After Miranda had the computer alert the department heads, including marines, the group all assembled in the Transporter Room and Miranda could take stock of who was there.

Miranda T'Shran (XO; Team Leader)
Elle Quinn (Flight Control)
Katherine Seward (Comms)
Pacomio Starbird (Security)
Koram Val (Engineering)
Jillian Svensson (Medical)
Zarim Thraw (Science)
Shard Vinzz (Security)
Eclipse (alien consultant)

+6 Marines: Ace, Burke, Chad, Drake, Eli, Finn.

Shard will take Pacomio and Ace, Burke, Drake and Finn with him as the first team that beams over.

A space that could be the bridge has been detected on the other ship. It's at least at the top, clear of debris and obstacles, and large enough to handle the entire team.

The first team beams over.

You appear in a large domed room about 100 feet in diameter but only about 50 feet high. It is dark.

" Commander Vinzz, take the marines sweep the ship. Everyone else, take stock of situation here. "

"I forgot to bring my broom," Shard replies to Miranda just before the transporter whisks his team away.

As soon as he materializes on the other ship, he drops to one knee to minimize himself as a target should there be any hostile fire.

When none comes, he stands again and looks around.

The atmosphere was breathable, of course (sensors said so), but there was a strange odor to it. It was a bit acrid with a hint of licorice. He hated that Earth flavoring; there was nothing on Andor that even came close.

The dome gave both a sense of space and of claustrophobia at the same time. Oddly, there was a faint 'black glow' coming from the dome, which he realized only a moment later was coming from the video screens. Plural. Very much 'plural'--the entire dome appeared to be comprised of a myriad of dark video screens. Modern technology didn't use screens any more that had that 'black glow'.

He found that quite... odd. Even if he laid down on the floor, it would be close to impossible to see all of the screens.

His next observation was the floor... mainly because the dome continued all the way down to the floor, so, unless there was a door hidden behind the screens, there appeared no way out of this room.

The floor was not flat. The transporter had found the one area of the floor that was flat for about 10 feet in any direction. The rest of the floor, while it had flat spaces--not all of them at the same level he was standing, it had numerous 'bumps'. Nearly all of them were angular, with different orientations.

=/\= "Lieutenant Commander Vinzz to Commander T'Shran. We've secured this... room... level. Have yet to find a way off of it. Do you wish to beam over?" =/\=

oops

" I guess I spoke to quickly. Let's go over. "


Hopefully we transport over now.

Starbird double checks his phaser rifle, making sure it’s set to stunning force.  Nothing worse than killing someone you wasn’t supposed to.

Once she beamed over, Quinn quickly drew her own hand phaser.

Elle trusted the security team, to be sure, but after the strangeness they'd already encountered in the Expanse, it was best to be ready for whatever came their way....
This message was last edited by the player at 16:12, Fri 21 Aug 2020.

The rest of the away team beams over to this new alien ship. It qualifies as 'alien' simply because it doesn't match any existing design in Federation records.

Once there, it appears even more alien. The design of the 'bridge' (for lack of any other reference) does not seem to be intended for humans or even humanoids.

“Looks like some rummies really rearranged the furniture in here.  Maybe tryin’ to keep pink elephants away.”

As soon as Koram materializes on the other ship, he scans around visually and audially with his own eyes and ears while he unslings his tricorder.

Silent as a tomb but an intriguing sight.

He begins scanning the floor first, but doesn't seem surprised by the readings he gets.

"The 'floor' is actually the control panel," he tells the others. "They are clearly not intended for human hands, however."

"They can also change configuration."

He then directs his tricorder to the 'ceiling'.

"Multiple interlinked video screens. I would guess that they can be linked to form an image of space in front of the ship. Pretty much any configuration we can think of is probably possible."

"That suggests that these aliens have similar if not the same visual perceptions as we do."

Starbird checks for doors or other possible entrance points, mindful of potential security threats.

"If you mean that they have eyes and see in the same wavelengths that we do," R.T. responds, "then you are probably right. The configuration of this screen, however, suggests that they might have compound eyes like an insect. Either that, or they have eyes all around their head."

"We'd have a hard time seeing all this at once. It also suggests that they probably aren't humanoid. This configuration of a control center would be very awkward for a humanoid."
This message was last edited by the player at 00:24, Mon 14 Sept 2020.

"You are probably right," Katherine agrees. "If you extrapolate that further, however, it might be that they communicate visually as well. Perhaps their language is chromatic... colors and pulses, perhaps shapes or even holograms."

"The Human eye can see one million colors, though some studies indicate it could be as high as ten million. It all depends on the parameters you are using."

Since there are only two 'surfaces'--the domed ceiling and the 'mechanical' floor, it follows that any door would have to be in one or the other. Since Pacomio can't quite reach all of the ceiling and presumably nor could the aliens that manned this ship, he begins by searching the floor. Also, he's not positive, but he thinks that beyond the ceiling is the cold dark emptiness of space. The ceiling seems to conform to the front of the ship.

He may have started out looking for a 'normal' door, but after only a few minutes, he realizes the absurdity of that. Without knowing what these aliens look like, it's hard for him to 'think like an alien'. Instead, he looks at the floor in terms of 'the big picture', and tries to figure out where it would make sense to put a door. In fact, a 'door' in the floor made little sense to begin with. What would normally be in the floor is a hatch.

The first spot he examines doesn't reveal anything to him. If there's a hatch there, he can't find it.

The next spot proves more successful. He's not sure if the hatch was intended to be 'concealed' as it seems to conform more to the equipment around it, but Pacomio manages to find the latch that releases it. It's a bit hard for him to manipulate the latch, but he manages it. He cautiously raises the hatch, prepared to slam it shut again if something crawls out.

Nothing does. What he sees is a 3-foot square shaft going down. Each corner of it seems to have been set up as a ladder--the rungs are set diagonally... and are rather narrow and shallow.

Does it look as though a human being could use the ladder with a reasonable degree of safety?

Yes, a normal human could use the ladder if he didn't hurry. The rungs are easily gripped by a hand, but footing is a bit tricky.

The thickness of the floor is only about three feet. Beyond that, two of the ladders continue down on a framework but the shaft opens out into a room... or corridor.

Starbird reports his findings to the landing party, and volunteers to go first in case they choose to climb down.

"Proceed, Petty Officer," Shard responds to Pacomio. "I'll be right behind you."

He doesn't need to tell the others what to do. The other two security crewmen would guard the rest of the Away Team until they all descended or split up. If some stayed behind here on the bridge, then security would remain as well.

This was standard operating procedures.

Starbird straps the phaser rifle across his back and proceeds cautiously down the ladder, remembering that time he broke into Uncle Al’s cellar and wound up taking a tumble down the stairs.  He might have ended up making his own bones!

Without any hurry, Pacomio has no trouble climbing down the ladder. Even as he reaches the lower level, he realizes two significant things: the ladder was meant for creatures considerably smaller than him and probably for creatures that may not necessarily have hands and feet but something else.

Reaching the lower level, Pacomio finds a very strange sight. This level not only has a low ceiling, but the floor and ceiling are as irregular as the upper level. Equipment sticks up out of the floor or hangs down from the ceiling everywhere.

There's only about a 4-foot clearance for most of the space. He can see what he takes to be partitions in a few spots.

He also realizes, now that he's down there and can look around, that it isn't that equipment sticks up out of the floor (or hangs down from the ceiling), it's that the equipment and machines and whatever have just all been stuck together to form the floor and ceiling.

Amid all this, he finally spots... the creatures. Well, maybe that's what they are. He sees about a dozen of them scattered across the floor, making a mental note that there is clearly gravity here. They are small creatures, about a foot in diameter at the head and maybe a foot and a half-long. The 'head' is a hemisphere covered in a dozen or so eyes. Below the hemisphere hangs several tentacles, at least six that he can see.

None of the creatures are moving. The nearest one is about 20 feet away.


Shard follows Pacomio down, and, at Shard's cautionary signal, the others remain above for the moment.

Seeing the life forms, the petty officer gives the landing team a heads up as he sets his phaser rifle to stun.  He hates having to squat down due to the low ceiling, but such is life.
This message was last edited by the player at 09:56, Sun 27 Sept 2020.

"Low ceiling down here," Shard calls up to the others.

"We've also spotted what we think is a lifeform, but it's either dead or... dormant, we think."

"As soon as we clear it, we'll need either Jillian or Koram down here. Maybe both."

He then turns to Pacomio.

"Cover me while I check it out."

He moves over to the closest 'life form' in a crouch and prods it with his foot.

Starbird obeys the order, ready to react with heater in hand should the situation turn threatening.  Just like standing guard at those bootleg whiskey trades back home.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:16, Mon 28 Sept 2020.

Shard pokes the nearest alien with his foot but that produces no reaction. He tries a couple of others with the same result.

He's joined by Jillian a few moments later. She scans the life forms with her tricorder and finds no sign of life. However, she realizes that they are not organic, so she isn't sure what would constitute a life sign.

When informed that these new alien life forms are not organic, he immediately assumes they are mechanical... some sort of robotic life form. He climbs down the ladder to the lower level, and, crouching down, makes his way to the alien bodies.

"They look just like their ship!" he says in surprise.

"On the one hand, that makes sense in a way, but form usually follows function. This ship just copied their form, even though it doesn't seem like the best design for a starship. You'll notice all the eyes--visual sensors--on their... um, heads? The dome ceiling up top now makes sense. They can see in nearly all directions at once."

He runs his engineering tricorder over the forms.

"I'm not finding anything unusual other than their forms. I'm detecting an artificial neural net that constitutes their brains, but there's been massive damage done to it. I suppose it could be a powerful EMP. An alternative might be a lethal computer virus. I'd have to examine them in the lab to be certain."

"While the EMP makes more sense to have killed all of them at once, and also explain why the ship is shut down, the virus could have been transmitted over a subspace channel."

He waits for Shard to decide whether it's safe to take one of the 'bodies' back to the Mongoose.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:33, Wed 02 Dec 2020.

“They built their ship to look just like them?  That’s like putting a hood ornament of yourself on your fastest getaway car.  I met a goomba back in the neighborhood what did that.  We all said there was a hood on his hood.”

As he yacks, he periodically looks over his shoulder, from side to side, etc. to make sure nothin’ was gettin’ fresh wit ‘em.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:17, Wed 02 Dec 2020.

"You'd know better than me if it was safe, Ensign," Shard replies to Koram. "If they were taken out by an EMP, could they wake up when they recover?"

"I'm thinking transporting it back to the ship directly into a containment field just to be safe."

"Now, with this low ceiling deck, I'm a bit confused at how many decks this ship has. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see that these aliens need 'personal space'. It seems to me they could all hang from the ceiling like bats... assuming they have to sleep or recharge or whatever."

"Speaking of which, Koram, can you determine what their power source is?"

"Meanwhile, the rest of us scatter around this deck and look for another hatch down below."

Starbird heads out, looking for hatches leading to the lower decks.  He wonders if that’s where these aliens stashed their booze.

Eclipse suddenly appears on the alien ships bridge, shi had been dealing with a minor issue on the Ancestor and hadn't been able to meet up with the away team in time to get transported over with the others.

Eclipse looked around the bridge as shi listened to what the others said over the comms and after one look down the shaft to the next level and that it too was a bit cramped shi elected to stay on the alien bridge for now, as yes shi was flexible, but in tight quarters shi could still easily be a liability.


"I think I'll stay here on the bridge, down there in cramped areas I'd be more a liability then an asset, but let me know if you find any other larger rooms as I can jump to them as long as there is an away team member there, I'll also try to use my astral projection to look ahead."


After saying this Eclipse sits down carefully to try to avoid anything and closes hir eye's to concentrate as shi uses hir astral projection to try to look around the ship, as this way shi could look beyond doors without having to open them.

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.