Colonization: Ch.2: DESCENT [Mature, IC]

[Azlan]

Rebecca checks her feed and vocally acknowledges, "video feed is steady and clear."

Turning her whole body and fixing her violet eyes on the rest of the team, she gestures to one of the others who is decently armed, "someone should go with him... cover him and all that.  Don't need to be hostile, but careful is good and second pair of eyes will help."

[techmaster-glitch]

   "Whoa whoa, hey, wait up!" Jaks said as Wolfe rushed past him and then past his robot in the cave. Jaks hefted his battle rifle, and briefly considered going back for the launcher, but decided against it, and proceeded up the ramp into the cave while Phobos followed him. Inside the cave at the top of the ramp, Diemos started skittering after Wolfe, and started poking at his shoe with its own legs.
  "Wolfe, hold on!" Jaks said as he stopped at the top of the ramp and looked at the man, who now had "WOLFE - Suicidal bastard?" hovering above is head. Bits of the stucture were highlighted in neon, pointing out things that looked like they may be important.
  "We don't know what's ahead, most particularly, if there's a reason the Pioneer crew vanished. Let my robot go first. I...don't want to say it's expendable, but it can keep itself out of trouble, and in a worst-case scenario...ehhh...better it than us, right?" Jaks said into his comm. Though, he didn't speak with much conviction on that last part.

[SquirrelWizard]

Marcus merely shook his head as he donned the helmet to his suit while walking into the cave, "They vanished, but nothing indicates that there was any fighting. I'm walking up this pathway, and I'm not seeing anything out of the ordinary. Tracks are normal for the terrain, showing no extraneous movements indicating panic or unstable behavior. There is no spore, neither is there any indications of hostilities; no casings, or bullet holes." He finally caught up with Wolfe, "And to judge by the placement of the light sticks at the entrance of this tunnel, and the facilities installed, our query stands a good chance to be capable of reasoning. The real question is... do we want to ride the elevator? Or, do we want to see if we can get them to come to us?"

[Azlan]

The female doctor regarded Marcus as he entered.

"I think caution is warranted none the less."  Rebecca moved for a bit of a closer look to keep those moving inward in sight, "There may not be any obvious signs of struggle or conflict, but remember that they do not know anyone else is here.  Those first few moments of surprise can cause an unfortunate situation if not handled correctly."

[ShadesFox]

Wolfe nods at Marcus and Rebecca.

"I'm curious about whenthey installed this elevator.  I thought they were supposed to be recent arrivals.  I know my first thought when stranded here was not to install an elevator.  Or second thought.  In fact, I never thought of the subject until just now."

Wolfe looked around and fixed his sights on the robot, "Also, though I'm fine with running into a cave, an elevator is slightly different. Can't exactly run and run in an elevator shaft.  Can we send your little bot in first?"

[Inumo]

Marianne sat back at the mouth of the cave with the rest of the group, idly testing samples both inside and outside the entrance. "Is it clear in there?" she asked.

[techmaster-glitch]

   Jaks caught up with everyone near the elevator shaft, his second robot in tow, plus the small one perched on his shoulder.
   "Alright..." He examined the elevator shaft, looking for the controls until he found them.
   "Okay, I'll send Kappa down. If there's anything fishy, he's small and hard to see." He held up the personal communicator that he'd been using to piggyback his remote-implant transmissions to the robots on. "Wish I brought a stronger transmitter than this, though."
   The small robot on his shoulder climbed down his side, and went to sit right in the center of the elevator. Jaks then fiddled with the buttons until it started to move down.

[Arcalane]

The elevator makes a loud thunk and suddenly drops about a foot, but refuses to go any further than that despite any button mashing. The control panel is flashing up an icon of something that looks like it might be a weight, and some kind of warning, but the text is in a strange language.

[techmaster-glitch]

   Jaks stared at the error display. "...Okay, that's weird. Dunno what that's supposed to mean, and definitely no one we know built this. Unless anyone is a linguist, gimme a minute."
  Jaks then moved around to the elevator's mechanisms, and inside his hazmat suit, looked at the HUD readouts. "Doesn't look like there's anything wrong with this immediate location, and we've barely entered the cave anyway..." Jaks then unzipped his hazmat suit halfway, and pulled it down until it's to his waist, and tied the arms of the suit around himself for the moment. He stretched a bit, and rolled up the sleeve from his metal right arm, and wiggled his arm around a little. Small tools folded out of the cybernetic limb, and he started cutting open the mechanism container panels on the elevator. Once he had it open and the inner workings exposed, he started trying to hotwire the elevator motor directly.

[Arcalane]

Jaks is rewarded with another loud thunk and the sound of grinding machinery as the lift drops another foot or so, before suddenly lurching back up to its original position, possibly knocking him off his feet. Another bar has appeared on the panel, it looks a little under 20% full, with another flashing weight next to it.

Puzzling, eh?

[ShadesFox]

Wolfe looks towards the mouth of the cave, "Yes, everything seems pretty safe in here.  Fun times with an elevator too!"

Wolfe watches at Jaks tries to make it work.  After laying down on the floor to check out underneath it to make sure everything was clear he stepped onto the elevator to see what would happen.  He also jumps a little.  "You think it's out of juice?"

[AmberCross]

Ari, who had arrived a little bit ago, peered over the shoulder of Jaks. It ran counter-intuitive to what he knew about elevators, but it looked like this lift might not work unless there was a certain amount of weight on it. Plus he wasn't sure since he had only glanced at it earlier, but he thought the bar was a bit fuller after Wolfe stepped on it than before. He thought for a moment and then went to stand next to the small robot and Wolfe. After all, the warning appeared to be weight related and the bar wasn't quite full.

"Try it now?" he said. At the very least, perhaps the warning would change and they could get another clue.

[techmaster-glitch]

   "Jeeze!" Jaks backs up from the exposed mechanisms after the attempted hotwire, as the lift went down lsighly, then shot back up. "Okay, there's some redundant lockouts on this thing. If everyone's okay with waiting a few hours, I can try and disassemble it completely so we can rappel down."
  Jaks looks up from his work as Wolfe steps onto it, eyeing the man. "No, it's got juice, there's just some lockout in this thing I haven't bypassed yet..."
  Jaks starts waving his hands as Ari gets on, too. "Whoa, whoa whoa! Hold on there! What if I cut out the wrong cable and the whole thing goes falling down? What if..." Jaks notices the little readout on the panel flashing again, and cranes his head over to see it as he's still standing outside of the lift itself. "...Wait a minute. That little bar keeps going up when someone steps on it...and is that symbol supposed to represent a barbell weight...oh, you've got to be kidding me."
 Jaks smacks his forehead with his non-cybernetic arm. "What kind of dumbass makes a lift that doesn't move without minimum weight on it? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of in all my time as an engineer."
  Jaks steps back, puts his hands on his hips, and looks at it for a moment. "Anyone want to pile rocks or something on it to send it down with one of my robots first?"

[ShadesFox]

Wolfe bounces a little more,
"We could, or we could just all go down together.  That seems like the less complicated option."

[Azlan]

Becky regarded the lift and then Jaks, "Martians apparently make lifts that function this way.  Seems like a bloody stupid design if you ask me.  However, harping at the sheer idiocy of the mechanics and the 'dumbassery' of its designer will not improve the quality of the equipment.  This is what we have to work with and it is best if we make use of it."

The doctor stepped onto the lift, "let us proceed."

[Inumo]

Marianne had entered the cave as revelations over the lift were made. "Y'know, it makes sense. Ah mean, this kind o' lift don't need no electricity to really make it go, just enough weight. S'definitely more effective for a buddin' colony, seein' as y' don't need to use precious juice on th' thing." Stepping onto the lift, she continued, "Goin' down?" Her grip tightened on Ol' Faithful.

[techmaster-glitch]

(Oops! Forgot I hadn't posted yet, sorry! Start poking me if I fall behind, people! )

   Jaks givs an odd glance to Marianne. "It is running off electricity, I just...ah, nevermind." He notices everyone's piling onto it, shakes his head, and just follows, getting onto the lift with his three robots.

[Arcalane]

All Aboaaaaard!

With everyone on the lift, there's a faint *ping!* and the lift drops sharply for a moment as a barrier slides up to complete the railing around the edge. A few seconds more and the lift starts to descend properly, at a pretty good clip too.

After a couple of minutes of rock walls around the framework, it gives way to a view over a large cavern. Or at least, it looks like a large cavern. Given there's no light-- hang on, there are a few light bars scattered around in a sort of... chain? They seem to be pointing towards the next bar in the chain. The view is obscured by a brief section of metal sheetwork, then the lift begins to slow down before finally coming to a stop in the cavern. It's too dark to even see the ceiling, and there are numerous ledges and steep drops, with the very bottom equally impossible to see. The lights seem to mark out a winding path over ledges, walkways across platforms, and through small caves, around the western edge of the cavern and over to the other side.

[ShadesFox]

All aboard the train straight TO HELL!

Wolfe looks around his person for his flashlight, before suddenly remembering that it was just built into his helmet.  Flipping the lights on he look around, trying to find any walls/ceilings through the darkness. 

"There seems to be one obvious path.  Shall we explore down there?"

[SquirrelWizard]

I saw this in a movie once. Keep an eye out for the mutated nazis.

Marcus noted that when Wolfe stepped off of the elevator that it didn't begin its ascent, "Hmmm.. so either that was a one way trip, or there is a latch." Granted that his knowledge of mechanics wasn't much more than having an idea where to plant his boot to make things work, he opted to leave the quandary of working the elevator to those with more skill. He walked over to Wolfe's side and peered into the darkness as well. He tapped his radio unit, "Well, my one complaint is that our ride in doesn't seem to be the ride out. I'd prefer not to go stirring anything up without an exit. But, if we can't get the elevator working again, I suppose we'll have to head down that path. Do we have anything like radar or sonar sensors with us? Hell, infrared would do in a pinch."

[Inumo]

Marianne followed after Wolfe, disembarking from the elevator. Turning on her own head lamp, she scanned the path as best she could to understand why whoever had placed them felt it was important to make them point from one to the next. "Robot man there might have it on one o' his 'bots," she answered to Marcus.

[techmaster-glitch]

   Jaks stepped off the lift with the others and looked around. His cybernetic eye wasn't full-spectrum, but it was made for less-than-ideal conditions, such as limited light, and he could see a little better than the others.
   "Not much, but yeah, my bots don't rely entirely on normal vision." He said to Marianne. "They have short-range sonar and laser rangefinders. Not really enough to get a good picture of anything without normal optics, but they can avoid walking off a cliff in total darkness. Deimos, forward."
   One of the two larger robots starts slowly skittering forward, feeding information back to Jacks as it goes.

[Azlan]

Reveal map script error

Rebecca followed the rest of the team, taking up a spot more central to the groupas she considered the path that lay ahead, "what I would not give for a remote viewing drone with ultraviolet imaging sensors and a spectrographic analyzer.  I wonder if this cavern is water carved or an evacuated magma chamber?"

Keying up an angle and depth program on her wrist unit, she also brings a timer and a temperature readout to the display as well, "we should keep an eye on air purity and radiation levels."


OOC: sorry, preoccupied with Skyrim at the moment.

[Arcalane]

((Derp, thought we were waiting on someone and nobody pinged me.))

The Caves of Madness... or maybe just Mundanity.
Wolfe sees nothing upwards at least, but they can't have gone too far down to make the cave ceiling beyond sight unless the entire mountain is hollow. Which it probably isn't, but we won't rule that out just yet.

Marianne's examination of the light bar path indicates that the safest-looking (relatively speaking) and shortest routes are those lit up by the bars. It's likely whoever set them down anticipated someone else might come this way, and elected to set them up such that they could follow. It's possible that a group of the lost ship's crew stayed at the elevator for a set period of time before following the rest for some reason.

Deimos doesn't turn up a whole lot of useful information. The cave - more of a cylinder really - is pretty wide, a good two hundred yards from edge to edge with a thin walkway around the edges and another cave or tunnel on the far side, but any sonar or lidar signals aimed up or down don't return in a timely fashion. There are a number of "islands" and walkways that cross the middle of the cavern as well... it would be a lot faster to go over them, but stability is definitely not guaranteed. It's easy to see why the others chose to go around the edge than across the center.

Air purity is good, radiation levels are a little under background normals for a terrestrial planet.

[Inumo]

"Well," Marianne said, following the lightbars with her eyes. "Onwards?" With that, she began following the path set out, carefully picking her way along, glancing up from time to time to watch out for any surprises.

[techmaster-glitch]

   Jaks nods, and heads forward with the group, Phobos and Deimos keeping ahead to see things and transmit them to Jaks before the group can happen across anything.

[Azlan]

Rebecca takes up pace with the rest and nods in acknowledgement as she tags onto Marianne's query, "and forwards."

[ShadesFox]

"Onwards and forwards I suppose"

Wolfe couldn't shake the possibility of a trap... but it was a silly feeling and best ignored.

[SquirrelWizard]

With a nod of acknowledgement, Marcus shifted his rifle so he could bring it to bear as fast as possible, he started down the lit pathway, doing his best to keep an eye out for anything unpleasant; hopefully before it ate his face.

Already, Marcus could feel his heartbeat start to accelerate, his breathing quicken. All his senses were being stretched to keen enough to shave with them as his body readied to fight or flee from whatever lay at the end of the path. Marcus knew that they were following men, that something intelligent had to set up the pathway, but at the same time something in the back of his mind told him there were many things he didn't know about this place; that he might very well be walking to his death, and this thought always made him savor each and every breath he took.

It was a guilty pleasure, one he hadn't indulged in a while, and for good reason. He had handled many dangerous beast, high levels of adrenaline were nothing unusual for him. But, on very rare occasions, he and his team were in a position where they found themselves deep in over their heads. Always, some superpredator stalking them, with them being blind, undergeared, and without support. It was during these screw-ups, that stuck with Marcus. The times when in a split instant everything could go wrong, and not preparations, no planning, no equipment would keep the avalanche from crashing down on your heads. The only thing you could do is ride it out and pray you and your mates didn't get munched on in the process. He had survived a few of these, where many others didn't. Before the horrible realization of what transpired hit him it was always the heady feeling of victory, that he had beat death, triumphed and survived. Of course immediately thereafter you had to go on body part detail, the bloody price for a split second feeling of invincibility.