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Engine Bells and Shotgun Shells (hard sci-fi quests)

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[x ] A professional naval officer, raised to the trade, with multiple live combat engagements under her belt. She's proven very hard to kill, but this has made her somewhat arrogant.

[ x] Enter a low orbit. We'll be able to quickly gather a good assessment of the situation.
 
[ ] The Daughter of an Earl, she was forced to serve as part of her Mother's will. Even so, she has proven to be an empathetic and caring leader, as long as you're on her side. She has made several enemies and her reputation often proceeds her.


[ ] Enter a low orbit. We'll be able to quickly gather a good assessment of the situation.
 
[X] Felicity Gibson
[X] A professional naval officer, raised to the trade, with multiple live combat engagements under her belt. She's proven very hard to kill, but this has made her somewhat arrogant.
[X] Enter a high orbit. Our sensors will be less useful, but it is certainly the safest course of action.
 
[X] A professional naval officer, raised to the trade, with multiple live combat engagements under her belt. She's proven very hard to kill, but this has made her somewhat arrogant.
[X] Enter a high orbit. Our sensors will be less useful, but it is certainly the safest course of action.
 
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Episode 1 Part 2: Orbit
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    • Vote details:
    - 6 votes for A Naval Officer - @Serafina @permeakra @Sime @lelenoi @Night_stalker @Crazy Tom
    - 5 votes for An Earl's Daughter - @pspan @veekie @kinigget @Andelevion @Novus Ordo Mundi
    - 1 votes for A Scientist - @E73S

    - 8 votes for A high orbit - @Serafina @permeakra @lelenoi @Night_stalker @kinigget @Andelevion @Crazy Tom @E73S
    - 4 votes for A low orbit - @pspan @Sime @veekie @Novus Ordo Mundi


    His Majesty's Starship George Vancouver was built off of a long hub-corridor that stretched the entire length of the ship. It was the ship's spine, it's central nervous system, and its main artery. But I was only interested in the first few tens of feet of it and the entrance to my office. As I span lazily towards it the ship's internal sensors picked up my biometrics and command keys and slid the hatch back into the wall. Navigating hatches had never been easy in zero-G and I'd seen more than one sailor injure themselves trying to secure one at speed, but these made the whole affair a simple one. I wondered briefly if perhaps the architects had put comfort and ease of use over security and safety, but that was an argument that held little weight until they introduced similar philosophies on ships designed for war.

    I sighed wistfully as I grabbed a wall bar and pivoted head-first into my sparsely decorated office. I missed the Fleet's warships more than I would let anyone else know, especially not my current crew. They were fine people, excellent sailors and my bridge crew was as sharp as I could expect from the Navy, but still I felt a sense of lost opportunities. I'd joined the Royal Commonwealth Navy to fight its wars and lead it's sailors, not wander the stars learning to herd cats with a gaggle of scientists. And yet here I was, on a ship with more lab space than I'd ever had in an apartment and which was soon to be filled to the brim with doctorate-holding researchers.

    The small cluster of decorations and awards pinned to one wall glinted at me and were rewarded with a look that mixed pride and venom. The Distinguished Service Cross that was the centerpiece of the display - a display once called impressive by an admiral - was now simply a reminder of how I'd gotten myself into my current predicament. If I closed my eyes I could recite the text that went with that burnished silver cross, I'd read it that many times - 'On the Third day of September, 2234, Lieutenant-Commander Felicity Gibson did take command of His Majesties Starship, the cruiser Halifax whilst under the enemy's guns…' - it went on in much the same manner for some time. The moment we'd come out of that action alive I knew there was no way the Admiralty could do anything but give me my own command. I had, however, made the mistake of assuming that they'd give me a warship.

    Instead, they'd seconded me to the scientists and placed me at the helm of the George Vancouver. I comforted myself almost every day with the fact that I had a command to myself, a ship of my own, even if she was an unarmed research vessel. Never mind that thus far all we'd done was orbit geological curiosities in Sol's asteroid belts as part of our shakedown cruise and run test after test at Anmouth. Now we had a real mission, a rescue mission. Perhaps if it went particularly well the Admiralty would realise what a mistake it had made and give me a real fighting ship. Perhaps even one of the new Type 37's, the Navy's most advanced destroyers.

    It certainly made for quite the fantasy but now wasn't the time for daydreaming. I strapped myself into the chair bolted behind my desk. There was no point in floating away as I typed the reports that were part of my daily life as ships Captain.

    - - -​

    I returned to the bridge in plenty of time for the capture burn. The planet rolled by below us, the surface only ten thousand or so kilometres away. A safe, cautious orbit around a planet that may already have claimed one of our own. Our sensor arrays were already unfurled, searching for any signs of our missing sister.

    "Nav?" I said simply. The question didn't need voicing, they all knew what was being asked.

    "Still nothing in orbit, Captain." I frowned. The atmosphere in the bridge was heavy and it was easy to understand why. If there was nothing in orbit, either our sister ship had left or something disastrous had happened to her. I was starting to fear the worst.

    "Understood. Keep scanning and report any changes." We were locked into a stable orbit and until we had more information, there was little we could safely do but wait. My first urge had been to drop the ship into as low an orbit as possible, to give our sensors the best resolution of the surface - it was where I expected to find any actual evidence of what had happened given the reports of an established research site - but then caution had overruled haste. If something had happened, perhaps low orbit around the unnamed planet was where it had occurred.

    And thus we waited. We waited for what seemed like days but couldn't have been more than a matter of hours. The steward brought us hot drinks and cold sandwiches to keep belly's full and eyes sharp. The interminable silence reigned over the bridge until finally it was broken by our Navigators grunt.

    "Captain… I have something. Several somethings." I resisted the urge to bolt from my chair, as i'd seen that impulse land someone in the ceiling more than once.

    "Show me." I said as I instead swam sedately across the short distance.

    "Here; this canyon just saw sunrise." He said, pointing at his screen. The man, Murphy, I hoped his name was, had short, dirty nails. "And we just got an image of these" He tapped three points. The northernmost pair were close together, two black spots on an otherwise pale beige landscape, one significantly larger than the other and obviously artificial. The third was an indistinct haze of what might have been a base or small compound. Our resolution was too poor for too much detail to be visible. Even so, it was a start.



    How shall we proceed?
    [ ] Drop into a low orbit and conduct close observations of the three sites.
    [ ] Deploy the ships shuttle craft with away teams to investigate, leaving a watch crew aboard the ship.
    [ ] Write in
     
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    • [X] Drop into a low orbit and conduct close observations of the three sites.

    Good, we found a starting point. Continue the steady and slow scan. We'll find what happened carefully.
     
    HMS Sophia said:
    Ask/suggest away. If it seems unweildy/impossible I'll say so.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    What do we know about the planet, outpost and the type of research being conducted?
    Do we have any satellites we can deploy for a closer look without risking the ship?
    What's the crew size of the Vancouver?
    Broadly speaking, what are the Vancouver's technical specs?
     
    [X] Drop into a low orbit and conduct close observations of the three sites.
     
    [X] Drop into a low orbit and conductclose observations of the three sites.

    We play this safe
     
    Appendix 1 & 2 - PH-533 and the Mary Kingsley class
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    • Crazy Tom said:
    What do we know about the planet, outpost and the type of research being conducted?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Appendix 1 - PH-533

    When PH-533 was first discovered by the Royal Scientific Survey Ship HMS William Dampier initial reports compared it to Mars, and indeed it's was only a little larger than the red planet that for so long tempted Earth explorers. It could not, however, have been more different.
    Denser than the than dusty planet, explorers would experience higher gravity than those who first stepped foot on Mars, and the planet had a thicker atmosphere to match. Not nearly as breathable as Earths, of course, but useful and even survivable for a brief time. It was, however, cold with a mean temperature that stayed below freezing for the majority of its seasonal period and left it with but a small pair of polar caps with little other water present on the surface.
    Of course, a description of a planet's characteristics means little without a description of its features. Often cloudless except in it's very brief summer period, the beige surface is visible in all pictures of the planet. The surface is a thin mix of Silicates, dust and worn rock stripped from PH-533's mountain ranges by the harsh winds that sometimes blow across the planet. Those ranges are still, however, harsh spikes, an indicator of extreme volcanic activity at some point in the planet's past.
    Outpost Eta was established only a matter of days after that ill-fated ship arrived in the planet's orbit, with wild suggestions of a ruined non-human complex appearing in the individual researchers messages home. The outpost is still a site of historical importance and thus is protected under the Commonwealth heritage Project.
    • Excerpts from 'A History Of Human Space Exploration, Dr Shackle Neun, 2281




    Crazy Tom said:
    Do we have any satellites we can deploy for a closer look without risking the ship? What's the crew size of the Vancouver? Broadly speaking, what are the Vancouver's technical specs?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Appendix 2 - Mary Kingsley class Research Ships

    First designed in 2227, the Mary Kingsley class were a leap forward in scientific research vessels in service by the Commonwealth Navy. At one hundred and twenty metres long and massing just eighteen hundred tons, she's smaller than similar ships in service with foreign navies, but has still left her mark on human exploration. Seventeen have been built in the thirty years or so of their service, entirely replacing the twenty-seven hundred ton Shackleton class survey vessels. Eight of these have been the initial Block 1 designs, followed by an updated nine of the Block 2 designs which added additional crew comforts and rearranged the cargo and supply spaces somewhat.
    Technologically, the onboard systems of the Mary Kingsley are almost as advanced as some of the Navy's main line warships. Twin sensor sets, one designed for planetary survey and the other for stellar survey, allow high fidelity data to be gathered about all sorts of phenomena without risking the vessel or her crew. The closed-cycle fuel cells and extendible solar panels which power the ships are also some of the most advanced in production, allowing continuous power in any situation.
    Regardless of the phenomenal technology that the Mary Kingsley's were built with, she has a full crew of just thirty including the space for ten scientists and researchers. With two six-crew bridge watches, an engineering staff of just three and four additional personnel, the ship is entirely staffed and ready for missions.
    Despite her design for fully orbital survey missions, the class is also equipped with a pair of orbit-to-surface shuttles capable of carrying ten passengers and two flight crew to anything beyond the reaches of the ship itself. Each shuttle is well fitted for long term away missions, with an inflatable base structure and light ATV allowing those ten passengers to operate on the surface without supply for some time.
    • From Jane's Naval Ships, Clarke and Monterrey, 2243
     
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    • permeakra said:
    Do we have any drones we can drop to .... fly/crawl around the sites and give us a closer ? I'm not comfortable with currently present options.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    I'd like to second this.

    If the science outpost woke up some sort of dormant planetary defense system, I'd prefer to try probing with a drone first, then the shuttle.
     
    Episode 1 Part 3: Starship down
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    • Vote Details:
    - 8 votes for Drop into a low orbit - @Crazy Tom @Noco @veekie @kinigget @Salbazier @Night_stalker @RedV @E73S


    "That's the outpost then?" I pointed to the structure-like blur on the low resolution images. I fought down a frustrated growl, annoyed with myself for coming in so high. I knew it had been the only way to stay safe but even so, it meant more time wasted, more time in which the evidence of what had happened might slip through our fingers.

    "It's exactly where their reports said it would be, give or take a few metres." Murphy's attempt to inject some humour into his tone fell well short of effective and, after an embarrassed silence, he continued, "These other two points though... Maybe volcanic activity, or weapons fire?" he shook his head, "If I'm honest Captain, I have no idea."

    "Can I take a look?" I raised an eyebrow at my fresh faced helmsman, who was suddenly floating only a couple of feet from the navigator's station. While I welcomed initiative, I wondered if perhaps she wasn't a little too eager.

    "Midshipman... Coleman. By all means." I slid sideways, allowing her to lean over the console and get a better look at the screen, albeit upside down from her orientation.

    "That's an impact site." She said almost immediately, tapping the larger of the two black smudges. "Something big. I'd wager the other is as well, though I'd need a closer look to make it a sure thing."

    "You're very sure of yourself, midshipman." Murphy put so much stress on the young woman's rank he almost broke the word. They were almost polar opposites, she the very image of youth, he the picture of grizzled experience. Perhaps it didn't help either that she was on the officers track and he, as the ships most senior Hand, was not.

    "I had a semester of disaster response. My essay was on the survivability of air crashes." She'd become defensive, almost physically curling up, and her face flushed bright red almost as soon as she'd realised.

    "Thank you, Coleman. And thank you, Mr Murphy." I cut them off before they could devolve into the intense bickering that only a newly formed bridge crew could manage, and this crew was nothing if not hastily put together.

    One, maybe two crash sites and an outpost with no beacons or radio signals. No sign of our sister ship, assuming she was still flying. Assuming she wasn't half buried in one of those crash sites. I wondered momentarily what it would be like to scream down through the atmosphere in a ship designed for space. The images that flickered through my minds eye were as horrifying as they were fascinating. I hoped beyond hope that the crash sites would simply be our sisters shuttle craft. It was a much more comfortable idea than the loss of a starship in atmosphere.

    "I think we need to take a closer look at those three points of interest. Helm, plot a descent to five hundred kilometres and circularise."

    - - -​

    Sitting in my office a day later, I studied the images we'd taken like a hawk studies a field when it's hunting for prey. It had taken almost a full twenty-four hours to get the images we needed, and the tension aboard had only built. I felt glad that I rarely went aft to the living sections, mostly choosing to sleep in my office. Apparently two scuffles had broken out as various hands theorised as to what exactly had happened. Fortunately without the scientists aboard there was plenty of space for the crew to eat as separately as they desired. I hadn't had to step in and exert my authority.

    I shook my head, dragging my thoughts back to the problem at hand. From five hundred kilometres the images we'd taken were extremely detailed, and what they showed confirmed my worst fears. The smaller of the impact sites - for the midshipman had been proven right, that was what they were - seemed to be one of the shuttles from the William Dampier, smashed against the barren surface. The other, I was sad to record in my log, was the wreck of the William Dampier herself. I could not record her as all hands lost, not until we had investigated further, but between the lack of contact and the burned and buckled hull plates that were visible from orbit, I would be surprised if I could do anything but add that detail.

    The third set of images were just as… interesting seemed like the wrong word for an abandoned base. The sandy surface layer that covered everything but the mountains of the planet below was built up one one side of the few low buildings, and against one side of the silent shuttle that sat alongside them. There were no signs of current habitation, but thermal imaging showed several heat sources. It hinted at something I wouldn't dare to hope for, a hope that the images of the crashed ships wanted to wash away.

    My door alarm started beeping insistently enough that I couldn't simply ignore it. Closing the computer's screen - I was trying to maintain some level of secrecy around what we knew - I pushed the button that opened the hatch from the inside. Floating in the now open door was my First Officer, Lieutenant Devin Wescott. We'd seen comparatively little of each other since I came aboard. I had wondered more than once whether he'd been trying to avoid me. I supposed this was a time when he couldn't.

    "Captain, I-" he cut himself off, throwing me the sketchiest salute he could get away with. I nodded for him to continue, "The crew are restless, Captain. Rumours are flying, and tensions are mounting."

    "I know, Mr Wescott, I've read the reports. How is Ms Abernathy's jaw?" The young engineer had taken a mean right hook over breakfast, though by all accounts she'd given as good as she'd got.

    "Healing well. It didn't even need a pin, just setting." Wescott flashed a brief smile. "Heart of oak and all that, I suppose."

    "Just as long as she can still take her watch… I'm assuming you had a suggestion, Mr Wescott?"

    "We must take action, Captain, and soon. Do you have a plan?"



    Do you have a plan?
    [ ] A plan? Everyone is lost. We will image the ruins and return home.
    [ ] Of course. I will take a shuttle to the crashed ship/the crashed shuttle/the abandoned base (pick one) with an away team.
    [ ] Of course. You will lead an away team to the crashed ship/the crashed shuttle/the abandoned base (pick one).
    [ ] Write in.
     
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    • [X] Of course. You will lead an away team to the crashed shuttle

    Check the shuttle, better survival odds.
     
    [X] Of course. You will lead an away team to the the abandoned base.

    Heat sources indicate activity. What sort remains to be seen.
     
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