Drifter brings Resolution in for a low pass over the mining facility on the gas giant's moon. The ship is seriously damaged and the moon's slight atmosphere drags on the various holes and torn edges, rattling the ship badly as it sets down on the outskirts of the facility.
As you come in for a landing, you see evidence of the most common story in the known universe - open airlocks. Virus must have infiltrated this system, as it did hundreds of thousands of others, and killed anyone still inside. Yet the various shuttles that normally swarm around a mine are gone, so perhaps some of those long-ago miners managed to escape. Only the remains of a small ship can be seen, crashed into the largest of the habitat domes.
"I'm not receiving any signals," says Sandman. "Power may be offline. I recommend extreme care before attempting to restore it."
Spider looks at the crew. "Ok, let's suit up. If we can find anything that can help us patch up the Resolution, then we can start planning an extended stay here. If we don't find anything, we head to the next rock."
Drifter gears up and brings his weapons and pack of explosives along in case things get wild.
Mascot dons his armor and grabs his weapons, then waits for the others by the airlock. "Ready?" He prepares to open it.
Flatfoot joins his companions in the airlock, donning his gear to prepare for the exploration of the ruins.
"Agreed, Spider," he says before donning his helmet. When Mascot asks, Flatfoot gives a thumbs up.
The thin atmosphere of the moon - you still don't have a name for it - hisses into the airlock as you step outside. A light breeze is ruffling sand against Resolution's hull. The mining facility is close by and clearly nonfunctional. In addition to the crashed far trader, you can see that the airlocks stand open. A desiccated corpse lies half-in and half-out of the airlock.
As you approach, you can see the sand-dried mummy might once have been a woman. She wears no vacc suit and only has on a flight suit bearing a logo that says "Deepnight Endeavor".
Spider leads the group towards the open airlock. "I suppose there could be something useful on that far trader, but let's search the facility first."
"Right behind you, Spider," repies Flatfoot.
Flatfoot keeps an eye out as the group explores.
"Sandman, can you do a search on a vessel named Deepnight Endeavor? Maybe we'll have some idea what she was doing out here." Mascot nods and heads to the facility to scout out the airlock.
"Sorry, Mascot. Most records of the Imperial era were destroyed when people began smashing computers a century ago. I doubt there's a record like that anywhere in the Coalition and I certainly don't have it here on our ship."
Drifter continues forward keeping an eye out for any signs of something moving.
"Lets check the undamaged dome. It might have something." Drifter says.
"Seems like the best place to start," says Spider as he heads towards the airlock of the mining dome, rifle at the ready.
Flatfoot follows, keeping watch for any sign of activity among the ruins.
Mascot nods and begins moving towards the mining dome with his rifle at a low ready. Once he gets to the airlock, he tries the controls.
The airlock stands wide open, all the air long gone. A fine yellow sand coats everything inside and is piled up in a drift at the airlock. Looking inside, Mascot sees only a dark hallway with signs welcoming you to the Arroway Mining Station #6.
Drifter keeps his weapon drawn and provides cover at the door for Mascot.
Mascot kneels down at the airlock and touches the yellow sand. "What is this? Some residue from what they were mining?" He doesn't really wait for anyone to answer before he stands back up and moves inside, activating his suit's lights.
Inside you find a world frozen in time. To the left, administrative offices. Two desiccated bodies lay on the floor in the lobby. To the right,a large machine shop. Straight ahead, access to the mine head.
Spider gestures for Mascot to lead them into the machine shop.
Mascot doesn't acknowledge the signal, but bounds efficiently in the low gravity towards the machine shop entrance. He shines his light ahead, but does not pause at the threshold to the room in case someone inside wants to bottle them up there. He pushes off a wall to send himself inside the room at an oblique angle.
As Mascot moves into the machine shop, Spider moves quickly to the entrance, leans around the frame of the entrance, and points his rifle into the shop.
Drifter will follow along watching Mascots back.
Beyond a small dressing area is another airlock, also cycled open to let out all the air. Inside is a large machine bay with tools for repairing and maintaining heavy mine machinery as well as space dedicated to fabricating small items as necessary. Reasonably high tech by the standards of the Reformation Coalition, it was probably well behind the leading edge during the Imperium.
A fine layered patina of frost and sand lays over everything, including the bodies that lay here and there between the rows of machinery. Mascot finds six bodies, five with the Arroway logo on their jumpsuits and one whose jumpsuit displays the logo of "Deepnight Endeavor."
Mascot motions to the others. "Six bodies. This one is from the ship. The others are miners, likely." He kneels down to check the Deepnight Endeavor crewmember for any items.
The crewmember's patch shows the name "Eithigainnor" and under that in gold letters "First Officer". He... the corpse appears to have been male... bears two things. The first is an old-style slug pistol, a rather large-bore hand cannon that is entirely out of place on a ship's officer, naval or civilian, but which had become somewhat common during the "Hard Times" (as the period of the Final War before the release of the Virus had been known). The second item is a large and solid wafer of crystal on a lanyard around his neck, the sort used to encase data for long-term stable storage.
Flatfoot hangs back, keeping watch behind them towards the entrance.
"Even money is that the storage crystal was used to bring a copy of Virus to the mining colony," he muses to his companions. "Do we risk taking it and letting Sandman examine it?"
Spider moves into the room slowly and joins Mascot. "We can examine it on an isolated system. Intriguing as it is, however, I doubt it will help us repair the ship. Let's see what here will help us with that."
There are certainly tools and even heavy machinery to make tools, if only you had someone to run them. Hopper might make use of them, but not swiftly. The mining facility is sizeable and includes a great many diggers, laser torches and grav carts, but unless you want to do some mining, they're going to be of limited or specialized use.
"Maybe we should check out the ship. Hopefully, the hull took the damage from the crash and we can get some replacement parts to at least tide us over. Drifter suggested as he looks over the tragic sight of what the viruses did to this place.
Mascot takes the officer's sidearm. "Maybe we can trade it." He looks back down the hall. "Might as well check out the administrative offices while we're here though."
The admin offices are as sad as the other spaces - jump-suited office workers lay dead and frozen on the ground. Desks and personal knick-knacks lay about. The computers that might once have told you something are all dead, but one low-tech artifact might be of some use: a whiteboard. Even on a high-tech moon, sometimes the oldest technologies are the fastest and best and the miners tracked many things with grease pencils on a whiteboard. Among these are mine output, problem areas, repair status and "other".
Under "other", you see the notation "DeepEnd - Fuel Shuttle injector - Rush - 127.23.".
"Do you suppose that would work for our engines?," asks Flatfoot.
He studies the board in hopes of determining anything more about either "DeepEnd" or "127.23".
Spider puzzles over the notation for a moment. "DeepEnd, hmmm? Could be short for Deepnight Endeavor."
"I can't imagine we will find much of use in the mine itself. Let's check the shipwreck next."
The shipwreck is a blasted crater at the center of the largest habitation dome. Nothing is left of the ship but twisted wreckage. It wasn't a large vessel, but was doing better than Mach 3 when it hit the dome. There is nothing salvageable from that ship.
"Well, it looks like we should focus on the mine and the other dome. We can probably scavange some life support systems that were just shut off. We just need to make sure they are clean before we install anything." Drifter shakes his head at the wreckage.
"And we might come across the parts depot. That would be useful, too," adds Flatfoot.
He checks his vacc suit and fittings, offering to do the same for his companions.
"Ready when you are."
After a few hours of exploration, you find lots of sad mementos of lives cut short as well as hundreds of asphyxiated mummies. But the only things really useful to a stricken ship are in the machine shop. It's going to be a long, slow process of repair because you'll have to machine the parts you need. It could take months, maybe more. Or you could try to take Resolution to the mainworld. Or you could try to jump with the damaged ship.
"I kind of thought they would have at least some spare parts here, but maybe they figured they would just make whatever they needed. Do we want to risk another flight to maybe save some time or at least fix the most dire things here before checking the mainworld?" Drifter asks.
"We could likely make what we need," says Flatfoot. "With a lot of time and instructions, that is."
"Exactly how bad is the damage to the ship? Would she make it to the main world?"
"She is coming apart at the seams. It might be good to at least do some repairs to the modular bay and the fuel line. Coming apart at the seams or running out of fuel halfway would be pretty poor. We might be able to do some quick repairs to at least improve our chances of making it somewhere more likely to just have what we need. Spending months here seems like a hard option." Drifter says.
"We are just as likely to be able to craft what we need to the main world. We should try and get there and hopefully it will save some time." Drifter says.
"I am willing to take that chance, Drifter," replies Flatfoot. "Mascot and Spider, what do you think?"
As he speaks Flatfoot looks around at the devastation wrought by the arrival of Virus in this system.
"I agree - I'd prefer to risk going to the main world than spend months here. Let's head back to the ship. We can take a closer look at what's on that data crystal, and unless it contains something useful, we can see what we need to do to get off of this rock."