Sam spoke, up as she continued her checks "Maneoverings on line so we can go take a closer look if we like. And I think we should - if only to get more information to tag this on Astrogation maps. if this pulled us out of Jump, it could do the same to another ship - and with worse results."

Although you are in the darkness of space and there is no nearby star to provide sunlight, it is not utter darkness--the stars still shine.

The pyramid is tumbling slowly through space, kind of an irregular catty-cornered pattern. It is only when you bounce a laser off of it do you get detailed information. It looks like it's made of stone, but the laser reflection spectography said it was metal. A laser surface scan indicates that the metal is smooth... there are no seams, there is no roughness to the surface. It appears to be a discoloration of the metal that gives that look. Clearly, though, the metal was intentionally made to look like stone.

There is no dust, no scratches, no impact craters...


The gravity field is about .24 standard Gees.


It's velocity is about 30,000mph. That, and the tumble, will make it difficult to dock with.

"I've been pretty useless aboard the Long Shot," Pablo spoke up, "so if there's something there I can shoot, then I'm all for it."

"Admittedly, there's a small chance of a misjump under normal circumstances, but every time we jump, there's a chance that we'll all die. So, I figure we're all living on borrowed time anyway."

"By all means, let's check it out."

"Wherever you go, Count, I step on the mines first," Jones added.

That situation had evolved somewhat, at least, Gregory felt like it had, but it certainly hadn't been formalized. The Count hadn't released him from service, nor had he offered him an actual crew position or share in the ship.

He almost got the impression that the Count was waiting for him to leave... or perhaps get killed, so that he wouldn't have to make a decision.

This situation was a bit unusual for Valeska. She was used to a different way of operation. When you signed onto a ship, you were essentially leaving all decisions up to the captain. He always had the final say. So, Valeska was surprised then that the Count had asked the crew's opinion.

But while it was unusual--this 'all for one, one for all' approach, she appreciated it.

"I'm in," she said. "The pyramid shape is a regular geometric solid, so it could be some sort of alien ship. The gravity field it's generating could be some advanced technology."

She'd merely voiced what she felt everyone was thinking.

"Yeah, what Pablo said," came Kaengarr's response.

"I'm used to long waiting periods before intense action. And since the Count wouldn't let me shoot anyone on Outpost, I consider that my 'long period of waiting', so I'm ready for that intense action now."

Having come up from the engine room after squeezing into a vacc suit and getting briefed on the situation Khea hovers around the sensor station to constantly get a gimps of the object while offering "advise"

"Make sure to record everything you see. The data alone would be worth millions .... And do a full gravimetric scan .... And make sure to remove any location information from the scans, we can sell that separately.

In reply to Kheaiftouaw (msg # 30):

"I am..." Vonon mumbles in response to Khea, as he works the sensors, "... I know ... I am ... I am removing any - wait, what?" Vonon glances up at Khea,

"What do you want me to do, erase the Universe from the scans? We do that to the recordings! Later, not now."

Vonon looks around Khea, "Captain, I've bounced the entire electromagnetic spectrum at that thing - and a few things besides - at all sensor frequencies and it remains an inert, unresponsive lump. Time to decide if we escalate."

"Count me in!" Aimee says excitedly. "This beats working in a space lab seven ways to Sunday!"

"If I settle in to work at the lab, this might be my last chance for adventure!"

Then she listens to Khea and Vonon's discussion.

"Actually, the easiest way is to just dual record the data, but turn off the GPS on one of them," she suggests. "When you are looking at the scans, there's a row of touch-button toggle switches along the top that let you control the various aspects of the scan. Usually the far right one is the GPS switch."

"The computer is feeding the sensor data to all consoles, which everyone seems to be watching, so just pick one as your no-GPS station and shut it off while you hit record."

Sir Walter listened to the conversations, not use to being part of an expedition to an unknown object.

"Well, I do not have much to offer in the aspect of science or exploration but it would be a good idea to get things organized before we step foot on it. Armor, weapons, jobs, etc, would be a good idea since we do not know what to expect nor if we will be able to communicate with each other while we are on it." he said.

In reply to Walter Zeller (msg # 33):

Vonon stares wide-eyed at the sensor station as Aimee makes her suggestion.

"Well frack me..." he finally says, "I'm military sensor trained, and they never taught me that trick. No wonder civilian courts are so choked up, if you can futz with the sensors like that."

Vonon begins to slowly, and carefully, set up the sensor recording scheme suggested by Aimee, as Walter suggests visiting the object.

"Well, that's what I was just saying, Sir Walter - that object is probably deader than that ancient Terran actress, uh, Lassie, I think her name was."

"But, since sensors aren't telling us much, I don't think jumping out onto it should be our next step. We need to find out if it'll react to either a comm signal, or, well, a laser shot."

Vonon looked around, "From what little the sensors are telling me, our laser cannon aren't even going to leave a warm spot on that material. I think. But we might wake something up. Same for beaming a comm signal at it. It's not responding to being scanned, but it might acknowledge a signal or comm-laser."

"We should also pre-calculate the jump coordinates. ... Just in case.

Sharik listened with one ear on the conversations swirling around them.  The diminutive navigator continued her work on figuring out where the Long Shot had actually dropped out of j-Space.

While it was possible that it was merely in the space between their source and destination, there were documented misjumps placing the ship more than thirty-five parsecs off-course.  Which could actually have placed them anywhere in the sector (and well outside of the subsector that they had started in).  That was one of the reasons that she was only listening with one ear.

The talk of fuzzing the positional readings was likely irrelevant at this moment.  They were already unintentionally fuzzed.  Hell, if they couldn't figure out where they were, any discovery that they might make might also be lost to time and space as any jump calculations from an unknown position would be virtually impossible (in the sense that without known initial positioning, reentering j-Space virtually guaranteed another misjump - and the next time they'd probably not be as lucky as they'd been this time.  Next time, they might find their atoms reentering n-Space strewn across more than one system).

That actually didn't phase Shar that much though, she felt confident that she could eventually figure out where they were.  Eventually.  The auburn-haired socialite would have freely admitted that it might take a while to figure things out though.  Such were the vagaries of not having a necessary ready point of reference immediately available ...

---

[OOC:  First and foremost trying to figure out where the Long Shot actually is.

  01:00, Today: Sharik Kaagira rolled 12 using 2d6+5 with rolls of 1,6.  Astrogation/IntCheck: Where in Known Space are we?

No difficulty modifiers factored in, only the GM knows how easy/hard this is supposed to be.  Sharik will take more time to figure things out based on star chart readings (she has her personal Intellect and Expert Navigation programs at her disposal).]

Khea leaves the bridge and waddles back into the engine room in the ill fitting emergency vacc suit she had hastily done to turn on main power. One week should be enough to explore this object or at least get a good enough fix on their location to come back later. Still she reduced power levels just in case.
Satisfied she climbs back to the upper deck while humming a tune from her homeworld and goes back to her cabin to exchange her current vacc suit with the properly fitting aslan one she bought and to collect an exploration kit which she deposites in the main airlock so that the others dont forget essential equipment.
The toolkits from the ship locker, just so that they can be quickly retrieved when needed, all the different scanners stored there, a tranq gun and the remaining ammo and a few mousebots just in case they need something to scout ahead.
She herself takes her computer and one of her guns with 3 magazines in case there is trouble.
OOC: 20:52, Today: Kheaiftouaw rolled 12 using 2d6+2 with rolls of 4,6.  Turn on power Edu + skill

Sharik starts out by locating any pulsars she can identify, and then comparing them with known pulsars, and finally overlaying the star patterns in the computer with what's out there. Thus, she has no problem determining the ship's location... it's about halfway between Outpost and Duncinae, about where it should be under the circumstances. It didn't seem like it was a misjump, in the strictest sense of that term, and it turns out that it wasn't.

Based on the remaining fuel, there's no problem with laying in a resumed course for Duncinae.

At Vonon's suggestion, a tight-beam comm signal and then a laser-comm signal is directed at the pyramid. There is no response, and the pyramid continues to be inactive.
This message was last edited by the GM at 15:52, Wed 12 July 2017.

In reply to StarMaster (msg # 38):

Vonon repeats the results of trying to get the pyramid to respond to a communication attempt - zilch.

"Okay, now, maybe this the Patrolman in me speaking up, but..." Vonon turns in his seat a little to look back at everyone, "Before we try to go stomping across the surface of that thing, I would suggest we try to get the ship in a hover, just abouve the surface, then drop The Boys down, for a recon, and let them find out what happens when somebody sets foot on that surface."

Sharik's brow furrowed for a moment as the initial sensor readings came back and the initial positional estimates began to iterate through the various higher-order refinement algorithms.  The estimates were troubling, not in the actual position, but in what they might imply.

"Good news, bad news." the auburn-haired navigator of the Long Shot noted off-hand to the others on the bridge.  Shar started with, "The Good News™, we are not far off-course ... if at all."  She paused for a moment to and pointed to a spot midway between the source and destination of the ship.

"Bad News™..." she noted rather deadpan, "I have no idea how we fell out of j-Space.  We didn't have a rupture in hydrogen containment bubble or in the lanthenum matrix.  All I can think of is that thing..." and she jerked a thumb towards the sensor readings for the pyramid, "had a large enough effect on the local gravity well to act as a true space-time anomaly and an effective barrier in j-Space.  A one in a million chance of us plowing into it through the vagaries of our particular vectoring and positioning along this route.  I guess..."  To be honest, she didn't sound completely convinced about that last statement.  Probably too many suppositions and coincidences for her taste.

Sharik paused again, as if in additional contemplation, then slowly posited, "If it was large enough - gravitationally speaking - to disrupt local space-time...."  She pursed her burgundy lips and whistled slightly for effect; shaking her head slightly, she let the statement hang there.  Shar made little move to join the boarding party; though possibly interested in just what the thing might be made of and contained, the diminutive socialite actually looked a touch wary (if not scared).  That level of local disruption could be down right hazardous.

"Yeah, absolutely." she tacked onto her Vargr friend's idea, agreeing wholeheartedly, "...we should send one or more drones down first to take samples and look around."  There were plenty of more 'expendable' remotes available than people on this ship.  At least, that seemed to be her current stance; it made perfect sense to her.

Sam looked at the rotating Pyramid And pursed her lips "I could probably get  us into a hover over it, but it'll be tricky. But where do we want to hover - over the base, or one of
 the sides? when we've decided that - where abouts on that side?"

She looked at Sharik "Sharik, Can you work out if the point of the top is pointing at anything - in system or elsewhere?"

In reply to Samantha Kilgore (msg # 41):

"No, it's kinda tumbling top-over-bottom, in a wobbly kind of way, Sam." Vonon chimes in from the Sensor Station, "I don't think the pyramid top is pointed in any one direction, though I suppose it might be scribing a circle around some limited volume of space. I'll set the sensors to monitor that, but it really looks like a totally random tumble, to me."

"As for where to drop the drones," Vonon adds, "If you feel you can get us there, I'd recommend smack in the middle of the square base. I don't think it will matter to the drones - that pyramid is generating a gravity well of around a quarter-G - that'll hold anything down on it's hull, regardless of what face it's on. As long as they don't do a lot of jumping around, the drones should be good to scout around."

The crew was doing what needed to be done, without him interfering. He really had little to contribute. It was a technical investigation process, something outside of his skill set.

All he had to draw on was the holovids he'd made. It wasn't as bad as it sounded, since smarter people than he had written the scripts. While they had tried to keep it as realistic as possible, there was a certain amount of fiction that was expected.

"Khea," he called on the comm. "I've been thinking... yeah, I know how dangerous that is... but, I'm pretty sure that this pyramid is some kind of ship. It seems like something happened to their gravity drive, which is what is causing the localized gravity field. No big deal about that, except that there is no way our gravity drives could ever produce that effect."

"I suppose it could just be some sort of wonky trap. There was something like that in The Pirates of the Black Nebula that I made."

"Anyway, am I off-base with that? Can you extrapolate any sort of mechanism or power source that could generate that sort of gravity field?"

CountDarrels request stopped Khea cold. She was no scientist and "extrapolating" basically means guessing. But of course she couldn't say so. So she gnashes her teeth and thrums on the bulkhead with her claws while trying to come up with a more professional sounding version for "I do not know"

"If it were a drive I would expect the centre of gravity to be on the outside of the pyramid. Otherwise you would not move at all.
Considering how far we are from the next planet we can rule out any fusion power generation or anything that depends on fuel. Maybe the gravity is not a drive but a power plant.

"Okay Vonun" Sam said "Can you see if its a regular tumble, so I can try and predict its location for us to intercept?"

"Okay, Kaengarr and I are suiting up for an EVA action-aboard," he reported.

"Okay, Kaengarr, rock-paper-scissors-Spock to see who steps out first!" he challenges his partner-in-crime.

In reply to Pablo Esteban Ryzov (msg # 46):

"Uh ... um ..." Vonon turns back to the sensor station and adjusts a few settings, then gives the computer a few short instructions.

"Ah ... it's ... well ... it is tumbling ..." Vonon says, then quickly sends the most recent feeds to Sharik, "Uh, Shar'r, you were always better at Math than me, can you get anything to plot an approach from this?"

---

OOC: by "better at Math" I mean better with the Navigation skill ^_^
This message was last edited by the player at 07:41, Fri 30 June 2017.

Sir Walter watched as the others got ready. "Mind if I tag along. I have some experience with Zero G, and can help as a medic. Hopefully not but you never know.