The game opens with your team having tracked the bounty target to these coordinates. It is a distant star system with a dim red sun, and you are far away from its meagre warmth. The coordinates lead you into the system's thick kuiper belt. Your scanners show nothing of interest yet, though your passive optical systems have picked out at least seven comets and several thousand small asteroids in the area.
It is eerily quiet here, so far from the Imperium and civilized space. There are no public comm bands which reach this far, and your connection to the StellarComm, the Imperium's FTL version of the internet, is tenuous at best. There is a relay bouy in the system, placed there several hundred years ago, but it seems to be malfunctioning and any requests or downloads from the network take many times longer than they have any right to.
As you close on the coordinates, your ship chimes and calls your attention to a signal. It looks like a transponder, a slow steady pulse. You are puzzled for a moment, wondering why the ship took so long to find it, when you realize it is a
radio signal. No one has used radio for years though it is still part of the computer's standard search routine. The shipboard intelligence, a labotamized version of a true AI which all ships in the fifth Imperium carry, automatically decodes and identifies the signal.
*Alert*
Signal Detection
26500khz FM Signal located - 5khz deviation
Tentative identification... transponder signal, Genesis class starship
Transponder decoded - ID 2773-388A-BC304
Initiating StellarComm identification check... unable to connect
Initiating StellarComm identification check... unable to connect
Initiating StellarComm identification check... connection established
Uploading transponder identification code
Waiting...
Waiting...
Waiting...
Download received...
Transponder ID 2773-388A-BC304 belongs to CSS Roanoke
Colony ship owned by the Nasaki Colony Corporation
CSS Roanoke reported missing 3 years 6 months 1 day ago
CSS Roanoke reported lost with all hands 3 years 7 months 3 days ago following failed search and rescue mission
Crew compliment: 27
Passenger compliment: 5000 (Cryogenic suspension)You sit back, absorbing this information. What is a ship like that doing here? Vanished 3 years ago without a trace. The coordinates you have for the target lead here though, directly to the source of that signal. Maybe the target is hiding out there, but how did
he find it? No matter...
On another monitor, the target's profile is still displayed. You take another wistful look at the bounty amount...
Bounty File 38-135-7b
Name: Joseph Phoenix
Wanted by: Imperial Justice
Wanted for: Homicide, Inciting to Riot, Mutiny, Desertion, Treason
Wanted: Dead or Alive, payment on death pending positive identification of body
Bounty: 12,500,000aThat much Aure would make anyone a ridiculously wealthy man. Splitting it 3 ways with your team will still leave you with enough to retire from the game and live in comfort for the rest of your days. Aureus has been the official currency since the new Emperor Tammon I decided he liked ancient Greek and Roman history. Time will tell if his sweeping changes 'for the good of the Imperium' will turn out to be so good.
As your ship closes with the signal source, you finally get your first look at the CSS Roanoke. At maximum zoom, the optical image is jerky and poor quality, but the ship looks undamaged and silent. You detect no heat radiating from it, and no signals of any kind beyond the transponder.
Suddenly several things happen rapidly...
1. Alarms sing as the ship detects another active heat source in the area, about the same distance as you from the Roanoke and moving in silently just like you are.
2. A sudden and very powerful active sensor sweep reaches out from the supposedly dead Roanoke. It plays over both your own ship and the other ship you have detected for long seconds before it dies. The computer cannot determine its source, but the power behind the signal was incredible, far beyond what your own ship is capable of.
3. Just after the scan, you detect a burst transmission from the Roanoke aimed at the StellarComm relay. It lasts a mere fraction of a second.
4. The transponder signal dies.
Both teams start in space, equidistant from the Roanoke. You know only that your target is supposed to be at these coordinates, and the only thing nearby is this derelict ship. The target must be aboard this ship, and judging from the activity from this 'derelict' he has not been idle.
If you're curious, yes... you are within extreme weapons range of the other ship.
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Topic: CSS Roanoke - Round 1 - Play Begins (Read 24370 times)