Start tidying up lab room. Put samples safely away in the correct containers. Check if that beetlething lukas and me caught is still alive. Also check up on my arm, ask Mesk if necessary.
You tidy up a bit, putting things back in their rightful places. That beetle, are you talking about the rock louse from the lava zone? Because thats been sliced into dozens of pieces.
Your arm is doing better; not healed yet but it's not sore anymore and the cast is good enough that you think you might be able to pilot Gilgamesh again. Probably best not to go to overboard, but you should manage normal actions just fine. No gigaton punches though.
To Everyone: "Uh, Blue Team to Base. Blue Team to Base. We are on the boundary of sectors 15 and 31. We have detected some vibrations under us moving North. Something huge is moving underground. And by huge, I mean equaling a mega-subway.
Cause of this is unknown. Neither are any other details about this anomaly. I would recommend us to cease all picnics, if any are happening, directly North of us.
What should be the course of action? Should we follow it, or will you send somebody else to keep track of it? I do not actually know if it is possible to keep up with it on foot, and we do not have any vehicles. In addition, only one of us is a robot. Response?"
How fast does it seem to be moving? Can we follow it on foot?
Continue mapping out the scales anomaly.
It's hard to tell with nothing but the vibrations to go by; but it seems to be moving pretty fast, judging by how the vibrations fade.
You continue around the edge of the zone, finding nothing much else of interest until you finally make a full circle and reconnect up with the storm and the static.
Continue reading into the Engineer's Pantheon while I'm on the mend.
Jemlan: God of malfunction: Jemlan the Bug, Jemlan the broken cog.
The image on the opposing page is that of a skinny looking man with his eyes covered by welding goggles. His nose is very long and hooked and a thin mustache sits on his upper lip. He's holding a large wrench like a club and generally being rather stereotypically evil looking. His symbol is a broken gear.
“Jemlan is the god of malfunction and disrepair; the missing bracket in machine code, the lose screw in the engine, the imperfection in the focusing lens that causes lasers to fire sideways. He is the out of order sign and the scrapyard. Jemlan is the trickster, the one which seeks to bring disorder to Hal-mon's order. His sign should be inscribed and then crossed out on things which the worshiper wishes to keep functional. If inscribed in it's whole form, it is sure to bring misfortune to the bearer.
Wave. Then to the back of the shuttle and open the ramp.
Sir, you're in a mini shuttle. It has no doors. Its basically a series of bucket seats strapped to a metal frame with some engines. You're basically flying a metal folding ladder with rocket engines. Armor and padding is for people much more important then you.
"We're leaving it be? It doesn't require an entire team to follow it, one man on rocketbike would do. If it causes any changes in the existing landscape, it might be worth capturing. I remember Flint was hot about this sort of thing."
((And how exactly do you plan on catching this mega subway?))
commence shuttle dragging.
You grab the crashed shuttle, half lift it off the ground and start dragging, pulling it slowly back toward the main base. As you drag it, you notice something. About half way through the dry lake bed area you notice that the ground is vibrating slightly.
"I'll head over there, but I'm not racing whatever this thing is.
Head up North, monoatomic sword readied it I feel the vibrations coming my way. Check on the supply dump- there's not a need to get there before the vibrations, though. Video the whatever it is if it shows up.
((I'm probably one of the better equipped on the team for the mega-subway thing, considering the sword, but that's still not much. I don't want to have to fight it.))
You head north toward the supplies. The vibrations are about equal own here; seems whatever it is thats causing them has veered off toward the east a bit. The supplies, when you reach them, appear to be just as you left them.
"Bishop here. Flint's legs are back to normal. I'm at a loss at what I can do right now, so I'm going to be checking out the vehicles in the garage until you need me somewhere. Let me know if you need something fixed."
Check out the damage to all the vehicles in the garage. Organise and clean up any mess in the garage too.
The damage to the vehicles that remain in the garage is minimal enough not to matter. The damage to the shuttle that jack took out is probably more substantial.
Wander in circle around the base and observe interesting scenes
Scenes from "all my clones" or around the base? Cause unless you like gray rocks and craters, there's not much to see.
((Tinker, Tinker, little Czar...))
"Alright, let's see what we can do."
Find a nice, clear section of floor to work in.
Find a piece of scrap metal and some insulation to prevent being shocked through the floor.
See if the output of the Red Hand is sufficient to have it work as both a laser cutter and an arc welder, and if it could or would need to be modified to work as easily as either. Test by cutting apart and welding back together the piece of scrap. ((it's just nice to know if you have a backup tool for repairs, so it doesn't need to be improvised later))
Get one of the remaining rocketbikes. Examine it thoroughly. See how much modification would be needed to combine it, the wheelchair, and the electric motor, into a single vehicle capable of both driving on the ground and flying. Pay special attention to any flight controls that would be operated with the right leg.
Requesting permission to modify one of our surviving rocketbikes into a personal transport. There's not a lot I can do here, and I'm useless for exploration in a wheelchair.
You find yourself a nice patch of floor, devoid of blood, severed limbs or other detritus.
You grab some spare aerogel insulation and lay it on the ground before putting some metal down to stand on.
The red hand could be used to cut metal...if you have a while. And to weld, if you have slightly less time. But it's not exactly fast or great at either of them.
As per your rocket BICYCLE BICYCLE! I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE. Ahem. As per that, you could probably get a very rough sort of jury-rigged version running pretty easily just a fixing wheels with electric motors to the bottom of the machine. It would probably need more then two wheels to be very stable though. And yeah, there's a right leg control; much like the pedals in a jet fighter, you assume it controls minor right or left orientation.
Grab all my equipment, food and stuff, enter my exosuit. Go to the zone with the orange blobs near the motion anomalies and look around.
((Just caught up. Will post some comments when I have morw time. Funny nobody used my dynamic bonus.))
The orange blobs are still there, still as weird as before. They're like massive lumps of neon orange, semi-transparent elmer's glue filled with shimmering strands of something brightly reflective and metallic blue. They remind you, vaguely, of pictures of single cell organisms you saw in high school text books.