With a round chambered Cord removes the partially empty mag and switches it with a full mag.
Anyone make anything of that broadcast? he asks?
"'Launch' doesn't sound good to me. Let's get to the bridge." She continues moving through the room.
The door leading back to the Engine Room still reads 'Environmental override: Run again or clear?'. You need to acknowledge the message one way or the other before the door lock will resume function.
Cord notes that the fatigues of the corpse that had the gun on it have a faded name tag '...ayes'
Sirus punches the Clear button and crosses his fingers
Looking a little more confident now that he is armed Cord joins the others.
The door lock panel flickers for a moment and then reverts to the usual 'Push to open' icon.
Seeing the icon change to nominal Cord encourages Ready here.
Sirus nods and pushes through the door
The door slides open to reveal a standard looking engine bay. Split in to two decks, both upper and lower surround a two storey reactor that runs floor to ceiling. The reactor is only dimly lit, with a repeating sequence of white lights flashing away.
There is some clearly damaged cabling running across the ceiling and back the way you've come. Multiple large cables lie sparking and several bunches of comms cable are hanging down from the ceiling.
There is a single repair droid working diligently away on one of the exposed panels. It also looks worse for wear, evidently caught in an explosion it is missing one arm and making only very slow progress on its repair.
Aside from the above, there is a single large console (currently unpowered), a bank of crew lockers and another large door leading aft with the designations 'Power distro 5 & 6, Rear turrets, Engines, EOL'. EOL stands for 'End Of Line' so you appear to be in the aft of the ship.
Sirus cracks his knuckles. OK, baby. Tell daddy what the mean humans did. He says as he gets to work.
Sirius takes one look at the power cables and says, Give me ten minutes and I can have those repaired, but let me look around a bit first.
He doesn't ask for permission per se as he is already wandering off and talking in tech jargon as he asks. Five minute later he has the run down.
After about five minutes Sirus reports, The reactor's in safe mode and I'm not getting any specific error codes which means the computer's on the fritz shipwide. We could be looking at a coolant or distribution problem.
I'm going to fix that droid first and put it on diagnostics of the critical systems. I'll repair the space suit next in case that's needed, then those cables. I'll know more about our situation in about thirty.
Roger that Sirus. Any way I can help?
Cord will wander over to the crew lockers and assess what might be needed it force them open. Anyone good with security systems?
We seem to be at the wrong end of the ship for my skill set to come fully into play. he notes. Might be educational to check out the two rear turrets. he muses.
Sirus nods. See if you can get any targeting data out of it. We might be able to get characteristics or an idea of the capabilities of the ships who gunned at us.
As he works Sirus keeps his implant on and frequently listens to various bulkheads.
Thursday rascals the security system to get access to the crew lockers.
Hey, nicely done there Thursday. Smooth.
Thursday cracks the lock on the personal storage area, finding mostly spare sets of clothing, knick knacka and mementoes. Of note however she does find two stim packs , a security ID card, and enough spares for another working spacesuit.
Sirus works diligently, and soon the repair bot is working at a higher efficiency, and after fifteen minutes both suit and cables are also repaired.
The reactor hums back in to life, and the dim lights slowly edge back to their usual luminescence. Power seems to have been restored to the area, and likely the rest of the ship.
Cord looks through the data accessible from the console, however the core still seems inacessible. He does however manage to interrogate the rear turrets and engine systems. The turrets record their activation to respond to an unidentified frigate deemed as a threat when it opened fire with 'intent to disable the Cinereous' as the log entry puts it. The Cinereous sustained damage to its engines, and further scans identified the hostile vessel as the 'Celadon'. The Cinereous returned fire but the Celadon used evasive maneuvers to take it out of the rear turrets line of fire. The Celadon was last seen headed towards the forward section of the ship as it strafed the mid-section turrets.
Looks like we are on the Cinereous. Cord states as he reads the information gleaned from the console. And we were fired upon by the Celadon. Either of those names mean anything to anyone? These turrets in the back returned fire but I am pretty sure it did not hit. We have at least some damage to our engines.
With that information Sirus nods. I can do a manual check of the engines but it'll take a while. It would be better if we could get the computer on line. I'll set the droid to clean up here, then we can move on.
Sirus sets the droid to repairing just enough to keep the situation from degrading before doing any full jobs. After the patchwork is done, then it will start with core systems and repair its way to the redundancies.
The repair bot seems happy enough, with plenty to do keeping the systems from degrading further. Cord and Sirus manage to coax a ship schematic from the system, to allow a better assessment of the ship's configuration.
>>> Cinereous ship schematic <<<
The Cinereous is a long-distance cargo hauler, it's highly unusual it's been attacked. The Celadon is an unknown at this stage, but must be reasonably armed in order to damage a ship of the Cinereous' size, evidently it's a gunship or a well-armed frigate, it's certainly not a run of the mill civilian ship.
With power restored to the ship, the bulkhead outside the cargo bay where you awoke will be able to open again. There is also the rearmost sections of the ship to look over, the turrets, rear power distribution and engines.
We are already in the back. Finish searching here and work our way forward? Cord suggests.
[ooc]Do we have any idea why our pods would be on this ship? Where were we all suppose to be headed?[/b]
Cord move to aft and tries to enter the rear turrets. Understanding that they might have sustained hits he is careful in his approach.
Sirus follows and tries to access Power Distribution in that area.
While he's in the engine room he scrounges around quickly for tools and portable diagnostic gear.
The door to the rear of the ship glides open, revealing a now dimly lit corridor that has been shaken up somewhat, conduit and buckled panels hang down from the roof and the tube of the corridor looks like a giant has crushed it.
Cord finds the panels to access the turrets. They appear to be under automatic control still. The panels read as:
Turret control: AUTO (local)
SystemLink: Offline
Ammunition level: 50%
Operational efficiency: 87%
Power: Enabled
Status: No detected threats
Sirus is able to use the keycard from the lockers to open the power distribution hub. Inside the spherical room there are many huge looms of power and network cabling, most headed towards the engines.
Sirus notes that there is a large battery unit attached to the power distribution that is not normal spec, evidently the ship has been upgraded to provide additional power to the engines or turrets in this area. The batteries seem to have been shaken up during the battle, and there are large cracks in the sides.
Do the cracks in the batteries pose a threat to their operation or threaten to leak, or is it just a superficial crack in a casing of some kind?
Are the cracks repairable? If so I'm going to fix it.
I've got a damaged secondary battery of some kind. Probably acting as a power buffer or additional energy source. Either this ship was supposed to arrive at its destination in a hurry or they were expecting trouble. I'm going to see if the damage is fixable. He reports.
Turrets are on auto and half their ammo has been expended. Cord calls. No threats in the area, at least according to their sensors. They are not connected to the ship's computer system, which is bad. I'll try to reestablish that link. Maybe I can learn more about the other turrets or even the ship itself
The battery casing has cracked through, enough that the cells are exposed and leaking fluid. Sirus' best guess is that if they charge up they wont be able to hold full capacity and are likely to explode. Given the size of the battery, maybe twenty minutes tops.
Cord is sure that there is no core computer responding. Either the network lines have been interrupting or something is preventing the core from responding.
We are not connected to the rest of the ship from here. Cord notifies the group. I'm going into the weapons area if I can to see what is up in there.
We have a problem. This battery is cracked clear through and leading. I'm going to have to disconnect it. Could someone check over the other room? I'm being there is a battery there too.
He then makes sure the battery is completely disconnected and looks around for something to contain the leak.
Cord opens a maintenance hatch in the turret access way, seeing that the guns are almost completely automated. He sees battle damage consistent with assault by a gunship, there are several railgun-sized holes in the plating, which must have been sealed over nearer the hull to allow the ship to still remain pressurised. The weapon network connections remain intact, they are operating on local automatic, programmed to shoot anything they deem hostile, they pulse every few seconds sending a message off to the core to reconnect, but there is no response.
Sirus is absolutely sure that most other engineers wouldn't have been able to pull off what he's just done, but he somehow manages to bypass the hardwired battery component and redivert the power to stop the battery charging, all without interrupting the flow to the rest of the ship.
Thursday reports back that the other room seems fine with little damage compared to this module.
Thursday adds
Well I'm not sure whether there's any point going back to the engines if they've been shut off. That radio comms said something about a launch happening soon, maybe we should move up and see about getting this boat back up or else grabbing a lift...
She has a point. Even if I could repair the engines quickly we would still be stuck without the computer. Let's head forward and see what's up.
Agreed. Cord says and begins to move forward. As he walks he mentions I am thinking that the ship was either boarded or there was a mutiny.
If there was a mutiny they were downright stupid about it. I'm thinking boarders, though I haven't seen to much internal battle damage yet. Well see what we see further forward.
Heading back up the main corridor of the ship, with lights at half illumination now you can see the extent of the battle damage. Conduit and buckled panels hang down from the roof and the tube of the corridor looks like a giant has crushed it.
Reaching the pressure door next to Cargo bays 1 and 2, the door panel now glows green.
Pressing the panel results in a juddering wrench as the door opens part-way and reveals the corridor beyond is filled with cargo crates and broken support spars. Squeezing your way through the gaps on hands and knees you stop before you emerge from the pile.
The corridor before you is empty of debris, and you can see the four doors of the cargo bays you expected to find here, however there is an internal security gun deployed on the ceiling. A cargo hauler like this shouldn't have anything like that, the guns are usually only seen on combat vessels. The positioning means it is able to cover the entrances to the closer two cargo doors, but potentially not the larger ones further down the corridor. At present you appear to be outside of its range, at least it has not reacted to your presence as yet.
The defence gun spins around in a repeating pattern, the play of its laser targeting light the only movement in the corridor ahead of you.
What the hells? That gun should not be there. This is a cargo vessel. I wonder if we can work around it. We do have two space suites...
We probably could get around it, but if we're going for a walk I'll want more than just a jaunt. I'd want to walk all the way to the bridge or forward air locks and check out the external damage at least.
We've two suits Sirus, if we trust the repairs the the first. I'd join you on such a walk.
A good shot might take that gun out. But it might be able to target us here too and could fire back. Too risky while we still have other options.
Sirius will do the shuttling of the empty suit. In doing so he will try to take a different route each time he goes forward or back to maximize the amount of the ship he sees.
And taking ten constantly on Kn: mechanical for 26
Sirus gets a pretty clear picture of the outside of the ship, it's damaged mostly around the turrets and engines, the attackers evidently wanted to disable not destroy.
There only appear to be proper airlocks built in to the cargo bay modules, though there are bound to be access hatches elsewhere to enable access to ship systems from outside as well, these are unlikely to lead anywhere inside.
Sirus leads everyone to the next (larger) cargo bay (bulk cargo 1) and is able to cycle the airlock. Inside there are row upon row of empty cryopod mounts, and a discarded fusion welder evidently used to remove the personal lockers of the crypods, as yours were. There is an abandoned trolley left nearby.
Thumbing the door pad and peeking out, the sentry gun continues on its routine spin, evidently unable to detect you so far away at its current sensitivity.
Attempting to enter Cargo bays 3 and 4 would likely result in it firing upon you, but bulk cargo 2 across from you would seem safe, or else you can go north towards the infirmary.
Sirius checks the welder. Is it still operable?
Might as well check out the infirmary before venturing into cargo 2. Cord mentions. He moves to check out the trolley. Hmm. I wonder if this could be driven by the gun in the hall there.
The welder is still operable, but cold. It hasn't been used for hours.
The trolley is literally that, a platform with several wheels underneath which can traverse the decking carrying a load. The platform can raise up and down (waist height to floor height) and makes shifting large weights relatively easy. . It works by being pushed so no remote control and no cover.
Probably could, but I wouldn't rely on it to stop bullets. Sirus says as he starts walking toward the infirmary.
Cord falls in behind the engineer. I got banged up by that wack job we had to rapid thaw. I could use some patching. he notes.
You and me both. He gestures to the gash the same man had given him. Not to mention what happened in our own bay. I'm surprised we made it at all.