Mission to Mithril - Part 2

 

The Crew of the Skylark 2 continues to investigate what happened at Mithril Down starport and discovers that the answer may be on the far side of a frozen continent.

This note is from our September 9, 2018 session and was written by Carl and Kay with additions by myself.

Since we are now scattered around the country, we used Discord for voice communications and Roll20 online virtual tabletop to connect with each other.

Continued from: Mission to Mithril - Part 1.

Imperial Date: 303-1107.

 
Location: The Planet Mithril in the Sword Worlds Subsector.

We came to Mithril Down to deliver a snowplow and pick up a passenger, but were met with some type of EMP that disabled part of our drive system.

It looked like there had been a fight/massacre in the port building complex. We found lots of blood stains, but no bodies or survivors so far.

We are not sure if we can even move the Skylark, since we took a bit of landing gear damage on impact.

When we left off, Sam and Kipenzi were in the port buildings, Leon and Fig were trying to cobble together an EMP direction finder (in the event that another one happens) and Medicus was on sensors and guns in case a threat appeared.

Sam and Kipenzi found more blood stains, but still no people. Someone had taken a solvent based cleaner and had tried to clean up the blood. Mostly it just got smeared around and it made any kind of DNA analysis impossible. It is almost as if someone was trying to kill something that was in the blood...

Checking the pantry and cold storage, Sam noticed all of the high-end or luxury stuff was gone. The cold storage and bar also had been looted. The dining hall table was overturned and there were more of those wiped up blood stains. There were a lot of holes from what looked like maybe an ACR. Sam grabbed a few shell casings that had been left behind. Whoever had done this had cleaned up their brass, but missed two of them that had rolled behind a trash can.

1530 Local Afternoon
They walked up a staircase to the control tower. There were windows here and they could see the starport was in a wide valley with mountains in the distance, all covered with snow. It was intensely white in the brilliant sunlight. They could see the Skylark 2 tilted slightly on the landing pad a couple hundred meters away.

All of the control panels were set on auto. They looked for new information, but it only duplicated what we found in the computer room. Sam found a link set up to ATV so it could get alerts of any incoming ships.

The automated log showed our arrival as the last activity, so the system was working as we came down. About a week before a newt ship, the E-a-taka Wasab, came and went.

Since the EMP seemed to be finely tuned toward taking out grav lifters, it didn’t affect our comm. It likely didn’t disturb anything here either and there was no visible damage.

Back downstairs at bottom of stairs they rechecked the meeting room and office, nothing had changed.

They found another office that looked half unused. The right side was full of empty file cabinets, desks, stacks of room dividers and chairs. They all looked like they were never used. The starport seems to have been built for a lot more people than were actually here, or maybe they were planning on expanding it.

Looking through the engineer's desk

On the left were two cubicles that had been in use. There was a desk terminal connected to the base computer system and the desk was messy, piled with printouts, paperwork and hand written notes. It had belonged to Katla Karlseffni, the port’s engineer. All of the paperwork was at least a week old. It dealt mostly with the base power plant, sewage system and life support. Some of the hand written notes were concerned with EMP with sketches of electronics and how to build some circuits for a focused EMP device.

The other desk belonged to Padraig Staki, the manager for Safety and Wildlife.

At the west side of the building was another hallway leading to the front of the building. When they walked down it they found a broken door leading into a cargo storage room and armory. The armory had been looted and cleared out.

Sam and Kipenzi went back to the main corridor, removed their button cams and mounted them on a wall at each end of the hall. It was a way to make sure no one would be coming out of hiding to sneak up behind them without the crew on the ship knowing about it. The ship would only have voice contact with them from here on out.

They walked to the rear of the building where the vehicle storage area was and investigated the ATV. Sam went to the back door and Kipenzi climbed the ladder to the roof and checked out the turret. There were antennas and a mount for a weapon in the turret. Simultaneously opening the rear door and roof hatch they entered the ATV and made sure no one was inside.

Sam was quickly able to find the online instruction manual and start it up.

He quickly read through the specifications:

The vehicle runs on six very large wheels, with tires filled with a lightweight gel which seals punctures and provides the vehicle with buoyancy in water. The vehicle’s interior consists of a driving compartment and main compartment subdivided into two configurable areas separated by the tiny galley on one side and fresher on the other. There are side doors just behind the driving compartment, and roof hatches in the driving and main sections of the vehicle. You can use these as an airlock by closing the airtight partition between the main and driving compartments.

It has a small but efficient life-support plant under the main compartment floor alongside its fusion power plant. So long as the vehicle has power, it can recycle air and water, processing a range of biological matter, gases, and liquids. Plant and animal matter can also be processed into an edible paste served like porridge or formed into dried blocks and carried as emergency rations. How nutritious and bad-tasting these rations are depends on what is available, but in theory an ATV of this type can keep its crew alive for months or even years.

The control cab has seats for a driver and an additional crew member. The ATV is equipped with powerful driving lights and remotely controlled spotlights plus radar, thermal and low-light instruments. It is also equipped with magnetic sensors and a seismic activity detector as standard.

The two configurable spaces are currently set up with four bunks which can be collapsed when not in use, creating additional working or living space. One configurable area has a dining/meeting table on the other side, whilst the forward compartment has workstations for two crew.

The ATV has a narrow gantry running around the outside from the cab doors to rear airlock with retractable ladders to reach the ground. This platform is intended for use as an elevated working station, with another pair of ladders giving access to the flat roof of the vehicle. There is also a winch for towing or self-recovery if the vehicle becomes ditched.

There is a small turret on the roof containing various antennae and instruments including a powerful multimode camera, and can support a light weapon. A locker next to the rear airlock contains a shotgun and rifle, with 100 rounds of ammunition for each.

The ATV is outfitted with a range of common tools, including shovels, saws and various power tools which can be charged or run directly off the ATV’s power plant, along with an awning that can be used to protect a work crew from the sun or increase living space by acting as a tent.

Typical working crew is four; two in the cab and two riding in the rear area or sleeping in the bunks. Collapsing the bunks makes it possible to accommodate a more people in the rear area in cramped semi-comfort and possibly more. Many crews resort to space-gaining tricks like opening the airlock or moving items into it for storage, or rigging seats or hammocks over the cargo, making a trip more tolerable for a larger crew.

It turned out to be and easy start and a pretty darned good vehicle. Definitely good to have on planet. A rifle and a shotgun plus ammunition inside were a bonus.

It had a remote control for the big doors on the main control panel menu and Sam opened the doors and drove out of the hanger, went around the building and took it across the field to the Skylark.

Once everyone was back at the ship we planned to take the snowplow out of the ship and park it next to the ATV and then lift the air/raft out and move it to the cargo bay for dismantling the grav lifter components and repair the ship.

Getting the snowplow parked outside was no problem, but when Medicus tried to move the air/raft, he got multiple error indications, the same components were failed as on the Skylark. BUMMER !!!

Change of plans: After lunch we decided to go back to the port building and do a more thorough search.

Everyone would head back except Leon who would monitor the radio, keeping an eye on sensors and the video feed from the button cams.

We put the ATV and the container with the spare life support back in the Skylark’s cargo bay and walked across the field to the terminal. The temperature had crept to just above freezing and the sky was a brilliant blue and the air was fresh. The UV from the F-Class star overhead was higher than was healthy and everyone stayed bundled up and with their goggles on.

Once at the terminal building we split into two groups: Fig and Sam to the right door and Medicus and Kipenzi to the left. Sam wore Leon’s button cam since his was stuck to the wall in the main hall opposite Kipenzi’s. She would not be transmitting any video back to the ship, but would be staying near Medicus in case something happened.

Fig activated the sensor array in his prosthetic arm, Ir/UV/Geiger counter.

The search went on pretty much as before with no new discoveries until they got to the power plant/engineering area.

Medicus checked out the blood stains. Someone had tried to clean them up, but he could still tell that someone had been fatally shot here. The chemicals used in the cleanup had destroyed the DNA so there was no way to figure out who had been killed here. It was likely the Engineer, Katla Karlseffni, since this was her work area but there was no way he could be sure.

Notes on a workbench matched those found in Katla’s office concerning the construction of a focused EMP generator. It looked like she had been working on it for nearly a year.

The melted device on the workbench that we had seen earlier matched the notes, so it was not something damaged by the EMP, it was the source of the EMP. It looked like it was hastily wired up to a control panel/sensor device to activate when it detected a ship.

“A robotic trap.”, says Kipenzi.

Fig said, “Looks like it was automated to hit the next arriving ship, and we just happened to be it.”

This was meant to kill a ship and the Chief Engineer for the starport did this.

The question is, “Why?”

There was no indication that it was part of an official project.

There were a lot of spare parts here, but nothing that we could use to repair the ship. We scanned everything so that Leon could see back at the Skylark and he didn’t see anything we could use either.

Fig saw some items that might be useful for the EMP detector, and grabbed them even though we probably will not need to continue trying to make a detector after all.

As we left the lab area, Kip spotted a small magnetic container stuck to the back of a toolbox. Checking it out, she found a data storage device.

We decided to head back to the ship at this point. The sun had gone down while we were searching and Leon turned on the Skylark’s running lights to give us something to aim for in the dark.

While we were on our way back, Leon spotted a distress signal on the Comm log. About 2200 kilometers from here, it appeared automated but looked serious. Probably Sword World, but definitely a distress signal. No way to tell how long it had been going on, but it was on a civilian frequency

Sam disabled the snowplow by taking the key and locking the cab.

Decrypting the card was a high priority, and we had purchased several decryption programs after our last flailing away (the brooch from oh so long ago) Medicus started in on it.

The IR signatures (two small, one large) we had noted earlier were still in about the same place. We checked our Grav belts and they were also fried, alas.... Repair or Replace.

We decided to investigate the IR signal that we had detected earlier in case it was someone hurt, possibly some of the starport personnel. The snowplow seemed like a good idea for and out and back trip. Sam and Kipenzi took the plow out to see who or what was out there.

Approaching the site, the headlights showed some bluish lizard like creatures about two meters long. No rescue here. Kipenzi backed off and they turned around and headed back toward the ship.

On the way back one wheel got stuck in a hole. Kipenzi tried to back out but dug it in deeper, as Sam fired a warning shot at the lizards(?) approaching. Still stuck but made some progress.

The lizards appeared to retreat as Kipenzi finally got the snowplow free, and they headed back to the Skylark.

We discussed the distress signal when they got back. It would take over a week to get to the source in the ATV. We don't know when the signal started, and decided to try and get a comm/visual link from the ATV via the starport’s comm satellite before heading out.

The ATV is our backup power and food source if we are stuck here a while. It could carry four of us and have room to recover three people.

So we decided to wait and try to set that up. Tomorrow...

Medicus reported that he had made some progress but needed to sleep some before continuing. All of us did, it was time for some well-deserved sleep.

304-1107
Medicus and Sam continued trying to decrypt the coded storage device while the rest started working on setting up the comm relay for the ATV. Decryption made some progress, and the engineering team put together a reliable satellite comm relay by local noon.

Kipenzi and Leon went to the refuse pit to see if any goodies could be found. It looked like there had been a fire in the pit, and a trashed snowplow was there too.

Fig said “Guess that was the reason for our delivery”.

Leon climbed down to look closer with a safety line. There were bones in the burn area and it looked recent. Medicus looked via camera - he counted three human bodies.

Checking our landing gear, we discovered that the tilt that we noticed earlier was caused by a suspension issue. When we were hit by the EMP we had come down pretty hard. Fortunatly there would be no problem towing the ship for refueling if we needed to. There were some hose lines in the port, and if coupled to ours we would not need to move at all.

We set to refueling and processing the water, it would take a total of 4 days to fill the tanks with hydrogen so we would be ready to take off if we could get the ship repaired.

305-1107
Medicus broke the code! The data pack contained ship traffic information. It showed arrivals and departures in the Sword Worlds and adjacent systems. As Fig added these records to his personal/ship log of who came and went from where (he started that a looong time back).

This had to have been left by the intelligence officer. On closer look we saw that he had compiled a detailed listing of ships moving among the worlds of the Sword Worlds and Lunion Shield, highlighting several that might be involved in intelligence-gathering and others that could possibly become assets for the Imperium. His findings indicate some discrepancies in the movement of certain Imperial merchant vessels, which may not be making the stops their logs claim.

So even if we cannot recover the person (Drake) we came for, we have some good information to return to Imperial Navy. This is valuable information.

At this point we started planing our trip in the ATV to find the source of the distress signal. Who would stay with the ship, who would ride in the ATV? What supplies would be be bringing?

We also decided it would be good to adapt the ATV turret to mount a laser rifle fired from one of the consoles. Someone standing in the cab could fire through the roof hatch.

Continued in Mission to Mithril - Part 3

See Also: Dramatis Personæ, Skylark 2, Campaign Starts, The 2nd Adventure, The Chamax Plague, Horde, Shadows, Research Station Gamma, Twilight's Peak, Prison Planet, Leedor on Aramis, First Call at Zilla, Trade War, The Bloodwell, ANNIC NOVA, The Kinunir, Kesser's Return and Justice.