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

[techmaster-glitch]

   At the breifing, when Sandra had finished talking, it was followed by a long and low whistle. "We have officially landed in weirdo land. Actually, I'd normally love a salvage mission but...I have to agree, this is most likely a trap of some kind, Lieutenant Sandra. We were supposed to colonize this uncolonized planet, yet clearly someone beat us to it. This is the first we've found of someone being here first. Unless there was a second freak accident of some kind, what're the odds that the people who shot us down aren't one and the same with the survivors of the ship we're about to go 'rescue'?" Jaks was quite for a moment as the smaller bot on his shoulder crawled down his arm to his hand, at which Jaks held it up in front of his own face.
  "On the other hand, they don't want us dead, or they would have shot us with something a little nastier than EMPs. No, they don't want us dead....but they want us powerless. Why is that?" Jaks asked, seemingly to the little robot in front of him. Of course, it didn't answer.
  "Wel, trap or no trap, I think we're gonna find out. At least I'm reasonably sure we're not gonna be shot down by some SAM site on the way." Jaks shrugged, got up, and went out with the others to the shuttle, with his robots following.

  As he proceeded to board the shuttle with the others, he noted the weaponry in the cargo bays. "Well, at least we aren't going in unarmed! That's comforting, at least. Oh, and er...I hope someone else can fly this thing. I'm rated for practically anything on the ground, not so much for things that fly, unless I jack in and go to maximum automation." He said to the others, as his robots skittered to the cargo boxes, crawled to the walls, and latched onto some of the securement hooks on their own.

[Azlan]

Rebecca absentmindedly tapped her right cheek with her index finger as she mulled over the possibilities, "if we consider that this is the MarsCon Pioneer, then what we find largely depends on their crew size and the availability of potable water and food sources.  At this point, only the most minimum of 50/500 rule will apply.  If they had a crew survival of at least 50 when they attempted to live here then they've had one successful generation and could be working on the next.  Their time would be limited however, as this is not sufficient genetic variability."

Crossing her arms she sighed, "all this is great and all if they managed to maintain some discipline or community.  If they had their own little 'Lord of the Flies' or 'Mutiny on the Bounty' type scenarios, then they might be rather unfriendly.  Especially if they have maintained some level of technology.  Such thoughts could be moot as Sandra mentioned, they could all be dead and this just an automated beacon.  All this conjecture aside though, it would seem rather elaborate for a trap, but I'm not an expert in such things.  We should err on the side of caution though.  If anything, it is good to have a doctor along, so count me in.  Though I must confess an absolute lack of any familiarity with firearms, so I shan't be much use in a firefight."

[Inumo]

Marianne gave a slow shrug. "Ah don't mind in the least fer goin' out and checkin' this place out," she began, "but ah do hope we have some safety measures in place fer if it turns out we ahn't exactly the most... welcome of folks. Ahm sho' some othahs know moah about how to handle such a situation than I, so Ah'll leave it t' them and jus' make sho' Ol' Faithful's ready fer y'all." With that, she hopped into the dropship, carefully drawing Old Faithful out and giving him a once over.

[Malakin]

Alix listend to the briefing with arms crossed, "Frankly I don't know what to think about the situation, nothing so far makes any sense and anything we choose to do could lead to big problems. Then again we are not going to learn anything sitting on our arses here, he who dares and all that. So I guess I'm in...
But at the same time, if it is a trap...
Looks like we have some good equipment to protect us on the ground at least, but what about in the air, the shuttle outfitted with any kind of countermeasures?"

[ShadesFox]

Wolfe glared at Sandra over what she wasn't saying.

He then turns and heads to the drop ship, "A trap, perhaps, but who's trap?  Were those missile launched at us when we got here the right profile for missiles that age?"

Wolfe does a pat check to make sure that he still has his personal arm and pokes about the crates in the drop ship.

[AmberCross]

Chris wandered over in the direction of the ship, following the rest of the crowd as his mind mulled over various possibilities. He didn't think it was a trap, but then he was somewhat of an optimist. It was one of those mindsets you get when nothing really bad has ever actually happened to you in your life. As he reached the spot everyone else was waiting around, he asked somewhat quietly to anyone who may have been listening, "Is it possible they could have invented ftl travel while on board?"

[Azlan]

Becky narrowed her violet eyes as Wolfe boards the drop ship.  She leans on a crate as he pokes about the others, "something wrong?  That was one heck of a look to give Sandra, she is just doing her job.  This something about that display pad you've been fawning over?  I'd think it was a love letter to your girlfriend the way you've been studying it."

[ShadesFox]

"I'm not sure I can really say 'wrong'.  One signal I found that signal from the Mars ship.  Sandra decoded it before I could.  But I also found another signal.  I have no idea what it is.  It was faint, just behind the jamming noise.  For all I know it could be some letter to a girlfriend."

[Arcalane]

Outside

Sandra nods to Jaks, "I know, it's fishy as all hell. I don't like it either. As far as everyone else from the ship knows, you're on a recon/sample gathering mission near the equator. Which you are, kinda. Bring back some indigenous plantlife if you can spare the time, if we get a good look at it we might be able to work with it somehow."

She sighs, looking at the shuttle, then her PDA, then at Alix. "This is a ConFed dropshuttle, they regularly use these for marine drops very close to heavy combat areas. It has a fully automated missile guidance scrambler that can scram multiple missiles on incoming vectors, backed up by a network of high-powered infrared laser emitters tuned towards shooting down infantry and vehicle based anti-air missiles, with full spherical coverage around the craft. It's also rated for re-entry, but can't achieve escape velocity by itself, so it either has to be boosted out somehow, or it can hook up with a full ship in the upper atmosphere/very low orbit. Heavy EMP-proofing... it can fly with one engine missing and multiple holes in the frame, plus limited structural compromization," she laughs, a little nervously, "The ConFed marines set their requirements pretty high... but the bidding war to build this thing was intense. Manifold Aerospace reused a lot of older tech rather than trying to innovate and it turns out that sometimes, reinventing the wheel is a bad idea. They make a killing on these things, especially once they figured out they could downrate most of the important components to civilian grade and strip out a lot of the military hardware, then slap a new coat of paint on it and sell it to civilians as a 'lander and orbital transfer vehicle'. Since we're a first-drop colony ship, we get the military-grade ones."



Inside

Wolfe finds that the craft is well-stocked. The supplies are neatly organized and the crates are marked, so it is easy to find things even in a hurry. One of the main attractions is probably a crate with a pair of CBR-12s, aka Confederation Battle Rifles. 25-round magazine firing very high caliber caseless rifle rounds, works in a vacuum and underwater, reliable design and a good recoil compensator system. Still, they only come with single and two shot burst modes. There are miscellaneous other small arms, mainly rugged shotguns, rifles and pistols suited for frontier colonizing... though there is also a locked crate with a man-portable anti-armour missile launcher and three missiles. Guess you can never be too careful, huh?

Plenty of food, water, a good amount of medical supplies (for once!) and some spare cells for the vehicles to round things out. Isaac is indeed up front in the quite spacious cockpit, and has just wrapped up the pre-flight checks... looks like it's ready to go when everyone else is.

[Malakin]

Alix shrugs, "Sounds like a competent shuttle, I guess I should be grateful that we do have this equipment as a first landing expedition." He then straightens and gives a mock salute to Sandra, "Right, we'll try not to trash the thing too badly, see you when we see you." He then shoulders his pack and heads inside the shuttle up to the cockpit to see about the piloting arrangements.

[ShadesFox]

((OOC: The missile launcher better have a laser guidance system ))

"Oh look, they are even labeled correctly and everything!"

After checking the goodies in the crates he looks around for seating arrangements.  Though he has never flown in this craft before but they traditionally had a spot for people to strap themselves in.  Wolfe looks for a seat nearest the exit and assumes the seated position.

[Arcalane]

((If you can think of a plausible guidance system, the ConFed launcher probably has it. They are a very... creative faction, and they hate surprises. Their equipment reflects this by being incredibly reliable and flexible... and hideously expensive. Good thing they're basically post-scarcity in most regions. ))

The cockpit has room for five; Pilot, Co-pilot, Sensor/ECM Officer, Point Defense Officer, and a Passenger/Office/Captain seat. The whole thing is roughly trapezoid-shaped, with the Sensor/PD officers in the bottom corners facing outwards, and the pilot/co-pilot at the front facing forwards. The fifth seat is near the middle, again facing forwards.

There are plenty of seats elsewhere, too.

Up in the cockpit, Isaac has already set himself up in the co-pilot chair, glancing between an e-Reader-esque slate in his left hand and the panel in front of him, which is displaying the last of the start-up information. He looks up as Alix enters, "Ah, there y' are. Well, this ol' bird is ready t' go when everyone else is, so strap yerselves in and get ready."

[techmaster-glitch]

   As everyone files into the forward 'bridge' of the small dropship, Jaks notices the Point Defence Officer seat. "Okay, now that I can handle." He says, with just the barest hint of excitement. "Let's just hope we don't need it, though..."
   He moves over to that seat and straps himself in, before pulling a cable out of his cybernetic arm and plugs it into an interface port in the console. When he does so, he suddenly jerks back, cybernetic eye whizzing crazily.
   "WOO! Feel that rush!" He exclaims, shaking his head for a moment, then getting his bearings. In his augmented reality cyber-eye, he saw a holographic wireframe of the hanger outside the shuttle, as well as the point-defence emitter hardpoints on the outside of the ship.
   He settled down and ran preflight checks and diagnostics on the PD systems, then gave two thumbs-up to whoever had taken the pilot's seat.   

[Malakin]

Strapped in, flight pad and headset synced and with nicknacks placed strategically around the back up readouts in front of him, Alix was ready to go.
"Right, just going to check that we are clear and everyone is strapped in and then we can get this show on the road."

When Jaks gives him the thumbs up, he turns in the seat and nods in reply, "You know what to do with that thing ? Good, just don't distract me by messing with it till we are cruising."
Alix brings up the interior cameras and checks to see that everyone is seated and ready to go, at the same time he calls over the intercom "Alix here live from the pilots seat, we are all set to take off so make sure you find somewhere to get strapped in. Also, two seats up front in the cockpit are free, a sensor slash E.C.M. station and the officers station, feel free to grab one."

With that out of the way he switches to the external cameras, the walls of the shuttle seem to disappear from his view through the headsets HUD and he is left with an unobstructed view of the exterior of the craft, turning his head slightly left and right, the motions are exaggerated in his view and he checks the craft and runway is clear of obstructions and people before requesting clearance for takeoff from the tower.

[Azlan]

Rebecca entered the main area with the rest of the team.  Not having the necessary skills for any of the crew type stations, she took a seat in the only chair mostly separate from the others.  This seat was central to the bridge area, but she did not mind, she just didn't want to be next to anyone. 

She strapped in and synched her wrist unit to the dropship monitoring interface.  With it Becky brought up a holographic monitoring window and used it to view the exterior of the vessel.  She was hoping to observe the surrounding area as the lifted off.

[Arcalane]

((Right, let's get this show on the road.))

Hangar

Becky and Alix catch a glimpse of Sandra ducking into the cargo lift and heading down as the team prepare to launch, the dropshuttle's ramp closing and sealing at Isaac's command.

Cockpit

"No need to wait, kid," Isaac grins a bit, "`part from the scout, we're the only ones in the air. Let's go!"

Once everyone is secure, he punches the launch button. The docking clamps disengage, allowing the shuttle to initiate a short takeoff... it's a little wobbly at first, but it's also deceptively agile for its size once you get the hang of it.

~~

Camp Airspace

The view from above the camp is unremarkable, although it offers a nice idea of the camp layout, and a decent look at the launch site, which appears to be mostly finished. The camp itself is coming along nicely too, with a couple of the smaller nearby mesas converted into solarfarms/windfarms, connected to the main camp by thick landlines.

The camp slides away as the shuttle cruises off towards the ocean.

~~

Over the Ocean

It's a long flight. A very long, uneventful flight. Whilst the shuttle might be tough and well-defended, it's not particularly good at top speeds. It takes a good 21-22 hours before the island is in sight, a fairly solid forest around a dormant volcano. It's early morning, and the Pioneer is clearly visible from the air... she's clean, apart from re-entry stresses, put down in a very large clearing big enough to put the shuttle down in as well. A fresh clearing, too. Several trees around the edge have been knocked over by the Pioneer as she landed.

The Pioneer must have landed recently... and is maybe a good hundred-fifty or so meters long, shining white-grey metal in contrast to ConFed matte, rusty red and orange. It's a long and rather elegant design, reminiscent of the Space Shuttle orbiter in a roundabout fashion.

Circling down towards the site picks up minimal signs of habitation - a couple of tents that cannot have been set up more than a few hours ago, and clean solars, which are powering a dustbin-sized beacon that is transmitting the emergency signal. There are no human biosigns at the landing site. In fact, you can't pick up any on the island at all. The Pioneer's life-support is not running, and the primary reactor appears to be in economy mode judging by the emissions from the primary exhausts. All of the ramps are down too.

Setting down in the clearing is a simple affair. Isaac hauls himself out of his seat and turns to the others.

"...this is gettin' weirder 'n' weirder. Alright... we're here. What's the plan? I can prob'ly try'n boost our signal back t' basecamp usin' th' Pioneer, but it'd take a good few hours to do that and pull all their data. If I'm seein' this right..." he glances at the cameras, "...there's a fresh path in't' th' forest, leadin' t'ward the mountain. I'd say that's yer best bets for trackin' down the crew. If you're goin' after 'em I'd suggest you suit up though."

He gestures into the prep area, "There's lockers with light hazard suits in there. If you wind up in an unexplored underground system, you'll want 'em, trust me. I'll see if I can patch y' into the MarsCon team's net too, hazard suits haven't changed much in the last half-century."

The feeling of being watched is stronger than ever, even in the shuttle. Sure enough, the hazard suits are there, in that same, no doubt slightly grating rust red-orange colour again. Fortunately, it seems that they come with colour-adjusting systems, allowing you to take on a more... fitting colour scheme if desired. The suits themselves are quite comfortable, made of multilayered materials that provide respectable protection against the elements, as well as small weapons, and the torso has a harness for using climbing gear and carrying other equipment.

If Wolfe is paying attention to the sensors both now and throughout the flight, he might also notice the jamming is long gone, and there are no sources on the island. The beacon signal is crystal clear of course, but that's because you're right next to it.

"`course we can always sit around and hope they heard us, but I'm not gonna bet on that."

[Inumo]

Marianne quickly donned a suit and colored it a deep green to match the island's foliage. Holding Ol' Faithful in one hand and tucking Steve into a pocket, readily available by the other, she drawled, "Anyone else getting that watched feeling? S'a helluva lot stronger th'n out bah th' river." After a quick shake to try and disperse the feeling, she continued, "Either way, ready when you are, folks. D'you think we should use a buddy system?"

[Azlan]

Becky carefully pulled on one of the hazard suits and looked about for some climbing gear to secure to the appropriate place.  After gearing up, she made an effort to adjust the coloration to a grayer tone and to display the typical medical insignia that any human would be familiar with.

She nodded to Marianne's inquiry, "yes, I do get that feeling.  I suppose that it is possible that large complex life on this planet is slightly out of phase to our visual perception, or that they produce pheromones that affect our cognitive functions and convince our brains not to see whatever they are.  Maybe there are highly psychic lifeforms on this planet and we perceive their abilities as this 'watched' feeling."

The red headed female sat down hard on the seat and held her head with her hands, "I... just don't know, and it is starting to really creep me out.  It is not good for long term psychological health.  There is a lot of attention focused on us right now, and I hope it is not hostile."

[ShadesFox]

Wolfe was paying attention to his hardware for the first hour of the flight.  After that he curled up in the seat for a nap.  Between the fidgeting and the waiting on this exceptionally long flight he finally gets back to his destination and check on the jamming again, noting that it was now gone.  He used the opportunity to record some clear signals.

He suits up in the Hazard suit.  He adjusts the suit to a brownish color, after the color of the wood in the forest.  He picks up one of the large battle rifles, in spite of his old distrust of caseless ammo.  Sure with modern technology it is as good as any brass cased slug thrower, but old superstitions die hard.

"You know, maybe we aren't being watched?  There are a lot of weird things on this planet, and that was not a short flight.  Maybe we are just crazy."

He made sure he was putting the sling of the rifle over his shoulder and onto his back as he said crazy.  He then walks up to Isaac, "Well, no reason to assume anything really."

[SquirrelWizard]

For the longest while Marcus had been lost in his own thoughts. When he had scouted around the river site, he had found no evidence that there was anything out here other than them. Yet, the missiles that had been launched against them, the unsettling feeling everybody was experiencing, and another ship's distress beacon activating all pointed to habitation of some sort.

"Ah... Hazard Suits," Marcus mused as he picked one off of the rack, "Hazardous to your health to be caught in the field without one, and hazardous if worn too long." He listened to the chatter amongst the other crew members while he slipped into it. When the conversation had turned to the tense atmosphere when he decided to add his two credits in, "As weird as this place is, I think we are being watched, to some degree. I'd like to say we could write this off as nerves, but there is too much evidence at hand for that to be plausible. But, I'm pretty certain that whatever it is that is out there is probably much more mundane than we're working it up to be. Scans haven't turned up any major biosigns, our little forays into the wilderness have been pretty uneventful. I haven't seen any signs of a higher level ecology around here. Since whomever is watching us doesn't seem to want to show themselves, really the only thing we can do is try to do our best to either figure out what they have planned, or try and prepare the best we can for whatever might pop up."

[techmaster-glitch]

   Thankful that the point-defence emitters remained unused the whole flight, Jaks unplugged from the system and joined the others. He found a hazmat suit of his own and suited up, and also grabbed a bandolier and began slotting tools from the mechanic's toolkit into the pockets. His three robots also unlatched themselves from the storage bays and skittered around to the group.
   "Well, if we're all feeling the same thing, that's practically proof we're not crazy. No way everyone can be having the same hallucination at the same time with no external cause. So, what are we gonna investigate first? The ship, or the path? Personally, I vote the ship."

[AmberCross]

Ari took one of the suits as he listened to the back and forth speculation on that 'being watched' feeling. He of course had it just as much as they did, but was not willing to let himself think it meant anything. As the faded the suit to something a little less standing out, a faded gray perhaps, he took advantage of a brief lull to put forward these views. "It is not uncommon for humans to react similarly to the same stimuli. Electricity is painful to touch, and warm water relaxes muscles. If you ask a person what an unlucky number is or what they think a relaxing color is, nine out of ten will say 13 and green or blue. Just because we all feel like we're being watched doesn't mean we're being watched, just that some common trigger is causing that feeling."

He looked a bit uncomfortable for a moment before abruptly changing the subject. "Anyway, we should look for the people. They can't have too much of a head start." And hoped that would be enough to get people to stop talking about being watched. He didn't quite believe what he had said, but he really wanted to and would probably convince himself if everyone would just stop talking about it.

[Malakin]

Alix was reluctant to leave the pilots chair, for the first time since arriving on the planet he had managed to relax, he felt like he had some control over his destiny, but as the feeling of being watched started to grow any chance of continued relaxation disappeared.

He joined the others in the prep area and donned a suit, setting the colouration to a mottled green and brown to distinguish his suit from the others he listens in on the conversation.

"Maybe They want us to get worked up, all part of Their plan, maybe They don't exist, maybe we are all being irradiated by something and we have a week to live. At the moment I don't see what we can do about any of this apart from just getting on with things.

As for what to do now, I say we check their tents first, see what sort of state they left camp in and maybe find some clues about what is going on here. They might have set up automated defences or booby-traps or something on the ship, we should be careful when we check that out. As for hunting these guys down...
Well we don't even know if they are out there, we saw no life signs on the over flight.  Not only that but we have the equipment to track them down easily enough from the air or the ground with our vehicles so I don't think we need to hurry in finding them, an hour or two here checking things out can only help us figure out where they have gone.

So yeah, I vote camp, ship, survivors in that order. Of course we can split up to cover the first two, but I would not suggest any of us go out hunting the survivors with out all of us together."

[Arcalane]

((You have a little more time to discuss between yourselves as to what you want to do first before the next post. Plan wisely; stalling here for too long will make it harder to catch up with any of the crew that might still be alive, if there are any.))

Isaac declines a hazard suit seeing as he'll be staying near the ships. He ambles into the cargo hold and deploys the rear and inner ramps, looking out at the site with furrowed brows. The Pioneer's crew don't seem to have left in a hurry...

[ShadesFox]

"I don't see how there can be anything interesting in the the camp.  And it isn't like the ship or the camp are going anywhere, the people might be going somewhere quickly.  It would be better to run them down, since they are sure to have information far more interesting then the camp.  Maybe the ship, but the ship could be interesting.  Still doesn't change the fact that Pioneer isn't going anywhere soon."

[Azlan]

"If the fixed assets could have moved, then they would have done so already.  I would suggest all those able to take up a weapon for good measure and then I put forward we track any possible remaining crew.  The new path is the most obvious choice."  Rebecca commented with a confident air, though not a foolhardy recommendation, the human element was the most mobile of their possible targets.

[Arcalane]

Isaac nods, standing half way down the rear ramp. "If that path does lead toward the mountain and we didn't pick 'em up from the air, chances are they found caves. Bioscanner can handle ship hulls but not solid rock... don't ask me why," he shrugs. "Looks wide enough for the APC, I'd say that's yer best for catchin' up."

[ShadesFox]

Wolfe shrugs back, "Sounds like we have a good plan going.  We look for the missing people then we scour the camp and the ship.  Hopefully they just found a really nice restaurant in the woods and they didn't all go crazy."

[SquirrelWizard]

Marcus shifted uneasily, "I know you guys are all gung-ho to go chasing after any survivors, but I'd at least suggest having a stop by the ship before we get too far. The thing is, we have an idea of where these people went, but nothing to really indicate why, and under what conditions. If we can access the ship's computers we might get a more detailed picture. You dont go hunting something without putting yourself in your quarry's mind, and we are hunting them down; just that if everything goes well, we wont have to shoot them."

[techmaster-glitch]

   Jaks watched the others talk back and forth. When the one called Marcus spoke up, Jaks focused on him, cybernetic eye whirring, and in his augmented reality overlay, the large neon letters that spelled 'MARCUS' above the man's head added a smaller caption; 'Smart guy. Make friends with him when this is over.'
  "I would like to take this moment to also remind everyone before we go gallivanting off into the forest--an large open area, and environment we cannot secure, control, or search exhaustively--that there's still a very good chance that the people here are the same ones who shot at us. And even if they aren't, Marcus is right; if we check the ship's logs first and these folks did go off into the forest, we should actually be able to get an idea of where exactly they went, and be able to conduct our search all the better. My vote's still for the ship after the camp, though I don't want to make waves, I just want to get this over with. If the overwhelming opinion is to go into the wilderness first, so be it."
  With his hazmat suit and tool-bandolier all set out, as he spoke, Jaks went through the stash of weapons they brought along. He noted that 'Wolfe' had already taken one of the two heavy-duty CBR-12 battlerifles, but no one was springing for the other. Not wanting the equipment to go to waste--because who knows when you could ever need it--he picked up that rifle and some magazines for it, and went through a routine of checking the gun and the magazines in a way that suggested he's used a weapon before, but not as much as a real professional. At any looks, he shrugs and replies "I've been on a frontier world before. Used to go out and hunt game with some other dudes. Although, there was this one incident in a remote camp where some asshole went bonkers and barricaded himself in a shelter with a hostage. Since the thing that nearest approached law enforcement was half a day away, we had to take him down on our own. Fortunately, there was a retried police trooper with us, and he gave me and a few others a good run-down of more advanced operation in the short time we had. Just to err on the side of caution, everyone here should probably grab something, even if it's just a pistol. I can help give a crash-course in the basics while we walk, it's actually not that hard. Just gotta remember a short list of rules you never, ever break."
  He then gives a look at the one missile-launcher, before deciding to pick that up as well. "Okay, I'll admit I've never used anything like this before..." he said as his cybernetic eye looked it over, and he ran it over with his mechanical hand, a small cable popping out of a finger and finding the standard interface port. "But it's not that hard either. Overkill, probably, but hey. Better to have something and not need it than need something and not have it. It was given to us, might as well use it. Never know when you need to blow some shit up."


EDIT: Cut the end slightly to account for Acalane's post after this one, making new post.