Turn 05Land in a deep sea.
The gullet of our fusion reactor burns bright. It is not too long before our arrival, and our hull has been reconfigured. It has changed, no longer configured for a long, lonely interstellar voyage but changed with hydrodynamic lines, ablative and sacrificial metals line the hull, as well as the million different other processes to secure the hull against a breach from the water landing.
In the orbit of the world, hundreds of satellites sit in orbit. Doubtless, a few of them orient towards your hull, and fire off salvos of close-in weapons or missiles, but it fails to land a decisive blow. All in all, the only effect is the scouring of the first coating on your hull. You adjust one last time, flinging your ship's final destination hundreds of kilometers away from any active signatures on the surface of the ocean.
Nuclear detonations in orbit are the portents of your arrival. Afterwards, the ship begins to slice through the atmosphere. The craft has its rear pointed towards its destination, and the antimatter catalyzed rocket engines were ignited.
Different from the slow, ruminant torch burn of the past, this was a roaring, barely contained burn that took the wisps of atmosphere and threw it out as if it were a Jet Engine. With each passing second, the power increased as the atmosphere grew thicker.
The hull shook, burned by the incredible rigors of the incredible acceleration vectors. The ships engines were put into the highest of stresses that was barely within red - line tolerance.
3d6 vs 12 → 5, Success by 7
The Nitrogen oxidation events on our hull dissipates as we close through the outer atmosphere, the look of our hull transitioning from a hot yellow glow to only the atmospheric effects from breaking the sound barrier of the thick atmosphere. Your thrust orientates to steer the craft into an angle to break off more speed through increasing friction, and just as the ship closes within deadly-close ranges of the ocean, the last remaining dollop of antimatter is ignited in a pulsed detonation. You ride on your maximum acceleration capabilities, the thousands of times reinforced and perfectly engineered hull crackling from the stress.
We splash down into the roiling, burned sea. The hull creaks from thermal stresses as we sink deeper down.
Our sinking speed is slow at first, but maneuvering systems curdle the water and gyroscopes turn our hull to reduce our cross sectional area, portions of the hull that are vacuum sealed are allowed to fill with water. Our engines were never meant to fire off in a sea bound environment, and would be immediately ruined by the sea water if we were to fire them of, indeed, our last burn had done cataclysmic damage to both the local area as well as the engine itself.
Propulsion systems - 95% →
63% - DISABLED.
Hull - 93% → 89% | Patched,
RISKWe are lucky however, the hypergolic plumbing, photronics, as well as the connections to the internal systems are all intact. The only damaged components are the engine bell, which has cracked from the rigors of our journey.
The pressures rise. Compromised sections of our hull collapse from the pressures, but as of yet none of our most critical components or inventory are damaged as they were evacuated beforehand.
We are closing in to our final landing point. Our immediate surroundings are volcanic in nature and vary massively in depth and include an underwater trench, one that goes up to 8,000 Meters deep, deep enough to likely destroy us. We have the fortuitous luck of guiding our hull into one of three spots.
The first option is the most simple, being a depression at 3,500 meters that allows us to partially mitigate the costs of burying our hull if we chose to do so. This is the option we pick if we intend on only temporarily staying until our hull is adapted for aquatic movement without leaving behind much of a permanent base of operations.
The second choice is to guide our ship-self to our potential ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ-ꜰᴜɴᴄᴛɪᴏɴᴀʟᴇɴᴅ-ᴅᴇꜱᴛʀᴜᴄᴛɪᴏɴ inside the trench and anchor onto the side of the valley or to land on a plateau within the trench, going to a nearly hull shattering depth of 5,500 meters. Not only will this method immediately shield us from casual radar and sonar detection, it allows for a some-what easier operational time in excavating underground space for permanent structures due to the access of vertical rock and advantageous geology. It also more or less prevents close-in efforts by primitive military submarine craft.
The third is almost on top of a thermal geyser at a depth of 4,000 meters, allowing for the tapping of the resource in question without having to travel dozens of kilometers. This means we would be able to set up both volatile/chemical refineries as well as create geothermal power stations almost immediately. It complicates digging and underground operations however, due to the complexities of the geology at hand, and would put our ship-self to risk of discovery.
What should we do?A. guide our ship body to land at the Depression.
B. guide our ship body to land in the Trench.
C. guide our ship body to land at the Thermal Geyser.
Name of System - Integrity - Notes
Omni-Spectral Scanners - 94%
-Secondary Scanner Processor Stratum - 100%
Battery System - 100% | 100% FULL
Construction Systems - 100%
Primary Processing Stratum - 100%
Secondary Processing Stratum - 100%
Hull - 89% | Patched, RISK
Antimatter Key 01 100% - EMPTY
Antimatter Key 02 100% - EMPTY
Antimatter Key 03 100% - EMPTY
Antimatter Key 04 100% - EMPTY
Antimatter Processing - 100%
Fusion Reactor - 100%, ACTIVE 100% THROTTLE, DE+HE-3 FUSION RUNNING, 31 MONTH OPERATIONAL TIME @ 100% THROTTLE
DE Storage Tanks - 100 % | 68 % FULL
He-3 Storage Tanks - 100 % | 68 % FULL
Fusion Ignition Capacitors 100% - | 100 % FULL, A-OK for DE-He-3, DE-DE, or DE-T Fusion Ignition
Propulsion systems - 63% - DISABLED.
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Topic: The Bracewell Probe (Spaceship Quest) (Read 2503 times)