Assigns the jobs then work on converting the extra storage room into a proper living quarters the new hires are free to help if they wish.
The new crew members seem happy with their new jobs, and rush off to take a closer look at the parts of the ship they'll be working on. The Foss watches impassively, arms folded, then follows you to the storage room. The two of you spend the day setting up rudimentary rooms, a communal area with seating, bathroom facilities and so forth. The Foss has a fair amount of local currency, and buys enough rugs, chairs and sleeping pallets to make the large space look quite homely. By the end, there are some quite pleasant living quarters.
Passing through the ship, you notice that the twins are hard at work taking an inventory in the ship's workshop, Gustav is familiarising himself with the controls, and Jack is very carefully inspecting several hundred feet of pipes for leaks.
"Okay, I got this floppy-ears thing for you. Can you do your thing to it, Lucca?" Says Suzy, squirming rabbit in arms.
“Hmmmmmmm....” Lucca locates the rabbits, And modifies it’s genes, Turning it into a fish and infusing it with Suzy’s dna. ”
Lucca focuses for a few seconds, psionically scanning the ship. One of the rabbits suddenly finds itself hauled out from behind one of the escape pods, gently floated down several dozen feet of corridor, and deposited beside a large crate of clean water.
Lucca spends the next few hours splicing fragments of fish DNA from his archives into the rabbit and flipping genetic switches that had been set to off ever since the species crawled on land. This is pretty easy, but inserting a great deal of Suzy's larger genome into the newly created fish without having it become semi-human is a bit harder. In the end, he leaves a few key cells as fully-fish, but makes most of the cells Suzy-fish, including all the blood and muscle, most of the organs, and so on. It's the best he can do without a fair chance of mistakes. He leaves the creature in the tank, as its body begins to slowly change and shed hair.
At one point, Lucca passes a humanoid staring at the biological regulation garden, and instructs the creature not to touch any of the extremely delicate organisms. Looks like the ship has some new passengers.
But I don't have thumbs!
You dont!
(If successful)
"Fish!" Suzy says, juggling the fish. "I need to put it in water!"
Try to find a fish tank for the new fish. Other than that, over the next few days convert the rest of the Obdurite, and finish the team's uniforms. If I have time, extend the uniform thing to the new hires, making their uniforms a plain light gray.
As for the colony..
Split off an exploration group of microorganisms to enter the fish, while Suzy's still holding it. They are to explore the physiology of the fish, and try to evaluate if Lucca's powers are compatable with magic.. ie, to discover potential problems from mixing the two. There's been a lot of work on Suzy and I want to make sure we can work together, if necessary. Note that the group isn't trying to colonize the fish, they're simply going to explore it and look for hazards.
For the rest of the time, review my options for better long-range combat. Suzy is capable, yes, but there were some deficiencies found in accuracy -- it isn't something we'd have practiced inside the space colony. Have the night crew check on any possible optimizations while the host sleeps.. motor neuron rewiring, say, and balancing out muscle fibres for more stability. We'll do some training when we're not expending so much energy upgrading Obdurite.
Suzy finds the fish a tank, a large clear plastic crate full of water and greenery. It's not entirely clear what rabbit-fish eat, so you try to find food that might appeal to both. Most of her time is spent making the Obdurite into adamantine. It's slow and draining work, but by the end Suzy is left holding four bars of shining blue adamantine. So no uniforms yet.
The colony is mostly occupied turning Obdurite into adamantine, for doubtless very good large-scale reasons.
The expedition finds that the new environment would be nearly as good as Suzy as a place to grow, although possibly with less potential when it comes to influencing macroscopic events. It's an odd place, a mosaic of semi-familiar cells that seem a lot like Suzy's along with occasional completely foreign cells, but it'll do.
With regard to accuracy, the colony realises that there's a bit of a problem. Suzy's muscles are well-balanced, the motor neuron fibres healthy, the tendons and ligaments just the right kinds of flexible and taut. There are improvements to be made, but they won't do much for this issue. The main issue with aiming isn't Suzy's arms, it's her brain.
While the colony can choose when to fire, aiming tends to be a macroscopic business - thousands of tiny microorganisms tumbling about in the bloodstream or swaying in muscle tissue trying to organise a concentrated energy beam together at short notice is a nightmare. Unless the host is completely still, it's much better to all agree to fire out of the fingers and let the host do the aiming. So the host needs to get her fingers in the right place. And that process depends on her brain, which sometimes doesn't function perfectly. With some practice Suzy can get better, but right now she really isn't used to firing heat rays from her hands. Apes like her are instinctively able to use hands in close combat, so your accuracy won't be terrible when it comes to contact electricity, but as for range...
Of course, there are solutions here. Actual reflexes can be wired in, simple and rapid links between the eyes and the muscles that Suzy can choose to activate just like she can choose to move her leg, letting her point a hand directly at whatever her eyes are tracking. And of course, the brain can be manually rewired, made better at certain tasks, faster and more accurate when it comes to predicting the movements of hostiles and using the limbs. Naturally, Suzy might be a bit sensitive about you effectively taking over her nervous system, especially when it comes to the second option, so this could be a problem.
(Whoops, I didn't notice this had updated. Sorry about that.)
Varisdel will open his empty box again! It's always good to check what it might have.
By the way, what's the status of the other drones he sent out?
4
By the time Suzy has finished creating the last three adamantine bars, the box has a new object. It's a finely drawn map of a nearby continent of this planet from before the fragmentation, showing major works of architecture: royal palaces, castles, tombs, temples, and so on. The architects and owners of each building are clearly marked.
The other drones were instructed to scan the whole planet, several million cubic miles all told, and are taking their time about it, apparently too far away to be contacted. Assuming nobody in the interior has stolen them yet, which is not a very safe assumption.
Status: Fully intact
Fore:
- Bridge
- Varisdel's box, currently empty
- Engine room (Elder Xelqu Heart, Psionic)
Central:
- Quarters
- Suit Room (4x standard armoured voidsuits, fitted)
- Infirmary
- General Storage
- Biological regulation garden (waste disposal etc)
Aft:
- Secondary Storage Chambers: Nutrient Stock, Gene Library, Titan, Crew quarters
- Landing Pods
- Main Airlock
Movement:
- Psionic propulsion via Xelqu Heart
- Chasm Traversal (requires mounted Stride Blade)
Weaponry:
- Cleavers: huge detachable metal blades, psionically controlled. Also useful for traversing fluids.
- Secondary: flechette cannons
Passengers:
- Fish with a great deal of Suzy's cells, in tank in hold
- One desert hare, somewhere.
- Five new crew members (the mechanically savvy twins Tara and Kate, the hefty Foss, Gustav the wheelchair-bound explorer, and Jack Sterling)
- A Titan
Varisdel has a bar of adamantine.
Suzy has a briefcase that can be turned into a tank and four bars of adamantine.
Steve has a pair of sunglasses and a laser pen.
Lucca has, for whatever reason, some of Varisdel's skin.
Aside from that, it's just whatever sentimental junk and threadbare clothing people chose to bring with them.
As I suspect you're mostly done with this place, feel free to post actions both for any last bits of business in the settlement and for where you go and what you do once everyone is ready to leave.
(Unless you want to start doing something else in the settlement, of course. But most characters seem to be moving away from that.)
Author
Topic: Solar Graveyard - Starlight (Read 23266 times)