Watching over proceedings on the Albatross's small bridge from behind Alwin and Einar, Astrid can tell this is the crew's first run on a salvage mission... as a crew.

"There's no one calling the shots here," she says. "Be careful."

The system has several planets, and even from well away from the destination they can pick out the one planet of interest that matches the one seen in the data the ICS provided.

A small, cold, icy world.  It's had a basic survey, but being uninhabitable and quickly written off as economically unimportant, no one has ever bothered coming here, or even naming the place.  The atmosphere is cold, dense, and short of oxygen.  Small, shallow seas cover most of it- a water ammonia solution.   More or less, window cleaner.  Much of it is so cold that it forms slushy masses.

  Magda Simikos, the lead ICS researcher here, has an opinion about this.

"The choice this Carinan made, to land here, reinforces the idea that it was seeking survival, and therefore is not merely a machine.

"How does crashing help survival?" Astrid asks.  "Obviously it could do course corrections, couldn't it have just steered away, and floated in space until help came?"

"Carinans, like a lot of powerful electronic systems, have heat problems. We need our atmosphere to breath, Carinan ships are flooded with cold nitrogen gas to keep the electronics cool.  If this ship had a problem with that system, and vented its coolant into space, maybe it needed cold air to live."

"Sensors, catalog everything and plot its course and feed the info to Astrogation. We'll catalog all of the space junk so we don't become a victim here as well."

"Plot your course from Heather's feed Alwin, but don't execute until the captain orders it. The smallest particle could poke a hole through us."

"On it," Alwin says, already making the necessary preparations for this particular set of maneuvers.

Heather sat at her console and watched their course and speed very closely. She didn't speak, barely moved, barely seemed to breathe until she needed to. Her single-mindedness in situations fraught with risk had saved her life when negotiations broke down more than once.

"Light to port 5 degrees," she said, sending the change to the captain and Alwin. "Steady on that course."

"Make it so Alwin, steady."

"Run a sensor scan of the planet Horace, see if we can find our target, after we get through this field that is." he says with a smile. "Then we put down when we find the wreckage."

"Aye-aye sir" Horace replies.

Non spacers hear "debris field" and imagine great chunks of wounded starships, drifting and tumbling slowly through space.

That's not the reality.  Oh, sure, there might be one or two of those, but those aren't the danger.  The danger comes from the small fragments moving at truly sick relative speeds.  A chip of armor blasted off in battle becomes a bullet.

This isn't the worst such area, not by far, it was only a small skirmish.  But there are some dangers.

Alwin will have to make a Piloting skill roll here to make a completely intact approach.  Because of the relatively low threat of the debris field, he only needs a 6+  (2d6 + skill/modifiers is the basic traveller/Cepheus engine system)

Even as they approach, they can pick up a signal- something is down there on the planet, pretty much where it is supposed to be, transmitting a simple, repeated code.

"It's alive"  Astrid says in mock-creepy voice.

"Hehehehehehehhehehe, yup, it is! There it is captain, I found it!" Horace says with a grin!
This message was last edited by the player at 16:58, Wed 15 July 2020.

In reply to Horace Wymp (msg # 10):

"Smart ass!" he grins back. "There is your target Alwin, get us there in one piece and set us down."

It isn't pretty - there are a couple of close calls along the way - but Alwin's skill and experience in the pilot's seat gets the ship to their destination unscathed.

14:08, Today: Alwin Brandle rolled 7 using 2d6+2.  Piloting roll.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:14, Wed 15 July 2020.

Everybody get your suits on, it isn't nice out there.

He puts on his vacc/hazard suit for the evil atmosphere outside the ship. Ammonia and other things he thought he'd heard. He wasn't sure, he was the novice here, he would take orders from the experienced salvagers.

The Albatross lands.

For centuries, word smiths have wrestled with the oddness of saying "water landing" when no land at all is involved.  Unfortunately, no good alternative word ever made it into regular use.  In this case, it's barely even water that the ship is landing on, it's a cold aqueous solution of water and ammonia, mostly.  This is a good thing in this case- water-ammonia blends freeze at much lower temperatures than water.  If it had been pure water, there would be nothing out there but a sea of ice, and nowhere for the ship to set down.  The Albatross, like all of its sister ships, lacks any "hard surface" landing capability, that feature being passed up in favor of economy.

It's so cold that despite being in solution, some water manages to freeze.  But when the water freezes, the ratio of ammonia to liquid water increases in the remainder, and as that ratio rises, so does the freezing point of the solution.  It creates an equilibrium- for any given temperature, some of the water in the liquid is frozen.  The result is a surface that is not entirely liquid, but is certainly not solid.  Soft slush would be the best description.  The landing of the ship has left a trail two miles long, clearly visible- it will will take a while for it to fill back in again, but it will.

The other very important thing about landing the Albatross is that the water must be deep enough, or else, horrible things happen.  This is usually determined with a laser sensor- standard equipment on all ships of this type.  The laser won't travel far through water but it doesn't have to.  If there's no return from the beam at all, then obviously the water is more than deep enough.

Here, much of the slush is shallow, but there are deeper areas the ship can land in.

The target is close, only about a mile and a half away over this slushy sea, in a much shallower area: according to readings taken before the landing, less than a foot deep there!

"Can we get closer Alwin? Or don't you recommend it due to the depth? Maybe we can get to the edge of the shallow area."

Alwin considers the pros and cons of a closer approach, only to realize that this particular environment is different enough from what he has done in the past that he can't say with any certainty as to what the correct answer is in this particular instance.


14:55, Today: Alwin Brandle rolled 6 using 2d6+3 ((2,1)).  Pilot skill plus INT modifier.

He does the best he can with a second pass.  The environment is strange, and the danger of landing in an area that is too shallow is... well the one good thing is that being stranded here might not be for long if others come looking.  Assuming the ship lands relatively intact.

The ship sets down, leaving a slush trail behind it.  Now you have a little less than a mile between you and the target site, much of which is very shallow, a thin layer of loose slush over surface.

"We need a boat, or a hovercraft, or something like that," Astrid says.  She looks at the chief scientist.  "You knew we were landing on a planet like this.  I'm sure you looked up the particulars before we left on this trip, right?"

Magda Simikos nods.  "We brought an inflatable air boat, and a submersible drone.  It is too shallow for the drone.  We will have to go investigate with the boat, in person."

"What the hell is an air boat?" Astrid asks.  "It flies?"

Magda shakes her head.  "A boat for crossing shallow water or marsh.  Lightweight, powered by air. A blower in the back acts like a jet. The air here will work just as well as breathable air."

"Thank the gods we brought a boat! We're good then!" Horace says under his breath. "We'll need a toolkit too and a few other items, we go armed too, just in case."
This message was last edited by the player at 12:49, Sat 25 July 2020.

"Where do you want me, boss? I'm happy to go but this is out of my wheelhouse and there's no linguistic similarities in their machine code for me to seize on. I'll go wherever you need me to," Heather called out.

"Get a sidearm from the ship's locker to start, then follow the lead of the salvagers, I'm new to this too. Astrid or Boris will know, Dan is too new for that." he says with a smile.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:46, Mon 27 July 2020.

Horace heads for the boat, Einar stays on the bridge watching the sensors.

Gun on his hip, just in case, and toolkit in hand, he lends a hand getting the boat to the water and gets in out of the way, not wanting to be in the road for the upcoming operation.

The air boat is big enough for six people, so it's Horace and Heather, the two younger salvagers, and Magda Simikos with one of her junior assistants.

The planet surface has the consistency of a partially melted snow cone.  Though, presumably, the taste of kitchen floor cleaner.  At the very least, the lower hull of the Albatross will be very clean.

Alwin set the ship down very close.  It only takes a minute for the goal to come into sight.  The first thing they see is the trail.

Had the alien ship only plowed up the slush, it would have long settled back by now.  But the slush covering here is so shallow that the landing carved a furrow through the loose, wet ground beneath it.  This now exists in the form of two parallel raised ridges, each about a meter above the surrounding surface.  Between the two ridges, the furrow is deeper canal.  It will probably be a feature here for many years, as the planet isn't a very active one.

Almost immediately, you see a large twisted piece of metal off to the side, well away from the track.  It looks half melted and twisted.  Maybe it was an antenna or other component that tore away during the landing.  Another piece of metal is in front of you, it looks like a lost section of hull plate.  A few moments later you can see the ship in the distance ahead.   Maybe it's not the whole thing, because it certainly looks smaller than a "Junkyard B" class Carinan ship did on the computer screen.  But the width is about right- it's about 40 meters wide.  It looks battered and partially melted, and there are scorch marks on the hull.

Back on the Albatross, they are monitoring the alien ship:  it is still transmitting its signal.

Horace checks his sidearm, "What do you think Boris, your opinion? Everyone check your weapons just in case, they don't like being captured."

Heather checks her weapon as well. "That's not what worries me. I'm worried about others coming to investigate that transmission. If they find us here they'll kill us and destroy the Albatross without a second thought."