With a few adjustments to his tricorder, Koram re-scans the dead alien, then repeats the process with three more of the creatures.

"Ooookay... that's interesting," he finally reports to Shard. "It appears to be a cosmic energy absorption grid. It just doesn't appear to be big enough to power even one of these creatures. Somehow, they figured out a way to amplify that energy... maybe even store it, but I can't detect any place that could do that."

"Wait. There's this mushy section. Yes, I know that's not a technical term, but I can't identify it. Which means it could be the missing component. I am picking up a faint magnetic resonance. It could have been destroyed by the same EMP that killed their brains."

"They have some sort of molecular memory. I'm guessing it was their equivalent of a core back-up. If their 'minds' had been wiped by the pulse, it could have rebooted their mind. Only, it got slagged, too."

"Okay. Now I'm worried."

He activates his communicator.

=^= "Ensign Koram Val to Commander Dypec. I've found evidence of an intense EMP that may have killed this ship and its cybernetic crew. We're talking at least a magnitude 7. It could have been an attack, but we haven't seen any other evidence of it. I'm thinking it may have been a phenomenon of the Expanse. We need to at least triple the hardening of all our susceptible electronics. Ensign Koram out." =^=

Miranda looks to the others.

" I will stay here as well. "

“This may be a dumb question... science ain’t exactly my box of noodles, after all... but is there a chance this EMP thing could turn our brains to mush, too?  Then we’d really fuggedaboudit.  I mean, everything.  I’d even forget about that five credits Stan down in engineering owes me, and that would be terrible.”
This message was last edited by the player at 00:32, Fri 04 Dec 2020.

Miranda remains on the upper deck along with Eclipse, Katherine, R.T., Elle, and the two security crew Chad and Eli.

With nothing else to do, the other four begin to search the bridge deck while security stands guard and Eclipse goes into a meditative stance.

It's hard to tell just how many of these creatures were needed to man the bridge, but you find a dozen places where an iris-type cover can be manually rotated open to reveal eight small holes that could correspond to the creature's tentacles. It does seem as if these could also correspond to the Mongoose's bridge stations.


Shard and Pacomio and Jillian and the 4 security crew search the lower deck and easily find a dozen hatches to an even lower deck. While there are a dozen aliens laying about on the deck, there are 50 more sitting 'upright'. One of the security people pokes at one with his foot to make sure it's dead, and it semi-topples over, enabling you to see that it's tentacles are inserted into holes in the deck.

Jillian is able to confirm that these are 'habitats', someone analogous to the Borg regeneration alcoves.

Eclipse continues to look around after going quickly through the whole ship and goes back to look more closely at where shi found the ships engineering, also trying to gauge if there would be enough space there for hir to move freely, while opening hir comm and letting the others know what shi has found so far.


"From what I can see and sense, the aliens your finding seem to be nearly identical to the bridge, almost as if the bridge of the ship was alive. the deck below the one yoru currently exploring seems to be engineering and they seem to have suffered a catastrophic failure of both their power plant, and their warp core, both of which most likely would have released not only massive amounts of radiation, but also a massive emp, even the most hardened electronics probably wouldn't have been able to survive ground zero. Also we have 99 alien bodies on the ship."

“Is there still radiation?  I wanna know if my meatballs are thawing.”

If Eclipse can move about on 4 'legs', there's enough room for her to move around on the engineering deck.

There's no radiation remaining that Eclipse or sensors can detect.


As near as Eclipse can determine, these aliens are an artificial lifeform. She's never encountered or heard of an electronic/mechanical lifeform that spontaneously came into existence. Any such that were encountered were the product of engineering by some type of organic lifeform that then acquired sentience and became self-replicating.

Given the general appearance and nature of these alens, it is unclear if they were sentient or just sophisticated robots. Clearly, though, the ship was designed to be operated by them.

Starbird says a brief prayer of thanksgiving for the negative radiation reading.  He HATES that stuff.... even more than aunt Florence’s garlic sauce.

He keeps an eye out for intruders as the others struggle with the mysteries of the ship.

After Eclipse's findings, Koram gives some consideration to the idea before speaking up again.

"I believe it is possible to reactivate one of these robotic lifeforms, but they would no longer have a mind," he reports. "It does occur to me that they may have been designed and programmed to function much like a hive mind. That would serve to explain the number of them on this ship, as well as the various stations."

"The only thing that I know of that could have caused such a massive EMP is a pulsar."

"Eclipse... is there a chance that these might be from your universe? Our sensors haven't registered any pulsars in the area. Could there be a dark pulsar, made of dark energy?"

None of their portable equipment had that kind of ability... to determine the quantum wavelength of the aliens and their ship. He was leery of taking one of them back to the Mongoose, though. Not without knowing more about them. Although they did not appear to be inimical, he knew appearances could be deceiving.

"I concur," agreed the Bolian Science ensign.

"I'm not sure anyone has ever postulated the existence of a dark pulsar. Since pulsars are energy, it does stand to reason that such a phenomenon could exist. We'd have no way of detecting it. Yet, anyway."

"Wouldn't that imply that these aliens--we should give them a name--had a power source and a computer-robotic mind that also functioned via dark energy?"

"As much as I would like to take one of these back to the ship and study it, I agree about not knowing enough about them to make it worth the risk."

"Eclipse... have you detected any technology that we could use?"

“We got a casino back home called ‘The Pulsar’.  But instead of EMP coming out, there are always EMT’s goin’ in.  Rough joint.”

"So far everything I've reported is from visual inspection, there is nothing though that I readily recognize as from my universe, and the only sentient non organic race I know of back home are called the Starione, and they are comprised of nanomachines. The damage I see in main engineering though is similar to what I've seen from other ship wrecks when they had a catastrophic containment failure, but the biggest oddity is that the remains look like there was an explosion and implosion at the same time. As to strength of EMP, I know of an incident back home where a super freighter suffered a partial loss of containment which resulted in an EMP that knocked out not onlt multiple ships nearby that did not have their shields up, but also completely disabled the Hesperia asteroid city. I'm about to attempt to teleport myself into engineering though so that I can take tricorder readings and see if there might be anything salvageable."

After getting off the comm Eclipse again concentrates on the image in hir mind of the ships engineering and tries to teleport herself into a space shi could fit.

" Starbird, sounds like the Pulsar is a place I want to go on shore leave. "

“If you want, I’ll take youse there.  But like I said: it’s kinda rough.”

" probably not rougher then an Andorian Ice Mine or T'Shran family outing. Grandfather T'Shran has always been a rough customer.

“You probably got me there, Miranda: at least The Pulsar ain’t an ice mine.  They was keeping some cheaters on ice for a while, though.” This recollection obviously amuses Starbird.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:17, Wed 03 Mar 2021.

Eclipse has no problem teleporting to the engineering deck. Crouching down or moving about on all fours is doable, but standing fully erect is impossible.

There aren't as many 'dead' aliens here as on the other deck, but that is generally the case on most starships. It doesn't take a LOT of engineers to run the ship, which is mostly automated anyway, but it does takes a few good ones.

It stands to reason that the aliens here in engineering had more sophisticated engineering programs than the others. That train of thought makes her wonder what would happen if one of the engineers got damaged/killed. Would another non-engineer be recruited to fill that role? Would the necessary programs just be transferred from another engineer? Or is there some sort of central repository?

She begins looking around for such a place, further wondering if she'd even recognize it.

Now that she's looking, she's starting to see unusual elements. Each one appears to be modular, as if it could be pulled out of its current position and then inserted into another one. Without understanding the alien writing, she has no idea what the purpose of each one is, or even why they'd be modular, but she gets the sense that they are important. In fact, in a way, each one of the three oddities is not only different from the others, but none of them actually look like they are of the same overall design as the rest of the ship.


Meanwhile, Koram continues to scan and study the aliens and the various ship components he can access. After a dozen more scans, he's convinced that there is nothing in the alien bodies that poses a threat. If they were alive, there might be a problem, but unless their programming/consciousness exists on an atomic or quantum level, they quite definitely dead.

Just to be on the safe side, Koram calls the Mongoose and has them send over a containment box.

=/\="This is Koram, Dypec. Request a Level 1 Containment Unit be transported over to my location. I'll put one of these alien bodies inside it to be beamed back to the ship for further study."=/\=

“If only Cousin Pete had one of those back home,” Starbird mutters (in reference to the containment unit), possibly unaware he’s thinking aloud.  “Way easier getting rid of a stiff.”
This message was last edited by the player at 18:45, Thu 04 Mar 2021.

In due course, the containment unit is beamed over to the alien ship, Koram places one of the alien 'bodies' inside, seals, and signifies it can be beamed back to the Mongoose. Only, there's a problem.

=/\="This is transporter Chief Garton. The transporter isn't able to transport the containment box back to the ship. Something within the box is scrambling the signal."=/\=

Koram cautiously opens the box again and looks inside. There is nothing in there but the alien body. It's still dead/inactive.

Koram is able to scan the box and contents again with his tricorder. With some adjustments, he's able to pick up a scrambling field within the alien. It seems to be part of the material that the creature is made of.

Koram looks around for his commanding officer. While the transport of the containment unit was well within his purview as an engineer, sending the box across open space, with or without someone accompanying it, was a bit beyond that.

While he's waiting, he hears Eclipse's report on what she found.

"Eclipse, do those three items look like they are integral to the operation of this ship? If you can establish that they aren't, then see if you can remove them without doing any damage. We'll take them back to the ship for study, if we can."

He then explains the problem with the transporter. Knowing so little about this species from another universe, he's reluctant to ask her to teleport one of the aliens back to the ship... just in case it should be hazardous to her. If they can't be transported, it was possible that they couldn't be teleported either.

He was surprised at Pacomio's comment... until he remembered Pacomio was an Iotian.

"Really? That still goes on there? I would have thought you'd have moved on from that in the past 150 years."

Eclipse listened to Koram as he asked hir about the odd modules, and then his report and frowned slightly as shi used hir tricorder to start scanning the three modules.

"The modules look like they can be put in place of each other, but as I said they appear different then the rest of the technology down here. As for your problem with the alien, there is a material back home that is like that, it generates it's own kind of scrambling field, that prevents transporters from either being able to transport it, or it causes the transporter to overload, if you want once I get the scans of the modules I can try to use my ability to teleport the container and the alien back to the ship."

"I think I'd rather not risk you teleporting one of the aliens over to the Mongoose, Eclipse," Commander Vinzz interjects into the comm conversation.

"I have some security people that can manually transport the containment box. Safer that way since we don't know what we're dealing with yet."

"However, it's nice to know that there's a substance in this universe that scrambles transporter signals. We've not encountered that before."

"However, I have to ask: we've established that this ship and these aliens don't have the same quantum signature as you, your people and your ship. Is there a way for their quantum signature to have adapted to this universe?"

“What are you talkin’ about?  We move on each other all the time.”

Neither Shard nor Miranda can find anything else to do on this alien ship, so after a security team comes over with a containment box to put one of the aliens (?) in and take it back to the Mongoose, Shard orders the Away Team back to the ship as well.

Studying this ship and learning its mysteries and secrets could take a lifetime or two, and that's not the Mongoose's primary mission. Yes, they found it, they examined it, they took samples, but now it was time to move on.

A homing beacon was placed on it and its galactic position coordinates were logged into the ship's computer for all the good that either of those things were likely to do here in the Expanse.

The Captain called a meeting of the Away Team when they got back and unsuited, but it was more of a formality than anything. He was just looking for people's impression of the aliens and the other ship. There might have been something someone saw that everyone else missed or something one crewmen interpreted based on his own unique experiences.

In the end, if was decided to NOT classify the little machines as life forms just yet. They might not be aliens at all but some sort of remote drone used to direct the ship on long term or dangerous missions.

After that, a course was set for the distant albeit obscured star system that the long range sensors had detected. There had been some anomalous readings that the Captain, the Science Department and the Stellar Cartography department all felt was necessary to investigate.