Mascot prepares his armor and rifle. Then he draws his boarding sword. "Let's be careful shooting holes in this thing. No power means no emergency bulkheads. Not even sure if there's atmosphere in there to lose." He sets himseulf up to be the first one in.
Drifter gets into his suit and grabs his weapons and a satchel of tools including a torch in order to force some of the doors open if necessary.
The team stands in the airlock and Hopper opens the out door, revealing Deepnight Endeavor's access hatch, emblazoned with the logo of the Deepnight Corporation.
Run a power umbilical: Engineer (Power)+EDU/INT (Average) or
Open Manually: Mechanic+STR (Average)
Drifter tries to open the door manually.
"Well, that was rather easy. Heh."
<End Retcon Notice>
Drifter will lead the way through the open door.
Pressure equalizes between the two ships and you step into Deepnight Endeavor's airlock. Beyond that you find a second door. Several minutes later, Drifter has that open, too.
Beyond is a large hanger, tiny compared to the massive ships docked on the rails outside, but big enough to park Resolution inside. The lights are off, but emergency lights are on, casting a lurid red glow over the whole compartment.
The landing bay is completely empty. A conspicuous brown stain soils the floor near the center of the hangar.
"Do you want my considered professional opinion concerning that stain?," asks the former police investigator.
From where he stands near the entrance, Flatfoot estimates the area and the amount of (what he presumes to be) blood required to make it.
"I was going to just say blood, but hey...could be mud." Drifter says as he makes his way to the next door.
Mascot moves with Drifter to find and cover any door to the interior of the ship. He checks to see if it's closed and locked. Then he begins looking for any access to maintenance shafts. "Or some left over toxin. Probably years old."
The door is a pressure hatch, Mascot, and it's unpowered, but it could be opened by either of the two methods above.
Drifter moves to open another door.
It takes you about ten minutes to force open the door, Drifter. There is a corridor leading forward towards the flight ops bridge.
Drifter puts his tools away and then will start heading towards the front. He draws his blade as he goes.
"That was blood back there. I could not tell whether it was enough to come from one person or many people. But there was violence here, some time in the past."
Flatfoot stays with his companions as they move towards the bridge. He keeps alert for other evidence of violence or combat.
Spider follows the group and radios the ship. "Sandman, we have boarded Deepnight Endeavor and we're making our way to the bridge. No sign of any life so far, but let us know if you see any sign of activity - automated or otherwise."
Mascot glances around and then heads towards the ops bridge. He grips his static sword tightly.
The passage to the ops bridge is unremarkable. The hatch is closed and unpowered. Just aft of the hatch is a second hatch for a lift to "D" deck (the next deck up.)
Drifter will work to open the new hatch and then head up to the D deck if nothing happens when it opens.
And as it turns out, necessary! The door was jammed from the inside and Drifter had to use his full knowledge of motor servo actuators to get this one open! Inside, the ops bridge is a sad scene. A single body lies on the floor, dressed in the remnants of a crew uniform. The corpse is nearly mummified and most of the flesh has rotted away. A neat hole in the corpse's right temple and the slug gun at his feet show that she likely took her own life.
The ops computers are a total loss. The crewman appears to have shot every console and computer bank multiple times.
"What does this look like to all of you?," asks Flatfoot.
"Insanity? Or someone trapped on a ship controlled by Virus? I guess that both could be true," he says after a moment.
Flatfoot moves into the room, bending to peer at the corpse and then moving to the consoles.
"I am going to look for anything else that might tell us what happened."
Spider looks around the ops bridge to see what, if anything, still looks functional. "Let's see if there is anything worthwhile here, then we can search elsewhere."
"If it was a virus in the main system I think all the lights would be out or the ship would not have sat here. It could be someone who couldn't tell if a virus was here and panicked." Drifter says.
"Well it's been known to go dormant to seem like a non-infected system." He looks at the corpse. "But I agree with Flatfoot. I'm betting this someone slowly driven insane by holding this position with no other contact. Poor bastard."
He picks up the slug pistol and checks it, clearing it to look for any malfunctions, then returning it to working order if it seems functional.
Mascot moves to one of the bridge consoles. "Any of these still functioning? Maybe they just shot the screens?"
The slug pistol appears to be somewhat old (which is to be expected - it's at least a century old, possibly much older) but in decent repair. It has two slugs left in it out of a magazine of fifteen.
The computers appear to be completely destroyed. Some lovely salvage in there, but nothing that's going to function any time soon.
Mascot sighs and glances at the corpse. "Well, you did a good job scuttling the ship, sir." He jerks his head up. "Or, he was trying to kill Virus...?" He backs away from the systems, tucking the slug pistol away.
"Right. It doesn't look like we are going to be able to do anything useful from here. Let's head towards engineering, exploring as we go. Sandman, did vessels of this class have a secondary bridge?"
"So far as my fragmentary records show, that vessel is unique. Nothing like it existed. My best guess, and this is admittedly as much from the name as the design, is that it was designed for a very long range voyage where few fueling resources were expected. A journey into a sparse region like the Great Rift or possibly even farther, as its capabilities exceed by a considerable amount what would be needed to cross any part of the Great Rift."
"Visually, I can see two bridges. You're in one and the other is further up. I expect that's the command bridge and you're in the ops bridge, where they would have coordinated the docking of the larger subordinate vessels or the landing of smaller craft. The ship itself would have been flown from the command bridge."
"Could this have been a colonization vessel?," asks Flatfoot.
"I agree - it looks like it was self-sufficient. Not sure about military, but I can't see it being some kind of independent exploration vessel. Or, did the ancients have time for that before Virus?"
You can hear the non-physical smile in Sandman's voice. "I'm not sure your great-grandparents would appreciate being called "the ancients", Flatfoot. Yes, it is almost certainly some sort of long-range exploration vessel. Could it also be for colonization? It's certainly large enough to house a colony, especially if most of them were in low berths. It will be interesting to see what's in the cargo spaces and the subsidiary vessels."
"Do we want to try the command bridge then or head straight to engineering. I think checking the bridge might be better. If nothing else we might find out what happened to the ship there." Drifter says as he begins heading back into the halls.
"While engineering might show up if there are any active areas of the ship, the command bridge might tell us more about what happened. If there's any logs, they could be there. I agree that we should start there." Mascot nods at Drifter.
Spider nods and follows the others towards the upper decks.
Flatfoot walks with his companions, looking around at the corridors and open rooms as they pass.
The lift door is inoperative. It's suffered massive laser fire.
Drifter looks for a service hatch to see if there is a ladder up.
"Uh, Sandman, how many decks between us and the command bridge?"
Mascot inspects the damage to the door. "This is starting to look less like an individual gone crazy and more of a battle onboard." The former marine tries to see what type of weapon might have caused this and whether this may have been a tactical point.
Drifter, there is a service hatch on the ceiling. It too has been damaged with laser fire, but it shows bright edges - someone (or something) has broken through that hatch from the other side at some point in the past.
Mascot suspects that a laser carbine made some of the shots (carbines are common shipboard weapons for their maneuverability), while he's pretty sure that a laser torch was used to spot-weld the hatches (the same sort one might use in a shipboard repair effort).
"Boost me up and I will see if there is a service ladder we can use." Drifter says to Mascot and preps to climb up through the service hatch.
Spider helps boost Drifter up to the hatch. "Maybe some of the crew didn't like the idea of staying parked way up here above the system's ecliptic and started some kind of mutiny?"
Flatfoot stands back as Drifter is boosted up.
"We have seen hatches welded shut, and the like. DO you wonder if they were trying to keep soemthing out? Or locking something in?"
Drifter, as you open the hatch you see an access tube dimly lit with the red glow of emergency lights. Twenty meters above and ahead you catch a glimpse of something moving in the shadows. Something...human? It rushes through the far hatch and slams the hatch behind it.
Drifter pulls himself up and says, "Yeah.....we are not alone. Something just went through the hatch above us. I am going to go out on a limb and say whatever survived up here for this long is probably not all that friendly."
"Well, at least it's not Virus. Let's go after it." Mascot sheathes his static sword and begins climbing up to the upper hatch.
"How long did we think that this ship has been parked here? A couple generations?," asks Flatfoot.
"This might be worse than a Virus ship," he continues with a barely suppressed shudder.
While Mascot and Drifter climb, Flatfoot keeps his weapon aimed at the access hatch until his companions are uncomfortably close.
Drifter, Mascot, the hatch is shut firmly. How do you proceed?
Mascot looks for the hatch mechanism. He also presses his shoulder gently against it to see if there's any movement.