STAR BRICK
NoNoNoNoNoNoNoNo!
as the three of me that fell look around for another exit or some way to build a ramp or ladder back out, I and Me return to the Sensor Room bearing a message:
TurnOffGravAtSec: A7-H2-K5((feel free to correct the coordinates))
Whilst the remaining three of me attempt to find a path help could crawl through to reach me and get me out!
[2]
-1The three kittens that fell down the hole attempt to find enough material to build a ramp back out of the hole, but the shallow pile of tattered clothing and discarded spaceship components makes a very unimpressive mound in the corner. Worse, cleaning up all that junk reveals that the walls of the hole are contiguous with no alternative exits, patched or otherwise!
[1]
-1A second group of three kittens begins exploring, looking or a way into the hole. After all, nobody would just build a hole for no reason, right? It seems to be a garbage chute; presumably, there must be a place the garbage was being chuted to, and that means there must be a place for the kittens to crawl and regroup.
In a seeming stroke of luck, the next room over has an active console, seemingly untouched in the years since these halls were circumvented. Kit can't read Tensarian, but they can recognize the general schematics of the garbage chute, and it appears that one of the walls can be made to move, allowing Kit access to a nearby service tunnel.
Unfortunately, when Kit enters the command, the wall moves
inward, not outward. The kittens in the chute mewl in terror as they realize they are actually in a garbage compactor; the walls are closing in!
Seeing the kitten on the ground, Conan reads its collar.
"I do know about turn off gravity. I feel that is not order that I should take from cat. What is problem over there anyway."
Move to where the kitten tells the problem is. If I can see the hole and/or locate it by the mewling, try to take off my shirt and dangle it down the hole so the kittens can clamp on it and allow me to pull them out.
As far as spacefarers go, Conan is a greenhorn. He's vaguely aware that the red lights surrounding the odd ship on the viewscreen are bad news, but he's also increasingly aware that just about everything on the
Star Brick is in some state of more or less emergency, and if the sensors can't detect everything they
should see, at least they seem to see well enough to prevent a collision.
A pair of small kittens tumble into the room as Skirri moves over to the sensor console. Conan bends down, reading their collars.
TurnOffGravAtSec: A7-H2-K5Gravity modulation? That's life support, and tricky work too. It's certainly nothing that Conan feels he should be messing around with unnecessarily. If the kitten will show him what's wrong, he's sure he can fix it.
[2]
Following one of the kittens to the wall, Conan gets down on hands and knees and squeezes into the old Tensarian halls. It feels as though he's inside a Spacey's Fun Freighter, one of those mock spaceships they have for the kids to crawl around in while the parents try to unwrap the radiation shielding on the patented Spacey's Star Sandwich (guaranteed to survive your intergalactic journey home or your money back!) Invariably, one of those parents has to retrieve their kid from the hellish plastic labyrinth that is the Fun Freighter, and invariably they get stuck in a hatch and have to wait for the local Spacey's employee to get the jaws of life out from under the counter.
Before long, Conan's crawl through the Tensarian halls is halted when he reaches a short staircase and sharp turn in a particularly narrow segment. He might be able to squeeze through there... or, he might not. Conan does not think a Spacey's employee will come with the jaws of life to save him if he gets stuck in here.
Skirri tilted her head at the viewscreen. Hmmmmmmmmm.
Hmmmmmmm.
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
...no idea. Well! Taking things apart was the first step to fixing them. Unfortunately the frigate was out there, so she'd have to settle for looking at it.
Get to Sensor Control, see what I can find out about that death frigate.
[3]
Skirri steps up to the main Sensor Control console and begins typing. She's more familiar with the appraisal scans of the Omnicrush in the Cargo Bay, but she can figure out some of the more detailed active scans available at this terminal. She soon discovers that the Aelyrain Frigate is a quite outdated model; several decades, in fact. This is unusual, since the Aelyrain Caliphate has rather peculiar attitudes regarding scrapping and retrofitting; official Aelyrain vessels are always kept to top of the line technology specifications. Conventional wisdom suggests that an Aelyrain ship is only as outdated as its most recent trip to port; thus, conventional wisdom suggests that this ship has not returned to Aelyrain space in nearly a century.
[2]
A small kitten meows loudly while Skirri chews her lip, trying to find a different scan to run. She does not notice the small creature trying and failing to climb onto the console to get into her line of sight.
Someone couldn't tell what the sources of the vibrations were, exactly, but she did know they were enemies of some sort now. And this necessitated some tactics.
Try to get the ship into orbit around the gravity well. Feel for the hums and the buzzes, fly by the information directed to my lower jaw.
[6]
Captain Someone gets some troubling vibes from the sensor record autologger; somebody is running scans on an Aelyrain Patrol Frigate, which means there is an Aelyrain Patrol Frigate near enough to scan, which is the sort of thing Someone usually learns about when plasma begins carving hunks out of the
Star Brick's hull. Since they are not currently being cut up, Someone has detected a more serious problem; not only is the
Star Brick inside an unknown gravity well, but they are currently plummeting deeper into it at an alarming rate.
Someone presses her face to the helm console. Various levers and widgets vibrate in response; debris 0.3 klicks in that direction, ship 1.5 klicks in another, grav well sourced 5.4 klicks in a third direction. With a tricky bit of eyebrow wriggling, button mashing, and lever throwing, Captain Someone triangulates the tactical information supplied by the helm console and levels off the
Star Brick, quickly achieving a stable orbit around the anomalous grav well.
As she begins to crunch the numbers, however, she finds the situation is more dire than she had expected. Though their orbit is stable and free of collisions for the foreseeable future (and her calculations can foresee quite some ways) an escape trajectory is much more difficult to plot. Simply put, the main engines of the
Star Brick are insufficient to escape the pull of the anomaly, and the DSJ drive will not function properly within the pull of a significant gravitational field (it's not called the Deep Space Drive for nothing.)
On the plus side, the Aelyrain Patrol Frigate hasn't opened fire yet! Not only that, but it has not corrected course to pursue the
Star Brick... nor has it altered its posture at all. It remains fixated on the cloud of debris before it.
Credits: 100
Fuel: Full
Provisions: Full
Shields: 16%
Rooms of Interest:
Life Support
Engine Room: GRAVITIC ENGINES ONLINE DSJ CAPACITOR 15% CHARGE
DSJ Reactor: MAIN REACTOR ONLINE
Weapon Control
Shield Control
Medbay
Bridge (Captain Someone's Quarters)
Sensor Control: PASSIVE SENSORS ONLINE ACTIVE SCANNERS OPERATIONAL
Cargo Bay
Conan's Quarters: BOOKS ORGANIZED AGAIN
Skirri's Quarters
Author
Topic: Star Brick: Green Swirly Thing IN SPAAAAACE! (Read 15983 times)