The Last Flight of the Amuar - Part 7

Having located the Amuar, the crew of the Skylark begins to explore the ship and discovers that there may have been survivors from the crash.

This entry is from the November 29, 2020 session and is based on the Carl and Kay’s notes.

Continued from: The Last Flight of the Amuar - Part 6.

Location: Pa'an in the Egyrn Subsector, Trojan Reach Sector.

Imperial Date: 124-1109.

1800
It is evening on this part of Pa’an.

We have found the Amuar. The ship is in an estuary on the opposite side of the planet from the only major settlement/city on Pa’an, Zhdantspanon.

The air/raft looks good for an approach; there is enough space on the top deck to land, and looks like there might be some fairly easy access to the interior. There is definite damage to the hull.

Erek on the Voidskipper called and said, “We found a second crash site, should we check it out while you are looking at the Amuar?”

The other crash site is 2610 Km from the Amuar and we decided, for now, safety in numbers would be a better plan and it would be better if we didn’t split up. We got the coordinates and will visit it once we are done here. Voidskipper will hold position over us and keep both sites in view.

It might be the missing launch, might be another ship entirely. It looks more of a debris field than a bad landing.

Sam and Leon stayed onboard; the rest took the air/raft down. We wore our Psi helmets, ballistic cloth, and hardened VACC suits. We carried weapons and medical supplies in case we found trouble.

We noticed several large mammal-ish herbivores about 500 meters away grazing in the wetlands surrounding the ship.  They sort of look like hippos about the size of an elephant.

The terrain is an estuary with up to 4-5-meter-high tides. There is a definite water line on the side of the ship, confirming the tidal action we had expected. Water was trickling out of cracks in the hull on G & H decks as we approached.

We gotta be careful the tide does not catch us. The ship becomes an island for part of the day. The tide is going out now and it will be 12 hours before it is high again as Moon-B passes Pa’an.  The highest tides are when both Moons B and D are adjacent.   

There are plants and some kind of invertebrate, something like barnacles growing on the ship at lower levels below the high tide line.

The launch bay doors on the top of the ship are damaged and one is hanging loose, but is not open enough for the air/raft to land inside the bay.

There is a hatch nearby where we can gain entrance without going in through the bay doors.

The Amuar remains more or less upright in her normal flight configuration. She is canted a little down to the starboard bow, but not sufficiently to make it difficult to move around and doesn’t look like she is about to tip over. The landing gear was down, so it looks like she was under control on descent.

We landed on the top of the ship, above A Deck, near a visible access point. We used our grav belts to lower ourselves down to the hatch on the side of A Deck.

Once inside, we could see Vacc suits and tools scattered on the floor inside the open airlock. All of the doors that we could see were open, and computer terminal was dead.  Some emergency lighting was on, so batteries were still at least a little good.  This surprised us, batteries usually don't last that long...

It Looked like someone took a hammer to some control panels haphazardly. Iris valve to B deck was open; looking down, it trashed, too. Bullet holes in the wall were a surprise, and a femur bone was on the floor. Cannibals? Local fauna? Medicus looked and YES, bite marks apparent. Just the bone. Where was the rest of the carcass? We got our guns out and were even more careful after that.

In the launch bay, it looked like some of the damage matched the damage on the launch we saw during our Midnight Madness on Belgard. It looked like the launch hit the door on takeoff. There were a lot of leaves and debris in the bay that may have blown in during a storm.

We went through the open iris valve down to B deck. Part of the deck was torn up, like an explosion would have done. Except for the dim emergency lights, there was no power here, either.

Kipenzi tripped while looking into a cleaning closet and slightly injured her left knee. Getting up she noticed a trip wire. Right next to her was a drop shaft with no elevator. It was a trap for sure. EXTRA CAREFUL from there on.

Pa’an being a Zhodani world, it could be a case of telepathic control forcing the crew to fight or it could have been a falling out from accumulated aggravation.

Back on the Skylark, Sam got a call from Francisca on the Voidskipper. Marianne and Ueinsadz are fighting and Erek is trying to break it up; they’ve been on each other’s nerves for months but this is new, and Erek threatening to shoot them is new, too.

Once Erek was back on the comm, Sam advised them to move to a high orbit as some kind of Psionic intrusion was looking much more likely. Voidskipper went up, maintaining an open channel with Skylark, and with the away team by relay.

Back on the Amuar, Kipenzi looked into a fresher that had been used well after the water had failed, very messy. Whoever had survived the crash wasn’t much into sanitation.

Medicus looked down the shaft and sees a rigged rope ladder going down and water at the bottom. The Elevator shaft normally has a platform, it may be underwater now.

Medicus found a pistol lying on the deck; he picked it up and checked it. Automatic, slug thrower, magazine fired out.

Fig set his grav belt to support most of his weight, making it easier to arrest a fall if he slipped. (We all did)

Checking the map, we could see the main power plant was directly below us on decks C and D, high enough so that they would always be above the water line.  We proceeded carefully, clearing rooms as we went. Someone had twiddled the emergency batteries, so maybe we could get main power on.

The backup computer is on H deck, below the water line, but still a possibility for retrieving some storage.

We stayed with the access hatches rather than expose ourselves to open fire in the elevator shaft.  You cannot be too careful.

Kipenzi went through the hatch down to C deck.  There were more human bones, plant stuff, it looked almost like a nest.

Suddenly something jumped out at Kipenzi. She killed it with one shot at point-blank range as Medicus and Fig moved quickly to support. The thing’s claws had done minor damage to her vacc suit, but it was still air tight.

It was some kind of armored bug thing with four limbs. Obviously, a predator with two front-facing eyes and ripping claws on its limbs. It had an odd mouth that was sideways and it didn’t look like anything any of us has seen before. Sam did a search in our database, but it didn’t come up with anything. The Scout Service has never done a complete survey of Pa’an, so it might be local.

The bug-thing had a nest, scraps of cloth, and some human bones. No eggs we could find, but lots of nooks and crannies could have held some. Probably would not hatch in the next few hours anyway.

The power plant had error indications, lots of failures. The good news was that the auxiliary plant on D deck was on standby.  That was what had kept the emergency lights on.  One puzzle probably resolved.  More bones scattered around there too, at least enough to make a human skeleton.

Clearing the area before we moved on, but aux power was a good goal for the start.  We went through staterooms, conference room... rifled but no sign of any occupants recently. All food was gone from the galley, and lots of knives and utensils as well.

Medicus came around a corner and spotted someone dressed in rags. The person threw a spear at him, but missed. Looking at it, it was clearly a homemade contrived spear, made of a kitchen knife and a length of pipe. Medicus ducked to one side into a stateroom and Kipenzi fired through the doorway, to warn them off.

Medicus saw more gnawed-on bones in the stateroom.

Fig yells, “This is a rescue, not an attack, please come out, we won’t hurt you!”

Kipenzi continues with, “If you are crew of the Amuar we’re here to rescue you.”

They hear footsteps running away. Medicus says he looked like a human male, maybe Solomani extraction, looked like a cave man.

The Voidskipper crew said that could still feel a little irritation in low orbit; were going to move into a higher orbital position and see if that alleviated the stress some.

The person we saw had been under the stress inducer field for a loooooong time, so we were not likely to reason with him.  We headed toward the auxiliary power area, to try and get some actual juice to the ship.

Looking down to D deck, we saw more human bones, more predator nests, more disruption. Some lights on the power plant indicated low level activity only. Nothing that we could see was moving.

Kipenzi goes down through the hatch and looks around. She sees another predator through an open door moving toward her. She draws her gun and shoots it as it leaps.

Medicus spots a second one and shoots, cutting it in two with his laser rifle.



When it was all done, Kipenzi found that her suit was now compromised, leaking air, but still working as armor.

Kipenzi checked the power plant, there was some damage, but it was running in low power mode.

We noticed that every single door and iris valve on the ship was open. Someone would have had to do that before putting the power plant on low power. It looked like the only things getting power were the emergency lights and the Auxiliary Bridge/Fire control on H-Deck. H-Deck would be dry now, but would be under water nearly half of the day. We saw water leaking out between hull plates earlier, but at least part of it would have to be still sealed, or the safeties would have cut in and shut off the power.

The Auxiliary Bridge/Fire control can control all of the ship's guns. If someone down there brought the auxiliary power plant back up, they could shoot down the Skylark from there.

We wanted to get power to the computer, but could not do that from the auxiliary power plant.  It might be dangerous to bring the power up to full, and would take several hours anyway. Bringing a generator down and hooking it into the computer would be faster, and not interrupt whatever was being sustained.

We proceeded, with Fig leading this time since Kipenzi's VACC suit was already breached. We found more quarters, bunk type with human bones scattered about. We retrieved personal data pads as we came across them.

We found another messy fresher, this one looked like it was used recently.

Fig approached the cargo bay and threw two pieces of equipment in to try to spring any traps. We heard footsteps and yelling in the hall on the far side and caught some movement in the shadows.  Multiple voices, at least two people, both male. We couldn’t tell what they said, but they sounding angry.  He yelled our good intentions again, but no luck. 

Light from one side looked like an open cargo door, and it did appear that we could land the air/raft in the D/E-Deck cargo bay safely.

We headed back to the air/raft, being careful in case some of them got behind us. Looking across the wetlands around the ship, the tide was fully out and would start returning soon.

2100
Once back, Kipenzi patched her suit to make it air tight.  It would take much longer to do a full repair, something she could do later. There was no reason to risk the backup suit as well when we go back. We picked up non-lethal weapons and some food that we could use as icebreakers. Fig started digging through the ship’s locker for a power supply of the right size so we could to try and get the Amuar’s computer running.

Erek and the Voidskipper are up at about 30,000 Km and he says that they think they are out of range of whatever the Zhodani were beaming at them. We noted that Ueinsadz had an arm in a sling. We decided to keep our Psi helmets on, for the duration.

Sam took the two data pads from Kipenzi and started working on unlocking them.

125-1109 0001
Sam got a breakthrough and started downloading data from the first data pad. It had belonged to Ru Iirsaara, a drive hand.

It contained games and some sexy texts to Daniel Daruunii, one of the gunners. There was also a lot of complaints of what an asshole the Captain was, but nothing to help us learn what happened to the ship.

About three hours later, he got into the second data pad. It had belonged to Tadeu Porfirio, the Power Plant officer. Aside from personal stuff, it contained notes concerning power level problems after the main jump drive failed at Odin on 273-1108. They were only able to do jump 2 and went to Hadera on 273 and Jumped for Pa'an on 287 from Hadera.

This shed some light on the Amuar history and explained the unknown part of the timeline. There was possibly more information in the pad, he would continue searching as time permitted.

125-1109 0800
Breakfast video call with Erek to catch him up on what we found. He knew Porfirio and said that he was a competent engineer.

Examining the notes on the power plant and his difficulties more closely, Kipenzi said that some of it looked like sloppy maintenance possibly due to poor morale, avoidable problems. Tadeu never badmouthed the Captain but said nothing good either.

We also now had a complete timeline of the last flight of the Amuar:

 

It looks like the Amuar landed on Pa’an, and actually crashed on the way out.  Could be a general Psi field.  We set up a scanning program to look for anything anomalous.

We wondered if Medicus would be able to detect a Psi field, after his experiences on Shionthy.

We put together a plan where we would go to the auxiliary bridge on H Deck. We would time it so that we would arrive just before low tide. It would be tricky since we didn’t know how long it would take us to get from the cargo deck down to H Deck. We settled on 0900, which would give us about two hours before the water reached its lowest point.

We decided to take the cargo lifter net also, to bring back the people for cold sleep till we get back to civilization.

0900
Tranq pistols, cargo net, food, loaded up. We go back to the Amuar.

Kipenzi flew the air/raft down to the open cargo bay door on D&E deck. We look in to see if there is anyone inside. There was no one that we could see waiting for us, all we could see was some cargo containers, and a freight elevator.

Instead of flying in, we decided to park it hovering about 7 meters away and fly in on our grav belts for just that last little bit of security. The plan was that if we see anyone, we would tranq them and net them and then put them in the air/raft for safekeeping.

Fig turned up the gain on his speakers to listen, but didn’t hear anyone.

Once out of the cargo bay, we went into the adjacent machine shop. It was a real mess, tools everywhere. It looked like someone had been making something primitive and hadn’t bothered to clean up afterwards.

When Medicus stepped through the door into the corridor, an axe on a spring slammed into his chest. Fortunately, his suit absorbed most of the blow, but the big guy was pushed back a bit. He checked his suit and verified that nothing vital was hit as the axe dangled on a spring in front of him.

If it had hit Fig, Fig, being much shorter than Medicus, it would have gone right through his face plate.

The main jump drive compartment had LOTS of bones, maybe five people. All are chewed up. We also found two more guns; both were empty.

The covers on the drop shaft were open and the rope ladder that we saw in the shaft earlier was hanging down past this level.

1000
Kipenzi opened the hatch in the floor of engineering and saw another predator. She shot at it twice and missed both times, slamming the hatch cover down and spinning the wheel as it jumped towards her.  We heard a thud as it bounced off the hatch cover half a second later.

Continued in: The Last Flight of the Amuar - Part 8.

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, Outback and Skylark and the Pit.