting out enough gravity to capture a moon?"

+++Things could be far worse but for the time being, this space is getting crowded with 4 vessels and none of us are sitting at a starport.+++ Walter said.

+++I have no idea what it is but I can say that if it is a merchant vessel, I have never seen it before. There is a crew aboard the unknown craft and are in the process of checking it out on a busted up Type S that is not jumping out of here except as cargo. If you have any scientists with you, you might want to send them over to help.+++ he added.

In reply to Morgan Randolph (msg # 278):

Ahhh.... Sure! Whatever Verner needs! Brayln rounded the corner and entered the engine room. Something tells me that wild-looking engineer isn't familiar with any maintenance that isn't percussive. he thought.

OOC: My mechanic roll is above. As I read the rules, it's good for diagnosis and jury rig repairs. Is there any way I can use that to assist Verner, giving him a positive DM to his repair roll?

- This reminds me of a fishing net, - said Serge phlegmatically. -  When it became full, a fisherman will come.

+++ My old friend, my crew is so far from scientists it isn't funny.  I've got a low-tech warrior as my engineer and a journalist as my comms officer and steward, while I pull pilot and navigator duties, +++ Morgan explained to his fellow captain.  +++ This is my second misjump in less than a year thanks to Raxilthar Ralmithane.  That lazy son of a Vargr-Aslan mating had been faking his maintenance logs for almost the entire time he was my engineer.  Whatever you do, don't hire him for anything other than raw material for your fuel processors.  Even then, he'd probably cause your ship to misjump. +++

However, from the sounds of it, the misjump was caused by an uncharted anomaly, not the state of the engines, so maybe they were okay.  Getting on the internal comms, he contacted engineering, "How's it looking down there?  From my conversation with our neighbors, we seem to have been dumped out of J-Space by the gravatic anomaly in this region, not by a drive failure.  Did the unexpected cascade damage anything?"  If the engines where fine, then they only had to worry about getting enough fuel to jump out of here.  (And the tiny little need of their being an actual system within a parsec.)

+++Morgan, it gets even better.+++ Walter said as he took a deep breath. +++I am Acting Captain of this vessel as the Captain some how got his brains scrambled and is sitting in the med-bay with the Doc. Most of the crew is checking out the alien craft to see what is going on so we can see about getting out of here safely. I will keep that in mind about Raxilthar but we got a top notch grease monkey here.+++
This message was last edited by the player at 16:28, Wed 07 Mar 2018.

Captain, it seems I beat Verner here. I'll run what diagnostics I can while I wait for him. Did they say this misjump was a gravitational thing? That's got to mean we're near a planet or something, right? Have we tried a signal GK?

OOC: To move things forward, shall we assume that my success on the Mechanic roll is enough to restore emergency function to everything but the J-Drive until someone with Engineer can look at it?

Sam smiled as Kheas comment "True, but if things get that SNAFU'd, then you'd be dumping it anyway so you can run faster."

She keyed Comms to Walter "Is the ship hostile, do we need to return to the Longshot?"
This message was last edited by the player at 09:46, Fri 02 Mar 2018.

"Or something describes it nicely.  We've got a gravatic anomaly large enough to be a planetary gravity well being generated by some sort of huge pyramidal structure/ship/Ancients'-knows-what thing out there that seems to be catching starships like satzleflies on honeypaper.  Whether that's intentional or just an accidental by-product of whatever it is remains to be seen," Morgan informed Brayln over comms.  Hitting the button for shipwide announcement as he also turned off the misjump klaxon, he then said, "Verner, you may have been unaware that that very loud noise that has been sounding throughout the ship is the warning that the ship has misjumped.  In such a situation, the ship's engineer is expected to report to his duty station in engineering to begin assessing damage to the drives and power plant.  It would be greatly appreciated if you would head there now and help Brayln--who has even less clue than you do about fixing stardrives--with that task."

In reply to Morgan Randolph (msg # 286):

Ancients!? Captain, make sure you record the sensor data on that thing, especially visuals! An ancients artifact drifting through space and causing misjumps? That's the kind of news article that brings down the net server it's hosted on!"

And of course, I'm stuck here in engineering! Well the faster we get the sorted, the faster I can get up to the bridge and get some high quality holos.

"Thats why you stow it away as soon as possible, so you can run with it if it comes to that.".
Back in the Scout Khea drops her loot in a convenient place and starts browsing ship schematics for far traders on her computer.
"Stupid men's work". Khea switches to a private channel to Vonon. "Could we outfight a far trader? The space is getting crowded out there and the more people leave the less will the data we pull from this ship be worth."

As everyone is using suit-comms, the fact that Khea is in the Scoutship is no hindrance to conversation, so Vonon responds with,

"Us? No, we just have side arms *snicker* We pose no threat to a starship *snicker* But, uh, that's probably not what you meant. Well, maybe Serge's scoutship could fire it's dorsal turret -- Hey, Serge, does your ship even have a dorsal turret?"

"But if you mean 'can the Longshot handle a far trader?' then the answer is 'Oh Hell yeah'!"

"Even reorganized for mining, as she is, we still have six fairly decent, civilian-grade beam laser cannons.  If we still had the original missile launchers installed, a fight between Longshot and a far trader would last about sixty seconds. As it is, it might take us one-hundred twenty seconds using just our lasers. And, unless they've made some interesting modifications to their far trader, Longshot's armor can probably go paw-to-paw with that thing for an hour-or-so."

"So ... either way, we're safe. Why, you thinking of going Pirate and shooting first? That old trader is no threat to us..." Vonon catches sight of Pablo making hand gestures at him.

"Oh.  Right ... unless she's a Pirate, herself, and has a hundred armed combatants ready for boarding actions. *heh* Then we're really, really screwed."

News stories!  They were potentially stranded for the rest of what would be their tragically cut short lifes in the middle of the void and he had to worry about crew that was more interested in documenting what did it to them than how they were going to get out of there.  "Where did I go wrong?" Morgan asked himself.  "How did I end up with a crew of non-spacers?"  ~By being cheap, obviously.  You could have hired on fully qualified and experienced crew at Drexilthar--there were plenty of spacers looking for berths--but with their increased skills came increased demands for salary.  You didn't want to pay that high.  You convinced yourself that these guys were skilled enough to do the job.  So stop bellyaching, trust your instincts, and let them do their jobs.  And do your own while your at it.~

Setting aside his thoughts of doom, Morgan set the computer to analyzing the sensor output to calculate from known spectral data exactly where in the blasted void they had been dumped.  He couldn't even begin to calculate a jump out of there without a fix on their current position.  While Walter may have already done those calculations, and he would be sure and exchange both his calculations and his conclusions with Walter, in a situation like this he wasn't about to engage the J-Drive without doing the work himself.  (At least as well as he could.  Not replacing the ship's navigator when Liala quit after their last misjump had been another way he'd cut back on overhead trying to keep up with the mortgage payments.  She'd taught him a lot, but as a navigator, he was just as much a "skilled enough to do the job" compromise as the rest of the crew.)

Walter had said there was a scout ship that wasn't going anywhere except as salvage in their holds.  Maybe it had enough fuel in its tanks to let them jump out of there, because he didn't think they were going to be able skim a gas giant to refuel like they did after the last misjump.  While the computer worked on calculating their position, he turned to the sensor logs to see if they were floating in true interstellar void or they were actually in a system and just not close enough to any or its natural bodies to immediately realize that.  (Far enough out in a system and even the local star just looks like an extra bright star, especially if it's not particularly bright in absolute magnitude in the first place.)

Clenching her teeth as she has ti explain the obvious to another male again "Hssss....
The danger they represent is not that they attack us know, but that they report back to their clans. And they will have the ressources to drive us off and deny aby further access.
Also any information or items we recover from this will be worth less if we do not hold the monopoly on it

Khea drops her computer on the floor and leans back against the wall in frustration.
"But we have to act fast. We are obviously sitting directly sitting on a common jump route. The longer the gravity stays on the more ships will arrive and some might be more than trader."

Captain, I've done all I can here. Until Verner gets here, there's not much more I can do. Do you need any help up on the bridge?

The pyramid ship isn't really 'huge', but it is 'ship-sized'. It's big enough to swallow a Scout ship, but then Scout ships aren't really that big to begin with.

Morgan has no problem getting data from the sensors. When a ship is in j-space, its fusion reactor is functioning all the time, as it is what keeps the lanthanum grid/jump drive functioning for the whole time, not to mention the artificial gravity and life support.

It is during this time that it uses up most of its fuel. It's not a 'burst of fuel' consumption at the beginning that drains the tanks.

So, once he determines the current location, which is about halfway between the two points of his jump, he realizes that he still has sufficient fuel to jump again to finish his initial trip. Essentially, the ship is capable of a 1/2-Jump still. It's never been impossible to do; it's just been pointless. Why jump only halfway to your destination, where there's no chance of refueling,  nor any chance of rescue (because your emergency beacon would take years to reach the nearest base)?

Thus, the free trader still has slightly over half its fuel remaining.


Furthermore, the free trader DID NOT misjump, though most people would consider it as such simply because it isn't normal. No, the free trader's j-space transit was still in a geometric line from its point of origin to its destination. Somewhere along that line, there was a 'gravitic anomaly'. This anomaly is generating the gravity well of a small planet. That much gravity 'intrudes' into j-space, and disrupted the j-space bubble that the free trader was in. This is the same reason a ship has to be 100-diameters out from a gravity source/planet in order to jump.

After reading the sensors, Morgan now realizes that his ship did not misjump again. It was an external force that caused the premature ejection from j-space.

The whole point of the space lanes is that these are known routes between two star systems where there are no intervening stars/planets. That's not to say there can't be a rogue planet now and then, but these can usually be detected, and, in any case, such is their transitory nature that they are only in the 'space lane' for a very short time, so it's extremely unlikely to run across one unintentionally.

All this flashes through Morgan's mind as he looks at his sensor and processes the data they give. It's not an unlikely inference that this other ship may have experienced the same problem.

While the pyramid ship is drifting, it's not under power, so its motion is slow. On its current vector, it would take two months or so for it to drift out of the space lane.

Also, the pyramid ship is tumbling irregularly through space, one corner over another. It's a slow tumble, and the larger ship is keeping station over the pyramid ship's base. While this 'appears' to be some tricky piloting, in reality, it only required getting into position and then putting the ship on autopilot to maintain that position.

- Rephrasing an old joke: my ship does not have a turret, but in case of emergency, it will return fire, - said Serge.

"Unless this new ship uses magic, we're still talking about two weeks before we can see anything like what you suggest, Khea," Pablo replies.

"And that's not counting the bureaucratic inertia that's likely to keep a ship from being dispatched right away, or even the negotiating time between the ship's captain and his clan. He might be altruistic, but self-enlightenment is more likely his motivation. You don't become a free trader out of altruism."

"And we're so far off the beaten path that it's most likely here for the same reason we are, though possibly the same reason Serge is. Remember, he was being sent this way to investigate the gravitational anomaly. And he found it!"

He's already looked down the right hand passage that seems to circumnavigate the central docking bay. It was empty, of course. But he dutifully checks again to see if their noise or activity has woken the dead... or anything else.

"In any case, let's keep going. If the other three passages are like this one, and apparently they are, we've got a lot more doors to open."

"It looks like the inner wall has utility compartments, while the outer wall has the more functional compartments. This time, let's try the outer ones first. Vonon, send the drone to the first door."

Vonon takes a quick look over the data,

"Oh, yeah ... I hadn't noticed that pattern." Vonon responds to Pablo, "Yeah, okay, let's confirm that, then..."

Vonon sends the drone to the door indicated by Pablo, and instructs it to begin scanning for the magnetic frequency that will open it...

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't get your loincloth in an uproar," Verner finally gets on the comm to Morgan as he enters engineering. "I was having a beautiful dream until this damn misjump screwed it up. And let me remind you... I didn't cause the first misjump, and I didn't cause this one either!"

"If I understand this high-tech thingamajig you call a jump drive, it can misjump from one of three reasons: bad fuel, bad astrogation, or bad equipment. Don't know nothing about the astrogation part, and the bad fuel could have been sabotaged, couldn't it've? But, when's the last time you had the J-drive overhauled? Is it second hand?"

While he talks, you hear some banging going on.

"Everything looks hunky-dory down here. I'm getting green lights on everything... wait a minute. That ain't right. The spindizzy... the precessing autogyro... is showing a wobble. Hmmmm. If I understand that right, that can only be caused by an intense gravity field. Usually a sun or mega-planet. Wait! We were in J-space, right?"

"Well, there you go! It wasn't a misjump per se; you got too close to a planet and the gravity well burst the jump bubble!"

"See? It wasn't my fault after all!"

OK Captain. It looks like Verner and I have things under control. Should we check with the other two ships here about the wreck? Have they gone aboard? Are there Ancients on there!?