Play date: August 11, 2017
In-game date: April 9, EY219
Location: Aiscapo system
Previous events: Sabotaging the jump gate
Soundtrack: Free fallin'
While the Hummingbird flies towards Daebak the crew work out their plans. They still have several passengers on board who aren't the crew, so when they stop off at the naval base on Eondeog they'll drop them off and then... what, exactly? No one has any desire to get involved in the heavy fighting that's just starting to happen. No one on the Hummingbird, that is. The Iof's jump drive gives it a huge advantage in system-wide combat and the Grob are eager to fight back against the D'vor. They'll join the war, even if they can't coordinate with the human navy. They're still leery and shy enough to not want to work with the navy if the Hummingbird isn't around.
It's time for the Steel Hummingbird to finally see what's in the slide point. They've noticed an object in it for a while now and everyone's wanted to go there for a while. With the Iof raring to fight and the Resplendent Dragon still not expected for another week it's as good a time as any.
Jillian calls ahead to tell the navy what they've managed to do and to request equipment. They'll fill up a fair amount of their cargo hold with food, water, oxygen, and fuel. That's the obvious choice and easily filled. There's a lot of debate about getting a moon buggy, but it would take up so much of their hold that it's not a priority, and when Jillian inquires about it she's told that there aren't any spare ones now that war has broken out: most travel on the surface is the pressurized train between the naval and civilian moon bases and the ground vehicles the military has are either too massive for the Hummingbird or in use on stepped-up patrols. Personal-scale excavation and scavenging equipment is available, though. Several of her crew want better EVA suits but Jillian insists that the ones they have are fine.
April 11, EY219
The ship lands on Eondeog and lets its three passengers off. Professor Michael Pritchard is happy to back on solid and safe ground. Commander Seo-Yun Jo is still buzzing with joy at having used atomic weapons and doesn't seem to mind that the nine other members of her team got atomized. Lieutenant Na-Na Kim seems to be the only one who it all reluctant to leave the ship. She is grateful to have survived and thanks the crew, but now that their mission is done she's eager to join the fight against the invaders. Jillian reminds Kim not to tell anyone about the Grob -- Kim doesn't want to get the aliens into any trouble: she agrees to keep mum.
Not surprisingly the brass want to meet with the crew and congratulate them on their fine work. Everyone on the Hummingbird is still very much aware of the sacrifice of 18 military men and women and beg off any real acknowledgement. Malcolm in particular flees to the bar on base, where he works out some of his angst through booze and sex.
While waiting for her ship to get outfitted Jillian checks her messages and finds that she has four. Two are from Mi Kyong Choi, the rogue xenotechnologist she rescued from Crapworld. She apparently has some "toys" she really wants to share with the Hummingbird and leaves a phone number. The second message from her is similar to the first but more emphatic. Another message is more disturbing; it's from Benjamin Mitchell, the Gurg's captain, and strongly suggests that the jump drive that the Hummingbird gave to the Black Rose has been successfully installed in his ship. Just plain strange is a message from Evie Donaldson (Governor Jasmine Lee's assistant) offering to meet up with the crew socially. Jillian scowls a bit when she remembers how the short-haired blonde was making eyes at Sheema but she's solidly convinced of her girlfriend's loyalty.
Jillian leaves her own message for the Resplendent Dragon saying "Heading to investigate anomaly in slide point, then Piccadilly", then tells her crew about the first three messages that were left for them. When she later tells her girlfriend about the message from Evie she is relieved that Sheema's response is a dismissively arched eyebrow and some slight eyerolling.
Everyone agrees that it would be a good idea to have Choi on board for a trip to the anomaly, and Jillian calls the phone number provided. Choi answers right away and speaks in an uncharacteristically hushed tone. She's happy to hear from Jillian and offers them the xenotech that she's recently acquired. She's also quite willing to come along on their trip into the slide points. She asks Jillian to meet her at Palheyon Ri park on the edge of Wonju. She'll leave a note for Inspectors How and Wen -- she seems to have a lot of autonomy with Hoax -- and she'll bring her gear.
It's usually not possible for civilian ships to fly down to Daebak's surface but Jillian figures that the navy owes them enough to let them get away with this and she's right: after a brief call to Rear Admiral Ha-Eun Choi they have permission and as soon as the gear and supplies that they requested are on board they head down to the surface with plenty of time to meet Choi.
The navy probably wasn't thinking about giving them permission to land in a park but at this point they're past caring about rules and besides, any burned shrubbery will grow back. When they come in to the mostly empty Palheyon Ri Park they see Choi coming out of a copse lugging a duffle bag full of something heavy towards their hovering ship. Coming in to actually land they see Inspectors How and Wen erupt from some bushes and begin to run after Choi. No one's too sure what's going on but the crew want the gear and Choi, so they'll prioritize that. While Malcolm keeps the ship hovering just above the ground Volkova jumps out of the ship and sprints towards the relatively slow Choi. She scoops the xenotechnologist over one shoulder and the duffle bag over the other, then turns and hustles back to the ship.
How and Wen's hiding spot was too far away to catch up to Volkova even with all the extra weight she's carrying and she easily pulls away from them. They look angry and are shouting something but no one can hear them above the ship's engines. Bishop, up in the gunnery cupola for the view if nothing else can't help himself and uses the ship's external PA system to ask the question that's been bothering the crew for some time: "Where's our beer money?" Malcolm feels that this is petty and cuts him off from the bridge.
Once Volkova is back on the ship with her prizes -- hardly having broken a sweat -- Malcolm lifts off. He can't help but tell the furiously waving Inspectors "Meet us in Piccadilly... and bring our beer money!" before flying off to space. Apparently, pettiness isn't something that he's totally above. Choi is grinning madly at having gotten away from her minders and is obviously impressed by Volkova even if her stomach will be bruised from the firewoman's carry.
With everyone but Malcolm (who's busy piloting) in the cargo hold necessary introductions are quickly made and then, after Volkova says "Show me what you've got, you naughty girl" Choi unzips the bag and starts pulling out bizarre alien tech:
Laser: Small stick, emits invisible laser light, like a pointer. Press harder on the button and it does damage (like a pistol for range, +1 to hit, can fire 50 "points of damage" with a maximum of 5 damage. Every "xenobattery" (see below) charges it up all the way -- laser pointer doesn't really use up charges). Uses pistol skill, but fire at -2 until you get the hang of it.
2x inflatable sphere, 3m in diameter when open, the size of a big backpack when "closed". turn it inside out and it's almost perfectly insulated and a small box attached to it provides a decent atmosphere for 72 person-hours. It's easy to get in and out of by pressing on a flap. Leave it in an appropriate atmosphere in a semi-open position and it will, in five hours, "recharge".
Camouflage tarp. 2m x 2m. Cover something and it becomes mostly invisible (+4 to Stealth, +2 to Stealth if moving, even if running [though in that case the Stealth skill itself can't be used and it's just a 2 difficulty to spot the person]). Needs to be run off of xenobatteries. One xenobattery will run the tarp for an hour.
Oddly sticky material made up of something like gecko toe pads. +2 to stick to things plus the "gecko toe pad" Aspect. Currently several pieces of small "cloth"; equal to about a square metre when all put together. Enough for two sets of gloves and two sets of slippers (+1 to climb for only one pair of extremities is equipped).
Flattened metallic disc, kind of beat up and deformed, about 60cm across and 10cm thick. Obviously damaged. When powered by xenobatteries, flies at a little higher than head level and just behind the person who turned it on, making a noise that it obviously shouldn't. Any other purpose has been lost due to damage. Runs for two hours per xenobattery.
Xenobatteries: There are an even dozen of them. They can't be recharged as far as Choi can tell. The laser, tarp, flying disc, and xenobatteries all come from the same culture. There are no indicators of where they were found in the records -- Hoax is very paranoid about this and doesn't want scavengers.
Some little abstract sculpture that, when out in the open, gives an "Aura of Menace" Aspect to the zone it's in for the scene with one free invocation. Looks like Inspector How's old thing.
She also has "gravity bombs" that Hoax had in its base in Piccadilly. She insisted on bringing some here because how is Hoax going to use them, not being a military organization? Idiots, the lot of them. She's got three of them. They're the size of a grenade and can be put into a special ship projectile weapon shell, one without explosives (which would destroy the bomb). When fired at another ship's space drive (at the usual -2 called shot penalty) the gravity bomb automatically turns off the space drive and an engineer in the ship must spend their turn rolling Engineer (Space Drive) vs. the margin of success every turn to try to get the space drive to work until the bomb runs out of juice after about ten minutes (basically, longer than most combats are going to last).
With the exception of the abstract sculpture (that she stole from Inspector Wen) and the gravity bombs (that she stole from Hoax) this haul came from a secret spot upriver from Wonju. The reason Choi had been sentenced to Crapworld in the first place was that she'd been stealing xenotech from Aiscapo University, selling some of it. The duffle bag's contents were the last bunch of things she'd stolen and hidden before being caught and sentenced. She told Wen and How about it and was planning on just bringing it back to Piccadilly until she realized that the Steel Hummingbird was around.
Now that she's shown them all her toys Choi wants to know what's going on with not just their current trip but the chaos in the system that had her trapped on the planet due to intersystem travel restrictions. Jillian explains the civil war, the D'vor, and the slide points but doesn't bring up the Iof or Grob. Choi's certainly happy to have chosen to come on this trip. Sure, she'll be in a lot of trouble with Hoax, but she's not really employed by them and doesn't like How or Wen anyway. This seems like a lot more fun.
April 13, EY219
The Hummingbird reaches the slide point and, as usual, Azar, Sheema, and Whang are sedated by some of Malcolm's tea (despite Bishop's insistence that crapbark tea would be even better). Choi waves off the tea: she wants to experience this.
At this point the crew has gone through the slide points enough times to be totally unfazed by the trip and after the standard bizarreness they get to the point where the mystery sensor blob is detectable with both their ship and sanity intact. Choi's made of pretty stern stuff given how she shrugs off the crazymaking experience.
Instead of continuing to a slide point exit Malcolm heads towards the sensor reading that Jillian finds and after some time -- and who can tell how long they take in the maelstrom that is the slide point? -- they're close enough that Jillian can try to get some readings on it beyond its existence. This is a planet, about ten thousand kilometres in diameter. It's hard to find out much of anything, but she can tell that it's got a strong magnetic field, high gravity, and an atmosphere. There's a halo of debris around it and two moons, one fairly large and one that's much smaller. They decide to visit the moons first, starting with the smaller one.
Coming up on the small "moon" it turns out to be a large ship, over 300 metres long, and is boxy in terms of its outline. The various protrusions are difficult to assign a purpose to and the exterior has a very cleaned look to it, so they decide to enter it with the ship: there are various slits that Malcolm can fly through.
Shining one of the ship's searchlights around in the darkness they find that there are a few entrances of several metres' width that lead further into the ship. It's decided that Volkova will make the first EVA trip into the ship proper, tethered to the Hummingbird with a 30-metre long length of rope. It might be inside a ship but it's also inside the insanity-inducing slide point, so someone with a strong mind and body is the best choice. The interior of the ship is also stripped bare of everything but the metal walls. Volkova doesn't recognize the metal, so she uses some tools to take samples. There is what looks like it might be writing on some of the walls, but she can't read it and isn't sure that it would really mean anything.
She returns to the ship and, not having gone insane or having been eaten, it's decided that it's safe for more people to go exploring. Two teams are formed: Choi and Volkova in one and Bishop and Jillian in the other. They take paint along with them (pink and blue, respectively) to mark their trails and ensure that they can make their way back. Everyone else stays on the Hummingbird.
Three hours out and one hour to get back to the ship and no one's found anything. It looks like the place has been picked completely clean of anything other than the base structure. It's a pretty amazing strip job, honestly.
Disappointed, they leave the ship behind and fly to the larger "moon". This one is about 50km on a side and largely spherical. It's an asteroid with some sort of massive artificial structure on one side of it. Flying close to it, the structure looks like it housed a massive space drive! Someone took an entire asteroid for a ride. It looks like the fitting is empty and Malcolm takes the ship in. Like the other ship, this place has been picked clean, and after a few hours they decide to take their chances on the surface of the planet. There's some worry about the high gravity, but the Hummingbird can take it and her engines are powerful enough to lift off as well.
There's the matter of flying through the cloud of debris, but it's not a problem. The larger pieces are easily enough dodged by Malcom and the smaller ones ping harmlessly off the armoured hull. Curiously, they're all pieces of metal.
Entering the yellowish hazy atmosphere, everything seems fine at first. There's no real wind or turbulence and everything seems fine until the atmospheric engines suddenly show lots of red lights on the control panel and then explode. Everyone does what they can to make what looks like an inevitable crash landing as survivable as possible and Malcolm ploughs the ship into the planet's surface as gently as he can. When the ship finally stops sliding everyone calls in through the intercoms; miraculously, no one is injured, though the extremely high gravity is obvious and most everyone comments on it. The Hummingbird has seem better days, though it will take a little while to check out the full extent of the damage.
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Bishop's Bedpost Notch Count: 1 (running total: 32)
Jillian's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 5.5)
Malcolm's Bedpost Notch Count: 1 (running total: 16)
Volkova's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 7)