Clawpair Orbital, 2 Months After First Contact
You stare at the report on your desk through tired eyes. There's no way this can be right. Can it?
((Holding It Together: 1d100(3) + Rightform(10) + Friends in Odd Places(5) - Fatigue (5) = 13))
Unfortunately, the damage report is all too real. One of the subspace labs has had some form of accident, which is why you've been dragged out of bed in the middle of station night. As you read through the report, the true scope of the destruction becomes clear...
((Where was the issue? 1d4: 1))
((The Vicissitudes of The Universe: 1d100(9) + Hardshell(10) - Fatigue (5) = 14))
((Did You See It In Time? 1d100 (
NATURAL 1) + Tidewatch(14) - Fatigue (5) = 10))
As of the latest estimate, three-quarters of the subspace laboratory has been eaten by a microsingularity, which has potential to compromise the entire Orbital. Kalthas Jagta, head of Computing, was in the lab at the time: they are missing, presumed spaghettified. If you had been there, you too would likely be dead right now.
You contemplate your own mortality only briefly, then shake the fog of sleep from your brain and start directing rescue efforts.
((Improvise! Adapt! Overcome! Better of 2d100(66, 57)[Self-Modification Meme] + Cutspawn(22) - Fatigue (5) = 83))
((Beg, Borrow, Blackmail, Steal: 1d100(72) + Frontways(20) - Fatigue(5) = 87))
The former lab is sealed, and the section is cleared of all nonessential personnel. Precision detonations sever it from the rest of the station: the entire rest of the habitat is repositioned 500 kilometers down-orbit. A storage section is repurposed, and the subspace laboratory is put back into active service. It takes a day.
Yes, some of the new lab equipment
does look rather familiar to some of the civilians, only with the serial numbers filed off. Yes, no-one is quite sure where those explosives came from. Nobody cares: the bulk of the research has been saved. Not only has it been saved, but many of the surviving scientists have a new and fascinating subject of study. After all, no-one has ever examined a singularity up close before.
Though the warp drive research has been...
inconclusive, your three other teams have produced better results - no less astonishing in their own way.
The drones and the station are not associated. The drones are millennia older than the station, and are still performing some ancient form of military drill or sporting event. Though the details of how exactly this was determined are beyond you - something about micrometeorite weathering and maneuver patterns? - the implications are clear.
The "technologically superior" species you encountered in the Jaxus system likely does not possess the accurate, miniaturized warp drive that you were so concerned about. The station is in orbit around the toxic world because that is where the drones are. The drones are there because there is nothing there to damage if one of them were to malfunction.
So, in short: You know even less than you thought you knew about the alien species in Jaxus B, but at least now you know that you know less than you thought you knew.
-----
Crisis Turn Results:
Kalthas Jagta MIA, presumed dead.
Clawpair Orbital has lost 25 Raw Material Storage.
Klaxis Prime has gained an additional anomalous satellite: the Jagta Singularity.
The Jagta Singularity Subspace Research Project is now available.
Crisis Research Turn 3:
[ ] What is that alloy? (Industry/Void Engineering Joint Project)
The station in the Jaxus system uses an alloy unknown to our science. Put our engineers on the problem of determining its composition and reverse-engineering it.
[ ] What are they, biologically? (Genetics/Computing Joint Project)
Initial indications are that the species occupying the Jaxus station is notably different from ours. Put a team on isolating potential life signs.
[ ] How does their jump technology work? (Subspace/Computing Joint Project)
The precursor drones observed in Jaxus B had jump technology far eclipsing our own. Dedicate a team to reverse-engineering their miniaturized microjump drives.
[ ] How do the drones work? (Industry/Computing)
The sophisticated maneuvers of the precursor drones display an understanding of robotics far beyond their own. How smart are they, and can we reverse-engineer that intelligence?
[ ] What can we reasonably infer about the alien society? (Genetics/Sociology)
Even with our limited information, an educated guess as to the alien polity's structure is better than nothing at all. Alloys have to be produced somehow. Materials have to be shipped. They have to maintain comfortable habitats for themselves, the same as we do. Every detail of how they do that is part of their culture.
Non-Research actions are available:
[ ] Send another scouting party. The data you have is insufficient to draw any real conclusions.
[ ] Make Second Contact, this time deliberately. Send a xenologist and a computer scientist on the Carcina with the Contact Package.
[ ] Personally make Second Contact.
[ ] Propose that one of the other Directors should personally make Second Contact.
[ ] Stand down the emergency research teams. You've had one major accident already: let's not have another.
