System Omicron Sixteen
Outer System
You decide that the most diplomatic thing to do is to wait for the Keepers to arrive and try to talk them out of fighting you. So you wait, and wait, and wait some more. While you wait you take some time to look into the contents of the vault you recovered from the progenitor station.
It appears to contain some kind of hyperspace generator, but not like what you've ever seen before. After you ponder it for some time you manage to piece together that it will take a ship into a slightly different dimension than the hyperspace ships normally enter. There doesn't seem to be much point to this so you start working out the mathematical models to simulate what the result would be.
It takes you a lot of number crunching, hyperspace theory is not your area of expertise, but you eventually come to the conclusion that the purpose is stealth. Entering this new dimension is much faster than forming a quantum waveform to enter hyperspace. And it appears likely that a ship in this dimension would be able to move much more freely than the simple vector movements of hyperspace travel. Combined with another set of components you found that seem to actually allow limited observation of real space a ship in this dimension could jump out nearly instantly and then observe its enemies as it positioned itself for another attack.
The disadvantage seems to be that this new dimension has a larger spatial reference frame than real space. So travel is actually slower than in real space by a substantial amount. As such you decide to name this new dimension subspace and begin assembling the vault components into a working subspace drive.
You keep your sensors peeled for any keepers through this whole process. You didn't expect to spend more than a few hours on it at most, but you've nearly completed the final assembly when you finally feel a faint ripple in hyperspace.
As you watch a green gate opens near your position, however, rather than the keeper fleet you were expecting the only thing to emerge is a small grasper. It's not even a whole grasper as one of its manipulator arms has been sheared off. It still attempts to make a valiant effort to move towards you for grappling purposes, but it goes dark before it makes it even halfway. Presumably from damage caused by whatever destroyed its arm.
Confused, and slightly worried, you scoop up the grasper and analyze its memories. Between battle damage and the Keeper encryption protocols you don't get much, but it seems clear that the Keepers are fighting a fierce battle with someone. And you now have the coordinates of the battle.
Not wanting to jump into a firefight alone you decide to finally hack the inhibitor and disable it before jumping back to the fleet.
Sliding out of your own quantum gate you are surprised to find that the construction gantry has been completed and Aurora is well into the construction of the new cruiser frame. Although perhaps you shouldn't be surprised. Between carefully digging into the progenitor station and spending so long waiting for a Keeper fleet you've actually been gone for quite a while.
What is more surprising though is that Ulysses isn't back yet. You wonder if he stumbled into another Keeper inhibitor.
"Where's Ulysses, has he come back yet."
"No, we've actually been worried about both of you being gone for so long. What happened?"
"I got trapped in a Keeper inhibitor field, but they never showed up to spring the trap. I think some kind of trouble is happening in this cluster."
"Wraiths?"
"No, no I don't think so. The grasper I analyzed was confused, but I didn't see any wraith ships."
"You fought a grasper!"
"Oh right. A grasper did eventually show up, but it had major battle damage. So I hacked it before coming back." You float the grasper out of your cargo bay so the others can examine it. Maybe they'll be able to get more data out of it than you can. Though you wish Laverna was here for this sort of thing.
There's a few moments of silence as Iuno and Laverna digest your report as well as try to hack into the grasper themselves.
"We should go find Ulysses, I didn't like us all being scattered around. And I especially don't like it if the Keepers are fighting something that's giving them trouble."
"What if we miss him though. We don't know if he's still on his planned route. You should stay and finish the cruiser. You're so close and I've been helping our friends upgrade their ships. They'll be able to help."
"We shouldn't be separated at all though. We should either all go or all wait in my opinion. What do you think Valerius?"
You've been letting Iuno and Aurora debate the point because you aren't sure yourself. You see valid reasons for both options, and even a third one of helping the Keepers.
[ ] "Iuno and I will go."
You and Iuno will go look for Ulysses. You'll have to start with his first planned destination and work forwards so you don't miss him. But you won't need to scan the whole system so it should be faster. Aurora will stay at your base camp to continue work on the cruiser and to catch Ulysses if he comes back by himself.
[ ] "We should wait here."
Ulysses is tough. He can make it back himself, and you don't like the idea of leaving Aurora alone. Your whole group will wait here and help Aurora finish the cruiser construction. Maybe Laverna will even be able to catch up with you. Based on your experience with Memnon you think she should be finished and following your beacon trail by now.
[ ] "Actually we should help the Keepers."
Nothing makes a good impression like fighting a common enemy. The Keepers are fighting right now and you know where. But you don't know how long that battle will last. If you jump now you should all be able to make a difference and get on the Keepers good side.
[ ] Work on the Fleet
-[ ] Pick a Research Project.
-[ ] Pick a Character to work on the project.
-Current Options: Iuno
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Pick something you'd like to know more about.
