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RP: 188604 [Exodus] Part 4, Discovery

Alex Hart

FM of NDC
🎖️ Game Master
The Exodus fleet, flagship Exodus

The fleet had been proceeding steadily into a new nebula to the south of the Kikyo sector for about three days, with no sign of a habitable star system. However, long range sensors, while inhibited by the neubla, had picked something up. It looked like two star clusters, and the fleet had been making its way towards it. It was currently Sienna's watch on the bridge and all seemed to be going well until...

A veritable tidal wave of gravity swept over the fleet, pulling them towards the star clusters rapidly.

"Whoa-ho-ho~," exclaimed Sienna as she displayed her balancing skills by remaining standing straight as the aforementioned spatial anomaly sent the Exodus - and its cramped bridge - into a tilt.

In her cabin, which she no longer shared with anyone due to the incidents with the pirates not even a week ago, Kryss felt the rapid switch in motion. The blonde was thrown from her bunk and smacked into the wall across the room, the loud thud was follwed with a moderate cuss as she rubbed her head however it seemed like whatever it was that caused the motion hadn't finished yet as the woman was sent sliding into a pile of clothing. "This better not be those damned pirates again..." She muttered to herself trying to find her footing.

Tim Aricson quickly made his way to the bridge following a call from an officer on it, and when he arrived there, he was met with a peculiar sight on the sensors, now able to pick up where they were going with more detail. The Fleet seemed to be approaching a star system, without a star.

He slapped the intercom button, and called up the smartest person he knew of on the ship, as well as a few other people. "Kryss Black or anyone with knowledge of astrophysics to the bridge now!"

With her legs in the air and head buried under last weeks shirts Kryss groaned hearing her name come over the intercom, this meant it was another science based issue and she was again one of the only upper educated people apparently. Tossing the old clothing away Kryss finally found her feet and headed for the bridge, a sense of Deja Vu came over her which was quickly affirmed by a grumble to herself. Reaching the bridge she entered without waiting for a reply when she knocked and found Tim, "So, what's going on not another electrical failure I hope..." She said a little quieter, the events of the pirate attack still fresh in her mind.

"No, it's this." Aricson pointed to the instrumentation panel, as someone else entered the bridge.

Mattrick had doing some arc-welding when the ship suddenly and violently lurched about, throwing him from the bench he had been working at. Luckily though he couldn't see anybody around that had witnessed his stumble so the man stood and began to dust himself off as a voice came over the intercom. Now he was only an engineer by the loosest terms, he had no formal training on the matter and only knew what he knew because of his parents and their salvaging operation yet he still approached the bridge where all the more scientifically-minded folk who specialized in that field would no doubt be heading.

Something did... something to the ship and they weren't being told to arm themselves or anything that usually needed to be done if pirates were attacking them so he wanted to know what was going on and if he needed to grab his EVA suit. Morale wasn't exactly at it's peak currently so the double-named human reallly hoped it wasn't more pirates.

A new face, a very tired-looking Shukran Daur male walked in, holding an incredibly large mug of coffee, black as the backdrop of the void surrounding them, flinching at the brightness and the blur in his vision that was the bridge. He quickly put on his glasses, a pair that he made himself -- ones that used some polarized material that had a high refractive index -- and blinked as the circuitry inside shifted the polarizations to dim the world to an acceptable degree. For his kind, he was tall -- but in comparison to EVERYONE ELSE AROUND HIM (to his annoyance) he was a five-foot-tall midget.

He hated this fact. And he hated that he of all people just got rudely woken up by some crazy gravity thing as his sleepy golden eyes looked through the sensor readouts he could see, contrasting his black hair and fur and pale skin nicely.

"Are the inertial stabilizers broken again...?" he asked, his ears parallel to the ground as he took an...unsafe-looking amount of gulps from his coffeecup. "If that's the case...Engineer Is'kra O'rel on duty."

"Take a look." Tim said.

"I can't." Is'kra huffed, standing on the tips of his toes, just barely being able to look onto the panel.

Peering down at the console and instruments with an almost scowel on her face, Kryss's eyes darted this way and that taking in the various readings and values. "So what, a gravitational force where there shouldn't be one?"

"No, it looks more like we're just being pulled into the orbit of... nothing."

Mattrick finally surfaced on the bridge and pushed his way past a people folk who were strewn about the place, he cleared his throat briefly and spoke, "Is anything broken?", he asked anybody that was listening.

"No, nothing's broken."

"Ok then so what did you call us all here for if there is just some random gravity?" Kryss said, getting a little annoyed at how round-a-bout this conversation was going but trying not to wring his neck for answers

"It's an entire planetary system, orbiting nothing. Maybe a lagrange point?" Tim posited. "Are none of you the least bit interested in how this came to be?"

Kryss scratched her head, "Well I mean sure, it's a bit weird but I'd be happy to just not die or encounter any more weird problems at this point. If this strange planet system can provide me with a habital living area and enough resources to survive then I'm interested otherwise," She trailed off moving over to lean against the wall finding a stray sock down her shirt from earlier.

He had no idea what was going on but all this talk had piqued Mattrick's interest a bit, sure they probably were going to devolve into speaking nonsense for him but gravity that seemed to come from nothing was strange, now it just had to be determined whether it was the good strange or the bad strange. "Well, consider me glad that shit didn't break..." Mattrick trailed off as he sunk back a bit to allow the egg heads access to their precious data.

"Lagrange point?" Is'kra asked. "If it's not a technical issue...I'm going back to sleep."

"Fair enough" Tim began, as the console began to beep. "Wait a minute, we're picking up a huge power source on the 2nd planet's surface.

Is'kra stopped juuuuuust before he exited the door. "Unluckily for me, now I have to do something."

Instead, he took a position in the room -- mathematically as far as possible as he could away from Sienna. She was weird.

The sensors zoomed in to obtain an optical image. "My god... it's a ship."

"How many wrong FTL jumps do you have to take to end up here," he joked. "I'm assuming it's damaged. Badly."

"No, it appears to be in perfect condition, just... embedded in the ground."

"Now you're speaking my language, any life-signs?" The engineer asked, he was thinking more about how much they could salvage from it if the ship's crew were... otherwise indesposed. Getting your ship raided was one thing, but if the crew was dead then there was no point in letting it go to waste.

"None, but it's well, in perfect shape. And it's... It's bigger than anything I've ever seen. At least 2 kilometers long from my best guess."

Mattrick let out an inmpressed whistle at the mention of the ship's size, "does she have a name or any markings that can tell us anything?".

"Okay, now that's some really wrong jumps. How the hell do you end up with a battleship out here is beyond me." Is'kra chuffed, as he drank a gallon more coffee. "Watch it be Yamatai. That'll give us a good laugh. Or hell, one of the Norses."

"No, it's more than a half a kilometer longer than one of those..."

Tim thought for a moment. "All of you get environment suits ready, we're going down to check that ship out."

"Aye aye cap'n" Mattrick responded with a slight hint of mockery before he spun on his heel and began walking off to don his EVA suit. Maybe apply some new anti-fogging agent too.

"It's too early for this shit..." Is'kra mumbled as he followed Mattrick out.

Soon everyone was on the ground, and the size of the ship was more apparant. It was almost twice as long as a Norse class battlecarrier, and there were many points of egress.

Kryss whistled looking over the colosal ship and wondering what it was doing here without a crew and fully functioning, while also stuck in the ground. The briefing had been, well, brief just for a change and there hadn't been much discussion on what they were actually hoping to achieve other than poking it with a stick to see if it moved.

“Who’d ever just...leave a ship like this?” the Daur, now wearing his engineer’s EVA suit, stated. He had seemed to woken up to...be acceptable as himself, finally. “It’s perfectly fine and everything. I’d love to have a word with them...after hitting them with a tree branch."

Mattrick sidled up alongside Kryss with his hands on his hips, "No idea who owns it but she is a beauty" he spoke through the filter of his EVA suit's helmet before he slowly pivoted his head around to face the Daur. "Mate you're an engineer, build a better stick" he spoke as a pistol was drawn from his hip, the smile that was plastered across Mattrick's features may have been hidden visually but you could hear it in his voice.

“Yes. Yes I could. I could give it a bit of electric potential and make it really hurt too.” he replied. “And I think whoever did this deserves it.”

"That's the spirit... I think I brought a mini hydrogen reactor or two if you need 'em" Mattrick responded with, making sure the pelican case that was strapped to his back was secured.

"Let's just try going in first. We'll figure out that part when we get there." Aricson said, as he approached the nearest entrance. There were obvious controls, but they seemed extremely oversized.

"Should we just... try opening it up?"

"Fuck it, why not" Mattrick spoke, handling the pistol in preparation for whatever the ship may hold. He approached the ship and began using a few outcrops in the hull as foot holds to make his way up until he heaved a large lever into place, assuming it would open the door or at least do something.

The lever was about as long as Mattrick was, and 20 feet off the ground, and took a moment to move into place. When it did, the large door, which about 30 feet tall, slid slowly away revealing a huge hallway, and a giant humanoid skeleton. The bones were composed of a material that was at a glance, unrecognizeable.

"Fucking hell" Mattrick spoke before he began climbing down.

"That... doesn't look like bone. Does anyone have equipment to analyze it?"

Kryss had been following along behind the others, one of her Sonic rifles in hand for that little bit of extra reassurence. At the mention of something to analyse the lady stepped forwards, "Yeah I got something, not much but it should at least tell us if it's a known material." Retrieving a small scanner from her utility belt which aside from the tool was mostly bare, she stepped forwards hesitantly and ran a test.

The material was almost a complete match for standard bone, with one major difference. Compounds where there would normally be Carbon seemed to instead contain Silicon. This might explain the fate of the crew more.

"What's it say?" Aricson asked Kryss.

Kryss just blinked stupidly at the device, she'd seen some weird compositions before but, silicon based life? Now that really took the cake. "Well uh, let's just say these fellas are probably a lot bigger for a reason, according to this the bones are silicon based not standard carbon based." Kryss spoke back to Tim while replacing the scanner on her belt, and turned to face the others with arms crossed.

"I don't know if that tells us why they were so big, but it might explain why they're all dead. Kryss, let me see that for a moment."

"Well shit, at least we know they can die, that bodes well for us" Mattrick spoke, scratching the back of his neck with the barrel of his pistol. "Eesh, let's hope they stay that way".

With Kryss' scanner Aricson scanned some of the grass they stood on. From his limited knowledge of science, he managed to glean that the grass, and likely all of the life on this planet, was carbon based. "Well that'd explain it. I think these guys starved to death."

"Huh, well consider me glad that something bigger didn't get to them, don't think I have enough expl-" Mattrick paused and changed his phrasing. "Enough charm to deal with something that wiped out these sorry sons of bitches".

"But, if their ship is in perfect condition..." the short fox started, "Why didn't they fly away? They probably could have had the entire crew dig their ship out and with what food reserves, they would have been fine..."

"That's a good point... There's got to be some reason, but I just can't think of anything. Maybe we'll find more out inside."

With that Aricson began to lead the way into the bowels of the ship. Thankfully, unlike the airlock, most of the doors opened automatically, seemingly from some sort of motion detector. The group had entered towards the rear of the ship, and as they made their way along, they passed a large glass window, and were able to see what looked like a small town, in the terms of the giants.There even seemed to be a perfectly maintained park.

"I'm putting all my three remaining Arcmarks on 'siege.'" Is'kra grumbled. "Buy hard materials when economies tank, mother said, and you'll at least have something to trade. Wait, why is there a town here?"

"If it's anything like the design philosphy of ships I've seen, I'd guess it was meant for long term habitation. This must be some sort of small scale colony ship." Aricson commented. "Well, small scale for them."

"And they couldn't leave, it seems."

"Their loss, our gain" Mattrick added in.

"If we can find the bridge maybe we can access the ship's computers." Slowly but surely, the group made their way towards the center of the ship, and up what seemed to be a tower. There they found the bridge, complete with giant seats, computer consoles and displays.

"One of you see if you can access the consoles. Maybe hook it up with whatever portable computers you brought with you."

"I'll see what I can do." Is'kra replied, already starting to remove panels to look at the circuitry.

The circutry was complex, but understandable. It looked easy enough for an experienced technician to tap into the console.

"Not the worst thing I've seen...a little here, a little there..." Is'kra mumbled as he started to start hacking in through a small tablet. "I'll have Tankman Dan running on this thing in no time."

Most of the information was in a version of Trade that Is'kra was unfamiliar with, however it wouldn't take long to adapt for that. It wasn't surprising that Trade was used on this computer system. After all, Trade's origins were unknown, so it wasn't very suprising that a species yet unencountered used it as well.

"I think we'll need a linguistics officer instead." the engineer stated as his tail swished along the floor, sweeping the dust. "This is a really weird dialect."

"At least they spoke logic" the human engineer spoke, bridging part of a circuit board with a (mostly) straightened out paperclip. " 'at should do the trick" he said as some previously unlit lights blinked on.

Aricson came over to take a look. "It's just Trade." He stated. "I'll bet you're not really familiar enough yet with Trade to be able to understand dialects right away."

"I barely got around slang five years ago." he replied.

"It looks like this ship is called the 'Super Long Range Colonization Ship Starlight Road'. I guess these guys never got the hang of naming stuff." Aricson rubbed his chin. "That'd explain the town though. Looks like this thing crashed here... Jeez! 300 years ago. According to the ship's automated logs the crew died ten years after impact while waiting for automated repairs to finish."

Aricson stopped for a moment to look at the engineers around him. "Hey, if we were to try and retrofit this for human use, how long would it take do you think?"

'That depends, do you want it 'spaceworthy' or retrofitted? First option is uglier but it'll be a hell of a lot quicker" Mattrick piped up, giving his input on the ordeal.

"Well we can't exactly live in Giant houses, and we don't really understand all their systems. I think we should study it while we retrofit it fully."

"Well then, lets give it a few good old once overs and see if these tall lads even breathed oxygen" the human engineer responded with, his gaze was on the large skeleton outside which made a chill run down his spine.

"Super long range what now?" Kryss said in blind repetition, barely catching the full name of the craft they'd stumbled across and subsequently were now wandering through. "And can I have that scanner back now? I need it to set my morning hoop throwing schedule and it tells the time too." Kryss said looking around the average, yet large scale interior of the ship.

"If I'm reading it correctly, the ship does have Oxygen reserves, so it looks like their biology was similar enough to ours. Just... Silicon based." Aricson looked down for a moment and saw that he was still holding the scanner. "Oh, here. Sorry."

Tim continued to read through the computer systems of the ship. "It looks like this thing has some sort of automated factory bay, so that could help with retrofitting, but heavy work is going to be harder."

"Woah woah woah, slow down a sec. You want to retrofit something of this scale when we still don't even have a small establishment to call a home base? I'm sorry if I sound like a prick for picking on the idea but at this current time it doesn't seem like it will be much use to us as scrapping what we can." The blonde turned to face the other three with a skeptical look, she didn't think it was a bad idea just, not quite the right time for it.

"I'm down for it, at the least we will see what they had squirrelled away inside" Mattrick spoke, having a look of confusion across his helmet-clad face as he looked toward the lady. "Who are you again?".

"That's Kryss Black. She was one of the engineers who was trying to help save the Sentry when the pirates attacked. "

Tim looked around for a moment and decided to allocate some tasks. "Is'kra can you see if you can get the navigational controls working?"

“Maybe.” he answered, moving over to start checking the control consoles first. Soon Is'kra was able to get the navigational controls online via the tablet computer he was holding, with a bird eye view of the area surrounding the ship provided by the Exodus fleet overhead in orbit.

"Alright, take us into some open area, where we can start to build up a small settlement around the ship and begin to retrofit it."

"Well, our journey ends here, I suppose." Is'kra stated as he passed the controls to the pilot.

Soon the Starlight Road was situated comfortably in an open plain, and transports from the fleet began to land to begin the process of building up a settlement. Soon the people of the Exodus fleet would have a new home on firm ground.

"Just to set the record, I'm not an engineer by trade. I've picked up a few things here and there from designing and working with smaller stuff but my position is technically the liaison, so I'm the people person." She said quite casually, following along behind the others.

"Alright people," Aricson called. "There's no time for chit-chat. We've got work to do..."
 
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