Malcolm’s notes
At point XF-1402, in Unatil subsector there is a brown dwarf with a planet close in to it with life and a breathable atmosphere. A supply run there from usually takes 6+ weeks and the last one is 6 weeks overdue. The crew for the ship to be sent to investigate are on leave, so they’re putting one together. That’s us.
Map. Where are we? The only J-6 route is from Kiiguuroesa, which has no starport, although it has a gas giant. Brytsee is J-2 away from there, with a class A starport. It is on an X-boat route that goes to Depot.
What’s our ship? Rifthauler 4A4, with J-3, but it’s far more fuel-efficient than normal. We jump to Kiiguuroesa, refuel off the gas giant, and then do our two jumps to XF-1402.
Konash is an Answerin, a bit oblivious, 6’5”, built like a broomstick, he’s a good navigator and likes to wander.
Gani is a Vilani, a freelance engineer, ex-navy, likes to meet aliens, has spent time with the Aslan.
The other three mechanics are
None of them are pilots.
The missing ship, Rifthauler 5A7, had six crew, and the station had thirteen, ex-Navy or scientific.
We do our initial jump, refuel, re-do our navigation for the jump into nowhere and Akashirsha points out the expired part. We arrive at the buoy OK, nothing else around. We make the second jump. We know where Akashirsha’s still is by now.
We arrive near the brown dwarf, and spot the planet. No immediate radio signals.
The planet is close to the brown dwarf, low-G, atmosphere breathable in low-lying areas, some basic life. We head towards the planet, signalling by radio and laser and keeping a sensor and radar watch.
We have two neutrino sources on the planet, close together. One is sizable, plausibly the base power supply. The other is much weaker, but fairly close by. At a reasonable orbit, the base is there and so is a ship, plausibly 5A7 and plausibly the weaker neutrino source. That level is below dockside idle, but not fully shut down. On IR, the buildings are visible.
We fly round the planet to check there are no artificial satellites. We land next to 5A7. The base has lights showing, but 5A7 has none, and no transponder. We leave A, D & M to look after the ship, suit up and walk over to the base. We cross the bridge (metal, prefab), and go to Mission Support. Looking through the windows, nobody in sight, but the buildings are furnished.
In Mission Support, we find sewage processing and nutrition production. Everything seems OK. There is also a general repair workshop, in rather a mess. Looks as if the place was hastily searched.
We move to Mission Control, which has an upper floor. The ground floor has everything openned or pushed over. All the food is gone. On the upper floor there is a lot less damage and most things on the computer are locked up.
At the Science Building, one of the inner doors is open, and there are plant tendrils on the floor leading through it. There’s a human leg in trousers incorporated into the vine, which is twitching a bit. That lab space is full of vine. The other main lab is computers. The doors of the small offices have been torn off their hinges.
Gani spots something outside: it’s a human-shaped mass of vines and tendrils. It’s trying to herd us back in.
Konash shoots it to some effect; I laser it to more; Gani shoots it; Konash shoots it again and it collapses.
No more immediately around. Gani thinks he saw something in the distance but the rest of us can’t see it. We go back to the ship, check they’re OK, and equip ourselves for burning stuff. There are plenty of lubricating oils.
The accommodation block nearest the bridge has had a fire inside. The ATV looks intact, has a card in the slot, and has cables to Mission Control. The tools and ration packs are still there. We sweep the base looking for the mass of tendrils, which is gone, and don’t find it. We try to get into the power building, but Gani messes up the door.
Priorities:
Try the power building a bit more, then the rest of the base? Yes.
We could cut our way in, with equipment from the ship. Gani thinks it would be an unlikely place to hide.
The NW #2 building’s door has been bashed with high human strength, but not penetrated. The windows are intact. Looking in, it’s tidy accomodation, no movement or bodies. These blocks have 4 cabins and a common living area and kitchen. We can see into the common area and one cabin. Other cabon windows are opaqued. Gani opens the door, we search and it’s deliberately tidy according to regs, and there’s a body in one of the showers. Navy uniform, Able Spacehand, apparently killed herself with this gun. There’s a log recorder, normal civilian electronics.
We play it. Voice recording: Astrogator of 5A7 had a virus, 20 days after landing, attacks started, fought back, but infected people changed sides, one ATV gone, she ran for her quarters, they couldn’t open the door and didn’t understand basic tech. She couldn’t kill them with bullets. They retrived food and potted plants. Someone got away in an ATV, and both air-rafts are gone. She denied them a convert by killing herself when she was out of food, about 8 weeks ago.
As we’re leaving, three tendril creatures come in for us. The first one comes apart under laser fire in the second round, the second gets wounded by laser in the fourth and Konash demolishes the third in the same round. The wounded one absorbs some bits, but I blow it away in the fifth.
With all three disabled, we sweep the bits together and start an oil fire on them. That actually works. But we do need the accelerants. We burn her corpse on the pyre of her enemies, and take her dog tags and Spacer Carey’s tags, which she also had. No more come along while we are doing this. We check her guns, a pistol 10mm and a shotgun, but no ammunition. We close the door and Gani does up the lock.
I have a shotgun back on the ship, but we need to decontaminate before we go back in. As we head for 4A4, we see a flicker of light, as if a flame, through one of the windows of 5A7. We go to it, there are no lights or signs of activity. It is pinging on its transponder. We have an emergency access code that should work. We knock on a personel lock for 10 mins, no response. It doesn’t have enough power running to take off.
Gani tries climbing to the bridge windows, and makes it, slowly. The bridge looks normal. Looking for clues, someone comes in. She’s in civilian crew uniform, points at things on the bridge, seems very stressed. After a while she holds her datapad to the window. “<name>, 5A7 engineer, ship locked down.” He replies the same way “Vacc suit?” She goes away, comes back “Yes, how to get out?” A lockdown on these ships means external doors and ships systems unavailable. Unlock with senior crew member’s swipe card. She isn’t in a suit, doesn’t think there’s infection on board.
Lockdown takes precedence over emergency access codes. We could cut our way in, probably, and fixably afterwards.
Let’s be a little cautious about that, shall we? We don’t know how infectious the tendril condition is. It doesn’t seem to be very infectious, but our health is a weak link for warning the Imperium about this if it’s bad.
Do we have anyone with medical skills above First Aid? No. Not even Tass Engren.
Konash is a basically qualified pilot. That means we can recover 5A7. So we could get Tass to put herself into a low berth and recover the ship with her.
We have resupply for the base on 4A4.
We tell her we’re going to clear the base, and our engineers will let her out in a few hours. Gani rigs a system for talking to her when he isn’t outside.
She wsn’t very familiar with the base. On the way in, there was interesting wreckage in orbit, and one of the people who looked at it was the first to come down with the infection. The wreckage was taken on board and offloaded to the base. Probably the science building.
We get A, D & M to put my shotgun and ammo, and Konash’s ammo into the airlock so we can collect them. They’ve jerry-built a bladed hand for Gani to try.
We go to mid-east 2, which has been searched for anything organic, which has been removed.
South-east 2 has had a fire. Looks deliberately set, amd fire suppression turned off.
7 was the social area, galley, all organics gone.
6 was mission control: communications is alive, and we can talk to our ship on it. Computers are alive, but we have no authorisation. We could extract the storage devices and take them home.
5 has the workshop and food processor. The FP has not been cleared out, and that’s a bit odd. There are food blocks awaiting use, and local plant life in the input hopper that has not gone. It was secure until we breached that, and it appears they have been in since.
The fuel tanks seem OK, the processing is still working. The equipment shed is intact, and cables and hoses are deployed to 5A7. There’s enough rquipment to refuel two more ships simultaneously.
The computer room in the science building is wrecked. The leg has moved. It is still twitching. Is destroying the mass a priority? No. It probably can’t get through the doors.
We tell Tass to put a suit on when we come back and head up to the observatory.
We search the ATV for tendril creatures. We can’t find anything. It has its ration packs, etc., aboard, and they’re all sealed. Gani has a go, and can operate it, and we board and head for the observatory. There is no response to this.
There are tracks: a lot of foot traffic, and one set of wheeled ATV tracks, not well driven. They lead us to the weather station and past it. The foot traffic was to the weather station. Which is undisturbed, and not meant for living in. An emergency breather mask ad first-aid kits, but nothing more in survival gear. The wheeled ATV tracks turn sharp right and go up the side of the valley, not towards either the Observatory or Carving’s Camp. Tass thinks Carving’s Camp was possibly the original research station. People went there, but nobody lived there.
Gani damages the ATV a bit on the way back, we’ll need to fix that if we use it again. M is feeling rough and went to his bunk. We have potentially contaminated the inside of 4A4. We don’t like the idea either. He wants to go to the science building. We tell him to go into a low berth now. The other two got into suits on their own initative.
Tass reckons symptoms were fever, irritability, urges to do particular things. It varied a bit. She got aboard in the general panic, the captain triggered the lockdown while he was off-board. She thought she was the only one aboard at lockdown and has not seen anyone aboard since.
We board, decontaminate the outsides of the suits, stay in them and start decontaminating: UV flood is the best start. Check that M is in his low berth, which he is. This takes some hours, during which we get some sleep, but leave someone on watch to talk to Tass.
Let’s get her out. Cutting a cargo door is easiest to repair afterwards. Cut a side one. Gani does it. Tass is very pleased. Back into 4A4 and decontaminate. Rest of the day is a rest day. Put her onto our crew roster. She’s afraid of the dark now.
Priorities:
We load the ATV into the cargo hold of 4A4, and fly to Carver’s Camp. We can use its winch as a hoist out of the cargo door.
The camp is close to a small cliff with caves in it. The buildings are similar to Candling Station. The landing field is a bit overgrown, but works OK. The buildings have been stripped, apparently when the base was moved. There’s an air/raft on the ground, landed rather than crashed.
Break.
Any tracks around the air/raft? How much charge has it got?
Look in the buildings, and then in the caves.
Look for tracks in the frost leaving the area.
Decontaminate the air/raft and load it aboard 4A4? Leave it here in case there are survivors we didn’t find? If so, leave a note about where we are.
Back at Candling Station, retrieve storage units from computers. They’ll be encrypted, of course label them, but don’t put them in our computers.
Can we get the Candling Station food processor to make volatile hydrocarbons? I’m much more willing to break that one than the ones on the rifthaulers.
Laser shots used: 14,