Brent brings the air raft to a rough landing on the pad as the wind gusts bedevil him.  He notes the human female figure waving and yelling to them, her words obscured by the rush of the wind.  "Hey, we've got some sort of survivor." 

Brent is able to set the air raft down without breaking anything. He notices that the clouds to the north are dark now, not white like he'd seen before, and the wind is getting stronger. A loud pop from the windscreen startles him, and he notes several drops of a clear liquid starting to run across it. As he watches, several more drops hit the vehicle with audible pops.

Naimh looks north, and sees that they're about to get hit by a thunderstorm. They usually don't have tornadoes associated with them, but the rain is starting to come down. In five minutes, they will be in the leading edge of the storm.

The survivor in question dashes a bit unsteadily over to the air-raft, brushing a vividly red lock of hair from her pale, freckled face as she asks, "Um...you guys still speak Galanglic these days, right?"  Seeing the rather attractive woman up close, her extra-long fingernails and the more obvious than usual hair on her arms and legs makes it clear that she's been in a low berth for a *long* time.

"So far this planet has yielded monster cats, and storms apparently. Perhaps introductions can wait until we're heading back to the ship."

Gareth not so patiently waits for the air raft to be lowered for the rest of the group.

"Sounds good to me!", says the unidentified redhead quickly, scrambling into one of the unoccupied rear seats and strapping herself in as soon as the air-raft touches down.  Her centuries-old set of medical scrubs crinkles audibly as she moves, but it's pretty clear that she's more concerned about the approaching storm than her slowly disintegrating apparel.  "I hope your ship is nearby," she half-shouts over the whine of the air-raft and the rising wind, "because if nothing climate-wise has changed during the past 251 years, these storms can get pretty damned *dangerous* sometimes!"

Veronica, who opened the left side hatch when Naimh approached, looks at the bedraggled woman with wide eyes. She closes the hatch and looks to Brent. "She's definitely not armed. I'll watch her; we'd better go."

Bent looks with alarm as the liquid falls from the sky under the increasing force of wind.  "Joxe, we have darker clouds and increasing winds.  There are droplets of liquid coming down from the sky.  What is going on?"

When the woman approaches the air raft he draws his weapon.  He keeps it ready as she enters the craft.  As the woman doesn't appear to be a threat he slides the weapon back out of sight. "Yes, we speak Galangic.  Why..." Brent trails off for two reasons, one seeing that she's probably just out of a low berth and two as the wind picks up.  "Keep an eye on things Veronica, let me get us air borne and stable."

With care for the buffeting wind, something like the turbulence in a gas giant atmosphere during skimming Brent pulls up and away, steering clear of obstructions and buildings to give him plenty of margin for error or the unexpected.

"It's called rain, Brent, and it's not a threat to you, except it can reduce your visibility to zero if it's heavy enough. Take up a heading of two-one-five; that will steer you away from the storm's track. I'll meet up with you south of the town."

Brent's moving map display changes as Joxe drops her flight data to him. He sees the colored blotches showing an angry red off to the north where the storm is the strongest, and the course she wants him to fly. The turbulence is moderate, but it's about the same as what he's routinely experienced while skimming.

In the back, Veronica notices that Naimh's clothing is actually cracking open as she moves around. She reaches down and extracts a survival kit from under her seat. She opens the soft sided case, and extracts a rescue blanket. "Here," she hands the package to Naimh, "cover up with this so you don't get chilled. Your clothing is coming apart on you."

The woman with the crumbling, pink clothes doesn't seem to be bothered by the turbulence, almost as if it seems pretty routine to her as well.
Niamh accepts the warm blanket with a tired yet appreciative grin, and wraps it around her body. "Thanks."  She pauses for a moment, and then holds out her pale left hand for Veronica to shake.  "I'm Niamh Parker, by the way.  Where are you guys from, if you don't mind my asking?  A desert or vacuum planet, maybe?"

[OOC: She pronounces her oddly-spelled first name as "Neev".]

--
Bob K.

The blonde reaches out and grasps Naimh's hand in hers. Her grip is strong, but carefully moderated. "I'm Veronica Roland, Chief Petty Officer, Egg Navy." She releases Naimh's hand and sits back. "Your pilot for today is Brent Rogers, his observer is Malcolm Solo," she points behind Naimh, who is sitting in an aft facing seat, and then smiles at the man seated next to her. "And this is Gareth Solis."

"We are from the Egg System, and we are aboard a Beowulf-class merchant we've named Wanderer. The ship belongs to the last surviving member of her family, Joxe Laiam. You will meet her once we are back aboard."

Naimh is aware that the Egg System has no habitable planets, having passed through that system once in her travels. Everyone lives - or lived at the time - aboard space stations and orbital habitats.

Gareth nods in the newcomer's direction, and begins looking for a little clarity.

"We were expecting a little more in the way of civilization when we headed this way.Can you tell us a more about what happened here? It might increase everyone's odds of survival."

Gareth was hopeful Naimh had some answers, but judging by her appearance suspected she might even know less than he did.

"Rain huh?" Brent seems doubtful but steers the course that Joxe provided.  He is quiet for a bit as he deals with the turbulence and rain.  After a bit he glances back.  "I'm Brent Rogers.  We're from a vacuum system, no habitable planets.  All this... weather is new to us.  We'll get you settled aboard ship but if it's been 250 years since you were awake... well a lot has changed in that time."

She gives Gareth a somewhat sad smile.  "Well, provided that you don't mind my information being at least a couple of centuries out of date..."  She pauses to take a quick breath.  "Well, basically...we got nuked. There were never a lot of people on Khesansadu in the first place, so only took a pair of bombs to pretty much do the job. The redhead then lets out a sigh, looking down towards the floor as if remembering something painful.  "One of the targets was Norbu, my home town."  Niamh makes a utterly cheerless little laugh before looking up at Gareth.  "At least virtually everyone I even knew only had a few microseconds or so to suffer...and I was way too far away at the time to do anyth-"

Her age-ravaged clothing crackles audibly as Niamh chokes up and takes a few seconds to rein in her rapidly rising grief, quickly wiping an unwelcome little tear from her eye.  "Anyway...the rest of what I know came from the survivors that I managed to run into.  The ships that attacked us were pretty small...nothing bigger than escort-sized at best.  They used the nukes on Norbu and Keane, while they used lasers and particle beams to take down our power plants and other high-value targets.  After that, they just left us here..."  The look on her face darkens into an angry frown.  "...to *starve*, I suppose."

Veronica unfastens her harness, and kneels in front of Naimh. "Here, take this." She has a tissue in her hand.

Brent steers back to the ship and makes a low growling sound of anger as Niamh relates the story.  "Nuked... we haven't found any signs of intelligent life on the planet at all.  I would have thought the planet was hospitable enough that even with the infrastructure destroyed people would have survived."

Brent sees that Joxe has landed Wanderer about ten minutes' flight time away. The air raft is up to 400kph now that the turbulence is subsiding as they move away from the storm.

Brent brings the air raft around to the downwind side of the ship and docks it into the bay.

"Survivors? Did anyone else manage to live to present day?"

Joxe has turned the ship into the wind to put the hangar on the downwind side. The wind here is calmer, so Brent has no trouble with the landing. The hangar bay doors close as he powers the grav lifters down, settling the vehicle on it's landing legs.

"Welcome home," Joxe says over everyone's comm.

Niamh takes the tissue and wipes her eyes, managing a wan ghost of a smile.  "Thanks..."
This message was last edited by the player at 05:01, Sat 07 Oct 2017.

The green-eyed woman shakes her head.  "It's only hospitable if you have an off-planet source of food, unfortunately.  The local biosphere, while not really *toxic* to humans, is incompatible to our biochemistry.  TNA-based, completely incompatible chirality, utterly different base pairs..." She pauses and lets out a short sigh.  "Basically, it would all be as nutritious to you as eating the plastic off of a seat cover."

Ms. Parker takes a moment to sadly look down at what's left of her home world for a second or two before adding, "Whoever was *able* to leave, left about 250 years ago.  Barring anyone else hidden in a low berth somewhere, everyone else either starved to death, or got killed by other survivors...or maybe even got *eaten*." Niamh swallows hard.  "I um...kinda ended up witnessing some of that last stuff first-hand..."  Although it's obvious that the lady in the crumbling clothes is trying her best to keep her emotions under control, she simply can't hide the momentary look of remembered horror in her eyes.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:02, Sat 07 Oct 2017.

"We should get moving."

Veronica listens to Naimh's story, the sadness mirrored in her eyes. "I'm sorry for your loss," she says. "Look, why don't we go aboard and find you a place to rest? We have a fabric extruder, and several empty staterooms."

Joxe appears in the hatchway from the hangar, and calls to Brent when he opens his door. "We've got about half an hour before the storms arrive."

Brent is focused on getting the air raft docked with the ship.  Even sheltered in the lee of the ship he wrestles with the grav vehicle to bring it in safely.  When all is settled he activates the hatch and seals away the growing weather.  Unbuckling he stands up and takes a deep breath of relief.

"I'm sorry for your loss Niamh.  The last days must have been horrible." He didn't ask for further details while things were so fresh for the survivor.  "Do you think that others may have managed to get into berths?  It's pretty clear that there must not be anyone left actively alive on the planet from what we've seen.  Anyone else must be in sleep like yourself."

He nods to Joxe as he heads into the ship itself.  "Veronica if you can help Niamh get settled I'll get us out of this weather.  We'll drive up high enough to be above the weather but still in the atmosphere while we decide what to do."

Joxe takes in Naimh's appearance as Veronica helps her out of the air raft. "Hello," she addresses Naimh, "I'm Joxe Liaim. I will talk with you more a little later. Veronica will help you get settled. We have several staterooms available on this deck."

"Naimh, let's get you settled in, okay?" Veronica asks.

A few minutes later, Wanderer is safely above the storms, which top out at about 10km above the surface.

Naimh is assigned to one of the larger cabins on the upper deck. "The fresher is there," Veronica says, "and I can get you some clothes and bath stuff." She steps out and returns two minutes later. "Okay, here is a robe and some basic toiletries." She sets the robe and an open-topped plastic bag on the neatly made bunk. "When you're ready, I will show you to the commissary. It's a good one, so the food's okay."