EVE Fiction

[OOC : A few questions...
What is the size of the seedship ? Judging by the gate we can see in game, it mut be pretty huge, but what is the actual size ? (If you have no idea, I'm fine with a "pretty huge km long" answer ^^ )
What does the air smells like ? Faintly rotten, dusty, ozone-ish, nothing in particular ?
Where the seedships sometimes piloted by capsuleers ? If so, it's my understanding that the internal hardware of a ship is slightly different, since the capsuleer's brain takes many operations in charge. From what we've seens with Sam so far, is there any clue that this ship was flown by a normal crew or captained by an egger ?
When you say "radio", does it mean the short-range transmissions are actually using radio waves ? Or is it just a convenient term for soemthing totally different ?
And, finaly, did the seedships haul full-grown gates, ready to be deployed in space, or was the crew forced to face the usual "who wrote this darn manual" ikea nightmare ?]

Adreena was doing her best fighting a slight nausea : even if she wasn't floating around, the absence of gravity was unsettling. Doing her best fighting a grin that struggled pretty hard to appear on her face. Their problematic situation, the hundreds of lives that were probably lost on this ship : matters that faded with the awe and excitment she felt.

"Heh, we can breath ! That's nice. That's probably weird, too, right ?" she asked Sam, slightly frowning. "But that's nice."
She walked toward the monitors, humming softly : "A Gallente ship -this girl is automated to the bone... So, what turns you on, sweetie ?" she said, obviously speaking to the ship.

'Well, I suppose I should try to make some use of myself...', I thought as I hung, suspended in my warm hydrostatic goo.

"Adreena, see if you can route a schematic or some kind of area map." I sent a transmission through the local comms, hoping that she could recieve it on her comms implant, "I'm the only one of us that I believe has any experience with Gallente capital ships, I might be of some assistance with navigation and some systems."

That said, another idea chimed into my head, "Science Team! Get down to the cargo bay and see if you can salvage a short range transmitter from the remains of that Venture! We might be able to rig it up as a range booster for short local comms for our team inside..."

"Adreena, what do you think? Think we can find a way to power up this ship, navigate it to a grav well, and deploy the gate? Want to work on that figuring out how to power it up, while I see if I can get into its data systems?"

To the leader of the marines, Sam said, "Can your team establish some form of communication back to Captain Pardus's ship? We don't want to be out of contact with the ships for long. Perhaps a chain of marines leading back to the umbilical. If the distances are too far to stay in radio contact, at then at least line-of-sight contact." He made a guess at the leader's rank, hoping to err on the more generous side. "I'll leave it up to you, Lieutenant. I'm sure you guys have procedures for intra-team communication."

He took an electronics testing unit out of his kit and checked for emissions that could be interfering with Radio Frequency communications. [OOC- The goal is to find out what's blocking radio comms, if it's dangerous, and how the problem can be fixed. If that's easily resolved, Sam wants to go to the central computer console and work on getting it powered up and functioning. Many goals here:
1st - See if the ship can be controlled, or if it's too infected with drone AI.
2nd - Open the emergency bulkhead leading to the heart of the ship. There's no open passageway to the bridge, correct?
Then, power up the ship and turn on life support; find data on the ship's original destination and gate deployment point; find information on deploying the gate and connecting it with its corresponding gate. I'd like invoke Hacking +1 here, and use a Fate Point if needed.]

He said to Adreena, "I'm wondering what happened to the original crew of this ship. We might have some unpleasant sights to see in here. Let's stay alert for hostile AI machinery too." [OOC again-- Sorry to have been out of touch. It's been one of those crazy weeks. o7]

Astra:

You receive no response to the message you sent to Adreena, she must be out of range. A short while later your science crew (Reso: 1 + 1, 1, -1, -1 = 1 (not excellent but you do get some success)) reports that there are no extra radio transmitters found on the salvaged bridge but there is a considerable amount of coiled wire to be salvaged from a bank of electric generators. Perhaps the wire could be used as an antenna. It wouldn’t be enough to transverse the whole ship but it could probably reach the bridge where Adreena and Sam are.

Sam:

As Adreena gets to work and the marines test out the chain communication method you analyze the surroundings and try to figure out the static on the comms. (Reas: 3 + 0, 1, 1, 1 = 6*) testing the different frequencies you finally come to the conclusion that the problem is that the radio frequencies are actively being absorbed by the superstructure of the ship's hull. *The most peculiar thing is that this effect would need to be intentionally activated and maintained. In order to shut it off you will need to locate the origin of the absorption and shut it down.

Adreena:

You run your hands over one of the work stations and deftly start pulling it apart (Craft: 3, +1 ("Zen and the art of ship maintenance"), + 1, 0, 0, 0 = 5) This is a good success but not with spin. If you want to use a benny and add 2 it would add that spin and you would get more result. As it is you get the following.)

There is no power, but you anticipated this and brought along a diagnostic tool with a mobile power system. Getting to work you open up the console and start tearing through the exposed components and circuitry. At one point a marine starts to question your use of a swift kick to a junction box cover, but you quickly shut him up with a grunted "Relax, I know what I'm doing" He didn't hear the muttered "I think" you decided to add. After a few minutes you have isolated the console from the ships power system and have only the most basic of network connection to the main frame.

You turn to Sam and with a flourish, flip a switch, and the console comes to life.

Sam:

You sit down at the console and begin to boot up it's local operating system. (Reasoning: 3. +1 for Hacking, 0, 1, -1, 1 = 4) once again, this is a success but not with spin. If you want to use a benny and add 2 it would add that spin and you would get more result. As it is you get the following.)

Without a connection to the mainframe, you will only gain access to a limited number of systems and memory banks, but you do discover several interesting things. First thing of note is that this system was shut down rather that having its power severed as you would have suspected. When you ping the connection to the mainframe you know it is tact but no data is transmitted. After a short time you discover that this console was responsible for monitoring the progress that the worker drones have made on constructing the gate. The limited data you can parse together indicates that a suite of construction drones being used to construct the gate. The timeline indicates that prior to 48 hours before this terminal was disconnected, the active flight of construction drones went from 10% to 100% at the same time progress on the gate stopped. The construction drones were at 100% for about 3 hours then went to 0% for the remainder of the time the terminal was recording data.

The group of marines has been making rounds and this time two return with a coil of copper wire un-spooling behind them. The solder attaches a device to the line and says "Bravo to Alpha, has a connection been established?..." you hear a crackle on the line and a responding "This is Alpha we hear you loud and clear. Let the pilots know they can talk to each other"

"Oh yeah Adreena, power! Well done!" So that part was done. And communication to Pardus was linked, though just by wire. Now, on to greater objective: get this ship where it was supposed to go, get the gate deployed, and get it functional. Sam was rather stumped as to how to proceed. He considered what was known. a) This console controlled gate construction drones. Where they were now, no clue. Presumably corrupted by rogue drone hive AI. There had been a spike in the gate construction drones' activity, followed by shutdown. b) The passageway to the heart of the ship was blocked by an emergency barrier. Reason unknown. That didn't matter so much though, for the time being. One way or another, it would likely have to be opened to achieve the objective. c) The structure of the ship itself was actively absorbing the RF signals from the team's communicators. Though the ship was powered down. More reason to believe rogue drone AI was active within the ship.

"Marines of the Sin, I suggest you keep weapons ready. If hostiles, they'll likely be rogue drones, not organic targets. You know what damage types you want, of course. Please keep a running report to your commander Captain AstraPardus." Sam's own autorifle was loaded with a mix of 50% kinetic armor piercing rounds,and the rest weighted toward EMP, explosive and thermal damage.

OK, we've got to crack this console fully to get to the mainframe. The ship's powered up now due to Adreena's tinkering, so the only barrier to getting full control of it should just be a matter of controlling the mainframe. From there, we can open the door, get to the piloting center, track every associated drone associated with the ship and the gate deployment project, and analyze the structure's RF interference. Might be the challenge and biggest chess problem of this life Sam. Get on it boy!
[OOC-- Using a Fate point to try to hack into the mainframe and get full control of it. Then, monitor all drones associated with the ship and gate deployment project and their current status. If it looks reasonably safe to do so, open the door to the heart of the ship. Then use the mainframe to turn off the RF absorption. LOL a lot there SF. Pick your pace of plot progression SF.]

"Pardus, your marines are doing good. We're trying to keep you apprised of what's going on in here. Stay in touch with us out out and relay info to Cap'n Sepherim if you would. Any ideas on how to progress are welcome, both of you."

"Hey Adreena, what are you up to over there? Want to keep a finger on this rifle's trigger while I zone out on some hacking puzzles?"

[Edit: Changed next to last paragraph. Send some ideas in outside guys! ]

Adreena beamed for a moment, right before the reality of their situation hit back with the clickety sounds of the marines and Sam readying their weapons.

Adreena looked at the rifle, looked at Sam. Back at the rifle, then back at Sam.
"Sam, I'm not trained in zero-G combat. Er, I'm not trained in combat at all. With the only thinks keeping us from floating being our soles, if I fire this thing I'll just look like a slinky. High entertainment value, poor efficiency. And if we manage to get gravity back, I'm not even sure I could lift that thing."
She tried to scratch her head, sighed when her hand bonked on the helmet : "I could, er, move from one foot to another nervously. Or maybe you have something smaller ? Something I could point in the general direction of the drones ?"

Oh, yeah, and I'll probably end closing my eyes each time I pull the trigger. That should add to the efficiency department.
Shut up, inner voice.
You shut up.

She shook her head : "Anyway, whatever power we have now is... well, slightly less than what this ship can offer. Maybe far less, hard to say right now... Astra ? Your help would be more than welcome : right now we just have power, we don't know how much more we can squeeze out, how much we'll need to do this and that. I've just carjacked this poor girl and I'm sure we could use more, er, refined methods."

[Adding a benny to the roll : I certainly don't want us to be in a situation between two vitals things to power up ^^]

Sam:

A first attempt at initializing the re-connect command garners no result, however is does shed light on an extraneous piece of coding that you didn't understand at first. Now that you know what to look for you see that after the construction drones went to 100% the operator tried multiple times to reconnect to the now active drones.

"Excellent Adreena. Getting to the center of the ship can't but be useful. I recommend you maybe let the marines go first. They're the training ship boarders, after all. Can you hang on a minute while I try Pardus's idea of reconnecting to the rogue drones?"

He turned to the marine leader. He said loudly, while indicating with his eyes to Adreena that he also wanted her to hear, "Lieutenant, please convey this to Captain AstraPardus via the wire connection:

'Adreena's discovered a service passageway leading deeper into the ship. We're going to check it out. We'd like to take your marines along.'

'First, though, I'm going to try to reconnect to the drones as you suggested, Pardus.'

'A module on the ship made multiple attempts to reconnect to the construction drones, after they got active. So, it seems that the drones went rogue, as we suspected. But that also might indicate that the ship itself is still intact. In the sense that it's not under drone AI control. And warm air is coming through the service channel Adreena opened. That could indicate that the ship's life support system has been kept on all these years. Whether or not that means there's still something alive in here... who knows.'

'Pardus, please pass this on to Sepherim. As always, both of you keep your ideas coming also.'

[OOC-- Sam's going to try to use the console to reconnect to the drones. (Rolls against Reason and Hack?) Then he's going to be ready to go into the service channel].

Hmm, what happened to the gate deployment drones? That's a mystery. The rogue drones we killed seemed to pretty much be standard Gallente ship designs, I think. Not construction drones. Maybe the rogues scrapped them or cannibalized them for parts?
Sam reported the results of the reconnect attempt to Adreena, and to Pardus and Sepherim via the wire connection. "If you have any thoughts on that, captains, let's share them." He continued on behind Pardus's marines as they prepared to enter the service passageway toward the center of the ship.

It's strange to be alone when you can feel the feets, breaths and voices of all the crew members inside you. But I felt that way. Out in the cold space, with only the radiation waves of the near star and the silent masses of all ships for company, I felt lonely. All of them were engaged facing the unknown horrors that dead seed ship could be carrying in it's bellyand meanwhile I just stood guard outside, away from the mysteries inside. I didn't envy them, not one bit. Those machine things are... unnerving.

But I had my part to pay. So it was me, the stars, and the directional scanner running each two seconds. Sometimes, the worst part is the waiting. This was one of those.