Session 13: Cooking with Gas
Administrator Yeoman’s briefing on the Cooking Contest is cut off by a call from the traffic control centre. They’ve just detected an incoming object at extreme sensor range. Whatever it is, it’s huge and it’s on a collision course with Anaitis-17.
The object is metallic, and has a mass of approximately 50,000 tons.
There’s still some electromagnetic activity on board, suggesting the presence of some technology. If that’s a wrecked ship, the engines might still be working. It might be possible to alter the wreck’s course so it misses the station.
Looking at the object’s signature,it’s probably a wrecked ship – or several wrecked ships lashed together.
You can tell the bits of different ships apart even at this range. There is wreckage from at least five ships inthe projectile – a Combine freighter, a durugh raider,a kch-thk colony ship, and two unidentified vessels.They range between two hundred and twenty years old.
Put an explosive charge in the right place, and you can blow that ball of wreckage into several sections which should –mostly – fly harmlessly past the station. There would be a hail of shrapnel, but Anaitis-17 has inertia cloud arrays which should prevent catastrophic damage.
Tracing the course of the projectile back, it seems to originate on the far side of Notus, the local gas giant.If the lasers fly out and attach a glommer (towing line) to the wreck, they can drag it out of the way of the station. The station’s tugs can provide the characters with a towing line, but don’t have the range to reach the projectile.
A tractor beam should work even better than a glommer.
Unless stopped, it will impact on the station within four hours.
