Turn 46You spend a while tinkering with the salvaged equipment. You switch off the Alien life support packs, you probably should have noticed those earlier. You attach one of the spare air tanks to your own life support pack extending your air capacity by three hours. You could attach the other tank but you would lose your ability to easily holster your rifle which would hamper your ability to carry items.
You take one of the short range communicators (SRC) for yourself and give another to Bulb. You'll try and distribute them so that when teams leave the camp at least one member of the team has one. The SRCs look like they are some commercial personal communicators/computers refitted to work as independent units outside of a typical planet telecommunications network. It seems they are capable of text and audio communications, leaving messages as well as calendar/planning utilities and a few other minor functions. Unfortunately while they can interface with most equipment via the universal standard plugs and such they don't have a way for you to insert the AI chip. The only thing you currently have that could interface with the AI card would be your suit, which is pretty important to your survival right now.
Once you've completed that you inspect the antenna from the mountain again. Since you removed it's ability to transmit last time you hook it up to your own power supply and see what it does. As far as you can tell from it's diagnostic displays it's waiting to receive a signal. It looks like if it received a signal it would send something back, without giving it a signal you can't tell what it would reply with. You could probably change these behaviors if you wanted to using the SRC as an interface or just scrap it for some parts.
While investigating the antenna you realize your distress beacon is still very much active. You turn it off as per your efforts to reduce the chances of being detected by the larger ship.
Interrupting your tinkering session and the plant's messing around with power-tools session Mother gives new life into the world. The new Plantmin has tusks, and an additional set of arms which is causing a bit of a stir with the other Plantmin.
This commotion is interrupted by another commotion as Mask's party has returned with their catch.
Mother:Biomass: 4/16
Birthing: inactive
Status:Air:
8/8 Hours Remaining +3 max(air tank)
Suit Integrity:
DamagedInjuries:
BurnsHunger:
PeckishThirst:
ThirstyInventory:Food:30x Ration Bars
20x Ration bars (alien)
Equipment:1x Laser Rifle (6 shots left)
3x Laser Rifle Batteries (20 shots each)
1x Laser Pistol (8 shots left)
18x Laser Pistol Batteries (10 shots each)
1x High Explosive Grenade
1x Survival Knife
3.5x Grabber Suits
2x Grabber Lifesupportpacks
2x Spare air tank
2x Cutters
1x Hull Scanner
1x Fusetool
4x Short range communicators
Survival:1x Thermosafe Firestarter
1x Atmoscan
1x Electric fire
5x Blankets
Materials:10x Platinum
20x Gold
10x Wood
5x Stone
5x Acidic Nodules
15x Wings
4x Mandibles
1x Hover Organ
2x Scrap Metal
Misc:1012x Stalvus Confederacy Credits
12x Flamcorp Food Coupons
530x 61st Bank Chips
1x AI card (mystery contents)
Author Notes:Still feeling sick but I felt good enough to do an update. Hopefully I didn't mess up and write a bunch of gibberish.