You got in just in time. I was about to post when I saw yours.
GroupsConvenient link to the Master List.Faris gets on the radio to try to figure out where the Lifeboat is. Unfortunately he can't see any landmarks, and nobody can see it, so this goes nowhere in a hurry.
The scrapbot becomes Faris' eyes, which is pretty bad since it's camera is at about ankle level. It's not fast either, but being the size of a rollerskate, it can navigate between obstacles. For now it doesn't see much besides a lot of big rocks.
Squeegy meanwhile plots his course of actions from the safety of Shato-Makura...
The banging is definitely coming from the outer walls of your wreckage. There's no telling what might be out there, or what's going on. Wind maybe? Just you're head pounding? At any rate, you're not getting out of the fridge proper. You bang of the walls yourself, in some attempt at morse code, though you don't know morse code so that doesn't get very far. Frustrated, you try to ignore it with more sorting, but you can't think straight with all the noise.
A couple minutes maneuvering gets you wide, stereoscopic view of the crash site from two large mounds. Beyond the tower lies only flatlands. There might be more wreckage in the far distance, but a wall of dust won't let you see much farther.
In the direction of the metal lump, you can see two more like it about equidistant farther. You can see a little movement too – zooming in, it's the large mission rover.
Beyond that range, in an arc about half a mile out, lay three or four large hulks (it's hard to tell what's a chuck of ship and what's just ordinary debris). One is generating it's own dust storm, another looks like it's smoking, and the farthest couple between the mountains are just indistinguishable.
Vlad hurries back inside to announce the good news – there's another dozen or so survivors scattered around outside. Rosie and Serg grab the other pressure suits, but Vlad manages to stop them, explaining that Roy Boucher and Dr. Shideh Saberi are trapped in the Medical Bay, which could collapse any minute. He needs to take them the suits, so they can flee back here. The women figure that the greenhouse is probably a better place to be after all and relent. So Vlad grabs the suits and runs back out.
Left flat footed, the others go back to business. Serg refines her aeration structure, while standing ankle deep in the water Rosie tries to coax back into the pipes without using too much energy. With a little well placed manual help, she makes some progress.
Only Dietrich knows now...
You pound on the door for all you're worth. You pound until you can feel pain in your frozen hands again. You pound until it rings back up your arms and into your head. You pound until you can hear more pounding coming back.
But it won't open. The door controls on this side are mangled, and the manual latch must be closed on the inside. Either someone in there has to hear you, or there's no one to hear you.
Your ears start popping from the rapidly dwindling pressure in your tank-helmet, as your minuscule air supply bleeds out through your suit.
Going outside would be a lot easier with air. You peel yourself out of the EVA suit, and clean off the pressure suit you've been tripping over for the past hour to pull it on.
Louise and Geoffrey combine their physics know-how to build a fancy metal box, spot welded for structure, with a large removable plate for a door. The structure requires a generous caulking with every use, but it works and it holds in air.
Louise heads out with Geof, seeing the blasted landscape of Mars for the first time. Cycling through the radio finds a very crowded channel with a load of voices all running wild, comparing plans and landmarks to find each other. From here, the two of them can see a great plume of dust coming from some wreckage, another hulk of wreckage that might be steaming, and some moving figures in between them.
Inside the Engineering Bay, Pitor gets to work freehanding the electrolysis system. After a few minutes trial and error, he's pretty confident in his water-cracking abilities. Everything seems to be working alright, though the movement of fluids does reveal a few more minor leaks in the piping.
Strife wants to fortify the crashed bridge, for use as a rallying point. Tetsuo insists the bridge was never meant to land and crashed badly, and is now as airtight and study as a fishnet. Vernon wants to move on and find more people. Harry wants to modify the Auger. Augusta wants to sit down.
In short, the five of you spend a few minutes arguing fruitlessly. In the meantime, Harry manages to reset the track geometry to give him some safer overland maneuvering, but the Auger is still in storage configuration, and will need tools and time to really travel efficiently.
The rover's internal sensors certainly insist the structure isn't the same shape after rolling, but it can't detect any noticeable loss in air pressure. There's about 9 man/days of air in the roof tanks anyway, so you're fairly confident in air holding out.
No telling about the walls you suppose.
Managing the conversation on the radio is a fool's errand. Your attention drifts around the Observation Pod, and you wonder how much air must be in here.
This was originally going to double as a conference room, so it's fairly large. The room is roughly 25 feet in diameter and 12 feet high at the center. Doing some extremely rough math in your head, you figure there might be a few days worth of oxygen in here. At least for just you. The tarantula is probably insignificant. Speaking of which, the arachnid is now crawling around the corpse on the floor.
You get another signal on the radio – it's Louise Asker. She says that she, Geoffrey Mutumbu, and Pitor Zymbalski are all holed up at the Engineering Bay.
Qwerty pounds on the wall to get some attention, and yells though his helmet that he's found Vladimir, along with a bunch of other people, and another pod to hide out in. He's going to come back with some pressure suits after running an inspection of the hull to see if it's salvageable.
Shideh figures that leaving would be the prudent course of action, so she starts gathering up critical supplies in bundles and bags. Roy sees the obvious logic of this with no alternative, and helps out.
(Grek: I'm not sure you posted a definite action, so I just assumed a “wait and see”. No penalty.)
Back outside, Qwerty takes stock of the bay's structure, looking for any quick repairs or safer exits. It's not promising. The Medical Bay only has two doors - one at the far end leading into the surgery hall, and the other with the little office. Qwerty can clearly see the panels starting to warp and distend, another tiny fissure forming as he inspects it. With no good tools, he tries cramming some sand into the leak, but the air pressure spits it out again.
Vlad comes on the radio again, saying he's got the two suits and is on his way.
Louise and Geoffrey have joined the radio club, and bring word of Pitor with them.
The Next TurnTo actually get some shit done, the next turn will be a half hour. Kallev is still in mortal danger, but if nothing happens in the next couple minutes he's going to die. It's all or nothing now.
Hopefully, I'll be able to do the next turn on Tuesday, but it might be pushed back to Thursday. I'm aiming for Tuesday, because if I aim for Thursday, it'll wind up being Saturday. Procrastinators unite!
“Eh, we'll get to it.”
Nothing odd going on that I can see now. Hopefully that lasts.
Other corrections will go here as they inevitably arrive.
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Topic: Angry Red Planet - Totally And Completely Dead (Read 48183 times)