"I don't know how it would get here, just like I don't know how a single person with a working vacc suit would get to a station that doesn't!" Zhouth sounded a little more calm, but he clearly wasn't accepting of this being any sort of casual stroll through of a derelict facility.

With Varca's addition he started toward an answer to the second question, however improbable it might seem. "Maybe someone got away from them? And managed to steal a vacc suit, and go unnoticed the whole time? And they didn't come back yet to look." Even he didn't sound convinced by that prospective chain of events!
This message was last edited by the player at 08:13, Sat 13 Mar 2021.

In reply to Zhouth (msg # 41):

     "Oh, it was probably built by ... aw, crap!" Varca interjects,

     "I think that may be a Kingdom of Drinax station out there.  A station built Pre-Attack--so it's been blasted by the Pussies, picked over by scavengers, and beat-up by vacuum and hard radiation for over two-hundred years!  It's gotta be a frikkin rickety hulk!"

     "Thing is, like I said, I've been to Borite before--with the Star Guard Scouts--and we didn't know it was out there!  If it had been built and operated by those Oghman morons, we would have detected it.  That station must be so old and beat-up that it gets mistaken for the regular orbital junk around a gas giant.  We only did deep scans on it because we picked up that distress beacon."

     "Which does bring back up your question, Zhouth ... if the station is a wreck, and there's no good reason for anyone to go out there, then who--or what--is sending that distress beacon?"

     "Anyway, Captain--Sensors report no sign of other ships in the area.  It looks like we'll be safe from attack, if we dock.  If we even can dock, with that wreck."

"You'll need an engineer there, won't you?" Ingrid asks.

"Probably Miss Sigar, t'ough not necessarily t'e first off t'e vessel, so to speak." Rayjay answered truthfully before addressing Zhouth's concerns once more.

"Well assuming it isn't a trap, same way anyone gets t'rough t'e void, on a vessel. T'e absence of one suggests it left 'ere under it's own power and in a 'urry leaving be'ind t'e unfortunate soul. My money's on some salvagers getting scared off by Oghmen, and t'e damn pirates leaving t'em to rot to go after bigger prizes. 'ow long do Vacc suit batteries last anyway? About as long as their air maybe? Doubt it's longer t'an a day, would be a bit excessive if it was." Rayjay said spit balling a time frame of how long that message could have been out here before it ran out of juice

8 using 2d6+3. Vacc Suit + Int. If appropriate to theorize how long the signal could be broadcasted by a vacc suit alone.

In reply to Rayjaynul Brown (msg # 44):

"Not a rescue then, a recovery, let's be about it before we have company." Teddy said to everyone. "Ingrid, you stay here until it is secured."

Once the station gets within adequate visual range, the ship's computer identifies it as Fortranza, a High Guard outpost from the old Sindalian Empire, making it over 2,000 years old!

Sensors pick up more information. The station is pockmarked with the impact of thousands of micro-meteorites. However, it also shows evidence of having been repaired recently (perhaps within the last hundred years).

There's no sign of any present occupancy, but there is some debris floating near it. Analysis shows it to be hull plating and rivets from a small ship, though there is not enough debris to account for the ship to have broken up.

The Vultan's sensors can now determine that the distress call is a low-powered automated beacon, consistent with the sort built into a good-quality vacc suit. It appears as if it's been boosted, which is how you were able to detect it in the first place. Under the circumstances, the only way for that to have happened is if the suit's communications system has been removed and wired into the station’s transmitter dish, which means the suit wearer now has no way of communicating with the outside world unless he goes back to the communications unit.

Scanning for life signs with thermal imaging shows only one heat source on board, humanoid, probably a Vargr in a vacc suit and in poor health.

In reply to StarMaster (msg # 46):

     Varca reviews the scans...then reviews them again, to be sure.

     "Well, well, lookit that!" Varca chuckles to himself, before reporting to everyone else over the intercomm,

     "Unless Vargr's have suddenly sprung up amid the population of Borite, I think we've found our Scoutship Captain--Krrsh, wasn't it?  And while there's not enough debris in that junk cloud, over there, to be certain--I'd be willing to bet that that is the remains of Krrsh's Scoutship."

     Varca starts re-tuning the sensors,

     "I think it's going to be okay for all of us to go over and look for Krrsh, just ... give me a moment to see if I can locate an airlock, or some other way to dock with the station.  I'm not keen on the idea of having to spacewalk over there--but if we have to, we have to...."

"I'm going to stay and watch the sensors," Zhouth declared as he returned to the bridge, now in his full boarding suit, though even as he did he seemed to fully process what Varca had just suggested. "Actually, why is everyone going to go over there if the place is such a wreck and there's only one person to retrieve and everything else is just fine? It could come apart around you with that many people bouncing on old plates!"

"BB and her boarding crew should be enough, shouldn't they? Go over and recover the Vargr so we can get some answers. Then we'll decide what to do with the station. Two thousand years in space, amazing!"
This message was last edited by the player at 13:54, Sun 14 Mar 2021.

In reply to Theodore McFarlane (msg # 49):

Collyn reported for the boarding party, waiting for Taliesa and BB. He had a shotgun and a stun grenade just in case.

"Yes dear" Ingrid said. She didn't initially regret going on the boarding mission, because she wasn't any kind of soldier. But she did regret after she learned how ancient the station was. "Oh wow! I'd love to see that..."

"Once it's safe we can take turns visiting it if we might, and then decide what to do with it."
This message was last updated by the player at 14:32, Mon 15 Mar 2021.

In reply to Theodore McFarlane (msg # 52):

Salvage it or whatever. Does it have a drive on board Varca? Or just a power plant and life support? It could be under it's own power or have been placed here by tugs."

Rayjay would also sadly remain on board providing over watch should any unexpected and certainly unwanted company come calling. "Two t'ousand years and it certainly looks it heh-heh. Still t'at old Drinax tech can still amaze, certainly won't look near as good myself two decades from now let alone millennia." Rayjay said with a chuckle from his station.

In reply to Rayjaynul Brown (msg # 54):

     "We're at least a millennia too late to salvage this place for anything but raw materials, Theo." Varca says, "It's been here for two-thousand years, subject to micro-meteor hits, radiation damage from orbiting around this gas giant, and various passers-by that pulled in to grab what they could.  Being of Sindalian construction, there probably was some kind of central grav-dive system, powering multiple station-keeping motors, but I wouldn't bet any money that it's still around.  Same for any power generators."

     "Hell, Theo, I'm not even sure how that small section of the station is holding onto an atmosphere!  The only power I'm picking up looks like some kind of battery pack with the beacon transmitter ... and since the beacon we're getting is of the type found on spacesuits--and I'm guessing, here--the signal must be getting boosted, but I don't know how!."

     "BB?  You and the boarding crew maintain contact with the ship on Channel Three.  Use comm-encryption protocol Zeta.  While I'm detecting that there is an atmosphere inside there--the place is bleeding air, there's even a frelling frost halo around the place!--I can't guarantee either breathable quality or breathable pressure, so I recommend all of you stay sealed up once aboard the station."

     "Oh...one more thing, Gunny..." Varca adds, as he slides aside a corner of one of the control boards, in front of himself--revealing a small hidden space with a single, orange button inside,

     "I'm officially declaring this as our first Privateer mission!"

     Varca reaches out a gloved finger and presses the button--and Vultan's Ship Transponder goes into an un-responsive Stand-By mode.

     The Harrier-class ship was purpose-built to be a Commerce Raider, after all.  'Going Dark' is part of the design....

     "The gloves are now off, Gunny.  Make sure you bring that Vargr, Krrsh, back alive and able to talk--do not let anything prevent you from doing so."

"We're rescuing someone in secret?" Zhouth wondered aloud. "I suppose it is a raider rather than someone that's heroic to pull out of danger, and we're going to be questioning him afterward." It was nigh-impossible to gauge what Zhouth was thinking given the inscrutability offered by the opaque face-plate of his suit, but he sounded just a touch unsettled by the last part.

"Aaron, you can handle the bandaging part, right? We'll need to do that first once we have him. And, umm, I'd feel happier if you had bio-containment protocols ready, just in case."

In reply to Zhouth (msg # 56):

     "Oh, yeah, if that turns out to be Krrsh, we are so gonna question him!" Varca responds, standing up and stretching his shoulders, "Once he's healthy enough to take being questioned, of course."

     "Okay Zhouth, sensor control is over to you.  Comm-net is all set up and running on auto.  I'm off to gear-up into my hard-suit, so I'll be ready to back-up the Boarding Crew--Hey!  D'you think we could get away with calling them the Assault Crew, even if nobody is actually being assaulted?  Maybe we should give that smartass, Collyn, a can of spray-paint and have him leave behind offensive graphitti?  That would be an assault, yeah? Heh-heh-heh..."

"Someone could trace that!" Zhouth began to protest. "Well, maybe not out here. But if they want to assault the station, it doesn't sound like anything's there to stop them!" He'd managed to work himself up into sounding quite cheerful at the prospect, even miming a good palm-punch at a wall, but promptly crashed right back down again into unease. "Unless there really is something else over there."
This message was lightly edited by the player at 03:27, Tue 16 Mar 2021.

In reply to Zhouth (msg # 58):

"Get in your Hazard suit Ingrid, just in case. We may get lucky you know." he says with a grin and a head jerk toward the relic.

BB is suited up and ready to roll. Given that this was turning into a zero-g rescue mission she had to ditch her PGMP behind but instead was now equipped with a gyrojet rifle.

The space station is/was about 20,000 tons, a small Class C station. It looks like it once had a hundred fuel tanks slung below it, but they are all gone--only scraps of metal hand down showing where they once were.

The station's configuration is a bit odd, consisting of four parts. There's a central circular station which still has the communications dish attached to the front.

Behind that is a roughly rectangular section that's almost as big. It'd be where you'd expect to find the engines, but there's no indication that any were ever there.

To either side of these two central areas are long narrow pods. The near side one is as long as both central sections and is attached to both of them. The far side one is only as long as the main round section.

It is the near side one that has a docking airlock at either end of it.

The far side one, at the back end, is where you pick up the Vargr life signs.

Even from out here, the station has the appearance of having been looted, scavenged and salvaged. You can see that there are external components missing and several areas show where something was cut off with a laser torch.

Most of the ancient station appears completely non-functional. No light, no gravity, no air, no heat, no functioning computer system, no automatic doors or airlocks. You'll have to use vacc suits throughout the place and operate all the doors manually to move through the station. Sensors indicate a few areas do have light, heat and a thin atmosphere, apparently powered by nuclear batteries.

There's only one section that has a significant hole in the hull, and that's the central rear section corner nearest you.

"Where do you want inserted BB? You want to try to get in the central section or the pod?"

BB looks over the schematics and lets out an audible sigh of frustration.

"I fucking hate salvage missions..." she muttered under her breath as Teddy asked for her opinion.

"Alright so here's the deal. It would be much better to just cut our way straight to the objective or as near as possible. In and out quick and clean, plus going in on a pod means you don't leave your rear open. The problem is that this whole thing is a hunk of junk and it sometimes feels inevitable that as soon as you start messing around with the structure it causes the whole thing to start to fall apart.

So assuming we get someone who is good with a torch I would suggest we cut our way in as close to the target as possible. Secure that then poke around for shit sand giggles. If this whole thing is one sneeze away from complete collapse then we carefully thread our way through from that already open hole and hope to god nobody has allergies."
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 20:59, Sun 21 Mar 2021.

In reply to BB Nova (msg # 63):

     Varca has moved from the Countermeasures suite, out into the companionway, and over to the suit lockers next to the airlocks.

     "I think that's a great idea, BB." Varca says to BB, standing nearby, "But I have one thing for you to consider ... and one problem for you ... in regards to that plan."

     "Consider--despite all indicators to the contrary--the Vargr over there may not have a vacc suit on.  Cutting a hole in the pod, close to the heat signature, is gonna decompress the pod.  Of course, slapping a temporary airlock over the breach will prevent that.  Which brings me to..."

     "Problem--we don't have any temporary, rescue-type airlocks.  At all.  I want to get some, so we can do the very action you've described.  But we don't have any, right now."

     "You can still breach near the target, if you want--this time around, I'm not going to say otherwise.  But dead Vargr can't talk to us.  And, on top of everything else, there is a chance that that Vargr isn't Captain Krrsh."

"What about making a pinhole breach to see whether there is air on the inside? If nothing comes out, you can cut away without worry. If it does start leaking then slap a patch over it and go around the long way," Zhouth suggested, and after a split second pause, added a further thought. "Actually, if there's air in there, you can probably just start banging on the wall to signal him!"