Starside

[Earl of Purple]

Lost in Space

The girl doesn't wake up, though her breathing is a little steadier, or seems so. She won't resist being put into a pressure suit or being moved, but she won't help the process, either. She's a dead weight, though fortunately not literally.

There's nothing else in the other cells, besides beds, tablets, and the other furniture shared by the inhabited cells. Nothing looking out of place or unusual. These five prisoners were plenty dangerous on their own; they didn't want to maximise the risk by having lesser murderers or psychopaths aboard too. That said, Professor Montgomery specialised in nanomachinery. He could have hidden his tech in the head of a pin.

[bc56]

Dyson Sphere

The party makes it up the shaft with no difficulties. The passage above the shaft continues in both directions unexplored, but they could also go back further, such as to the closed door in the previous atrium, or the door high up on the wall that Reinholdt mentioned.

REACH Drydocks -> Hephaestus Drydocks

The guard hands Connor a map of the station, or at least the public sections, from a rack and returns to his post. The Spartan will find it easy to reach the Scrapyards section.

It is a very different place. REACH Technologies kept their docks clean, safe, and efficient. In this section of the station, however, cluttered bits of disassembled machines lie in piles on the floor, the air is thick with smoke from a half dozen electrical fires, and robots and people of many alien races dash by with welding torches and other equipment. A flickering neon sign on the wall says "Receptionist" and points down one of the many corridors.

[Felandria]

[Pirate Base]

Of course. How could one leave without looting a laser gun?
Chevin finishes hir repairs and starts opening the hangar doors (which conveniently seals the door back into the base pretty well closed, just in case, although the air is kept in the hangar by magic). Outside one can see the far wall of the crater, the black sky full of countless stars, and the pirate ship sitting on the landing pad.

The ship looks like someone took several normal water-going galleons and fused them together at odd angles. There are masts and sails on the top...and also the sides, the back, diagonally. The decks are small and piecemeal, a maze of ladders and ropes. The figurehead depicts and insectoid like the pirates with two pairs of swords crossed over his chest.
There's a stack of three large boxes that were just unloaded from the ship (it clearly could contain many more such boxes in its hold), but with the commotion in the base, the pirates have decided to halt unloading and retreat into space, to return once it's sorted out! They're just now undoing the various lines that tether it to the dock.
It seems the pirates in the rigging are quite alarmed to see the intruders/escapees, though of course out in space we can't hear whatever they're saying.

They’re getting away!

We gotta stop them.

Pew, pew, and also additional pews fire from Fel’s newly acquired laser gun, it the direction of the pirates who are untying the ship.

[Reinholdt]

[Dyson Sphere]

Oh right, the other directions. Well they're already here. Might as well check them out. Reinholdt lands and walks dramatically to the left!

[Recaiden]

[Dyson Sphere]

"It all depends on when the probes split up."
But they don't want to end up like that probe. Better stick together.
Yone follows Reinholdt down the left branch.

[Lost in Space]

They have rescued/executed all the prisoners! Phase one complete.
Now comes salvaging what they can of the prison ship.

Looking for nanomachines is a bit of a lost cause. From the prison block, they take the tablets that didn't belong to Montgomery and the memory stick that the guard was using.

Some time later, if not interrupted, one of the gunners (seems more or less human, although you can't see through his suit's faceplate) will join the Captain in heading for the other airlocks of the Tough Girl. There's a least an intact docking tube to collect, and perhaps more of interest inside.
Back on the Mote, an unlicensed medical amateur who happens to be the best the ship has would be strapping the recently-cleaned host body to a table and subjecting it to various diagnostics. X-rays, life-force monitoring wand, poking with a stick...

[Pirate Base]

Zap-zap! One pirate is shot and tumbles from the ship. Another is moving to take his place but hasn't made it yet.
Meanwhile, another is swiveling one of the ship's cannons to aim at Felandria!

Chevin grabs one of the still-attached lines and starts climbing it towards the decks.
The rescued catgirl joins in the laser fire, but is a terrible shot.
The kaleidoscope jumps (flies?) up from the landing pad, in an arc that will take it up over the pirate ship.

[Earl of Purple]

Lost in Space

Most of the tablets are reasonably standard devices, as these things go- they play music, films, rather poor-quality holograms, and contain libraries of 50,000 books. Though unfortunately the latter app has a complex and unintuitive search function, and furthermore contain the exact same 10,000 books- just in fifty languages, most of them human and also three varieties of Thaotan and Griolan (only one variety of that; it's hard to keep multiple languages alive when everyone relies on the same six space stations, which all share any new developments that might help the species survive). The capability to play holograms remains, though it's not actually a major feature- the size is so limited, and the created image so poor quality it's actually not used that much, except for face-to-face online conversations. And all the prisoner's tablets have had their online capability totally removed, wireless or wired. The individual tablets don't have any loaded films or music, unless they take one from an inhabited cell. Those had a selection chosen by the occupants. Oglok's tablet is in space; Maroon's is standard issue with no added media. Niarlo's has a lot of Griolan-language films, research papers and nearly eight thousand hours of human soap operas. Montgomery wasn't trusted with even such a basic device, and his cell has genuine books- The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson; the complete works of H.P. Lovecraft and seven Isaac Asimov anthologies. Duke Albert's tablet is loaded with oddities; a basic children's TV show to teach languages, of which he's halfway through an episode featuring Hawaiian; a collection of classic war films, including Dambusters and Ice Cold in Alex and his library has been replaced with a mix of technical manuals (1950s cars to space craft), religious tracts (ranging from the Thaotan holy book to speculation about the ritual purpose of Stonehenge) and also a collection of Griolan children's stories, dating from before the destruction of their homeworld.

The memory card has enough space for 120,000 hours of film. It's got about seventy hours of historical documentary saved on it.

The larger crew airlock isn't working at all. It won't respond to any attempt to hack into it or open it remotely; it has no power, and to discourage boarders it can't be opened manually from outside. The crew compartment's hull is breached, however; access can be achieved there. It is equipped with ten metres of docking tube, appearing as a transparent plastic tube held together with carbon fibre struts. It's very strong; the plastic is also used to retain atmosphere on worlds that lack one as thick as Earth's. The larger-still docking bay airlock is working, but doesn't have a tube, or gravity; the cargo is held in place with electromagnets. It's only supposed to be opened when docked. There's quite a lot of supplies aboard, particularly food; most of the food is either vats of flavourless nutrient goo or giant tubs of herbs, spices and flavouring agents; given a correctly calibrated 3D printer, the 'food' can be turned into anything from cake to a roast dinner. Or even paper. There's also a metal crate containing 'personal effects', and several large boxes containing plastic, silicon, nylon, kevlar, iron, copper, carbon, glass, aluminium and smaller amounts of titanium, gold and silver; all is in the form of small beads, used as raw materials for different 3D printers.

Aboard the Mote, the woman stays pretty unresponsive to the stick. The other tests show nothing too unusual; she's a pretty standard human, although it looks like she's spent several years in an environment with lower gravity than Earth's, resulting in some bone degradation, though she has spent at least a year in Earth-standard gravity since. She's got plenty of life force, too. Her brain is a little damaged, mostly memories it seems, but mostly she's unconscious because the nanites were doing a lot of the work in her brain, suppressing her personality and preventing her from usurping control, and now it needs to figure out how to compensate for the lack.

[Recaiden]

Sounds very useful if you're interested in learning to read other languages. Kind of tedious otherwise.
Somehow it's no surprise that Niarlo likes soap operas. And Duke Albert's entertainment(?) material is as varied as the shapeshifter himself. The genuine books are left behind. Nothing novel there, excepting all the novels. These things will end up as cultural artifacts, one of likely few traces of their universe in the nexus. Which is to say they will be placed in some library and never appreciated, because what separates Griolan fairytales from any other? Except for the Duke's technical manuals, especially on spacecraft. Judging by Niarlo's account of their universe and the Tough Girl itself, those may well hold lots of useful information.

First they slip into the cracked crew quarters to detach the docking tube. That plastic must be quite something, although it probably doesn't go around the entire planet like I first imagined, but rather creates domes and other such structures. The food vats are ignored for the moment. It would be an interesting change of pace if they had a 3D-food-printer, but there's no guarantee they can integrate one. Metal beads, on the other hand, are useful metals.

As for the girl, there's nothing more to do except keep her alive and see if she wakes up. Well, nothing that's a good idea. The bone degradation backs up Montgomery's story of a secret space research station...which the medic does not care about in the least.

[Earl of Purple]

Lost in Space

The plastic is indeed used to create 'tents' over settlements, not whole planets. Otherwise there'd be no need to artificially keep the atmosphere pressure high; it was developed for the colonisation of Mars, initially tenting over craters and canyons, but as the anchoring and support technology got better it started to be used on free-standing towns as well*. Fortunately, they don't need to enter the crew compartment to detach the docking tube- it's an external device attached to the outer rim of the non-functional airlock. Would be less useful inside the airlock, after all.

All the 'books' are loaded as ebooks onto the tablets. Montgomery was the only one with real books. Duke Albert's manuals, when they feature spacecraft, mostly deal with planet-to-space shuttles, merchant vessels and asteroid miners. No military craft, or even anything like Tough Girl, which isn't exactly military but isn't a civilian craft either.

The woman will sleep for at least the next twenty hours.

*This material is stolen from the Mars Trilogy, mentioned before. Near-future science fiction written by an astrophysicist, they're a little dated because they were published in the early 90's, and Kim didn't see the prevalence of wireless technology coming. Very good books; he also used a real map of Mars.

[bc56]

Dyson Sphere

The left path continues for some distance before reaching a small chamber which can only be described as a scene of carnage. Some animal has been completely dismembered here, and blood is splattered against the walls and floor. A metal pedestal stands in the middle of the room with a small black glass screen atop it. The gutted shell of a probe lies just behind the terminal, wires dangling out like the entrails of a creature gutted by an oracle of old.

[Felandria]

[Pirate Base]

Zap-zap! One pirate is shot and tumbles from the ship. Another is moving to take his place but hasn't made it yet.
Meanwhile, another is swiveling one of the ship's cannons to aim at Felandria!

Chevin grabs one of the still-attached lines and starts climbing it towards the decks.
The rescued catgirl joins in the laser fire, but is a terrible shot.
The kaleidoscope jumps (flies?) up from the landing pad, in an arc that will take it up over the pirate ship.

A cannon!

Felandria starts firing the laser gun wildly in the direction of the cannonperson, hoping to get them before they get her.

[Reinholdt]

[Dyson Sphere]

Reinholdt winces. Well if the probes were doing ok there really wouldn't be much of a mission in the first place. Still, something brutal happened here. "Best stand back and not touch anything," Rein warns. If ever a room looked trapped, it was here. Can't entirely rule out a creature on the loose did this however.

He'll float up a little ways so as not to be touching the floor as he maneuvers around the pedestal, ignoring the black screen for now. He wants to dig into the probe only and see if he can't find and scan another black box amongst the probe's guts.

[Recaiden]

[Dyson Sphere]

Yone raises her looted four-barrel gun to firing position and looks around. There's clearly a dangerous something around - strange that the animal is still mostly there. She hangs back at the entrance, ready to shoot any non-Reinholdt thing that moves. They might find answers here, but only if they're not added to the carnage.

[Lost in Space]

Asteroid mining is not to be discounted, nor the complexities of entering and leaving an atmosphere. Besides, they're doing fine on weapons; the lack of information on military craft won't be too much of a hindrance.

With the docking tube and metal secured, the crew of the Mote return to their stations.
Time to get out of here.
They specifically don't warn the prisoners in the hold that anything is about to happen, though there is a bit of vibration as the masts separate and snap into place. The woman who's not-quite-human does let the Lieutenant know that the ship is about to jump.

There are a few minutes of waiting and preparing as the 'Blood' gauge visibly drains. There is an instant where everything goes blue and vertigo fills the passengers. Then the ship is abruptly an incredible distance from where it started, undergoing modest acceleration in real-space as it moves towards a station.

I've heard them recommended before. But a real map of which Mars, is the question.

[Pirate Base]

You gotta take time to aim, Felandria. The pirate takes some cover behind the cannon and it's mechanisms, protecting him long enough to fire. Boom!

At least Fel was a dsitraction. Chevin has boarded the pirate ship and is defending the anchoring cable from approaching pirates with hir knife. One melted pirate, another thrown overboard - they're keeping their distance now.
The kaleidoscope changes its direction and crashes onto the ship near the bridge. Probably good.
That catgirl takes cover behind the boxes once she notices the cannonball hit...whatever it hit, be that Felandria or the landing pad.

[Earl of Purple]

Found in Space

No one can hear you scream, in space. That happens to include if you're going 'Woohoo! This is fun! Faster, faster!', like Duke Albert.

Simon braces himself, used to the translation from normal space to quantum space- not that this is the same thing.

Maroon feels the vibrations, and slowly turns. It reaches up to grasp some form of handhold, but doesn't otherwise react. Professor Niarlo keeps an eye on the weird engine he's watching, trying to see how -if- it changes, in the vain hope that that will give him clues behind its operation.

[Recaiden]

As advertised, the Duke should suffer no spatial distortion, quantum disentanglement, micrometeoroid collisions, or other mishaps from the jump. He should get a nice view of the Nexus's planet down below.

Not really the same thing at all. They technically never left normal space - just magically adjusted it.

At the moment of the jump, the marble distinctly stands still, before starting up again right after. I'm sure Niarlo can think of lots of reasons that might happen.

Many minutes later, the ship has pulled in to dock at Salmagundi Station. Russel comes out and unties the Duke. This is where he gets off.

Simon is called back to the bridge. They've got to mention some things to him.
"You already know you're nowhere near your destination. Usually when this happens people don't find their way home." "You're welcome to check our star-charts, see if you recognize, uh, literally anything." "The station here is probably your best chance of finding some way back, but I wouldn't get your hopes up."

[Earl of Purple]

Found in Space

Albert's a little disappointed it was so short. He was expecting a longer journey. He doesn't look quite as human now; his skin is pitch black, he has no clothes (they were always part of his body) and his hands and feet branch out into about twenty appendages each, and he's got no eyes- he wasn't expecting anything to look at, besides space. In addition to the method they used to fix him to the Mote, he's also clinging on with microscopic hooks and fibres on those parts of his body pressed against the ship. He doesn't want to drift off at all.

Niarlo has no idea what it means at all. He's got theories, but none of them make sense. He's still thinking it's technology, and his current thought is it's somehow a solid lump of metallic hydrogen.

"I don't know how to read star charts. I'm just security, a grunt. I'm sure I'll find something. Uh, you guys don't have an opening for a security guard, or a soldier or something, do you?" If so, he at least knows these people, weird as they are.

[bc56]

Dyson Sphere

Reinholdt is able to float across the room unharmed, and search through the guts of the probe. Within, he finds another black box.

Meanwhile, Yone might hear something from behind, an echoing sound of metal against metal.

[Reinholdt]

[Dyson Sphere]

Reinholdt pulls out the black box. "Got it! Thank goodness it's still here." He wouldn't want to go chasing whatever did this to try and find the black box. The cat scans the box for the most recent logs.

[Felandria]

[Pirate Base]

You gotta take time to aim, Felandria. The pirate takes some cover behind the cannon and it's mechanisms, protecting him long enough to fire. Boom!

At least Fel was a distraction. Chevin has boarded the pirate ship and is defending the anchoring cable from approaching pirates with hir knife. One melted pirate, another thrown overboard - they're keeping their distance now.
The kaleidoscope changes its direction and crashes onto the ship near the bridge. Probably good.
That catgirl takes cover behind the boxes once she notices the cannonball hit...whatever it hit, be that Felandria or the landing pad.

Yipe!

Fel narrowly manages to avoid the cannonball, which makes a cannonball sized hole in the landing pad.

She makes a run for the boarding area, still making sure not to drop her gray companion.

[Recaiden]

[Dyson Sphere]

Yone's ears flick and she slowly turns around to look for the source of the sound.
"Something else is here too."

[Found in Space]

If he wants a longer journey, he can aim at some other celestial body and jump. The cables that held the Duke lashed to the hull are unfastened and coiled up, and the Xinclex will be smoothly introduced to the floor of a hangar.

"We have an opening for a gunner, a doctor, and an engine. So we'll see if your aim's any good. If not, the Intersection Police have been recruiting; I'm sure they'd sign you up."

[Pirate Base]

That was close. But Fel makes it to the boarding spot (with her gray rescuee holding on tightly) and she makes it aboard, followed quickly by the catgirl.
Chevin crouches down for a moment and disconnects the mooring cable. The ship jerks up into the sky, bringing them all along. Try not to lose your balance.
Now they just need to make it to the controls, in that window-heavy cabin at the back.

[Felandria]

[Pirate Base]

That was close. But Fel makes it to the boarding spot (with her gray rescuee holding on tightly) and she makes it aboard, followed quickly by the catgirl.
Chevin crouches down for a moment and disconnects the mooring cable. The ship jerks up into the sky, bringing them all along. Try not to lose your balance.
Now they just need to make it to the controls, in that window-heavy cabin at the back.

Fel will look for ropes for everyone to hold onto so they don’t flop around.

Then she will try and help Chevin with the controls.

[bc56]

Dyson Sphere

From down the dim corridor, something is coming, or rather, Yone can hear something coming, but it is difficult to see if there is anything. There might be the suggestion of a shimmer, like a mirage, but it's tough to tell if there's a source to the sound.

Reinholdt scans the black box. This one is in much better shape. The probe records its last position about a hundred feet down the corridor, interestingly, and it had gone there detecting an electromagnetic signature. From the maps the probe carries, Reinholdt can determine that the passageway that passes the shaft down continues to another room, then to the overlook over the first chamber.

[Reinholdt]

[Dyson Sphere]

"Where?" Rein glances around nervously but is still distracted studying the box and hasn't yet spotted an enemy. "Huh. We're fairly close to an overlook of that original room." Rein will download the maps to share with the other three. "But it looks like it was investigating some pulse as well before it went dark. It's almost like something dragged it here."

[Recaiden]

[Dyson Sphere]

"In the hall we came from, it-"
Yone swings the gun towards the shimmer-coated sound and pulls the trigger.

[Pirate Ship]

There are plenty of ropes: ones the pirates just pulled up, ones running up the masts, ropes just to help getting around.
The grey rescuee grabs onto a set of rigging and carefully uses it to try to stand.

Between them and the controls is one last pirate. He looks between Fel, Chevin, and the heap of defeated pirates that's even now tumbling off the deck as the ship ascends.
He jumps overboard.

The kaleidoscope flows inside and takes hold of the controls, and in a moment the ship stops bucking and tilting so wildly.

[bc56]

Dyson Sphere

Yone's gun blazes, firing a beam of brilliant light from each barrel in turn. The blasts hit the thing in the corridor, and craters appear where they hit, the unseen thing scorched black. It moves forward, much faster now, and the active camouflage it was using drops. It is a machine, a four-legged robot with a spherical body high near the ceiling and an array of circular saws and serrated blades hanging beneath it.

[Earl of Purple]

Found in Space

That might be a little too long. Not that he can aim right now; he didn't bother making eyes once he was on the hull. Now he's in the hull, he goes back to Duke Albert's shape, though wearing a different outfit this time- a Napoleonic-looking British uniform, with red jacket and white trousers, with a tall black shako.

"What guns do you want me to shoot? And where can I demonstrate?" He's reasonably confident with his marksmanship, and if they find a compatible powered suit, he can use that, too. There's probably a couple on the Tough Girl, in the crew compartment. But they'd need to cut their way in or enter through a breach in the hull, since the airlock wasn't working there.

[Reinholdt]

Dyson Sphere

"Eve!" Reinholdt exclaims in surprise. He whips around to see the monstrosity bearing down upon them. Gah. It'd be risky to fire at it past the cadets and Yone since he's inside the room, so he floats up to the pedestal and taps madly at the black screen on top. More than like it was that thing that did this to what's in here, so maybe the black screen isn't dangerous. More importantly, it might have a door controls or defensive measures or something. Press the buttons. PRESS ALL THE BUTTONS!

[Recaiden]

[Dyson Sphere]

Gun: Impressive
Monster: Horrifying
Hmm. Even though it's clearly a machine, it's also clearly a weapon. (Honestly, what madman would put those saws there?) It will hold some od its designer's intent, and its programmer's. It's dangerous.
Not that Yone bothers to think about this. She leaps aside to one of the corners of the room. Maybe it will get distracted by the cadets.

[Found in Space]

The Duke is pointed towards the door. He can head onto the space station and enjoy all the weirdness of the Nexus. That should keep from from getting bored for quite some time.

"Des, come check this guy out." Bloom calls in an as-yet-unseen crewmember, who enters through the hatch on the left. He's not as human as the others. He's got long pointy cat ears atop his head, a muzzle, a coat of fur, a tail, literally eyes in the back of his head...
"You'd be handling the ship's starboard shock turret, mostly. The main thing you need to know is that it hits instantly. Not light-speed, instantly. But the mechanisms have a firing time so you still need to lead faster targets. In ground engagements, you'll be supporting Russel and Onyx - they're both close-combat specialists, and possibly, if things are going badly, the Captain and Engine. You'll have an AGR-14 Gauss rifle. That's the version you can use without power armor. Medium-caliber, armor-piercing, fast bullets."
"Before we give you an actual gun, you're going to demonstrate in VR." He hands Simon a wooden box containing a glittering translucent helmet and set of handles. "C'mon. Not on the bridge. This way."

[bc56]

Dyson Sphere

As Reinholdt presses the buttons, a rectangle appears on the screen. Pressing buttons causes alien letters to appear in the box. After a second or so of button mashing, an alarm klaxon sounds.

The cadets shrink back from the machine, which stoops through the doorway. It registers the alarm in its databanks and targets Reinholdt, lashing out at him with a curved blade.

[Earl of Purple]

Found in Space

Off goes the Xinclex, to become every third NPC I run.

Simon nods and listens intently. He wonders about the 'instant' speed of the weaponry, and remembers rumours he'd heard that the Federation of Ethnic Malay Worlds were working on firing chunks of metal into the quantum world, set to return to real space inside a target ship. That would be faster than light, possibly even functionally instant, and would handily bypass most shielding technologies.

He's glad the others are close-combat specialists; he's hardly a 'specialist'- he's not a soldier, he's a prison guard, though he has some transferrable skills- but it does mean (in his mind, at least) that they need ranged support.

[Felandria]

[Pirate Ship]

There are plenty of ropes: ones the pirates just pulled up, ones running up the masts, ropes just to help getting around.
The grey rescuee grabs onto a set of rigging and carefully uses it to try to stand.

Between them and the controls is one last pirate. He looks between Fel, Chevin, and the heap of defeated pirates that's even now tumbling off the deck as the ship ascends.
He jumps overboard.

The kaleidoscope flows inside and takes hold of the controls, and in a moment the ship stops bucking and tilting so wildly.

YO HO!

We did it!

What do we do now, Captain?