DSE: Chapter 1 | The Beginnings [The Show Hits the Road] [RP]

[bill]

Miles replied on the comm line.

"Probe's in fine form. Zil n' I did a prelim check, and everything went perfectly fine, and all that. Now the shuttle. I'm going to say the shuttle is fine, because the alternate would be for me to go on another rant on how big a pile of shit the KS is. Anyone who has to fly that thing deserves a medal. But, ya know, I digress, and all that."

[Boog]

"Aye," Rickardo replied, returning to his screen. Searching memory... Locklear Kodayn; friendly, mildly hyper, does not have a habit of strange confrontations with other crewmembers. Excellent.

[Arcalane]

After a short and fairly indeterminate time period~[/i]

The DSEV1 pulls into orbit around the planet. Noticeable from here is a faint greenish twinge to the clouds. Scanners are already busy looking for the crash site, and it may take a while despite the ship's heavy-duty sensor grid.

It is dark. You may be eaten by a gr--... wait, wrong setting.

Proceed.

[Azlan]

[OOC: LIVE!]

"Mister Haynes eh... well, no need to pack the underwear for our little shuttle mission then."

As the ship entered orbit, the foxish creature deftly appeared in an unusual location.

From a perch on the back of the captain's chair Locklear dangled a bell adorned meerkey, or better known as a space mouse, in front of the Joshua's nose with his tail.  In a sing song voice Locklear reported their status, "We appear to have reached orbit around the planet sir." Locklear purred slightly at the prospect of the planet.   

With a wicked little impish smile and a jingle of the 'nip infested toy he continued his sing song voice and risked a bit of playful deception, "Sir, it would be a good idea to take the probe into a proper orbit via a little trip on the shuttle, might be a good idea to get some ground samples tooooo!"

[edit: he was dangling it with his tail... forgot to put that in.]

[Boog]

The planet with air pollution visible from space, with unknown dangers on the surface... Rickardo's shoulders slumped and he hunched yet further over his keyboard, the body language equivolent of a cry of "Nuuuuuuu!"
"Kkkkt"

[Arcalane]

Some time later, the scans finally return. The wreck has been found in what appears to be a floodplains-like area - mostly sand, with odd patches of grassy terrain here and there. The computers have also managed to get a basic scan of what the area should look like.



It appears as if four larger heavy containers survived the impact somehow, although they do not seem to be in a very good state.

Scans have also picked up what appears to be some kind of old compound that may have been part of a pre-warpdrive communications network, similar to the Hyperpulse Generators (HPG) of the BattleTech universe, but have been unable to get a proper scan of the location.

[Boog]

Rickardo didn't like the look of the wreck. All those parts gone to waste, and lives probably cut unneccisarily short, their minds never to be returned to their Engineers.
Now I'm being silly. There were probably few Rouligi on that ship, if any. Others wouldn't have Engineers. He gave another series of clicks under his breath, a nervous habit. That thought had served as another reminder that he was among Others. The horror stories about the insanity of species that worked at extremes of organic or mechanical life had been with him since his youth, and now he was working with them. The thought always had been a bit worrying for him, but he endevored not to show it. He instead double checked the new parts he had equipped. He didn't want anything going wonky when he was out in the shuttle or, if Locklear got his way, down on the planet.

[Azlan]

Locklear leaned over to examine the monitor and made a short whistle sound, "That is certainly some significant damage.  Those four containers certainly were very sturdy indeed.  With that much damage, I am not sure what we can expect to salvage, but it is worth a look."

The ring-tailed creature's tail continued to dangle the mousy in front of the captain, Locklear was already running iff speedy calculations in regards to fuel consumption, approximate mass of salvage (with a healthy margin for overage), and mission duration.

"I can quite likely have a good away mission ready to go in a few minutes, with all the necessary supplies, personnel and firepower needed for unknown territory.  There is some type of structure detected, communications likely, so we may have some locals to deal with.  It is nothing that our capable crew can not handle sir!"

[Arcalane]

((I think perhaps I worded that poorly. The crash site and compound are in different areas, several hundred miles away from each other, if not a few thousand.))

[Stygian]

After the mandatory jokes about "physicals" and the first shakes of reentry had subsided Sebastian turned and left the infirmary, Dr. Glace remaining within to do a last preparation round before returning to her quarters.
   "And remind Locklear; no meerkeys in the lockers. It might make for a nice joke to find them in someone's underpants, but the little critters breed like hell and get in everywhere," she said as he stepped out. Sebastian smiled a bit and paced off against the bridge, still wearing his combat suit. Upon entering, he made a clack with his heel that contrasted his regular silence.
   "Reportin' for duty, sir. The doctor is ready for whatever preparation routines might prove neccessary. She doesn' seem to think we migh' need an inoculation, 's long as we don' expose ourselves to the atmosphere."

[Azlan]

The console beeped furiously at Locklear, he smacked his forehead and spoke some rather unkind sounding word in a language not known by the crew, "My calculations were not precise, they did not take into account distance.  The unknown outpost is at least a 100 units, possibly 200, from the crash site.  We probably won't have too much to worry about from locals of an organized and minor technological type.  Still might have some aboriginal types, but I will not know that until I bump into them.  Our scanners do not locate 'unusual alien species with pointy sticks, sharp claws or pyramid scheme based sales and marketing structures'.  That is too bad too, that incident over the R'quain Colony might have been avoided if I had known that was a holomarketer and not an advance scout from an alien race bent on assimilating all!"

[ITOS]

"Could the crashed ship and the compound be related in anyway?" Angel asked without leaving her seat. Funny how a scan that gives answers also creates a lot of questions.

Sebastian walked in. And some questions can't be answered with a simple scan. Angel checked her datapad to see if her mother had replyed yet.

[Stygian]

"Marketers arn't evil, they're jus' selfish li'l swine, 's what I say..." Sebastian said, while he stepped up and looked at the console over Locklear's shoulder. "S'pose we're headed for the wreckage then. Touchdown on half-mile perimeter, an' then keep our sensors up?" That wasn't so much a question as it could have been, but he was anxious to get down and out and get to move around.

[Azlan]

Locklear thought about the planet for a few moments, but a stray thought welled up and he snapped out of his concentration, "Wait, inoculations?  I hate those, I do not like shots, not at all."

Shaking the thoughts of a certain cackling canine doctor wielding her huge needle instrument menacingly.  He rubbed his arm absentmindely, meerkeys do not carry space rabies, I think she overreacted when that one bit me.  He thought to himself.

He stopped dangling the meerkey plushy in front of the captain and transfered it to his hand, the bells jingled and the nipmint was delightfully aromatic.  He considered batting the thing around, but that would look silly in front of the crew.  He did make a mental note to feed his little meerkeys Zip and Cirey when he got back to his quarters.

Acknowledging Sebastian's comment, he nodded, "standard operating procedure, as soon as the captain gives the okay, I will take the shuttle down."