STAR BRICK
Help Conan get back out into the *normal* parts of the ship before scattering back out into the various scattered sections of the ship.
[5]
Grateful for Conan's timely rescue, Kit leads the new crewmate through the larger of the Tensarian halls to a long-abandoned room, largely stripped of useful materials, apart from the teleporter pad. The teleporter pad was never cannibalized because it is defective.
Kit doesn't share the "defective pad" trivia with Conan; it would only upset him. The pad works perfectly fine for anyone wanting to leave the room. Those who want to warp back
to this room, however, usually arrive as a homogenous jelly of organic material. Fortunately, there are safeguards in place to keep the pad off the network; all Kit has to do is quickly deactivate them, bid Conan farewell as he pops off to wherever he feels like going, and then reactivate them to prevent any unfortunate accidents.
A neat job, and well done too.
Follow the kittens back outside, then go the cargo bay. The violent shudders we've had are sure to have made a mess of the stuff I carefully organized.
[2]
Conan appears on the deck of the Cargo Bay, the single largest room on the
Star Brick and one of Conan's primary duty stations. The far wall of the Cargo Bay is a pair of enormous steel doors, currently locked closed for various safety and structural reasons. When the
Star Brick begins a salvage operation, Conan is responsible for opening the doors and operating the lasers and cutters which reduce ruined hulls, abandoned orbital defenses, mineral-rich asteroids, and anything else to large to fit through the doors into bite sized chunks for the Omnicrush, Skirri's duty station.
The Omnicrush resembles nothing so much as a Othernian Ambush Slug, or perhaps a Terran Sand Lion. An array of robotic arms and hooks guide the salvage into the maw, where it is further broken down and passed into the main bulk of the Omnicrush. There it is rent asunder by a combination of powerful gravitic, kinetic, and chemical forces powered by a pair of independent reactors and reduced to its base elements, commonly referred to as Scrap. Scrap is used as raw material for all manner of matter fabrication and as a result is commonly accepted as the monetary standard of the galaxy, even ahead of Imperial Credits.
Of course, the
Star Brick isn't scrapping anything just yet. Instead, Conan is here for the barrels and crates of fuel and supplies which litter the vast storage space. Litter is the appropriate word; as he suspected, the rough treatment of the ship has toppled and scattered much of the cargo. Worse, the neatly parked grav-lifts Conan had intended to use to restore order are buried in immensely heavy cargo containers- how will he clean up this mess now?
Skirri probably should have been alarmed that a century-old automated deathship was cheerfully considering murdering them if they didn't provide credentials they didn't have. Or concerned that the technician would at some point come on and give the order manually. Or that the Star Brick was falling apart in general.
Instead, what she was most focused on was the lack of fleshy hands to stop her from looting that ship.
Oh, sure, she was aware that there might be problems. She was also aware that she had no particular way to get to the frigate, no particular way to get through the frigate's shields, no particular way to get into the frigate, no particular way to harvest the frigate's parts, no particular way to get back to the Star Brick (though at that point it might be easier to hijack the frigate's systems, install some life support, and call it a day), and certainly no guarantee that the principle effect of her efforts wouldn't be overloading the Star Brick's systems and venting them all into space.
But it was free parts. Everything else was just a minor technical difficulty next to that singular, monolithic truth.
So... she had to get busy!
Okay, okay. First things first- is there any way to cloak the Star Brick from Ayleid Aelyrain AI sensors specifically?
[3]
Skirri is excited by the possibilities presented by the Aelyrain Frigate; a positive bevy of military-grade parts, ripe for the plucking, housed in a hull which would make excellent scrap material once it is bereft of its more sensitive (and valuable) components! Sure, maybe there is still someone or something
using those parts and that hull, but if they can't properly pilot their ship or answer their comms then they probably can't use the rest of the ship anyway.
First things first; hiding the
Star Brick from the Aelyrain sensors. Unfortunately, Skirri's homebrew cloaking device is in need of some rather expensive components before it can be considered "functional" or "safe to operate." Components which may in fact be on the Aelyrain frigate! A bit of a chicken and egg problem, but maybe Skirri can circumvent that.
Taking careful note of the targeting frequencies of the Aelyrain autoturrets, Skirri pops down to Shield Control and begins wildly altering the modulation of the shields of the
Star Brick. Soon, she achieves success- of a sort. The good news is that the shields are now vibrating through a series of frequencies which disrupt the automated targeting system of the Aelyrain missile turrets, preventing them from achieving a target lock on the
Star Brick. The bad news is that the waste energy has depleted the
Star Brick shields to dangerously low levels; nothing that a bit of love given to the Shield Control console can't restore (really, in a situation like this it would be appropriate to wring as much energy out of the Shields as possible.)
As long as the
Star Brick doesn't do anything dangerous in the next minute or two- say, for example, plowing through a debris field at irresponsible speeds- then everything will be alright.
Get to work on that escape. Then feel the vibrations of the consoles. Try to discern more about the anomalous thing - what do the sensors say?
[1]
Captain Someone takes little notice of Skirri's actions; since the
Star Brick will take quite some time to evade this negative space wedgie, Someone sees no point in waiting and sets the ship on an escape trajectory before turning her attention to the ship scanners.
[2]
Something about the anomaly itself resists active scanners, but Someone can infer the nature of the anomaly from ambient clues. Though the anomaly is quite small (in the range of a large asteroid or perhaps a small dwarf planet) it exerts a meaningful gravity field at a radius commonly reserved for stellar bodies. Part of the reason for this effect is because the gravity field demonstrably violates the inverse square law, according to orbital data of minor rocks and debris within the field.
All of this shows that the anomaly covers an area far larger than it possibly could if it were a naturally occurring phenomenon, which in turn suggests that the gravity field is artificial. Since the only obvious purpose of this gravity field is "to be really big," it is most likely a DSJ Interdiction System of some kind; essentially, a trap or speed bump designed to return ships to regular space, where they can then be examined, interrogated, let free, or annihilated, depending on the intent of the interdictor. DSJ Interdiction is not the sort of thing you usually find randomly in deep space far away from everything and anything of importance, but hey, if nobody is waiting to attack you, it's pretty easy to escape.
Suddenly, the
Star Brick rocks violently! Captain Someone's damage indicators flail at her face wildly. [6] The ship's Medbay has sustained damage, [5] but fortunately it has not lost structural integrity. Some minor subroutines will need repair, and it's probably a horrific mess in there, but the Medbay remains functional.
A quick query of the ship's sensors reveals the problem; apparently, just as the engines of the
Star Brick kicked in, someone in Shield Control started messing with the shields, dropping them to 6%. This was not sufficient to repel the damage taken when the
Star Brick streaked through the debris field in front of the Aelyrain Patrol Frigate on its initial burn. [6] Fortunately, the
Star Brick is fully clear of the debris field and any other hazards; shields are down, and the escape course has been altered, but not significantly.
Credits: 100
Fuel: Full
Provisions: Full
Shields: 0%
Hull: 85%
Rooms of Interest:
Life Support
Engine Room: GRAVITIC ENGINES ONLINE DSJ CAPACITOR 25% CHARGE
DSJ Reactor: MAIN REACTOR ONLINE
Weapon Control
Shield Control: SCRAMBLING TARGETING LASERS
Medbay: LIGHT DAMAGE
Bridge (Captain Someone's Quarters)
Sensor Control: PASSIVE SENSORS ONLINE ACTIVE SCANNERS OPERATIONAL
Cargo Bay: CARGO SEVERELY DISORGANIZED
Conan's Quarters: BOOKS ORGANIZED AGAIN
Skirri's Quarters