"Agreed. I'm skeptical that contact will remain peaceful if we make it."

Ken nodded in agreement.  "A bit of intelligence would be well placed.  Let's plan on that for sure.  If nothing else we can also return the body of the man to them.  Make sure we have a full record of his diaries though."

"Okay," Joxe says. "We finish dinner, and then, after dark, we fly."

OOG: Anything else before the recon flight? It's about 6pm ship's time, which, helpfully, generally corresponds with the local planetary time.
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:45, Fri 22 Feb 2019.

OOG: I'm changing up the dating system to the Imperial standard of 365-day years, where each day is counted from the first of the year. If we need to calculate elapsed time from an earlier event, I can convert those dates for comparison.

163-1402 0030


Wanderer flew through the night sky, just below a thin overcast layer at fifteen thousand meters above the mean elevation of the land below. A few stars shone through gaps in the overcast, and the planet's lone moon had not yet come over the horizon.

Under Gareth's watchful eye and terse directions, Brent pilots the ship in a search grid pattern along a river valley a hundred kilometers northwest of the nearest seacoast. The mountain range to their east rises 2000 meters above the valley floor.

The team starts their grid search at the western side of the valley, and works their way eastward, flying at barely 300kph. Brent turns the ship southward on the fourth pass, and levels off.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:14, Wed 24 Apr 2019.

"Keep your eyes peeled.  I would expect that whoever we are looking for below is fairly well concealed."

"Contact!" Malcolm says from his bridge seat, where he's configured his displays for weapons and sensors. "Thermal bloom, ground based, appears to be stationary, twenty kilometers at eleven o'clock. Trying to localize it now." He sends his information to Gareth's station, which is using the largest portion of the available sensor capability.

"Bridge, Comms, no emissions detected," Naimh reports from her station in the upper lounge.

Brent's nav display shows the contact. At this speed, Wanderer will pass by the contact in four minutes.

"Got it," Brent calls as he locks the location into the navigation system. "I'll take a pass over head and move on as if we didn't see anything and then we'll circle around and approach at 1500 meters. We'll come in slow and look friendly.  Can someone hail them on the emergency channel?"

Naimh brings up the ventral directional antenna and aims it at the contact. She keys her mike. "This is the starship Wanderer. Can anyone hear me?"

A minute passes. "No response."
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:48, Sun 10 Mar 2019.

Brent sets the exterior lights to flash.  "Well, they may not be talkative or perhaps they lack the means.  Let's go ahead and drop on in as friendly as we can manage."  He brought the ship down slowly toward the thermal bloom.

Wanderer decelerates and begins a sweeping turn as it passes the heat source. Naimh, Malcolm and Gareth use their passive and active sensor arrays to scan the area. The resulting imagery and reports show on Brent's displays.

The heat source is a village, located on the east bank of a river that flows southward toward the seacoast. There is one bridge across the river, and extensive areas of cleared land eastward toward the mountains.

The village structures show numerous point heat sources, which the computer identifies as humans, animals, and small heat sources that might be heating devices of some type. To the east, there are more scattered buildings with more human and animal sized heat sources present.

"Looks like a good number of buildings down there," Malcolm observes. "This is a fairly large town."

"Thank god there are actually people alive and organized.  This would match the tech of the explorer that we found.  I'll see if I can find us a place to set down outside the town." Brent continues to bring the ship in slowly and carefully over the river to avoid any damage from their thrusters to the structures and fields below.  He'll try to find an open spot to set the ship down that will do the minimum amount of problems.

The ship's low light sensors helps Brent pick out an area of packed dirt next to the bridge's western approaches. He is able to put the ship's weight on the grav lifters, which will cut back on the downwash as they land.

"Still nothing on EM sensors," Naimh reports.

"There's a whole lot of movement in the town," Malcolm says a moment later. "Many point sources, people and animals."

"Don't go too far east," Joxe warns from her engineering station. "Watch your LOTs."

OOG: LOT = Limits of Travel on the landing gear mechanisms. The system has a panel that shows LOT and other stats for each gear leg.

It's going to be close... (Matt, a piloting roll, if you please)

"Got it Joxe... shift power to the lifters.  I'm going to come down as easy as I can."  He flips rapidly from the holographic sensors and the controls.  Brent's fingers fly over the virtual control as he flies by feel and instruments. "Ten meters... five meters... stand by... stand by... touchdown."

22:49, Today: Matt rolled 7 using 3d6.  Piloting [14].

As they approach, Brent sees that the ground slopes toward the river. He eases Wanderer closer to the treeline and away from the river bank. The landing gear legs contact the ground, and the ship settles slowly as Brent reduces power to the lifters.

The landing legs perform well, and, after an anxious moment, the gear system reports that it is stable.

"Looking good," Veronica reports from Engineering.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:32, Mon 11 Mar 2019.

Brent keeps his hands on the controls as they settle to a landing.  He didn't have a lot of experience bringing a ship in on a world with a habitable atmosphere but there were enough moons with tricky surfaces that he well understood the risks of settling on an unknown surface.  He waited, ready to boost if the ship should settle until Joxe called out that all was clear.  "Keep the drives hot Joxe in case we have to get out of here fast."

He brought up the exterior screens to see what might be the reaction of the locals.  Piping the display through the entire ship so others could see he mused.  "Let's hope we haven't squashed anyone's farm where we are at."  He'd left the exterior lights flashing although now he set them to flash 'Friend' in Morse code.

"Fear not," Joxe replies tersely. "Drives are ready."

The nav display reports that the ship is stationary and not sliding or sinking in the soil. The sensors show a large number of people moving around in the village, but only three people are visible outside the ship. They are all at or beyond the edge of the cleared area, with most in cover behind trees, buildings, or other objects. The three visible people are standing next to a stone fence, observing the ship.

"Okay, so what do we do now?" Malcolm asks Brent.

Brent sets his controls on stand by and rises.  "Let's go out and talk to them then.  They aren't overtly hostile so far.  Let's hope they give us the benefit of the doubt."  He goes over and buckles on his holster and pistol.  "Do you want to come with me Malcolm, Gareth?"

Gareth begrudgingly grabs his own weapon and agrees to come along. If an opportunity for personal gain presented itself he needed to be there to seize it.

"There might be something to learn here, so I'll come along."

Brent chuckles at Gareth's reluctance.  "It'll be a fine first contact experience.  Just think of it Gareth." He waited for a moment for Malcolm and then headed down to lower the cargo ramp and greet their erstwhile hosts.

The trio walks past the cargo container on the port side, and down the port cargo ramp. The ship's exterior lights, controlled by Joxe, light up the area around the ship. Veronica is out of sight behind the container, fully armored and armed with a rifle. Naimh waits behind her, clad in her own armor and with a med kit on her back.

When they reach the ground, they see a group of four men and two women standing at the edge of the clearing. Like Brent and the others, these people are clearly of Imperial descent. The group steps out as Brent and his team advances.

Behind them stand several men and women with rifles at port arms. They are watchful, but calm.

"What brings you to our humble town," one of the men asks, raising his voice to be heard. He looks at Brent with the interest plain in his expression.

OOG: They're speaking Galanglic, but the accent is odd. Think of an American speaking to a Scotsman.

Brent glances at the women standing backup in the cargo bay and nods.  He heads outside and stops several meters from the local group.  "We're from another system down the main, Egg.  We're looking to expand back out into space and re-establish trade and interchange.  We're scouting now to find out just who has survived the conflict and how they are prospering."

"I confess, I do not know much about other planets, or even much about what may be found on this one," the man says with a rueful smile. "Are you with their military?"

Brent relaxes. "I'm Brent Rogers and this is Gareth and Malcolm.  We're not with the military or even official in any sense of the word.  We came upon the ship in our system derelict with one surviving crew in hibernation.  We woke her up and decided to see if we could reach out to the surrounding systems and help re-establish contacts."  He looked around.  "You are the only people we have been able to find on this world."  He paused. "We did find a man, an explorer who may have been from your settlement.  He had fallen and died.  We have the body with us."
This message was last edited by the player at 16:11, Sat 16 Mar 2019.

Aboard the ship, Veronica looks at Joxe, who has been eavesdropping on the conversation with the ship's external sensors. "Jenkins?"

Joxe shrugs. "Beats me. If he wants to change his name, I'll certainly change mine to match."

~*~

The man sighs and shakes his head. "I was afraid of that. I told him to not go out by himself, but he wouldn't listen." He closes his eyes for a second and then looks at Brent.

"So, you are exploring..." He stops as he is interrupted.

"Father!" A young woman, possibly twenty years of age, runs up to him. "It's the Concordia!" She is nearly Brent's height, with blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, and with blue eyes behind large round glasses.

He turns to her. "Are you sure?"

"Yes! It's the same colors, even though the name is different now, and all of the technical details match. It's her!" She turns to Brent. "Is anyone from the Laiam family still aboard, sir?"

"You recognize this vessel? From where?"

Not sure how the others may want to respond to the girls question Gareth tries to learn more without directly answering.