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Pilot:
Taking a deep breath, Dev matches the rotation of the derelict ship and edges the pinnace into the landing bay.
"Well there you go. Now I just hope we don't have trouble getting out!"
As the pinnace eases into the landing bay, Jenni begins running scans of the vessel to see if there is still an atmosphere... or life...
Unfortunately, her lack of training shows through and while the data comes through, much of it is garbled and useless.
As the pinnace slowly matches the tumble and spin of the derelict, the universe begins to spin and tumble while the derelict slowly stabilizes and ceases it's spin and tumble, at least as those on the ship look out the window.
Once the ship penetrates the landing bay of the derelict, the ship's lights illuminate a large fighter bay running half the length of the ship, with four entrance/exits, two on either side. Most of the fighter slips are empty, but 3 of them have fighters that look very much like the derelict ship.
However, there are half a dozen other fighters of a radically different make in the fighter bay as well. These fighters are not in slips, they are instead scattered about as if they landed wherever they could as fast as possible. The interior of the landing bay is heavily damaged, scored heavily with holes punched through the walls into the interior of the ship, as if fighters had fired repeatedly while inside the bay.
Near the smaller fighters are three larger bulkier ships that are similar in size to the pinnace, also sat down randomly.
Debris drifts around, making it mildly dangerous to move around in the bay.
Scandalous looks green around the gills. Dr. Connery, can I... She gags a bit ...get some motion sickness medication?
It looks like this ship has been used as a port in the storm for other survivors.
EAVE rocks back and forth on her legs as she attempts to orient herself with the objects on the horizon.
Ultimately she fails to stabilize herself and continues rocking back and forth in place, jittering seemingly at random.
As they zoom in on the object and she begins to view it as her orientation, she slows the movements.
"Be careful. Probably survivors. Angry survivors. With guns. Pirates!? New Crew!?" Her color tones begin to shift until they match the interior of the pinnace, ready to shift once more to match the interior of the other ship.
We should probably try and access one of the Pinnace sized ships to gain some intelligence, before we head into the capitol ship.
Tam steps of the ship and immediately her stomach starts to do somersaults. She tried to remain motionless hoping her dizziness passes.
Glitch, Malt, and EAVE (needing to be carried in the zero-g open area due to lack of magnetics) step out of the pinnace carefully.
Pushing debris lightly out of the way, they make their way to the open pinnace sized ships first, and find that they appear to be set up as troop carriers. Row on row of seats take up the cargo space, and based on the seat layout, there was room for 64 people (8 rows with 8 seats each) on the pinnace, plus two pilots. However, oddly, there are no data screens or displays in the ship, neither in the crew hold nor the command pod. Only dozens of computer ports about 5 cm across, and three times that deep, one for each chair, and additional ones around the floors and outside wall. The pilot pod has no controls at all, not buttons or sliders or anything, just a half-dozen computer ports like the ones in the cargo hold.
Oddly, there is no bathroom either.
"Piloted completely by computer?" Jenni speculates aloud.
Scandalous stays strapped into the co-pilots chair. She puts on her comm as the others head to the alien pinnace. The pop star monitors their progress.
Seeing the hold and pilot's area, Scandalous' voice registers concern. This is not good. I had hoped the crew had been biological. Whatever military conflict would have died long ago. Commando robots is very different. They may only be dormant and could reactivate. We should go.
END Check:
Feeling a bit woozy from the last maneuver, Dev stays seated until vertigo passes.
"Well that was a close one. Nearly barfed all over the controls! Maybe I should just take a look at the old sensors before I unstrap and make a fool of myself!"
Sensors:
Dev picks up no power sources on the 'pinnace' ships, nor on the scattered fighters.
The two fighters in their slips however are registering low level power, as if they were in standby mode. There's no other power sources registering on the sensors. The interior of the ship, however, is playing merry hell with the sensors, so exactly what is inside the ship is hard to tell from the sensors, and will likely require Mark I eyeballs to confirm.
Warren looks a little uncomfortable but doesn't end up sick. "I may be getting a little more used to not having gravity. Though I'm a little queasy I don't think I'll lose my lunch. I'll be ready to leave after I have a quick look at those not doing so well."
Warren then checks out Scandalous and the others and says "You should be fine, you just need to rest here an hour and will be much better."
He then suits up and exits with the others.
The final expedition to the nearby ships ends up being Warren, Glitch, and EAVE.
EAVE quickly looks over the ports to see if they're identical to any of her own. "EAVE suspects WARBOTS. EAVE thinks if EAVE connects here that all local Warbots will be alerted. EAVE is master of deception and expert hacker, but feels her chances of being discovered are very high."
Scandalous taps the comm. Eave, the slipped fighters have power. See if you can access the cockpit of one. You may be able to access the capital ship's systems from there.
None of the ports on the 'troop carriers' are anything like what EAVE has.
Going to the slipped fighters, none of the ports (or the writing!) is recognizable, and none of the ports match anything EAVE has.
Looking in through the glass, however, EAVE, Glitch, and Warren see a more traditional cockpit with two seats, and a myriad of controls and display panels. The coloration of the buttons is 'off' as they are pink, orange, and blue. Additionally, there are four control yokes and four armrests on each cockpit chair. The cockpit doesn't look like it's designed for a human, or any other biped the group is aware of.
Malt examines the fighters in their slips, checking to first to see if they are laser or missile armed, and then performing deeper scans to determine their condition:
"It may take some work, but one or more of those fighters could be a valuable addition"
The fighters would be heavy fighters, if they were Imperial, they top out at just over 42 tons, the same as the pinnace. They are powered by internal fission reactors, which is why they still have power. They appear to be armed by energy weapons exclusively. The larger fission power plant means they'd have unlimited duration of activity, but only the 'punch' of medium or light fighters in Imperium usage.
"Sophonts, we are unusually lucky. Both of the currently powered fighters are fission powered, and their sources still seem to have functional material. I think retrieval of the fighters, or at least their fuel cores, should be our first priority."
Scandalous turns to Malt. Let's assume this ship is a sophont ship that was attacked by robotic commandos. Would it be safe to assume that the biologics lost, and that the robots won? What I'm saying is that we need to know what happened and the current situation inside, first. Before we do anything that might trigger sensors inside. EAVE would be the best person to send inside to stealthily scout. Right?
EAVE's sensors dart around looking for any tiny-bot advantages she could use to get in. Less-locked-down ventilation or maintenance ducts or the like.
The landing bay has a very specific dearth of ventilation ducts, as if the ship didn't maintain an atmosphere in here usually.
There are holes in the main bay wall though, leading to damaged rooms beyond. Several are large enough for the explorers to (carefully) navigate through.
EAVE, you should gather a few repair bots. I'm sure they could help you negotiate the unknowns that you'll encounter.
"I'm not going to be able to be more than 5 minutes in hard vacuum, so I'll be no use in long-form exploration. EAVE, can you task one of your drones to me? I'd like to run some circuit traces that may assist us."
Everyone except Malt suits up and begins to explore. Pushing carefully through the damaged hull reveals what would seem to be fairly typical ship areas, locker rooms, toilets, and meeting rooms, likely for the fighter pilots.
No bodies as of yet, although that could indicate the crew was not here when the hull punctures occured, or it could indicate they were sucked out.
Looking in the corridor beyond the pilot area, the crew finds bulkheads have been dropped to protect against loss of air. The interior bulkheads are not armored however, just a protection against air loss. A portable airlock has been placed against the internal bulkhead from the vacuum side, and is still in place.
Recon:
Dev snoops through a number of the lockers before he takes a look at the sealed airlock.
Mechanic:
"Hmmm...this may take a little longer than I thought."
Dev goes back to trying to figure out how to open the door.
Mechanic:
(inc -2 for Difficult, -3 for untrained)
Malt struggles with attempting to guide the drone before deciding he simply doesn't have the skill for it, and returns it to EAVEs control.
Instead, he begins watching through any available helmet cams.
"Please let me know if there is pressure on the other side of that lock. If so, I should be able to make the trip to the lock and join you."
Dev finds that most of the lockers are empty, but does find a high quality and light fighter pilot type suit in one. The suit is red and white in color, matching the ship's paint job. It has the alien writing on it from the powered fighters on the lapel, as well as symbols that are likely rank, flight wing, or perhaps clan or something esoteric.
The suit is slightly taller than Dev, with a much larger helmet than a human would require, and a bulkier body. There's a 'tail' hanging off the suit as well, and the suit has four arms. If Dev had to guess, he'd say the suit is more advanced than Imperial suits of the same type.
He also finds a few bits of jewelry in several of the lockers, amulets, rings, bracelets, and some other bits he can't immediately recognize other than ornamental. There are alien animal motifs, as well as geodesic designs, and water motifs.
Finally, the airlock begins to cycle although he has to break a few bits to do so. The airlock will have to be cycled manually from this side. There is an atmosphere on the other side, but his sensors indicate it's highly poisonous, as it's mostly nitrogen with high levels of ammonia, with a high level of trace arsenic. The pressure is also around 30 atmospheres. The suits will support everyone in such an environment for a few hours, but you'll need to be extremely careful of suit punctures.
"Interesting. I doubt that this type of atmosphere would occur accidentally. So can we surmise that they were ammonia breathers?" Jenni says through her comms.
"EAVE is sorry. EAVE needs more experience in controlling swarm. Or swarm needs more experience in behaviors required."
EAVE uses it's long legs to grasp from locker to locker and 'hop' around, foundering a few times. EAVE finds more jewelry, and what looks like an electronic data pad that's been damaged by explosive decompression.
EAVE quickly snatches up the missed goods, before passing them off to someone with a way to hold them. In particular, the data pad would be useful to Glitch.
She mostly uses her arm to move from place to.pace, then anchors herself. This would be fun... With practice.
Scandalous searches through the lockers. Once inside the airlock, she begins to feel uncomfortable. Such an alien environment. We'll have to change the atmosphere if we are to work here. Where do you think life support is?
Tam helps with the search and shrugs her shoulders in response to Scandalous' question, "Might not matter if the hull is breached."
Tam finds some more jewelry, apparently jewelry was popular with the pilots, but not worn in the ships. She does find a small holographic pendant with a very alien face in it, all pink and white with either lots of tendrils for hair, or else the hologram is blurry beyond the face. She's not sure which. There is something about the face that makes Tam think it's an adolescent, that half-way grown look that most sophants have.
"Never Fear, faithful crew! EAVE has no need of oxygen. EAVE will scout ahead!. EAVE shares as she skitters through the edge of the airlock as it rolls open, immediately shifting her color scheme to blend in. She keeps to the walls as she slips in and moves quietly forward.
.
Dev slips through the now open door. The 'clunk, clunk' of his boots magnetizing to the gangway echoes through the poison air.
EAVE clings to Dev as he slips through the airlock, while Glitch cycles the airlock manually, cranking away at the internal gears with the makeshift hand crank.
On the other side, the atmosphere is clear, although Dev can feel the pressure on his suit. The suit compensated for the pressure as it increased in the airlock by altering his breathing mix, to avoid oxygen narcosis. The hydrox mixture makes his voice sound very high and tinny when he speaks.
On the other side of the airlock is a battle field, there are a dozen bodies of an alien race. All of them look female, although at first glance, there's two different sub-species, one with an extra set of limbs/organs around the hips and with bone ridges on the head. The aliens would fit the flight suit Dev found, and each is obviously dead from energy weapon discharges. The walls are heavily scarred in the hallway, an obvious fight. The bodies still have alien looking side arms and long guns in their hands, left where they fell. There are a dozen bodies piled up at an obviously temporary defensive position.
There is no sign of what killed them.
Scandalous looks around at the carnage. Obviously they were no match for the commandos. I wonder if the commandos attacked before or after the jump that brought them here? The Baroness telekinetically brings a rifle to her hands. She looks it over to see how to make it work and how much ammo. Better to have it and not need it. she says pragmatically.
Although it looks intuitive, the aliens have four fingered hands similar to humans, Scandalous can't figure out how to make the gun work. Without gravity, she can't tell how much the weapon weighs, but it feels dense when she moved it with her mind, and moving it with her hands it feels like it has more mass than she expected.