The young woman looks at Gareth. "From some documents in the town library. A couple named Laiam left us a letter and some photographs of that ship," she points to Wanderer. They said it, and their relatives, might come by looking for them, but that was a very long time ago." She looks back at Brent and Malcolm. "It's been well over two hundred years. How did the ship, and all of you, survive that long?"

"Melina," the man said.

She glanced at him. "I think it's a fair question, Father."

Brent paled as the young woman ran up and told her tale.  "We do have a Laiam aboard.  Her name is Joxe.  She was still alive in a Low Berth when we found the ship derelict in our system.  Her cousins didn't make it.  Joxe had a message from her parents saying that they were coming here to this world.  We were hoping to not only find survivors but word of her parents."  He flipped on his comm. "Joxe, you need to come out and talk to the people here.  They have word of your parents."

Joxe exchanges a wide eyed look with Veronica, and then Joxe holds out her rifle. "Here. No point in scaring them worse."

She makes her way out of the ship, and walks up next to Brent. She is wearing her combat armor, and she carries her helmet in her hand. "I am Joxe Laiam Rogers. Brent is my husband."

Melina looks at her with wide eyes. "Uh, I am Melina. The Laiams said that they had a daughter. You're her?"

"Yes, I am. They came here from Poznan after my cousins and I took Concordia, well, we call her Wanderer now, but then we were trapped in the Egg System." Joxe takes a breath and reaches for Brent's hand. "My cousins put me in a low berth, and then they committed suicide. These people found me, and we decided to take the ship and explore up the main."

The man lifts his hand."I'm sorry, but it's very late. I think we should meet again in the morning, if that is okay."

"Can I stay aboard the Concordia with them," Melina asks. "Uh, I mean Wanderer."

Brent looked anxiously at Joxe as she came out of the ship to stand next to him.  he took her hand as she spoke her story before the others.  He nodded as the man suggested retiring for the night.  "Is it acceptable to keep our ship settled here?  We can move it but there is always risk of disturbance and damage around buildings and people when moving about."

When the young woman asked to stay aboard the ship Brent glanced for a moment at Joxe to judge her reaction and then slowly nodded.  "We would be pleased to have a guest although I would ask first why you find a two hundred year old story to be of such interest."

"Can you take me into space?" Melina asks excitedly. "This is the first ship I've ever seen, that any one of us has ever seen!"

"Melina, behave now," her father says.

Melina looks at her father. "This town lost so much when the books were destroyed, Father. Maybe these folk can help us get some of that knowledge back again." She turns back to Brent. "Would you be able to help us?"

Brent smiled at the young woman's enthusiasm.  "Our entire goal is to reach out to communities along the main and see what may be done to raise up the level of civilization.  We will do whatever we can to help your people here with knowledge and even equipment that we can spare."  He laughed.  "Yes, perhaps we can take you into space if your father agrees.  We will want to understand what happened here with the war and if there are any current threats."

Melina's father shakes his head, and then looks at Brent. "Will you keep my daughter safe? She can answer your questions regarding what we know."

Brent meets the father's eyes and nods.  "We will keep her safe and respect your wishes sir.  We will feed her dinner and we can swap tales and knowledge."  He turned to Melina. "Would you like to come aboard?"

"Yes!" Melina says with a huge grin.

"I'll take her into the crew lounge," Joxe says. "Come with me, Melina. We will get something to drink, or eat, if you're hungry." She turns and walks toward the ship, with Melina at her side."

"If you would," Melina's father says to Brent, "meet us at my home an hour after sunrise. I'm sure my daughter will have quite a lot to say."

Brent notes that many of the townspeople are gone, presumably back to their homes. He sees others congregate in small knots as they casually walk back into the town.

"Which home is yours?" Brent asks the Melania's father.  "We'll be there in the morning."

He turns back and heads up and into the ship.  As he does so Brent retracts the ramp and seals the ship.  "Stand down, secure the ship.  It seems we're unlikely to be attacked in the night."  With that he heads up to the lounge to see what their visitor might have to say.

"Melina will take you there." With that, her father takes his leave, as do the people with him.

When Brent enters the crew lounge, he finds everyone seated with cups of hot beverages in hand. Malcolm prefers a rather strong tea, and Naimh sits next to Veronica, each with cups of hot chocolate.

"I can't believe all of what I'm seeing," Melina says as she looks around. "I mean, we understand what electricity is, but all of our books were destroyed over two hundred years ago, and most of the people then apparently didn't think to write very much down." She picks up her mug and sips. "Your tea is good, too."

Joxe looks at Brent with a smile. "Hello, Husband."

Brent took a cup of coffee and settled in next to Joxe.  He took her hand and smiled.  "Hello wife." He turned back their guest.  "Without power most forms of records would be inaccessible to you.  We can offer some help in setting up power distribution at least on a small scale to let you access what you need to start the boot strapping process.  But enough... tell us what you know of Joxe's family."

"From his study of the sensor data, Gareth calculates that there are somewhere between 1500 and 2000 people living in this town. They use wood for heating - he's confirmed that by the faint odor of wood smoke in the air."

Gareth shares his observations with the rest of the crew.

"We should try to get this done quickly. We're probably being hunted by now."

Brent looks over at Gareth.  "Who might be hunting us Gareth?"

"Hunting?" Melina looks alarmed. "Someone is hunting you?"

"The conspiracy that is no doubt responsible for blasting whole systems to the stone age.We have to have been noticed by now."

Gareth states his correct assumption that he is being pursued.

Brent nodded in agreement.  "Do you think that whoever did this is still active after all this time Gareth?"

Joxe sits back and looks between Brent and Gareth. "From the records, we know that Imperial Navy units were responsible for wiping everyone out."

"I agree," Naimh says with a bit of steel in her voice. "I saw it, so I know."

Malcolm sits up straight. "From what I've seen so far, the damage we're talking about, after the naval battles, that damage was inflicted by lasers the size we carry. I've seen holos of damaged ships and facilities at home, and there's no way it was caused by a naval vessel." He lifts his hand in emphasis. "And, all the damage we have seen was done a couple hundred years ago. Joxe, can you bring up the vid footage?"

Joxe does so, and, at every site you've visited, there is rust, corrosion, and, in places that support it, plant growth though the laser-blasted structures.

"So," Joxe muses, "there was someone else around sometime after the Navy left. My parents said so, and she thought they were from Kiepes. I'd go with that until we can prove otherwise."

"We have no records of any ship sightings," Melina says. "You're the first visitors we've had at all, except for a pair of travelers from another village. They visited by boat about forty years ago, stayed a few days, and then left. There wasn't much recorded about their visit. Odd, that."

"So it sounds like the Navy did the bulk of the damage and then raiders or pirates maybe from Kiepes came through and finished off most of what was left."  He looked around.  "I think we may run into trouble if we get near Kiepes although it really seems like everyone has decivilzed at least below the level of Jump drives given the lack of traffic."  Brent looked at Melina.  "So why did the man from your village go exploring?  Also do you know where this other village was located?  It would be good to contact them as well.  There may be a lot of simple but useful things we can do for you before we head back off."

Brent paused.  "Do you know where Joxe's parents might be laid to rest?"

"Blasting this many planets to the stone age is too big an opportunity to waste. If the original conspiracy is not in place, someone must haven taken their place monitoring and exploiting the affected systems still.

"True, although there isn't much to exploit left.   I do think that we should be very, very cautious with our explorations.  Whether there are original or successor conspirators out there this ship is a prize and they have proven willing to use violence."

Melina listens intently as Brent and Gareth speak. Finally, she remembers Brent's questions. "Byron wanted to see if there was anyone else left. We don't know if there are other villages at all. And, no, there's no record of the Liaims being buried here."

"Gareth has a good point," Joxe says with a sigh. "Brent, there is one thing someone might want to look for - lanthanum. After all, that's one of the reasons we're out here."

"Lanthanum?" Melina looks at Joxe with a raised eyebrow.

"It's an element, a metal, that we need to manufacture the propulsion system that lets us travel between star systems. We call it a jump drive."

"That's funny. Jump between stars. Very imaginative," Melina says with a smile. "How much does this ship need, then?"

"We'd need a solid cube of pure lanthanum about the size of that little table," Joxe points at a side table next to one of the couches. "It'd weigh over a tonne and a half."

"Is there any of that here?"

Joxe nods. "That's where we found Byron. He was at an old mine that had been damaged." She pulls up the images on the display.

"Oh, that's amazing," Melina breathes. "I'd love to have one of these at home."

Brent nods in agreement.  "I agree as well with Gareth.  We'll need to be very, very careful as we move about." He looked to Joxe.  "We found the ruins of the lanthanum mine.  It probably wouldn't take too much work to get it back into operation if we could get the right equipment there.  Do the records show other mines on the planet or in system?"

Joxe brings up the ship's mapping library and manipulates the imagery for a moment. "We have all publicly available information for every system in this main."

"Main?" Melina stares wide-eyed at the display.

"Yes." Joxe stands and cups the Execute system in her palm. "We're here. We can only jump one parsec at a time, or a bit over three light years. That's the..."

"The distance light travels in a year," Melina says.

"Exactly. So, a main is a string of star systems that are one parsec, or a Jump One, apart." She traces the star systems with her finger from Montezuma to Possin, and then from Execute to Thorell. "This ship can reach all of these star systems. Eventually."

"What are the symbols next to the systems?"

"Well, this data is over two hundred years old, but it shows things like naval bases, or places to get fuel. It also," she points at Keipes, "warns travelers about star systems that might be dangerous. This one has a really bad government."

She looks at Brent. "So, yes we should be able to find lanthanum mines, if they weren't secret or really small." She frowns. "Oh, you asked about this planet." Joxe taps a few commands into the virtual interface, swipes some icons around, and peers at the result. "Nope, that's the only lanthanum mine listed here for Execute. There were others, but they were played out years before the war."
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:50, Thu 11 Apr 2019.

Brent listened quietly. "Just one mine would be enough to get us back in space and then we could come to prospect for more lanthanum here.  The Egg would pay handsomely for the metal most likely in technical assistance and equipment.  The trick is to get mining and smelting going again."