Session 106: Making some new friends

Play date: October 13, 2017

In-game date: April 13 or so, EY219

Location: The planet in the slide points

Previous events: Getting attacked in this awful place

Malcolm and Volkova drag their prisoner back to the Hummingbird while everyone checks out the damage on the ship. They're not sure exactly what kind of weapon they were attacked with but the damage is very intense in very localized areas. If the round that landed on them had been of a more typical variety the hull would have been catastrophically breached and everyone on board would have probably died -- even Ghost! -- but that's not a problem now: only unoccupied pockets were exposed to the planet's atmosphere.

The engineering deck took the brunt of the damage and the space drive is toast. All sorts of basic systems, like sensors and life support, have been damaged. The medical bay, i.e. Bishop's terrarium room, is gone.

Most tragic at a personal level is the damage to some of the crew's quarters. Bishop's room down on the passenger deck was unaffected, but everyone's rooms on the top deck are affected. Jillian's lost all her weapons and is most upset about a loss of a box that she simply describes as holding "personal effects". Ghost somehow managed to survive the breach, though no one's sure exactly how -- she must be down to a low number of backup lives. Malcolm's lost his lederhosen but he doesn't seem too disturbed when he finds this out. Volkova's the one who's lost the most: her copy of the calendar when she was "Ms. Tool Belt EY197", her dirndl and uBuntu outfits, romance novels, and her new guitar. The aliens didn't just destroy her space drive, they tried to destroy her life.

There are three priorities: repair the ship, interrogate the prisoner, and find yet more parts now that the ship's even more damaged.

Bishop will interrogate the alien prisoner, who is unceremoniously dumped in the Murder Room. He sets up the strange little sculpture that Choi provided, which makes the room feel ominious even for those who weren't around during the Flint Cardesco event. It's similar to the thing that Inspector How used on them and he wonders if he should try a good-cop, bad-cop routine. Not that Inspector How ever used anything remotely like a good cop on them... For backup he has Azar, who is more than able to gun down the alien if it's necessary, and Whang, who is less able to do so but not unskilled with a pistol. This will probably be unnecessary anyways; Volkova's tied the alien with stout cable to a securely-mounted metal ring that she'd installed behind the Murder Room's bed a while ago "just in case".

Volkova's naturally the one to repair what can be repaired and does so with a manic determination. Everyone else who could help her is otherwise occupied, so she makes due with the unskilled labour of Sheema handing her tools while she works. Volkova's not sure if this speeds her up or slows her down: Sheema doesn't know a worm gear from an exhaust manifold but Volkolva thinks it makes Sheema feel useful here and so is willing to go along with it.

Choi and Malcolm are the ones who are going to be on the away team to find more parts in this planetary junkyard, with Jillian running comms. She's found a likely ship for them: it's about the same size as the Hummingbird with a lot of damage to the front part but with an intact back end. Hopefully it will have some space drive parts that they can use! Malcolm bring his usual array of weapons as well as the collapsable atmo-sphere, camouflage tarp (with two xenobatteries), and small laser weapon that Choi brought on board in Daebak.

They're careful in picking their way across the broken landscape -- given the shape of their ship the last thing they need is more trouble -- though Choi does keep dangerously pushing herself to get to that sweet, sweet xenotech. The ship, when they get to it, does indeed look like it crashed badly but that the front half took the brunt of the damage. There are sharp parts to avoid when climbing through the hull but the hatches inside don't have any sort of security on them. Choi unlocks one and Malcolm cranks it open, only to be blown back as the highly-pressurized internal atmosphere explosively vents! The metal hatch catches him and although he doesn't get crushed by it against a bulkhead he feels a few ribs go and has a tear in his suit! Choi is luckier, being a step back and avoiding the hatch. She is still blown back by the rush of pressure, though, and likewise finds the terrible atmosphere of this place seeping into her suit through a rent.

Malcolm quickly opens the atmo-sphere and he and Choi take a moment to recover, then fix the holes in their suits. They're not major tears and once they get their breath back and tend to their injuries as best they can they're ready to explore the ship. Once Malcolm's convinced Jillian that they're not too badly injured to continue he deflates the sphere and they explore the shipwreck.

There are other hatches inside but they open them carefully and take no further damage from the venting. At least this means that the ship hasn't been looted! It might mean that there are survivors, but when they start finding corpses it's obvious this isn't the case. The original crew of this ship were vaguely humanoid, though with four arms. It looks like they've had red skin at some point in the past but it's hard to make out much detail from the desiccated bodies -- Malcolm feels the need to point out that this is not an attractive species. The cause of death doesn't look like murder, but whether it was the initial impact or starving to death is hard to tell. Neither of them has much medical experience and the point here isn't to determine exactly how these creatures died, so they don't investigate the bodies much further.

There are various pieces of equipment (what looks like a 2m² hovering board, four pieces of mesh that are wrapped around the bodies that looks to Choi like it has a protective function, and four weapons of some sort) but the main prize here is a perfectly intact space drive! It's nowhere near as good as the Hummingbird's but looks like it will work. Scooping up the loose booty they limp back to their own ship. The drive itself is too massive to carry by hand, so Volkova will have to rig up some way to get her ship to the drive or vice versa.

Back in the Hummingbird Malcolm avoids Bishop, knowing that his injuries are bad enough that crapbark will be applied. He instead goes to Jillian, who uses her skills and a first aid kit to bandage him up as best she can. It's not as good as Bishop's work but at least Jillian doesn't use crapbark. Choi's perfectly willing to risk whatever treatment Bishop will dole out for her injuries, which include some torn muscles to the obvious bruising.

Bishop's been spending the day trying to talk to the alien. He's made a bit of progress but it's certainly not making it easy, mostly keeping mum and as far as he can tell mostly insulting him when it does speak.

The gravity is draining even when just sitting around and with everyone safely on the ship it's time to sleep, even though there's no night here, just the coruscating colours above. Azar and Sheema continue to trade off guarding the alien while Volkova, uninjured and strong, volunteers to run the sensors while her weaker crewmates recuperate.

There's nothing much to see during the "night" and Volkova passes the time working out how to repair and improve the ship in her head. She's pulled away from her reveries when the sensor panel shows something. Maybe they're being scanned? The last time this happened nothing good came out of it, so she rushes and wakes up a groggy Jillian. Twiddling the dials Jillian finds that the object seems to be flying fairly close to the planet's surface, moving slowly and circling them. She's not too sure of any of this: the bogie seems to have some sort of stealth abilities.

Bishop is soon vaguely awake and up in the gunnery cupola. Malcolm, woken up by the noise, is quickly on comms -- scanning through all available frequencies he detects some sort of popping or fizzing that seems to be a transmission. Strange. Volkova dons an EVA suit and gets her trusty bazooka just in case, worrying about her low ammo load, but then realizes that if the vehicle wants to harm them standing outside when ship-scale projectiles start flying isn't the best place to be. She decides to work on the ship's armour, hoping to jury rig some protection if it comes to shooting.

It takes about an hour for Volkova to have bent some of the armour plates back into place and reinforced them with spare parts. She then starts working on the advanced sensor suite, declaring that she'll have it online in half an hour even if it costs her a few fingers. In that time Bishop's been listening to the noises that Malcolm's found and believes them to be language. He thinks that the ship out there is friendly in nature and suggests communicating back. Jillian shrugs, tunes to the strongest frequency the mystery object's been using, and sings the lullaby that her bodyguard Asjadi used to sing to her. Why not? It's the most harmless thing she can think of.

The aliens play the lullaby back in their strange popping way. How could they not be peaceful? Jillian's also convinced that they're helpful, though she's not sure exactly why. Volkova declares that the sensor suite is nominal at a cost of 0.0 fingers and Jillian uses it to determine that the reason she was having so much difficulty reading the aliens is that it's organic! So strange. The small smart worms flew ships that they secreted, but they weren't organic like this: while the worms' ships were more like bone or teeth this reads as soft tissue.

Since the aliens haven't attacked yet, are singing songs, and Jillian's convinced they're helpful, Malcolm decides to say hello in his own way. He leaves the bridge, pulls on an EVA suit, and climbs up onto the top of the hull, dragging his parasol, folding chair, and plastic cooler with him while leaving his weapons behind. There's no way that he can drink anything from the cooler and it begins to melt slightly in the atmosphere, but the chair and parasol both keep their shape -- the chair creaks ominously but doesn't collapse under his increased weight. He strikes as casual a pose as one can in high gravity while wearing an EVA suit that barely fits in a chair that's struggling to stay intact and waits for a response.

On the sensors, Jillian sees the bogie spiral in closer, and when it's close enough to see out the windows it's a sort of blimp with a gondola slung underneath it. The whole thing is about 60 metres long and glides gracefully. Choi and Volkova want in on the action and get their suits on in record time before climbing up with Malcolm.

A hole forms in the side of the alien (or alien ship, it's hard to be sure) and something floats out of it, about the size of a horse, if a horse were shaped like a balloon with a mass of tissue underneath it along with several jointed chitinous arms. As it gets closer they can see that it's got a bag or something around it, almost like a squeezy bag but with an alien instead of tea in it. Everyone on top of the hull motions for it towards the airlock, which Jillian opens from the inside panel. The thing glides down to the entrance and moves its bulk into the airlock.

Choi, Malcolm, and Volkova try to get into the ship as quickly as they can, but it takes a little while for three people to get through an airlock -- not without a little pushing and shoving as well -- and when the main airlock by Jillian opens up she's alone with a large alien that's floating above the floor and is pulling back its baglike EVA suit. Jillian begins to say hi when the alien sings her lullaby back at her from its mouth-sphincter. It sounds much like flatulence and the smell almost makes her retch, but she keeps her cool and sings back. It's not the most complex first contact, but it seems to be working.

Jillian's soon joined by the rest of her crew and they start to learn how to communicate with it. Bishop's the obvious choice to take the lead on this and it's surprisingly easy to work out the basics of how to talk to it, even though they don't make quite the same sorts of noises. Bishop guesses that this species is practiced in learning to talk to other beings, much like he is, and it turns out that this is exactly the case: this species has made it its business to help out others who are stranded here. It's just unfortunate that they speak with such terrible breath; the smell carries extra information that the humans have difficulty understanding.

Without a real way to say the name of this being they decide to call it "Sunshine". Sunshine is led down the stairs (with some difficulty due to its size) to the engineering deck, where it's shown the damage. It asks if they managed to destroy the ship that did this, apparently recognizing the destroyed tracked vehicles outside and the effects of the weapon that hit the Hummingbird. When they say yes it's pleased; the Hummingbird was attacked by a race that preys upon shipwrecked unfortunates and Sunshine seems to think that the universe is better off without them.

For such a helpful species Sunshine is surprisingly hostile when it finds out that they have a prisoner and suggests that they kill it. There's some debate amongst the crew about what they should do with their captive but nothing's decided and Sunshine stays out of the humans' conversation.

Volkova has been missing for a bit and shows up with cobbled-together gas masks made from the filtering mesh that they looted from their first found wreck. This makes talking to Sunshine far less stomach-churning, and Sunshine doesn't seem to mind what they're doing.

Sunshine's pretty willing to talk about many things and it turns out that its species doesn't know about the D'vor but does know about the Dreaming, though they don't know how to use it themselves. They've encountered planets like uBuntu and species that use the Dreaming as a means of communicating across distances and with new species (Sunshine's species had to figure out how to do this the old-fashioned way). Sunshine's species come from outside of the slide points and can use different ones at will. They figured out how to get here and made it their mission to help others.

When it comes to more immediate concerns Sunshine is more than willing to help them. The blimp ship can carry out surprisingly heavy lifting. It can carry the found space drive to the Steel Hummingbird and can also carry the Hummingbird into orbit, so there won't be any need to repair the atmospheric engines!

For now, though, Sunshine offers to carry the Hummingbird to another ship that it found. Sunshine's species isn't into artificial technology, so the humans are more than welcome to it. The original occupants left the ship and when the blimp approached them they attacked it out of hand, so the blimp destroyed them. For squishy balloons these seem to be fairly tough customers!

The Hummingbird and her crew are airlifted to the new ship, which obviously landed instead of crashed and looks much higher tech than what humans have! Bishop, Choi, and Jillian opt to climb into the blimp on the way there, wearing their EVA suits despite or perhaps because of the breathable-but-nasty air in the blimp, where they meet other balloon animals. Their tech seems to be pretty much entirely grown; the only hardtech they use is their space drive, and they've found an organic coating for their ship that keeps it safe in this atmosphere. Bishop finds the aliens fascinating, Choi wants to know more about their technology, and Jillian's interested in their knowledge of the slide points -- if they can use them at will then maybe she can learn to come out from various locations from any slide point entry!

When they get to the abandoned alien ship Choi finds herself much more interested in it than the blimp, mechanical and electronic xenotech being more her thing. She leaves the blimp and joins Azar, Malcolm, and Volkova at the new ship. Bishop and Jillian stay in the blimp. There's a door in the side that doesn't seem to exist until Choi works out how to open it, and they're in... and facing some sort of machine gun that's protecting the large airlock. Everyone avoids the short burst of projectiles and stay outside where it can't fire. Volkova modifies a round from her bazooka to lose its minimum range, climbs under the camouflage tarp, and sneaks in. She carefully picks a spot inside the airlock and destroys it, managing to avoid the explosion and shrapnel in front of her and the backblast coming out of the back of the bazooka and bouncing off the wall behind her.

They carefully enter the ship after Choi further hacks the airlock controls but there don't seem to be any other defences. It's all so shiny, with so many toys! And well-lit! They excitedly begin to figure out what all these things do

Up in the blimp, Jillian talks to the mushroom-like navigator and finds out that exiting from the slide point space is basically a matter of applying a very complicated but universal formula. She starts to learn it. This is a massive.

Everyone's happy with their new discoveries. It looks like they won't just be able to get home soon but will have some new technology to help defeat the D'vor!

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Bishop's Bedpost Notch Count: 1, somehow (running total: 34)

Jillian's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 5.5)

Malcolm's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 16)

Volkova's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 7)