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[~Neri]

"A bloom?"

Valrak looks for mention of that in records,

Nerin hands one of the pair's Cargo ID's to Dr. Chance."Did you have any other blob biomatrixes in storage? According to the datafeeds, there's a fairly large outbreak of something similar in your headquarters."

I feel like it's time to evacuate Nerin. Concern.

Agreed. Pondering, impatience.

Nerin pings the rest of the team. "Attention, multiple Biomatrix outbreaks have been detected. Station is likely FUBAR. Rioting mixed with disease will only make it worse. I recommend all guild personal locate hazmat suits and proceed to the docking rings." Nerin attempts to access cameras and datafeeds in the dockingrings to locate a ship that should work.

Valrak pings the KX9 through the Worldgate to see what their ETA is, even if they recently set out, they should be fairly close. Metallized Hydrogen is an extremely powerful fuel. Nerin and I may or may not require a pickup. Situation onstation is worsening. ETA to system? Concern. Mild anxiety.

Link for Metallized Hydrogen.
Secondary Link.

[WillowLuman]

(Don't see anything in there indicating that it would be more powerful than regular old hydrogen fusion, though. Just denser storage, though the stuff is probably incredibly heavy.)

[~Neri]

((Basically it's an extremely efficient and powerful fuel for a torch drive. If you want to go somewhere fast, it'll get you there. A single stage rocket intended to get you into low earth orbit IRL loaded with it would put you in orbit around the moon in under a couple days. Not to mention it makes a great catalyst for fusion. It's effectively gamechanging as far as fuel goes, producing and burning some makes more then enough energy to make more, allowing a mass increase in the amount of available power. It also is quite easy to store in small areas.

[Toaster]

'Noted.  I may be able to elevate my access a bit here...'

Oh ho, there's the boss man.  Let's see what I can do here...

Do what I need to do to crack in to that elevated privileges!  If accessing it isn't going to happen, shutting him down is second best.

[_DivideByZero_]

Valrak pings the KX9 through the Worldgate to see what their ETA is, even if they recently set out, they should be fairly close. Metallized Hydrogen is an extremely powerful fuel. Nerin and I may or may not require a pickup. Situation onstation is worsening. ETA to system? Concern. Mild anxiety.

[1/1] Unfortunately, KX9 presence is incredibly sparse here. Interference due to worldgates doesn't help, because closed Worldgates don't have a very high bandwidth. It helps to send out pings constantly, because every once-in-a-while you get a clear window of communication where ships are simultaneously passing through every Worldgate in the way at once and allowing the message to get through (on the order of minutes, of course). There's also echoing--as long as your message doesn't get drowned out by other tachyonic communications, your message will go back and forth between worldgates, dissipating based on distance traveled but still recognizable after a few passes. Maybe you'll get a response eventually.

Listening to chatter instead, you notice the familiar mental footprints of Rex and Oltun, those two stranger folk you detected in the Karling system a while ago. You're indeed curious as to what they've been up to, but the messages are mostly unintelligible. It sounds like the conversation is intended for in-system communication, but judging from echo patterns it's dissipating quickly with each pass. That means that it's omnidirectional, rather than beamed. Multi-target.

You hear some mention of a "hunt," something "interesting," and a something "threatening," although all three seem to be different things.

((Storing metallic hydrogen in a tank requires a very strong container. For reference, the hoop stress in a spherical container is qr/t, where r is the radius, t is the thickness, and q is the pressure. For most intents and purposes, your tank will be thinner than your radius. Why? Because metallic hydrogen is less dense than water. And it's not magical enough to make that good of a torch drive. The hydrogen inside a really thick tank wouldn't be enough to fly the tank itself, let alone the ship.

Unless it's metastable, of course, but that's basically magic at this point. At least metastable helium has been shown to exist and is documented.

Atomic Rockets (ctrl-f to metallic) states that the exhaust velocity for a metallic hydrogen pressure-based drive would be 17 kms, which is pretty low for torch drive standards. An open cycle fission drive would do better. If you have links to better calcs, then by all means post them. And if you're not using the pressure then you might as well not store the hydrogen directly, the stuff is bloody difficult to store compared to boring liquid hydrogen. You can convert the hydrogen to metal on-demand before using it in your fusion drive, rather than storing solid pellets of the stuff and shove them down your pipes.


Maybe with graphene storage, lithium-hydrogen alloy could work.))

"I'd suggest we tail them. You got any way to track them? Radarts? Tracking bugs? Remote spiders? Any of that corporate espionage stuff?" whispers Akatin.

(Crap, do I?)
(Also, yay! Saved someone's life!)

According to your inventory, no. :C

[Toaster]

((I just noticed that WARDEN has Augments instead of Traits.  A nice small touch!))

[WillowLuman]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Atlos, being prudent, surreptitiously double-checks the self-defense capabilities of his travel unit.

[1] Your unit unfortunately lacks any sort of weapons.

[4] The glass should withstand anything a drunken person, psionically subverted or not, could throw at it. Small arms fire too. Flare launchers and other emergency equipment could technically be used for defense.
The unit also has a smokescreen of sorts, projecting a cloud of harmful nanite-based toxins which cause temporary blindness and dizziness when inhaled, and bypass most forms of biological or even augmented immunity. The unit's onboard computer can selectively choose to mark nearby beings as friendly, allowing the cloud to be used offensively if you can catch up to the targets.

Looks like there's this stuff (which should probably be added to inventory).
"I may have one thing, but it would be very conspicuous..."

To the others, he sends "At the risk of compromising ourselves, we could relay the current situation to the Guild, who might then be permitted to bring their forces in to take the station on pretext of helping to contain the outbreak."

[_DivideByZero_]

((Thanks for posting a link to that.))

[~Neri]

"I recommend vacating the station. Post outbreak, it can be cleaned up."

[_DivideByZero_]

Moravia Orbital Colony, Ulysses | 237d/3008AD | Von Hapsburg System

Megacity Time: 8:32

Alpha Lobby
Mobs (+1 Stealth)

((I just noticed that WARDEN has Augments instead of Traits.  A nice small touch!))

(())

'Noted.  I may be able to elevate my access a bit here...'

Oh ho, there's the boss man.  Let's see what I can do here...

Do what I need to do to crack in to that elevated privileges!  If accessing it isn't going to happen, shutting him down is second best.

The administrator seems to be here to shut you down. Your Guild-approved infiltration software captures packets being send through the network and interprets them as commands, being sent directly to the systems you are bombarding with commands. He must be trying to override you, locking you out of the water supply and perhaps the rest of the system. You run a program called PJam-A5, which doesn't allow you to read the contents of the commands, but should allow you to cut off the admin's computer by disguising your messages as his and trying to get him locked out by the router.

[5] It works perfectly. The admin pops off of the network and a console message appears on the network's messaging system: 'ccarter has been booted'
You can also impersonate any command he sent previously.

Admin Commands:
C-emu: Copy the current instruction ROM held by a device to your hard disk
C-flash: Flash a saved instruction ROM to a device
C-flashl: Flash a saved instruction ROM to a device, then prevent it from being flashed without first calling C-unlock
*you do not know the C-unlock command

...

Headquarters, Floor 3
Professional Atmosphere (+1 Intellect)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Atlos, being prudent, surreptitiously double-checks the self-defense capabilities of his travel unit.

[1] Your unit unfortunately lacks any sort of weapons.

[4] The glass should withstand anything a drunken person, psionically subverted or not, could throw at it. Small arms fire too. Flare launchers and other emergency equipment could technically be used for defense.
The unit also has a smokescreen of sorts, projecting a cloud of harmful nanite-based toxins which cause temporary blindness and dizziness when inhaled, and bypass most forms of biological or even augmented immunity. The unit's onboard computer can selectively choose to mark nearby beings as friendly, allowing the cloud to be used offensively if you can catch up to the targets.

Looks like there's this stuff (which should probably be added to inventory).
"I may have one thing, but it would be very conspicuous..."

To the others, he sends "At the risk of compromising ourselves, we could relay the current situation to the Guild, who might then be permitted to bring their forces in to take the station on pretext of helping to contain the outbreak."

The Guild made sure to allow for quick extraction should you be put on a time limit to complete the mission. Guild spotters, hiding among the asteroid belt, are watching the station for any comms sent with your identification code. Their radio telescopes won't pick anything up through the station walls, but if you could find a window or leave inside a shuttle, then you could beam a message toward one of them. You'd probably have to visually identify the asteroids, but they are clearly visible with the naked eye due to their proximity to the star, and you have a starmap app with the locations bookmarked.

The spotters can relay a message to the fleet, or swoop by and pick you up themselves if you can find a shuttle. If you can't, then they'll have to send a request to the supercomputers back on the cityship to forge a unique ship ID.
Combat ships are located farther away, some hidden on particularly large asteroids, others orbiting Cerberus. While Cerberus is located in Ulysses' L3 point, it is still far closer than Askarian as of now, which is where the rest of the combat fleet is located. The full force should arrive in a few hours, although light gunships are only minutes away.

Spoiler: Ship ID's (click to show/hide)

Using a string of several thousand digits representing the prime factorization of the number itself in an open code, a ship ID is easy to verify, but difficult to assign. Only entities with access to massive computing power are able to assign them, and once registered with a polity the ship's information is broadcasted throughout the sector in an effort to stave off piracy.

"Hm, lucky break. You managed to arrive at just the right time so you don't have to do any work. I'd be a little suspicious, given that you seem to have brought reasonable protection... but I'm not really in a position to do anything about it."

Maintenance Shafts
Hidden (+1 Stealth)

[2] Nope, still stuck.

...

Moravia Lab
High Security (-1 Stealth)

"A bloom?"

"Yes, atmospheric blooming. It happens when von Hapsburg acts up and sends out flares. It's still an active star, but every couple of local years or so it acts up and gives off more energy than usual. The outer planets aren't affected much, but Ulysses tends to undergo an atmospheric bloom as its global wind cycles readjust. Essentially this means that the atmosphere becomes puffier than usual, typically reaching the station and causing deceleration. We use a suite of monitoring equipment to predict the turbulence and maneuver the station accordingly, but due to the chaotic nature of the system, we need to double and triple check our forecasts when it happens."

Nerin pings the rest of the team. "Attention, multiple Biomatrix outbreaks have been detected. Station is likely FUBAR. Rioting mixed with disease will only make it worse. I recommend all guild personal locate hazmat suits and proceed to the docking rings." Nerin attempts to access cameras and datafeeds in the dockingrings to locate a ship that should work.

[6/5] The station is a bustling traffic site, and as such there are many ships to choose from. However, capitalism has left its toll, and ferrying services not only cost money, but are focused toward destinations that are popular. Unless you wish to take an interstellar detour, there's only one conventional option to meet up with the Guild in a reasonable amount of time: the RTS Conquerer, a liner maintained by Rhine Transit. There are other ways you could get off, and Guild spotters are hanging around just light-minutes away with their receivers trained on the station. If you can get into space, your own transmitters could be sufficient to contact them.

Milan is not a very popular destination. It turns out that the Conquerer was chartered by a nobleman from the destination world, having made a quick business trip to the station. Entry onto the ship is reserved, and you can either purchase access or plead with the aforementioned nobleman. Alternatively, you could try to sneak on, knowing that security is hard-pressed to inspect every passenger and ship.

Camera feeds from the docking rings indicate that this is the case. Security checkpoints have been abandoned, and passengers simply find a taxi or punt to bring them into their desired starship, which is usually moored at a distance from the station. This might make redeeming your cargo ID a little tricky, as there are few officials to speak to.

[WillowLuman]

((Something's up with the format in that post. Also, what's Akatin referring to?))

[_DivideByZero_]

((Whoops. Editing))

"Hm, lucky break. You managed to arrive at just the right time so you don't have to do any work. I'd be a little suspicious, given that you seem to have brought reasonable protection... but I'm not really in a position to do anything about it."

[WillowLuman]

If he can, Atlos informs the guild of the outbreak on the station, and that they might be able to bring their forces in on pretext of helping deal with it.

"Believe me, an assimilating biomass is the last thing I expected."

[Toaster]

'Good news; locked out the admin trying to undo what I did.  No telling when he'll call for backup, though.'

[~Neri]

"Interesting. Wouldn't it make more sense to have the station in a higher orbit then to save on fuel? Or am I missing something?

Nerin attempts to locate and ping the nobleman of the Conquerer. "Hello. Me and a group of associates require a route offstation. You likely noticed it's falling apart, we would rather not be stuck here during that. We have a ship nearby that can retrieve us after launch, however we cannot signal it through the station walls, a bit of an oversight on our part. We can make it mutually beneficial should you be willing to allow us to use your ship as a departure vessel. We will not tax your lifesupport for long as we will be picked up by a seperate ship shortly after launch."