003: On the Road to Aki

[terrymixon]

Don't forget there are two other teleportals in the circular storage bay. You'll likely want to be sure they don't lead to something dangerous.

Jaelah walks to the closest portal and takes a look while she contemplates her terrifying future.

It is inactive but the soft shimmer on the surface tells you that it could be activated. Do you do so?

[joertexas]

Don't forget there are two other teleportals in the circular storage bay. You'll likely want to be sure they don't lead to something dangerous.

Jaelah walks to the closest portal and takes a look while she contemplates her terrifying future.

It is inactive but the soft shimmer on the surface tells you that it could be activated. Do you do so?

She steps to the side about thirty meters away. "Bilis, can you tell what's on the other side of this portal?"

[terrymixon]

Jaelah walks to the closest portal and takes a look while she contemplates her terrifying future.

It is inactive but the soft shimmer on the surface tells you that it could be activated. Do you do so?

She steps to the side about thirty meters away. "Bilis, can you tell what's on the other side of this portal?"

"I cannot. I have no insight through an inactive portal and am only able to communicate with you now because the portal to the ship is still open. The only way to find out is to open it."

[joertexas]

"I cannot. I have no insight through an inactive portal and am only able to communicate with you now because the portal to the ship is still open. The only way to find out is to open it."

Jaelah looks for a padeye to tie off her safety line, and closes up her suit.

[terrymixon]

"I cannot. I have no insight through an inactive portal and am only able to communicate with you now because the portal to the ship is still open. The only way to find out is to open it."

Jaelah looks for a padeye to tie off her safety line, and closes up her suit.

Done. Do you activate the teleportal?

[Thumper]

“What if we had Bilis create a hop 1 drive for Madam Treegarden?”

Walt-
”sounds like a damn fine plan. One thing we have to figure out first. How did we find this drive and tech specs? How, without giving up this base that is.

The Imperium has been all over the other site and the crashed 15,000 year old ship. So, how’d we come across the drive…plausibly? Disintegratoring another excavation in the other site and “finding it” doesnt explain why a drive and tech specs are there.”

With that gun active and now a known, someone is eventually going to come looking for this site. Perhaps there’s a way for us to use this site to find a completely unknown Ancients site that we can base at. The teleportals…if those locations are within range? We take the stations teleportals aboard so the linked locations cannot be known to Treegarden’s crew. Give this one up along with “the drive” we found in it. Before then, we clean everything we want from this shipyard.”

[Thumper]

Growler closes the door to the Ancients’ spaceport and walks over to the teleporter opposite that to the Lost and Found. He tethers himself to the wall beside the teleported, double checks his Maxwell suit and activates it.

[Tiglath]

Garvin chips in "I'm not sure we need to 'and over the drive. If we're prepared to give up this base Ms Treegarden gets the value of the archeological find and minor artefacts. Odds an sods of junk are still "major finds". We might know they're useless but the Imperium doesn't and they get the intact disintegrator weapon that's still here as well. If we offer up a drive it all gets too hard to explain".

"If we scour the base first - especially of the teleporters, we're 'anding over a "done deal". Treegarden must know about the ruddy 'ole in Mad Dog's Scoutship and so must suspect an archaeotech weapon to be somewhere 'ere. If we give 'er that then there's no loose ends or missin' links which would just encourage the Imperium to want more".

Garvin will act as back up for the teleporter exploration.

[Thumper]

Walt-
”I’d agree with that can you imagine how long Treegarden’s science crew are going to be enthralled by just the food and parts fabricators? Years of excitement for Omicron.”

[terrymixon]

Growler closes the door to the Ancients’ spaceport and walks over to the teleporter opposite that to the Lost and Found. He tethers himself to the wall beside the teleported, double checks his Maxwell suit and activates it.

As Jaelah found out at the other unexplored teleportal, there is no place to secure the tether. The suit is fine, and you can control your movement with the grav assist, so you don't really need one.

The teleportal shimmers and opens onto covered area. There is sunlight coming in from the left and the ground is a grey substance that resembles concrete. The large buildings you see look to be made of the same material. The odd white tinge to the sky makes you suspect you are somewhere else in a pocket universe, likely the same one as the refinery/manufactory.

Some of the spybots around you fly through and start looking at what there is to see. It quickly becomes clear this is a spaceport, though it seems abandoned. The buildings may be strange, but the innumerable hulls of vessels that march away from it are a good clue. Many of them look damaged and all of them seem to have been at least partially stripped. They are nothing like ships you've seen, so odds are they are Ancients vessels.

There is a globe on a pedestal near the teleportal. It's the same kind of machine that let you virtually observe the moon.

[terrymixon]

Garvin chips in "I'm not sure we need to 'and over the drive. If we're prepared to give up this base Ms Treegarden gets the value of the archeological find and minor artefacts. Odds an sods of junk are still "major finds". We might know they're useless but the Imperium doesn't and they get the intact disintegrator weapon that's still here as well. If we offer up a drive it all gets too hard to explain".

"If we scour the base first - especially of the teleporters, we're 'anding over a "done deal". Treegarden must know about the ruddy 'ole in Mad Dog's Scoutship and so must suspect an archaeotech weapon to be somewhere 'ere. If we give 'er that then there's no loose ends or missin' links which would just encourage the Imperium to want more".

Garvin will act as back up for the teleporter exploration.

"Unless they already found one of the other disintegrator weapons," Roscoe said. "They've been looking over this site for almost a year. If they hadn't found what they expected, they would have kept looking. I still think the base would be too much, especially considering that we don't know anything about it yet. What secrets are buried in its computers? We could be opening a Pandora's Box if we let the Imperium have this place."

[terrymixon]

"I cannot. I have no insight through an inactive portal and am only able to communicate with you now because the portal to the ship is still open. The only way to find out is to open it."

Jaelah looks for a padeye to tie off her safety line, and closes up her suit.

I'm going to assume that you do open it.

The teleportal shimmers and opens to the heart of a sun and incinerates you and everyone else.

Wait. That's not right. *flips to his notes* Oh, yeah. Never mind.

The teleportal shimmers and opens onto a vast loading dock that was obviously meant to feed material to the teleportal. The tinge of white in the sky makes you suspect that you are still inside the pocket universe.

The spybots flow through and it rapidly becomes apparent that this area if for growing things. Agriculture. There are carefully tended fields filled with crops that have no name you know. Machines look over them. There is a globe on a stand near the teleportal that is like the one that showed you the moon.

[ateno]

Arkar is befuddled by how fast all this is going. Fabs, teleporters, supercharged ships.

Standing by the teleporter recon near Garvin, he watches, thinking about whats going to happen.

Arkar

[Thumper]

As Jaelah found out at the other unexplored teleportal, there is no place to secure the tether. The suit is fine, and you can control your movement with the grav assist, so you don't really need one.

The Rexwell suit has magazine/grenade pouches and holders for standard military equipment, including three safety tethers, which can be instantly fixed to almost any solid surface using molecular glue.

The molecular glue don’t stick to the walls here?[/quote]

I forgot about it. That works.

There is a globe on a pedestal near the teleportal. It's the same kind of machine that let you virtually observe the moon.

Walt informs everyone of his observations, steps through the teleportal and manipulated to globe to see close ups of some of the ships in the boneyard, getting the “lay of the land”, and looking for other development. Can the star system be seen?

The atmosphere and temperature over there is fine. The ships are husks. Stripped or wrecked, many with battle damage. The world has numerous population centers and massive megalithic structures that rival mountains. Their purpose is unknown and potentially unknowable.

The one thing you don't find is a solitary, single intelligent being. Animals galore, nothing higher. The world seems deserted. Or perhaps evacuated.

The orbit is filled with stations large and small, also seemingly unoccupied. The gas giant and its station are here as you locate them. There is a second world in the same orbit as this one, only on the exact other side of the star. It seems to be an agricultural world. By happenstance, you locate the teleportal where the goods are shipped off and see Jaelah there. Other than her, the planet is idyllic and unoccupied by anything other than robots.

All the other worlds seem to have been broken up to feed the manufactories. The belts are huge and full.

Once you get farther away from the star, you oddly find your observation point coming back in from the other side. It looks as if your view is limited to this system.

[Thumper]

"Unless they already found one of the other disintegrator weapons," Roscoe said. "They've been looking over this site for almost a year. If they hadn't found what they expected, they would have kept looking. I still think the base would be too much, especially considering that we don't know anything about it yet. What secrets are buried in its computers? We could be opening a Pandora's Box if we let the Imperium have this place."

”So, what’s your story to Treegarden as to how and where we “stumbled” upon this drive along with its tech documentation?

And should we disable the big disintegration gun so it doesn’t go active sometime in the future and draw attention to this site again?

[terrymixon]

"Unless they already found one of the other disintegrator weapons," Roscoe said. "They've been looking over this site for almost a year. If they hadn't found what they expected, they would have kept looking. I still think the base would be too much, especially considering that we don't know anything about it yet. What secrets are buried in its computers? We could be opening a Pandora's Box if we let the Imperium have this place."

”So, what’s your story to Treegarden as to how and where we “stumbled” upon this drive along with its tech documentation?

And should we disable the big disintegration gun so it doesn’t go active sometime in the future and draw attention to this site again?

"I don't know. I'm merely throwing out ideas. As for the weapon, perhaps the base decided not to fire again. Otherwise, they would certainly know it was here. Still, we do need to deactivate it to be sure. If we could lure the Navy presence to somewhere else, that would be preferable. Maybe we can plant something in the companion star's system. One of the gas giant's moons again, perhaps. A gold rush there would make this site less active or they might even close it down entirely."

[terrymixon]

Arkar is befuddled by how fast all this is going. Fabs, teleporters, supercharged ships.

Standing by the teleporter recon near Garvin, he watches, thinking about whats going to happen.

Arkar

I freely admit this is a rabbit hole you could fall down into. Just remember you don't have to know everything all at once. This is a trip to make sure you aren't in danger. You've still got other fish to fry.

[Thumper]

"I like that idea of drawing the attention away from here. Perhaps we fess up to getting onto Mad-Dog's old ship. Say we found a reference to a location on another gas-giant moon in the computer consul we retrieved. We went to the coordinates, and look what we found... Maybe we found a small craft with the same construction techniques and materials as the crashed 15,000 year old ship outside. Not an ancient, though a highly advanced boat, and it had an Ancient's drive in a crate. How Mad-Dog knew it was there, we'll never know.

Bili? Can you externally manufacture such a craft as a large air raft or cargo lighter complete with ageing from cosmic radiation and micro-meteors? Maybe we have to use the station's fabs to make that? Then we go crash it place.

Again, spitballing ideas. Maybe Mad-Dog was witholding that info on the second location, one: because it was not an Ancients' ship, 2: because he wanted an Ace-in-the-Hole when we all inevitably got in trouble, and 3: he didn't know what exactly was in the crate. We could present the technical documentation to negotiate what we want from Treegarden. Once it's all officially agreed to, we tell her the location.

It would seem strange to trade an Ancients' drive for just one thing. What else do we want to get, or pretend to get out of Treegarden. Imperial-wide permits to carry weapons? A privateering charter? Patents of nobility? We already have one of those onboard, Sir Garv.

All we really need now is a plan of action...or more, accurately, the shell of one. We can execute on all that later. Time is running out on potentially finding Mad-Dog's murders, if that's what we still all want to do. I know I do."

[terrymixon]

"I like that idea of drawing the attention away from here. Perhaps we fess up to getting onto Mad-Dog's old ship. Say we found a reference to a location on another gas-giant moon in the computer consul we retrieved. We went to the coordinates, and look what we found... Maybe we found a small craft with the same construction techniques and materials as the crashed 15,000 year old ship outside. Not an ancient, though a highly advanced boat, and it had an Ancient's drive in a crate. How Mad-Dog knew it was there, we'll never know.

"Bili? Can you externally manufacture such a craft as a large air raft or cargo lighter complete with ageing from cosmic radiation and micro-meteors? Maybe we have to use the station's fabs to make that? Then we go crash it place."

"I cannot. I do not have a pattern that would work well enough. Artifical aging is also subject to detection. It would be best if we had an actual derelict to plant in space where an earlier search there might have missed it."

"Again, spitballing ideas. Maybe Mad-Dog was witholding that info on the second location, one: because it was not an Ancients' ship, 2: because he wanted an Ace-in-the-Hole when we all inevitably got in trouble, and 3: he didn't know what exactly was in the crate. We could present the technical documentation to negotiate what we want from Treegarden. Once it's all officially agreed to, we tell her the location.

"It would seem strange to trade an Ancients' drive for just one thing. What else do we want to get, or pretend to get out of Treegarden. Imperial-wide permits to carry weapons? A privateering charter? Patents of nobility? We already have one of those onboard, Sir Garv.

"All we really need now is a plan of action...or more, accurately, the shell of one. We can execute on all that later. Time is running out on potentially finding Mad-Dog's murders, if that's what we still all want to do. I know I do."

"An upgrade of our mercenary license to class 5," Roscoe said. "We have weapons we could get into trouble with. Also, Garvin was saying we needed a front business. Assistance in forming one that does trading across many worlds would be a lot easier with an Imperial charter like the megacorperations have. They don't have to incorporate on single worlds like the guild has done on Glisten. A lot of headaches would vanish with something like that."

[Thumper]

Walt-
"Well, it's a good thing I just saw a whole elephant bone yard of Ancient wrecks on the other side of that portal. We could go there since we have such long legs now and retrieve a real Ancients article. That should prove enticing and convincing.

Metz, are you aware of any Ancients' tech that Treegarden might have, or that she could obtain, that we might want to examine? And while we borrow them, we should just happen to get the patterns of. If so, we could add that to the bargain.

Good points Roscoe. We'll add those to the list.