Skylark and the Pit - Part 3

 

As the planet T’yana descends into civil disorder and the crew explores the Ancient ship, they discover some of the answers they have been seeking ...and then something goes very wrong.

This chapter is based on Carl and Kay’s notes from our January 5, 2020 session. Since we are now scattered around the country, we used Discord for voice communications and the Roll20 online virtual tabletop to connect with each other.

Continued from: Skylark and the Pit - Part 2.

Location: The Planet T’yana in the Egyrn Subsector

Imperial Date: 274-1108

Late afternoon.
While Sam was back at the Skylark keeping watch on us and the world, we went into the just opened/awakened ship.

The spherical chamber we were confronting made it unlikely that we would be able to get up the other side if we went down into this one. Frictionless surfaces and an inclined floor made movement without rope/grav belt impossible, unless we wanted to drop four stories to the bottom of this shaft - NO.

Consulting with the professor about whether to go get them or have them sent out by air/raft, he could not get in contact with the control tower. We did a radio check with Sam and learned that there was a riot going on over by the tower.

Sundown.
We went up to wait for Sam and found six soldiers standing guard in front of the building, we told them we’re waiting for Sam and chatted with them until he arrived.

Sam showed up in the air/raft with grav belts to our rescue, he even brought one for the professor. He also brought our cargo lifter net in case we needed take anything heavy out with us.

Everyone but Kipenzi and Professor Katzl wore psi helmets. She had hers with her, but left it off because at one point she heard a sound that no one else heard. She kept listening.

Past one spherical chamber and on to another. The professor, who wasn’t wearing a mask, kept telling us it smelled like an open grave inside. The next sphere had a passage downward.

We moved into a chamber with four pressure doors, the one to the south was partially open.

When he saw it, Fig said nervously, “It's not a door if it's ajar?”

The shaft down looked like there was another chamber, maybe with water at the bottom. There was a black panel/touchpad next to each door. There looked like maybe a terminal or control panel in the corridor to south.

Sam at this point reports that he has a weak signal – we realized that we will be going dark soon with no video or even audio getting back to the ship.

Medicus went to check, and it was definitely a control panel. The text that had been showing up around town at times was scrolling on the screen.

The Professor examined one of the black panels next to one of the closed pressure doors and we heard a grinding sound but didn’t see any other effects. We advised him to not touch anything.

On the control panel in the corridor, the text was scrolling up and down and writing over and over again. An error message maybe?

Down at the end of the passage, there was a door making a sizzling, sparking sound and producing a little smoke.

The air was stale but breathable and the decay smell was fading as we moved away from the central shaft.

To our surprise, Kipenzi’s X-ray scanner could see through the interior walls and doors. The room behind the shorting door was about 9 meters across and there were some shapes, and maybe some equipment behind the walls.

Medicus analyzed the smoke, and it wasn’t dangerous, at least in its present concentration.

The Professor agreed that it is a burning smell and wondered if it was what Kipenzi heard from outside on her scanners the day before. There were labels on the wall were in the same script, but different words next to each door. Some of the doors were blue and others were red.

Touching a panel next to a blue door caused it to open, revealing a square room about 4 meters across with a large thing in the middle and a control panel or terminal on the left.

Kipenzi tried to open a door via the control panel, and it opened. It closed behind her as she entered, but opened in response to an interior panel. There was a roundish bed plus a cabinet and a control panel with a sorta perch in front of it. Likely Droynish. There was nothing on that control panel, it looked dead. There was a spear and two shields with dinosaur(?) heads on them decorating one wall. Cabinet had Droynish clothing that looked fancy.

We decided to try and open the sizzling door and see if we can fix something broken, or at least stop the short(?) Leon and Kipenzi made ready, and the door opened with a sound like ripping cloth.

We found a room with five control panels, two had Droyne skeletons in front of them. A couple of the panels, were scrolling “The Text”, the rest were blank. The skeletons fell apart when touched. Medicus thought that at least one had died from blunt-force trauma, the skull was cracked.

The sizzling was coming from around one of the doors.

Leon checked it out and it looked like a malfunctioning defense mechanism. He tried to disable it and succeeded. Memories of electrical damage in our past flitted across our minds, thinking of Kipenzi on Yourbund – she still has the electrical scars from that adventure.

Screens at the control panels were not responsive to touch. Kipenzi’s scanners told us there was power running under the floor, running East-West. We tried to follow the lines (initially West) to see if we could find the source of the power and shut down the machine.

The next door opened smoothly, onto more corridors. Power lines seemed to run down the middle of every corridor, so East-West went out the window with that.

We found another small room with a dead control panel.

We followed the power lines down to the right and found a red door with a different label on the wall. When we touched to control panel, there was a low-pitched rumbling sound and it didn’t open.

Medicus tried to open the red door at the end of the corridor and it made the same sound and didn’t open.

Kipenzi tried to open it and it complained to her as well.

Medicus asked Leon to give it a try.

Leon used a crowbar and opened it with no problem. Where electronics skill fails, crowbar and strength succeed!

We came to a door that looked like a door to the outside of the ship (or a high security door?) Scanner indicated a big room with probable control panels and at least one skeleton. As Kipenzi was checking the room, all the control panels in the room where we stood came on and started scrolling. Kipenzi also heard an odd voice saying “One must choose to help me die”. The Professor didn’t hear it and he was not wearing a psi helmet.

It seemed to Kipenzi that she could now read the panels as they scrolled and that was what the mysterious text was, “One must choose to help me die”. That will help a LOT in the translation/understanding of the text and language we have encountered.

Leon got the other door opened, and as Medicus went through he took a big electrical shock. Shades of Yorbund! His prosthetic arm took the shock severely, and was difficult to move at the elbow, the joint may be damaged. The hand was OK though, he also had some minor burns on his skin.

The room looked more like a bridge than just another terminal room.

The skeleton had a coat with fancy shoulder pads.

Standing in front of the door, Leon could feel his hair rise a little. He tried to talk Medicus through the shutdown process that worked on the earlier door. First try didn't work, second try felt better to Medicus and in fact did disable the security mechanism so we could use that door without getting zapped.

Medicus threw a bolt through the doorway to verify that was really turned off.

A column rose up out of the floor in the center of the 'bridge' and a panel on it opened. A light came on briefly, and Kipenzi and the professor heard the 'one must...' message, plus "I traveled far with my cargo in the service of Yaskoydray. My cargo was precious – a colony of humans of the Yaskoydri and their caretakers. I was assigned to the Long Journey to the galactic core, when a mishap destroyed my drives. Helpless, I drifted here. I deployed my cargo onto the surface, before falling here. Over time, I sank into the mud, forgotten, in pain. I have waited for so long for salvation. Please. One of you must help me. Please help me to die".

Kipenzi was reaching for the button when Fig said, “That looks like a self-destruct to me, do you really want to hit it with us in the ship?”

She quickly pulled her hand back, realizing what she had almost done.

“Any way of relieving the pain without destroying the ship?”

“No.”

Kipenzi was able to communicate with whatever it was. Some kind of AI maybe. She asked about the disappearances of people, and was told it was not fully in control. Likely the defense disintegrator system did them in.

Asking about turning the defense off, it said that killing it would fix that. Push the button. We confirmed that it was a self-destruct button, instantaneous. The ship (hologram) was about a half kilometer across, and that would disintegrate pretty much everything inside the evacuation radius.

Asking about a dictionary of the language, we got a yes. BONUS!! We got lots of pictures of the Droyne, and we were able to video the dictionary as it was scrolled across the screen. Medicus had also collected the Droyne corpse we found earlier and put it in his sample bag.

Leon and Fig started fiddling with a grav belt to set up a timer to shut it off, so we could leave one over the button with a time delay. That way we and everyone else could be well away from the ship when the self destruct went off.

We discussed tracking down the 'smell of death' before we leave (actual corpse, or something live maybe) Ship told us there were currently no living on board except us. There had been people entering in last couple days, teleported into the central shaft, now likely at bottom. Maybe the cultists? But the chances of an actual Droyne body sailed out the window.

Questioning the ship, people have been coming into the ship over time to try to help it die, but they came in the same way we did, with frictionless surfaces (and no ropes or grav belts) slid into the 4-story shaft and died at the bottom. We were the first to get through.

Medicus finished his recording.

We confirmed that the grav belt countdown worked reliably, and set one up for two (2) hours over the button and beat feet out of that place.

We passed some previously not seen security bots, but had no difficulty in moving along.

Back outside, we recovered our cameras and relays, and got the word to everyone to get out and expand the evacuation radius. Told Sam to prep the ship for takeoff. Again, the control tower could not be reached, yet another reason to be somewhere else.

On the way back we saw smoke rising from several areas of the city. That didn’t look good.

We flew back to the Skylark 2 with grav belts and Professor Katzl took our car and drove back to his place. About the time we get back the tower calls saying, “Sorry we had some cultist problems, what’s up?”

“Can we leave now?”

“Yes.”

“Bye.”

Cleared for takeoff, off we took. The Skylark was in the air and we would be well out of the area when the timer went off.

The timer counted down, and nothing happened. and nothing... and nothing...

We landed again and talked about what to do.

We could:

1. send in our robot with relays to see what happened.
2. go back in ourselves
3. let the main cultist woman loose on it with advice on buttons to push.

Midnight arrived and the self-destruct is two hours over due.

275-1108
About 0100, Kipenzi and Fig flew the air/raft back to the dig site and sent the engineering bot down to the ship. They didn’t even need to land since it had built-in grav propulsion.

It went into the hole and rounded the first corner. There was a flash and then an end of transmission. Checking the recorded video afterwards, there were a couple of frames showing one of the security bots turn towards it just before the flash.

The Last Thing the Drone Saw

Looking down over the city, civilization was breaking down but things had calmed down for a while.

0300
Fig and Kipenzi in air raft discussed options. Fig said, “I am not really inclined to go back into the ship, maybe it could teleport us out?”

Kipenzi mused that what we could really use right now, were those Ancient grav platforms that teleported between each other. Maybe there were some on this ship, too? In a cargo bay somewhere?

The professor reported that people are still seeing visions all over the city.

They headed back to the Skylark to think it over for a while. Lots of possibilities, including maybe some sleep. It has been a long day.

Continued in Skylark and the Pit - Part 4

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, Justice, Mission to Mithril and Outback.