orvo sees Gregor moving to the airlock and thinks of joining his fellow Dralasite. Then he decides to punch in the following code into the bottom of the screen and push the red button--the number is 9945-2343.

Vadim prays Orvo knows what he's doing as he doubts they have enough time to suit up and get far enough away to avoid dying in a self-destruct blast.

"FRAK!  It must've started the countdown when we entered the airlock before.  And no, a countdown IS NOT good!"  Going for the airlock was futile now she knew with what little time was left and her suit was damaged coming in.  She gets ready to try something with the security systems if Orvo is unsuccessful with his attempt.

Gregor gets his suit on and starts working to repair the damage in Desi suit with any repair equipment that he hopes was a standard part of space suits. If not he would make sure in the future that everyone had patches handing in the exterior pockets of their suits.

Orvo apparently has not entered an acceptable number because the amber lights around you flash and a klaxon goes off.

Others start getting ready to get their suits on and to run the airlock. The airlock will take about 30 seconds to cycle through.

1 minute 20 seconds, 1 minute 19 seconds...

Orvo panics for a second, and looks around for his suit. Then he claps a tentacled hand to his blobby forehead and says, "I think I entered the wrong code." He will try the other code 7568-2983.

"If this doesn't work out, you guys had best getting to the airlock, suit up, and trying to get away from the ship. I will try to shut The alarm off."f

1 minute, 5 seconds...4 seconds...

Orvo enters the new code.

1 minute...59 seconds...58 seconds...

The light turns green, the amber flashing lights go off, and the countdown stops.

You breathe a deep sigh of relief.

"Great job Orvo!" Vadim whoops.

Orvo is visibly relieved that he has bought everyone some time, but he says, "I wonder now where the Sathar went. There are chairs here for two, so there must have been at least two. I wonder if they crashed here." He will check the bridge and condition of the area more closely for clues.

"That was dramatic." The Dralisite sits down next to the hatch with his blaster rifle across his knees.

"What is our assessment at this point. This is a small ship. Im no engineer so, what do we thing the range of this thing is and is it possible to download their navigation system to maybe plot out everywhere this ship has been?"

You determine that the ship is fully functional and did not crash. You may be able to pilot it but you will want someone with tech and piloting skills to look any deeper.

(You can try to start it up and fly it to the Moraes if you want. Bartja might be the most qualified to try to get into the memory banks or collect information. I don't recall if any of you have skills that would be particularly helpful in a piloting endeavor.)

The other thing you notice is that the scout ship is a new model, not old. It's unlike anything you've heard about before. As a scout ship, it is unarmed but highly maneuverable. It typically carries a crew of four, plus robots. It is also capable of atmospheric flight and leaving the atmosphere for space for short distance flights.

Desiraye leans up against the wall outside of the bridge and lets out a sigh of relief.  She smiles, and then speaks, "Well done Orvo!  Let's hope that our luck continues.  Okay.  I agree that we're looking at a crew size of about 4-6 judging by the size and the lodging.

I'm not up on spacer skills with Gregor.  I think we're going to have to learn some soon if we tend to fly this ship out of here and get it to the surface.

Vadim, Orvo.  If you two don't mind, start trying to collect and transfer as much data as you can back to Bartja and the others.  Maybe they can tell us how to minimally get this craft out of the water and topside for further inspection.

Gregor, you and I will collect and gather what equipment we can and get it ready for transport off of the ship.

Did the ship say it has a name Orvo anywhere?"

As he gets to work moving the gear Gregor says, "At the very least we should rig a booby trap of some kind for the things when they return."

"I think it may be a matter of 'IF' they come back Gregor.  Granted we don't know what their mission was, or is but, I don't think we should just leave the ship here all by itself.

Open for discussion though.  I think we can figure out a way to get this ship on land and let some of the spacers take a look at it.  Plus, I think we need a ship still to get off planet."

Vadim works on getting Bartja the information as quickly as he can.  "I'm not sure these particular Sathar will be back.  With everything else going on, why park here?  Lot's of questions but honestly we seem to have bigger fish to fry.  This is a hell of a intelligence windfall though."

Orvo doesn't see a name for the ship anywhere. That might be in its databanks, which you have not been able to access yet.

Bartja starts collecting the information.

You recall also that the Sathar mothership is somewhere up there and it shot down Dentin's ship. Even if you get the Moraes working, at this point you will still have to figure out how to bypass the mothership.

Bartja is quickly able to determine that the flying mechanism is relatively simple and intuitive. Anyone with even a basic flying skill should be able to fly it (80% plus piloting skill level, 60% plus 1/2 skill level for any tech skill, 25% for no tech skills.)

"If its that easy. Can we just move it so that they will not find it. We should probably disable any electric signals that they would be able to locate if we do."

Orvo agrees. If possible, they can just fly it over to the Moraes and get Bartja and the team inspecting it more closely.

"As long as we can get the ship over to the Moraes, yes, I think we may be able to shut down transmitters and what not.  I'm not that person to try it here.  We get the ship out of the water and over to our people and go from there.  OK, I can try to fly it over there unless someone else thinks that they've got a better shot?"

Vadim shakes his head.  "I don't have that much experience.  Though I can go back to the surface to drive our ride back to the Moraes."

OOC
I've looked and its been a while but didn't we use a ground vehicle of some sort to drive out to the river site from the Moraes?

To avoid this being an unnecessary problem, let's just advance the clock and say you get your explorer and the ship back to the Moraes after some coordination with Bartja and the group back there.

2:00 p.m.

20 DAYS UNTIL QANTARIATE INVASION

DAY 6 ON MAHG MAR


Everyone is now back at the Moraes, and the scout ship has been safely landed in the large clearing next to it.

Each of you receives 3 XP

S'Krllk looks at the Sathar ship, and wonders aloud if it isn't sending its location to the mother ship. While he lets others consider that, he tries to assess the status of the ship including the use of his duo-CAD and bodycomp to build a virtual reference for the thing.

Gregor busies himself with offloading the alien gear to their ship. He pauses in his work only long enough to comment. "Glijets with a lot of fuel. Radiation protective suits. Explosives.... What does that tell us?"

"What are they looking for? Is it possible to do a radiation scan of the planet to see if that will help us zero in on their intended location?"

In reply to Gregor Trask (msg # 195):

"In any case, Captain Dentin and the rest are in need of rescue." Vadim notes.