The Clockwork Mansion

Space

The Antygias rumbled ominously as it dropped out of FTL travel, the bridge crew already awake and at their stations. Kaukai loomed in the distance, the view of the planet dominated by oceans and thin, wispy clouds.

As far as ships go, the Antygias wasn't particularly elegant. The underside of the ship was coated in thick ablative panels designed to absorb re-entry heat from a belly-down approach, and the hull itself was long and boxy, with four large engines at the rear. A mottled, rusty-looking paintjob of orange, red and brown made the whole thing look barely spaceworthy, but that was the ConFed's MO, and trying to hide in space was barely practical in the first place. Might as well try and make your ships look ineffective outside of the parade details.

--

The Bridge

"Antygias on final approach, confirm satellite launch readiness?" Irvine spoke clearly and calmly.

"Satellites are green for launch Captain. Ready when you are."

"Roger that SatComm, commence standard launch procedure in five..."

--

Space, Final Approach

Kaukai slowly became clearer. Shorelines and continents resolved. The planet's vast ice caps were clearly visible.

In the orbit of the planet, something... somethings... stirred. Or did they?

--

The Bridge

"Launching weather monitoring satellite... weather monitoring satellite away. Launching FTL Communication and Navigation satellite..." the Satellite Commander intoned, almost as if he'd walked through the procedure a hundred times.

"Commencing final approach. ETA to point of no return is two minutes."

--

Space

The satellites boosted into stable orbits and unfurled from their pill-like deployment pods, beginning their start-up procedures.

Then, the Weather Monitoring Satellite stopped responding.

--

The Bridge

"ETA to point of no return is ten... nine... eight... seven..." The AutoNav chimed, counting down steadily.

"Captain, Weather Monitoring just stopped responding." Sandra frowned at her display. The radar screen was blank. None of the satellites were responding, even.

"What do you mean 'stopped responding'?" Irvine looked understandably displeased and confused.

"Satellite Launch Control confirms satellites no longer responding. Could be a hardware error? Slow boot sequence?"

"No... I can't trace it on the local RADAR. It should still be in range, but there's just... nothing there?"

"We are now at the point of no return. Commencing orbital insertion of First Landing Colony Ship One Nine Five Antygias, Operational Target Kaukai."

"Static?"

"Not even static," Sandra fiddled with the controls, to no avail. "...FTL CommSat is not responding either. Captain..." Sandra let fear creep into her voice.

"Can we launch the backup?"

"Not from here," Satellite Launch Command was clear, "...at this approach we're too low to put the backup into orbit... either they get torn apart by re-entry stress, or smash into the planet. Assuming we survive we'll need to launch it from the ground."

"Final Landing Approach Set, Target: Neumann's Mesa, Commencing Landing Approach."

The sensor screen bleeped angrily. Then again. Three more bleeps. Five more bleeps.

"****!" Sandra doublechecked, but there they were. Five red triangles incoming fast, with another wave dead on their heels. "Incoming! We have incoming from low orbit! I'm tracking multiple incoming missiles!"

She cursed again, mentally this time. How hadn't she spotted them? The sensors should've picked them up miles away if they were launched from the surface.

--

Space/Kaukai Orbit

The first wave of missiles slipped straight past the Antygias as it began to plunge into Kaukai's atmosphere, ablative plating absorbing the intense heat that resulted. Their targets were not the ship - instead, they were aiming for the satellites. Satellites that had no evasive or defensive measures. Satellites that subsequently bloomed into expanding clouds of superheated gas.

--

The Bridge

"The satellites are hit! The missiles took out our satellites!" came from the Satellite Command console. Oh boy...

"Hold on, we have five more incoming! They're headed straight for us!"

All they could do now was hope the missiles didn't do any significant damage to the ablatives, or the entire ship could be torn apart.

Fortunately, they didn't. But they did something else entirely unpleasant, and potentially worse.

--

Kaukai Atmosphere, Approaching Neumann Mesa

The second wave of missiles indeed had a different purpose compared to the first wave. They were aiming for the Antygias. Four electromagnetic pulse missiles slammed into the underside of the ship, and another explosive struck somewhere near the main cargo ramp. The ablatives absorbed the explosive blast quite well, all things considered.

Electromagnetic pulses, on the other hand, are not mitigated by ablative armour particularly well.

--

Antygias

The entire ship rattled at the impacts. Equipment malfunctioned. Panels exploded for no adequately explained reason. Maintenance robots ground to a halt.

Cryocells, whilst well shielded, were not perfectly protected. Nearly all of them were put out of commission, forced to engage their emergency stasis systems until they could be repaired and their contents dethawed.

Emphasis on nearly. Some of them survived intact.

--

The Bridge

"Crew, report!" Irvine barked into his headset.

No response. Even Sandra was out cold.

"Final approach complete, ETA to Neumann Mesa: five minutes."

The Antygias lurched and thrummed as re-entry completed, her engines barely functional after the EMP strikes.

"Commence thawing all viable cells and monitor for more incoming missiles."

"Affirmative. Cryo thaw in process." the AutoNav beeped again.

Irvine sighed. Sandra groaned and shook her head, waking up.

"Looks like we're still in one piece..." she muttered under her breath and hauled herself out of her seat.

Irvine laughed and stood up as well. "Barely..." he looked around at the others. Some of the consoles were spattered with blood. Not a good sign. "Let's get the others down to medical. Can you walk?"

The lieutenant nodded, "...yeah, I'm good."

--

Antygias

Those "lucky" enough to be in intact cells would experience the delight of the hangover-esque aftereffects that were the result being thawed out from cryosleep.

Meanwhile, it would take several trips to get the injured to the medical bay. The Satellite Commander, Communications Officer and Chief Terraforming Officer were the worst off. Sandra and Irvine were lucky, compared to the rest.

--

Kaukai

Finally, after a nail-biting five minute flight that was thankfully free of any further missile attacks, the battered and overworked Antygias set down on a large sandstone mesa that jutted out of an arid plain like a sore thumb, with several smaller mesas situated around it. As the colony ship set down, the engines sputtered and ground to a halt. Not exactly what they were supposed to do at this point, but they'd gotten the ship down in one piece despite the attack, so one could hardly ask more of them.

A long river ran north to south along it's eastern edge, beyond which was a large, scorching desert. To the west, a sprawling, reddish-toned badlands seemed to stretch on and on before reaching a mountain range that in turn curved around to the south of the badlands and back to the arid plains around mesa, then further east and off into the desert, no doubt the source of the aforementioned river, which itself terminated in a small delta leading out to the northern sea, which also bordered the curving mountains.

Several dusty slopes provided routes towards sea level and to the other mesas, albeit of varying width and precariousness. Some were massive stone stairways that would have to be traversed on foot. Others would be navigable by vehicle, so long as the driver was fairly careful. The latter could be beaten into proper paths, with time.

Neumann Mesa itself was, as already stated, a large, flat expanse largely composed of sandstone, with plenty of room for a base camp even with the Antygias settled in the middle of it.

--

Briefing Room

Not so much a briefing room as a smaller cargo hold cleared out and reappropriated. Only Chief Engineer Isaac, Lieutenant Sandra and Captain Irvine are in attendance, the others in medical under the supervision of the AutoDoc, or for the unlucky three, the morgue. Cargo crates have been placed as impromptu seats and tables.

The survivors - those able to be thawed - are assembled there after they have recovered enough to stand and be coherent. Common quickthaw symptoms are abound; headaches primarily, but also minor loss of balance and slightly blurry vision in some cases.

Irvine addressed the assembled specialists, a ragtag band of men and women who looked barely awake, nevermind fit for recon. Still, they didn't have many other options right now.

"I'm sorry we had to wake you all up so quickly, but the landing turned sour. I'll keep things brief; our engines are dead, our satellites have been taken out by missiles, our main comm array was fried by EMP, we can't launch the backup without a rocket, and most of the cryo cells took EMP damage as well, so you're all we've got. The dorsal - that is, the flight deck - launch doors are jammed, three of the bridge crew are hanging on by a thread and the others are still being cared for by the CMO. I realise this isn't part of the job description, but I need half a dozen volunteers to take a 4x4 and set up some sensor posts on the western approach to the mesa. Everyone else will be helping us set up the basecamp here at the mesa."

He pauses a few seconds to let that sink in, then looks at the assembled crowd of maybe a two or three dozen colonists skeptically.

"So, any volunteers and/or questions?"

((This is where you speak up, people. If you're in the first-post roster in the OOC thread, you're free to post now, and kinda-sorta expected to volunteer. Your belongings have fortunately not been damaged by the blasts, nor have any implants. It's safe to assume you already got all your personal effects sorted out and at hand already. Anyone who signs up between now and the group rolling out is assumed to have been in the crowd all along.))

((If you're disorientated, tired, confused, angry, upset, and/or generally have no idea what the heck is going on: that's the idea! Wait, you say you didn't sign up for this? That's the point! :giggle ))

Wolfe raised his hand almost immediately, "Question!  You said missiles?  I was just double checking because I never heard you say missiles before.  Especially the sort that shoot at us.  Who were shooting those missiles anyways?"

Wolfe's even glare could have been mistaken for intensity, though it was really the result of trying really hard to not mind the headache.

   The day had not started well for Jaks, such as it were.
  The last thing he remembered was the cryopod sealing up back on the Antygias's launching point, and the next, he was stumbling around with the worst headache he'd ever had. Everything around him seemed to be a chaotic mess.
  He wasn't sure how it happened, but he seemed to have been successfully heared inot a seat in the briefing room, and was getting his bearings back when the commander said what was going on.
  One thing in particular alarmed Jaks.
  "Excuse me..." The cyborg said, his electronic eye focusing on the commander, and in Jak's view, highlighted him with relevant data. "We've reached Kaukai, our destination planet...but we were shot at with missiles? Isn't the whole point of this operation that this planet is supposed to be uninhabited?"
  He sat back, rubbing his forehead. Man, his head hurt, and pulses from his implants weren't helping much.
  "And if we were hit by EMPs, I take that to mean most of our equipment, namely, our primary labor force, is offline? I think I'd be better applied getting all that rebooted, but I can be on the sensor team if it's absolutely necessary."

Rebecca had considered many elements before she had applied to this mission, an attack was not one of those things.  She had been sitting in silence, applying pressure to the bridge of her nose, a well know pressure point, to alleviate some of her headache. 

She let her glasses drop back into place and half rose from her seated position.

"It would seem that whatever attacked us is incapable or unwilling to pursue an attack at this time.  So setting up those sensors is important.  If no one else will volunteer than I will be the first unless you would think I would be better suited to assisting in medical?"

Pushing her glasses back into a comfortable spot, she added a question, "what do you plan to do if our attackers come to finish the job?"

Irvine just nodded. "Yes, missiles. Sandra?"

Suitably cued in, Sandra explained what had happened... "During our final approach, ten missiles were launched. Given how late we spotted them I can only surmise they were launched from low orbit, as planetary launches would've been picked up well in advance even with our sensor suite. The first five were conventional missiles aimed at our satellites. The following wave, four electromagnetic and one conventional, struck our hull. Two impacted Engineering in an attempt to burn out our engines, a third struck the forward sensor array, and the fourth hit just behind the main cargo ramp, damaging some of the auxiliary cryo units and jumping to many of the cells themselves from there. The conventional explosive hit the cargo ramp itself, but our ablative heatshields absorbed the impact without issue."

Again, a pause to let things sink in, before she continued, "To be blunt, we got lucky. Having to push through the intense heat just prior to impact probably weakened the missiles considerably, and let us land in one piece. Fortunately the pulses didn't reach too far so your personal effects and implants should be fine, and most of our heavy machinery is robust enough that it should only need minor repairs if it was damaged. The maintenance robots are low priority, as the current contingent are enough to start repairing the sensor array and cryocells since we don't need the engines... trying to go anywhere would probably just draw more missiles after us."

"As for the launches themselves and who fired them, we don't know. It's possible that somebody knew we'd come to colonize this planet, and set up a trap for us. Alternatively they could be setting up a trap for the high-speed marine detachment that will arrive in several months to investigate why we haven't reported in despite the low risk classification of the planet. If they came from low orbit that means they probably came from satellites, unless they were boosted into orbit from the surface... and those satellites either evaded the initial recon/survey sweep, or they were deployed some time after that - but prior to our arrival. We can't afford to launch our backup commsatellite if those defenses are still running either, as it's our only means of FTL communication. The nearest colony is several dozen lightyears from here, maybe more, so STL is a no go."

That said and done, Sandra took a chance to breathe easy as Irvine took over again.

"Our long-term priority is to figure out where those missiles came from and who was responsible for them, but first we need to get ourselves situated here on the mesa, in case whoever did this has ground forces that decide to come welcome us."

He nodded to Rebecca.

"Exactly. My guess is that they don't have any ground forces or installations, but we can't be sure what we're dealing with. 'Ancient ruins' have only been found in a single binary system on the other side of the Secure Zone from here, and it's unlikely that anything left behind would stay operational long enough to target us if that was the case. We're probably looking at isolated encampments, at least one of which is responsible for those theoretical satellites. Could be mercenaries, these guys seem too well organised for bandits or pirates."

"As for a defense plan... the Antygias might not be armed per se, but she has several standard-issue anti-asteroid defense guns that have good coverage and can be operated manually. It's not much but those things pack a pretty mean punch given their intended usage. For any that get in closer, we have several mining walkers, if they still work. The big ones are slow and the small ones over no driver protection worth mentioning, but the Mesa doesn't offer much room to maneuver and until we have a basecamp there's no cover worth talking about. The only ways up are gravel slopes and stone stairways, unless they come in from the air. There are several high-powered rifles and other weapons in the Armoury as well... the ConFed might not have given us a marine escort but they weren't about to let us wander off without a decent weapon cache handy. I know it's not much of a defense, but it's the best we can do until we're able to set up the sensor posts and some sentry guns."

Irvine finishes up, but it seems Isaac isn't going to be mute all day either. His voice is gravelly, compared to Irvine's practiced and clear command tones, and Sandra's clear - if slightly quick and breathless - manner of speech. Also, unlike the officers, the so-called Chief Engineer is definitely from one of the rougher colonies, dressed in shabby-looking overalls and not caring much for appearances compared to their neat civilian uniforms.

"Irvine is right. Whoever these guys are, either they did the job badly, or they wanted us to survive for some reason. Call me paranoid, but my money's on the latter."

As the world faded into reality, Ari took stock of what he knew should be going on. No headache; surprisingly good. Everything was blurry; to be expected since he wasn't wearing his glasses. He winced as his cyro unit hissed open and the unnaturally loud sound pierced his eardrums; that might become a problem if every sound felt like a stab to the ears. He exited the cyro unit and went in search of his belongings. They were fairly close so he found them quickly and pulled out his glasses which he put on. Everything was less blurry, but still blurry; crap. He then made his way to the bridge in the process walking into one or two doorsills; ow.

Arriving somewhat later than most of the others, he stood at the back as Irvine and Sandra explained the situation. As others asked their questions, he found himself continually trying to push his glasses up his nose to fix his vision in futility. If that didn't fix itself soon he'd have to get stronger glasses because this was getting annoying. After a brief pause after the first two speakers, he rose a hand somewhat uncertainly into the air to call attention to himself at the back of the group. "I-" he stopped, wincing before continuing with a somewhat quieter voice for the sake of his ears, "I have some experience with remote equipment. Maybe I can try to identify any orbiting satellites or find a way to boost a signal from the ground without launching the FTL communications satellite? If that's a low priority I could help with something else instead..."

Wolfe sighed.  This was a bit more adventure then he was intending to sign up for.  Still, no matter how they survived the whole sensor thing seemed a great deal more critical then any other concern.

"I'll go with the lady to help set up the sensors."

   Jaks absorbed the new information. Okay, so most of the robots were still functional, and the broken ones weren't critical.
   "Okay...I guess I can help the sensor team." Jaks said, still rubbing his head.

Letting what had transpired sink in, Marcus massaged the bridge of his nose; he had developed a mild headache from the defrosting process. "I'll help with the sensors as well. Considering we're erecting a giant beacon for them to home in on us, might I suggest we use some sort of survellience equipment?"

Isaac looks skeptical at Ari. "Ev'n if we quickcharged it with Anty's reactor, FTL comm signals can't breach atmos, 'specially not a breathable one like this. If anything got through it'd just be a burst of static, even more likely to bring them charging into whatever trap we landed in. I ain't much a fan of the marines but I don't like seein' good people die for no good reason."

Meanwhile, Sandra seems to be collecting a bunch of... poles? They look to be about five or six foot long, the bottom end terminating in a spike, and the top in some kind of camera dome. Several other antennae and attachments are part of the device as well, and she holds one up for the volunteers to examine, "That's exactly what you're doing. These sensor posts will act as an early warning system and let us know if anything's coming out of the badlands. They're not very subtle..." she taps the dome for emphasis "...but if you place enough of them, have some overlapping coverage and find good vantage points, we should be able to stand losing some of them, whether it's to bad weather or enemy action. They're light as well, so you shouldn't have any trouble carrying them. They passively monitor for unknown transmission sources in the vicinity, four motion sensors give them a sixth sense for detecting anyone trying to sneak up on them, and the camera itself is capable of thermal imaging. Even if one of these sensors gets taken out somehow... we'll know, and we'll probably see who did it to boot."

"As for making a beacon... there's no way they couldn't have seen us coming anyway. Neumann Mesa is about the only decently flat landing site on this continent for a ship of this scale. It'd be trivial to figure out where we were going from our landing vector... and regarding the satellites that attacked us... honestly, if they can evade our sensors in space, and they can potentially evade the sensors of a ConFed Survey/Scout ship, then there's no way in hell we'll pick them up from the ground. Our best bet is to find a control site. There's a slim chance it's located on one of Kaukai's two moons but our dropshuttle should be light and fast enough to get past the satellites."

Sandra goes back to sorting out the posts, and Irvine takes over again...

"That is, of course, assuming we can fix the dorsal launch bay doors--"

...before being cut off by Isaac.

"'course we can fix the bloody dorsal launch bay doors. It might take a while though."

Sandra doesn't look up from her box to reply, "Even if that's the case, we need to figure out if they have any local SAM sites. They wouldn't have had the firepower to take down a colony ship and likely wouldn't have wanted to reveal themselves, but they could easily trash a dropshuttle or one of the scouts."

"Now, if there are any more volunteers, help me shift these crates down to the vehicle hangar and load them into one of the 4x4s. The sooner you get these things placed, the sooner we'll know if there's anything else out there."

The crates are long cases, really, each containing four of the sensor posts. Light enough for one person to carry, but fairly bulky.

Ari flushed and muttered something about relay signals or making a copy of the FTL satellite with shaked down capabilities, good for just the one signal and stripped of anything else in order to make it small/unnoticeable enough to get past any missiles. It was somewhat lost to anyone not next to him and listening (which at this point was no-one), but he said it anyway to make himself sound less of an idiot to at least himself. Still, he realized no matter how you shook the idea around, it was going to take time an be a long-term project which wasn't really feasible to start just yet. So blushing, he headed over to help the sensory team which seemed like it would be more immediately productive.

"Well, no time like now I suppose."

Wolfe gets up and grabs a crate and looks for anyone else who will be coming along.

Resting her callused elbows on the knees of a pair of sturdy cargo pants, Marianne was downing enough water to quench a desert at the talk. Ah haven't had a headache like this since my twenty-first birthday, she thought. Setting the bottle down next to her foot, she brushed her fiery red hair back with a tanned hand and drawled out, "Ah think Ah c'n prob'ly get some testin' while we're out." Patting her left side pocket she continued, "Steve needs to be put through his paces. Sho', Ah'll come with y'all t' go set up some o' those sensor posts. S'gonna be a while 'til Ah can set up a proper fahm out heah." With that, she picked up the water bottle, slid it into her right side pocket, and smoothed out the front of her forest green t-shirt. Picking up a crate, she walked over to the tall burly guy. Extending a hand, she introduced herself. "Th' name's Marianne. Marianne Doflik. How d'you do?"

With volunteers apparently settled, all that was left for the time being was the doing part for this first task.  Rebecca moves away from the conference table and retrieves a crate.  It was not especially heavy, but bulky for her, nothing unexpected though. 

She took a spot over near Wolfe and stated, "now is always the best time."

Marcus reached down and picked up a crate for himself, "Unless it drops in our laps, I'm thinking research is a lower priority for us, at least for the time being." Leaning the crate against a wall, he opened up a long thin metallic case. Inside, nestled in the cases cushioning, were the two guns he had packed for the trip. He slung the CT3 rifle's strap over his shoulder, and buckled the pistol to his thigh. "I'm Marcus by the way," he said as he pocketed a packet of darts from the case.

Having been ushered into the briefing room just before they started, Alix lent against the wall by the door arms folded and looking grim. He hated waking sickness, sure he has experienced it before a few times, but its not one of those things that you get used to.

His expression grew harder as he listend to the news but refrained from making comment. What has happend has happend, its not the first time he has ever been in a bad situation, although the closest he has come to being attacked by another group of humans was a long time ago, and all that happend was a flurry of coms traffic and a single missile launched over the horizon. He never even saw who was attacking.

He expected to feel something, anger, maybe fear of what might come in the next few hours or days, but all he was aware of was the headache and the slight blurring of his vision.
Upon the mention of a job involving setting up some sensors he perked up, the opportunity to get out of the ship, stretching his legs and getting a breath of, well, whatever atmosphere was out there was incredibly appealing to him.

As the other volunteers stood up, he followed suit. "Count me in, if theres nothing to fly, I might as well make myself useful some other way."
He swings his pack containing his personal belongings and unloaded rifle over his shoulder before grabbing a crate and approaching the group.
Putting on a slightly forced smile he mumbles an introduction to them. "Hi there, names Alix Gault..."

   With little else to do, Jaks does his best to shake off the headache and heads over to the sensor crates. The cyborg lifts one up, mainly with his bulky and rugged metal arm, and starts carrying it out to the vehicles, not stopping to talk to anyone for the moment.

Wolfe suddenly felt quite popular.  He took Marianne's hand, "I'm Wolfe, Wolfe York.  I was supposed to fill out the communications and sensors grid.  I suppose I'm still doing something like that after a fashion."  After a firm shake he lets go.

He then looked over to Rebecca, "I suppose now is a good time for many things."  He wasn't about to make mention of a few things he could think of where 'now' was not best for.  Though he did look into her eyes a bit, wondering if her eyes were also an accident.

Isaac hauls himself up, picks a couple of the mechanically-minded techs out of the remaining crowd, and heads off to fix the dorsals. Irvine leads the rest out to set up the basecamp.

As for the volunteers... once everyone has a crate, Sandra gets their attention.

"Alright... hm, looks like we might need to trucks. Eh, no matter. If you work quickly and efficiently you should have no trouble getting these set up. Come on."

She leads everyone down to the vehicle hangar, the ramp already lowered. The hangar itself is vast, packed with cargo trucks, vans, pickups, even a small contingent of ConFed staff cars and scout cars, perhaps even a pair of armoured personnel carriers. Lurking at the back are the mining walkers mentioned earlier, half a dozen hulking brutes designed to smash through rock face with sheer power, and at least twice as many faster units for working in confined areas or in mountainous places where the larger units cannot venture due to ground stability concerns or narrow pathways.

Looking out of the hangar, the team can see that several prefab buildings are already being put together, mostly housing and hydroponic facilities - seeing as Kaukai is rather... lacking in edible native plants - along with plenty of solar panels for power. Automated bulldozers smooth out the mesa top where necessary, and a couple can be seen in the distance clearing up a sub-mesa, no doubt the intended location of the launch platform.

The vans themselves are pretty robust, and in a fairly distinctive yellow-and-black colour scheme, four doors (driver and three passengers) plus a rear double door for cargo. Loading them up is easy enough - the cargo area is also covered, and has crude benches facing the center that could accomodate more passengers if not for the secured crates taking up the center. Two semi-automatic rifles and spare magazines are mounted on netting behind the rear passenger seats as well.

"The vans can keep track of each other over a short distance as well as the location of the ship. Just use the navigation panel in the dashboard. It's a touchscreen, just tap once to set a destination, or hold and drag to pan. Since we don't have a navigation satellite online your range is going to be rather limited by what the vans can actually 'see'," she gestures to several points that look like cameras, "...but they memorize that and can upload the data to the main array when you get back. The more ground you cover and the more posts you put up, the better our coverage. There's a loose gravel ramp down to the badlands on the southwest side of the plaza, out that way," another gesture in the direction of the ramp, "...now get going... and try not to take too long. The vans are fitted with emergency beacons if something goes wrong, don't be afraid to hit them. Just keep in mind we might not be able to get help to you for several minutes depending on the situation up here. Any more questions?"

Before leaving, she pondered Wolfe's response for a moment, "well indeed it is, such as introductions.  I am Doctor Rebecca Sonada, but Becky is just fine unless you are seeing me for a checkup or I'm studying soil samples for microbes."  Pausing, she spoke to Wolfe directly, "teenage mistake, I've grown to like them though.  Let us be on our way."

Following Sandra while carrying her case.  She loaded her case and took an appropriate passenger seat, "I don't have any specific questions as long as our communications and sensor engineer knows where we need to place these and the best spacing.  If you have advice on that, I'd find it useful, otherwise I'll defer to Wolfe and figure out the rest."

Rebecca smiled pleasantly waiting for the others to be ready and for their inevitable, insightful questions they would ask of Sandra.

Alix followed the group down to the cargo bay, and after loading his crate into the back of the lead vehicle he takes the front passenger seat.

When Sandra asks for questions he speaks up, "So I know we should be setting these up as fast as possible, but is there any kind of limit to our time out there, potential storms kicking up or anything of that nature? Also with these things helping to map the area out, is there any where you need specifically checked out on the way to setting the cameras up?"

   Jaks follows Sandra and the others out to the vans, loading up his own sensor crate when they get there and walks around to the front of it. He spots the automated dozers off in the distance and looks forlornly at them, before shaking his head and looking over the group piling into the van. His cybernetic eye visibly sweeps over them, zooming in on each in turn. Man, that's creepy.
  He then gives a jaunty wave with the bulky metal arm. "Hi there! Name's Jaks. Robotics specialist. I'm cleared for most vehicles, and I don't see anyone jumping for it, so anyone mind if I drive?"

Setting down her sensor crate for a moment, she leaned on it and asked, "Uh, ma'am, wheah exactly ah we s'posed to put these posts? 'Round the mesa? Down the ramp? At the base? 'S far out's we can?"

Sandra shrugs. "I could tell you that if the weather satellite was online, but I don't think there's much chance of figuring the weather out from down here. Timewise I think we still have plenty of daylight left. For the posts... the more ground you cover the better. We're mostly concerned with anything that might be coming out of the badlands... we can see anything coming up the ramps and in the plains immediately around the mesa easily enough, but the terrain in the badlands itself is rough, and it'd be easy to evade the eyes of only one or two sentries. That's why you're putting out on the order of two dozen."

"The navigation panels in the van should be able to pick up the feeds from the sensors too, and display the coverage area if you're unsure about positioning. You can pick them up and redeploy them for better cover if you find they're badly placed, but make sure it's not too sparse or too heavy. I'm not sure of the exact model, but if we're lucky they might be able to blend into their surroundings and fool any casual observation."

Wolfe chimes in after Sandra speaks, "As long as we can get multiple routes back to the ship we can make the sensors fairly sparse."

Wolfe loads up his box and takes a seat next to Rebecca, "Well, I've not quite done anything like this before.  Usually the sats aren't destroyed by missile fire and I'm just filling in the gaps.  I guess in this case the gap is 'everything.'"

Wolfe pokes his head out the window and waves to Jaks, "Nope, the driving is all you!"

   Jaks nods to Wolfe with a "Cool" and hops into the driver's seat. He starts up the vehicle and begins using the touchscreen and switches, though he then glances around for a cyber-neruo link. Finding one, he pulls an extension cable out of his metal arm and plugs it in, with a few whirring sounds coming from his eye as van feeds into it. As the vehicle warms up, he casts his cybernetic eye over everyone again. Anyone who said their name aloud now had it floating over their heads in Jaks' augmented reality overlay, in addition to any information they had given about themselves in smaller text floating next to them.
  "So, we ready to go? Everyone piled in and buckled up, or someone got any more questions?" He asks as the engine revs softly.

Marianne loaded up her crate into a separate truck and gestured at the remaining volunteers. "Come on, no need to waste hay. Want me to drive this heah truck?"

((Rather hard to fit a bad Texan accent into rather universal words. <.<;))

Marcus hopped into the van, his gaze lingered, with a hint of disgust, on the cyborg's attachment to the vehicle. As he sat down and strapped himself in, he muttered to himself, "It'll be your own damn fault if something important gets ripped out."

Ari quietly grabbed what he could carry that needed carrying and climbed into the back of the van with it. He winced a little as Marianne talked with that heavy accent of hers. He'd grown up in what his mother liked to call 'a cultured environment', and people her that were very clearly not from a similar upbringing tended to grate on him. Of the rest of the people present, he recognized one or two that he had seen before going into cyro, but he didn't really know anything about them. So far he was neutral about most of them. He'd probably make more informed judgements once he knew them better. By now his ears no longer hurt when people talked and he could see properly.

IC:
The group would have plenty of time to get used to and learn to tolerate one another... and they'd need to, after all, if they were going to survive.

The drive to the Badlands is uneventful and fairly easy despite the rough terrain. It's most distinctive features are the rusty red sand, and the prevalence of tower-like rock formations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoodoo_%28geology%29).

There is little else in the way of notable features. A few scrubbish plants and small cacti-like growths cling to the loose soil, mostly around the base of the rock formations... no other life in sight though. Not a bird in the sky, no lizards, no insects... the lack of noise is almost oppressive. Well, not quite a complete lack of noise; as the wind whips through the passes and columns, it creates a rather solemn, haunting effect that only adds to a distinct feeling of being watched. Not by the sensor posts, but by something else.

If there's anything there, the sensors certainly aren't seeing it.

Placing the sensor posts is easy enough, and fortunately, it seems you were lucky; these are the self-disguising models Sandra mentioned. The effect is unconvincing up close, but from a distance it's quite difficult to spot where you left them. It takes a good couple of hours to get the net well placed, especially with the rock towers occasionally restricting line of sight quite badly, but things go well apart from that.

Speaking of fortunes, the skies seem to be nice and clear today. No dust storms or anything of that nature.

---

GM:
If anyone did anything particular during the trip or whilst out in the Badlands, now would be the time to declare it, and I'll post results before you head back. Naturally if you want to do something in secret then PM me and we will resolve it there. I apologise if I'm squashing opportunities for smalltalk, but I like to keep things rolling.

At every third sensor post, Marianne stuck Steve into the dirt and ran a sample while the others set up the sensor post. Noting the readings in her datapad, she used her knowledge to get a general idea of possible mineral deposits or arable land.

As they traveled and placed sensor posts, Rebecca noticed a few basic details.  During one of Marianne's tests, she followed and added a remark, "something seems a bit odd.  Discounting the disquieting feeling, this general combination of features and soils seem strange.  I'm not a geologist, but I know a bit.  This red soil is typically found in humid and tropical regions, it has very poor nutrients.  It is likely red from high amount of iron oxide and is probably rather acidic with very low pH.  However, these tower structures are typically located in hot, arid regions prone to seasonal flooding.  It could be ancient remnants and this area was once more tropical and now is arid."

While they moved on to the next post she took a few notes on her wrist computer, "it is going to take a bit of time to make this land arable."

Marcus kept an eye out for two things. Signs of indigenous wildlife, and signs of whoever shot the missiles at them. Primarily to make sure they didn't end up on the menu, or blindly walk into another trap. Keeping his gun handy, he silently went about his task of assisting with the sensors.

Marianne looked at Rebecca as she waited for the test to finish. "Thanks for your input! I noticed it too. However, while Terran stand'rds seem to apply pretty often, it never hurts to double check those assumptions, consid'rin' this's a new planet and all."

Wolfe did not like the rock towers in the slightest.  Normally there would be satellites in the sky so they would just be a minor nuisance.  But this was a land based network.  And rock formations had a nasty tendency to be made of rocks.

After thinking for a moment while near one of the formations Wolfe asks to the crowd in general, "Think someone can get up there?  I bet if we set up something up there it would work out really well."

Those pillars sure would provide a damn good view from the top, and a camera up there would have a decent advantage over those lower down, but Alix shakes his head at the suggestion.

"Although its a great idea, we don't have any proper climbing equipment, and are any of us even experienced rockclimbers ? It would be rather embarrassing to come back from such a simple task with some one injured or even dead...
I'm sure we can come back later to flesh out the sensor grid with some proper climbing equipment, I for one would love to give climbing those a go."

Placing the sensors is easy enough, although getting good coverage requires going back and adjusting things a few times.

Interestingly, you cannot seem to raise base camp on radio, though the line to the sensor post works fine. Regardless of the issue, you head back. The sun is fairly low in the sky by the time you arrive, and the colonists have made good progress on setting up basic facilities. Sandra greets the team on arrival.

"Ah good, you're back. A little later than I expected but that's not a problem. We managed to get some decent barracks and a mess hall set up, so you can relax, rest and prepare yourself for whatever tomorrow is going to throw our way. Assemble at the entry to the vehicle bay at... around nine AM local? I'll brief you when you're all good and ready."

With that, you have some time to socialize and relax. Make the most of it.

   Throughout the trip, Jaks drove the van he was controlling with the cable coming out of his cybernetic arm a little...excessively. He took it faster over the rough ground than necessary, and sheared off corners, but all the while if anyone looked at him, he seemed entirely unconcerned as if this was normal driving. Thus, the entire trip -was- shortened a bit from what it could have been otherwise. While Jaks didn't talk much, he helped with setting up sensor posts wherever he could, but internally, he was doing a lot. His augmented reality cybernetic eye was taking info on everyone as he watched them work and talk, noting quirks and idiosyncrasies.
   When they finally got back, Jaks plugged into the ships intercom/intertranscievers, and to his delight, found that his workshop bots were still active. He sent a command for them to converge on his location, then unplugged from the wall and walked back over to the others.
   "So! I don't have much to do until one of the robots breaks, so what's everyone else going to do tonight?" The cyborg asks cheerfully, the electronic eye swiveling around and randomly focusing and zooming in on people.

"Compiling analysis, more 'n likely," Marianne replied to Jaks. "Those dirt tests ah took oughta be worth somethin', even for a pioneerin' sort o' colony. If y'd like, I could teach ya a thing or two 'bout it."

"My old, pre-epic-fail plan was to assess what areas needed the most attention to hash out radio coverage.  Now I'm not even sure.  Probably figure out the most recent base camp radio problem.  However,  I'm also interested in what anyone has learned about the missiles that hit us.  I'm sure the captain has not been idle on that front."

Things at Night
It doesn't take long to figure out that the sensor array is being hit with some pretty low-powered, wide-frequency jamming. It's enough to mess with the vans, and the signal is hard to trace. Radios work fine within the camp and the sensor posts are reporting in A-OK.

Not much has been learnt about the missile strikes, although there's nothing particularly out of the ordinary. They appear to be slightly out of date short-range orbital defense missiles designed to be launched from satellites at smaller vessels, perhaps explaining why the Antygias fared fairly well despite not having military-grade shields yet didn't see them coming until it was too late.

*ConFed Shields are split into different types depending on what they protect against. Plus there's ECM, point defenses, and a few other systems. Most military ships tend to field several defensive systems for redundancy.

Moving on...
Once everyone is rested, washed and fed, Sandra gathers you all in the hangar again. It's pretty early in the morning, but everyone is up and working already. A couple of new faces have joined the crowd, thawed from cells restored to working order.

"Alright, good work on the posts and the soil data. Now we need you to check on that river to the east. We already have a water purification system set up and we're working on drilling a groundwater well, but we didn't want to keep everyone up all night. Just a quick check on the water quality, gather some samples so we can run some tests, and then you can head back. By the time you're done Isaac should have the dorsal bay doors working... or open at least, and you can head out a little further afield. There's actually a couple of potential sites out there, but there's only the one dropship for the time being so you'll have to choose which one to check out first. I'll brief you on those when the time comes."

"Any questions? If not, get in the vans and head out. There's another ramp on the east side of the plateau... it's a little narrow but I think you can handle it."

"One quick thing!  Can I talk with you for a second?  I found a few interesting things I wanted to share with you!"

Becky had spent a bit of her down time performing microbe tests on the soil of the camp and immediate areas.  These type of tests would take a day or two to produce results.  Other than that she spends her time reading and is cleaned up, fresh and ready for the next day's excursion.

She had brought her full kit with her for this mission and was actually eager to get a look at the ecology, if any.  This would be one of the more likely locations for any type of life.

Stowing her equipment, Rebecca waited in the van for things to get underway after the briefing.

After an early night Alix was up with plenty of time to spare and made use of it doing odd jobs for anyone willing to let him.

With the briefing over, he slung his stuff in the back of the van and hopped in eager to get going. One more milk run and then a chance to do some real work, sooner this task was done with the better.

   Jaks got himself a good night's rest, and reported in the command center when the call went out. However, when he arrived in the room, there was something very different; he seemed to be wearing some kind of armor. Except...it didn't seem practical to be armor. It consisted of two large bulky units attached to both his back and chest, plus one small shoulder unit, not really offering much protection. Waldos extended from both sides down his arms and legs, making it some kind of exoskeleton.
   He approached the rest of the group, and waved to them. "Good morning again, folks!" He went over to sit down in a chair, but doing so surely couldn't work or be comfortable with what he was wearing!
   Except, just as he began to sit down, the 'exoskeleton' seemed to...fall apart. No, it jumped off of him, in two parts. Both bulky units were really the chassis to some kind of insectile, skittering robots. The waldos were really their legs and other appendages. Several small flaps opened up, and sensor stalks poked out. The two robots chittered and beeped as the little eyes scanned around the room, parking themselves on either side of Jaks in his chair. The bit that had been on his shoulder was yet another robot, much smaller than the other two, and also spiderlike. It remained perched on his mechanical shoulder.
   "So, we're checking out the river, and after that, we can finally start scouting for basecamps? Excellent, can't wait to get started!"

Offroad Trip!

"This is basecamp, Mr. Karriten. We are running at perhaps ten percent of our full specialist crew due to the damage from the EMP missiles, and the other members of the bridge crew are still in medical. We can hardly afford to go haring off to set up new camps with next to no support... no, there's something else you'll be doing. I'll explain when you get back. There's a box of watertight to each van, now go on."

Sandra just gives Wolfe a look that says 'Trust me, I know' and sends the lot of you packing. Or, er, water-sample-collecting. The ride downslope is as rough and narrow as she thought it'd be, but the vans have good suspension so it's not too bad.

--

Caulk or Ford?

Reaching the river itself is a simple affair, and it's about the greenest place you're likely to see any time soon. Which is to say there are a few vaguely green shrubs, a handful of scraggly trees, and maybe a flower or three. All of the plantlife appears to be native to the planet, although there are some unsurprising similarities in their appearance to other Terran and non-Terran foliage, on account of foliage ultimately being foliage no matter how it becomes said foliage in the long run. The river itself is a good half a dozen meters wide and half that in depth, with fresh, clean water.

One thing a casual scan with a handheld device reveals is that the radiation and heavy metal levels in the water are a touch higher than expected. It's not enough to be a significant hazard unless you drank it all your life, although it's enough to make you wonder... and possibly consider not drinking it without a thorough purification first if you're paranoid.

The vans are parked a few meters away from the river, and the surrounding ground is mostly gravel. The river was probably larger at some point in the past, but it's hard to tell what happened exactly. There's a small waterfall a few dozen meters downstream, and the river splits into the tributary streams a couple hundred meters upstream amongst the rocks of the mountains. Across the river is, after a short strip of rough ground and some poor soil, the desert. A big desert.

Once again, it's very hard to shake that feeling that someone or something is watching you... quite closely even. Even so, there's nothing to be seen by the eyes of mortals or machines. No odd sounds, no hints of movement, nothing, but even Jak's' robots seem to be on edge. Whatever's going on, it seems that they too can feel that presence.

Rebecca sighed as she completed a scan with her wrist unit and her MC rechecked and confirmed the initial results, "the heavy metal concentration is a bit high, and there are trace radioactives in the water.  Unless this river passes through some interesting mineral deposits, something is a little off.  Let's hope this is not systemic to the watertable, we'll find out once the wells are in."

Rebecca began the process of collecting the water samples and interspersed separate samples of the thin flora that was collected around the river area.  Part of her research would be to determine if the bioforms found on this planet held characteristics intrinsic to life found on Terra, the other pertained to the unusual heavy metals and radiation.

"It would seem we landed in an area very poor for any type of sustainable agriculture besides in our hydroponics facilities."  She paused and gazed around, shivering a bit, "is it just me or does it feel like we are... not exactly alone here?  I don't see anything, but I feel like we are being observed."

Ford, constantly and always

During the trip Wolfe was obsessing with his display pad.  To the untrained observer, it all just looked like waves.  Wolfe seemed hard at work trying to sift through various interfering patterns and jamming patterns.

Every so often Wolfe looks up and checks around, sweeping his eyes across the horizon.  When Rebecca speaks up about being observed he nods, "I can't shake the, `we're watched` feeling.  It is quite unsettling." 

Marcus's senses were on edge, he sniffed the air trying to see if he could pick up a scent. So far he couldn't pick up much more than his fellow crew members and their vehicles.

"I don't like the feeling of this. This is a water source, and part of any local hunting trails for predators. We shouldn't stray too far from the van. And if you do need to go somewhere, take someone with you." shifting his rifle to a more accessable position he started to head downwind of the vans and personelle, keeping a lookout for any signs of life other than their own.

As the vans pulled up to the river, Marianne hopped out of the van and looked at the riverbed. "Did anyone think to bring a shovel?" She asked, doubting anyone did. With a sigh, she found a shallow spot and, after checking Steve's waterproofing, ran a test on the riverbed. As it ran, she checked around the base of the shrubs, digging an inch or two down near the base to see if any wet dirt was uncovered. After that, she took Steve upstream and performed another test up there.

At the mention of the "being watched" feeling, she replied, "I'unno. Ah've kinda gott'n used to it out in the wilds. There's always a critter 'r two watchin' you no matter what, why should it be any differ'nt heah?"

Alix had been walking the perimeter of the group with his rifle loaded and slung under his arm, he did not like this place one bit.

When the conversation sparked up, he rejoined the group catching a bit of it as he walked over.

"You guys feeling it too ? Weird that we are all getting the same feeling..."

Alix wandered over behind Wolfe and peers over his shoulder "Whats that you're looking at there Wolfe?"

Before Rebecca had spoken up, Ari had been surreptitiously checking behind rocks, bushes, etc when he wasn't busy with something related to their project. After Rebecca spoke up and Wolfe confirmed the feeling, he started getting a bit more bold in looking around though he continued to find nothing. However after Marianne's input he stopped, torn between admitting she was probably right and letting himself be shown up by her in logical sense and composure.

   Jaks seemed surprised at the response from the commander, but shrugged and departed with the others.

   After they had arrived at the river, Jaks tried to help where he could, but it only took so many people to collect a water sample, and he wondered why they were all out here at once. However, everyone began acting funny, talking about being watched. Jaks furrowed his brow and looked around. Strange...could whoever have shot at them be here, right now?
   What really alerted him was a sudden change in the pitch and tone of his bots chittering. He built them and programmed them himself, had them partially wired into his own brain for several years. They had their quirks, and sometimes acted like pets, but now they seemed to be...on edge. Like something was bothering them, too.
   "...Okay, something's not right. My bots are acting funny. It's gotta be something showing up on their sensors. Hang on, I'm grabbing a data package from them. Phobos, come here." One of the two larger ones skittered over to Jaks, and he plugged his mechanical arm into it, and closed his normal eye. His cybernetic eye whirred as he downloaded the last minute of sensor information from the bot.

Wolfe looks up at the creepy fellow peering over his shoulder, "I'm looking at an impossibility, and a mystery."

He was rather hoping that he could get more signals and get more details about the jamming and the nature of any other signals he picks up.

Fording Ahead
Nothing's out there. Not even a bird. Just the faint sound of wind.

There are shovels in the vans! Of course there are shovels in the vans. I mean, what if they got stuck and needed to be dug out?

All the bots have seen or heard that the rest might not have noticed are insects. Well, Ari might have found those too. But they're just insects, nothing odd about them at all.

Ari also finds a very badly damaged piece of metal not much more than a handspan across. It has ConFed markings and a mostly-readable serial that matches one of the satellites that got fragged. Nothing too unusual there.

Wolfe isn't getting any further signals out here, the jamming seems to be getting a little weaker as well.

Returning to the vans, Marianne discovered that, yes, there were in fact shovels. Nabbing one, she waded into the river and scooped out some dirt from the center of the riverbed, then brought it back ashore and ran a test there as well.

Ari was quite elated by his find. Yeah it didn't mean anything and wasn't all that important, but it felt like finding another piece of home. (Assuming he can lift it...) He took it back to the van where a thought occurred to him. He knew or could look up the mass and trajectory of the satellite when it was hit, and he could estimate the the mass of this fragment and how far off course it was. Perhaps when he had the leisure he could run a few momentum equations and try to plug in missing data to figure out stuff about the missiles or where other satellite fragments might be. Perhaps there was something worth scavenging. He probably didn't have enough input data yet but he'd keep his eyes open and look for anything else that might show up.

Rebecca captured a few little insects in small specimen containers as she worked.  Finished with her own, as well as the assigned sample collecting, she skipped a stone on the river's surface.

Maybe it was a bad idea to have volunteered for this mission.  An anonymous death on some distant rock orbiting an insignificant sun.  She sighed and skipped another stone as she spoke to herself, "not much to do about it now though."

   After a few moments of having his arm plugged into 'Phobos', Jaks furrowed his brow. "Okay, that's weird...my bots aren't detecting anything unusual at all. But...they can't possibly act strange without a reason..." He unplugs his mechanical arm, and notices that the guy with 'WOLFE - comm specialist' hovering over his head in Jak's augmented realtity is looking about with some sort of handheld scanner.
   Jaks trots over and looks over his shoulder. "So, what are you looking for..." His cybernetic eye then zooms in on the readout on the handheld scanner. "...Jamming signals?" Jaks then steps back and smacks his forehead. "Oh! Of course! EM interference! That could mess with my bot's electronics without them detecting it if it's strong enough, they aren't shielded. Frankly, I'm amazed they survived the EMP attack on the way in..." Jaks starts heading back towards a van, with his three robots in tow. He calls back voer his shoulder. "Anyone needs me for anything, I'm in the van. I can't fun a full diagnostic until I'm back at the ship, but I can try a partial one now and see what that can turn up."

Home Again, Home Again...
The insects are, like all insects, uninclined towards captivity. That said it doesn't take too long to catch them. Notable specimens include some small aphid-like sap sucking types, something vaguely related to a ladybird that evidently preys on the aphid-things, a couple of small and slightly sad-looking butterfly-esque affairs that have seen better days, and some evidently associated caterpillars that also seem to devour the occasional aphid.

With plenty of samples collected, everyone packs up and heads back. The trip is about as exciting as watching paint peel, but hey, it beats being dead.

Sandra is waiting for the return team again. The camp setup is going well, and several automated turrets appear to have been set up to cover the routes up to the plateau, fitted with heavy machineguns by the looks of things, and a ConFed scout VTOL circles the campsite lazily. The turrets buzz momentarily at the sight of the jeeps, but the IFF works and they go back to scanning for unidentified targets.

Samples are hauled off to one of the field labs for research, and the away team is sent to get lunch. A fairly big lunch, apparently. Once everyone is fed and ready, the away team is reassembled, this time in the Antygias' vast dorsal hangar. Isaac has at least got the doors open, so taking off is possible. Four small bays - one of which is empty - are host to the scout VTOLs, and two larger bays can each hold a dropship. One of the dropships is already aligned for takeoff, and it seems that a few of the others have been up here loading it up.

~~

Officer On Deck!

Rough hangar/flight deck layout (http://i53.tinypic.com/124cvmh.jpg), note the runway extends much further. Purple blocks are corridors ofc.

Large flourescent light strips keep the hangar well-lit, and it's fairly clean apart from a few oily stains.

Sandra looks at the dropship, then turns to the away team. "Alright, listen up and listen well. As I'm sure one of you has noticed, something is wrong about this planet... but I'm not talking about that sensation of being watched if you leave the camp," she pulls up a holographic display of the camp from a top-down perspective and zooms out, "Everything looks fine so far, right? That's not what I'm worried about," Sandra zooms out again, then starts panning north, towards the equator. Faint red pulses start to appear as she closes on one of the larger, somewhat jungle-infested islands, zooming in on a red blip that represents the source, "This is what I'm worried about. I managed to decode it whilst you were out... I'll play it back."

Then she starts an audio file.

"Begin automated distress signal. This is Captain Edward G. Bernstein of the MarsCon Survey Vessel Pioneer reporting from an unknown location on Terran Year 2079. The Pioneer is... if I'm reading this right we're several hundred lightyears off course and I don't even know how we got here. The ship is too badly damaged to continue and we don't have enough fuel to return anyway. We're setting up camp and settling down... not much we can do except hold out 'til the end, I guess. Bernstein out. Message Ends."

Sandra waits for that to sink in.

"I'm a little fuzzy on my history, but MarsCon would be the Martian Confederation, one of the primary members of the current Terran Confederation, and basically set the standard for governing our spacefaring communities. Here's the catch - the Martians never had FTL, that was invented on Titan after the founding of the current Terran Confederation - the founding was around 2086, about 17 years after the Pioneer's arrival on this planet..." another pause, "...MarsCon Fleet had a number of recon records they never declassified, the Pioneer was likely one of those if it went MIA in suspicious circumstances. It's possible the MarsCon had an FTL system, but I severely doubt it... and without FTL, we would have arrived here sooner than they did."

Sandra pauses to catch her breath, then zooms a little on the source of the signal.

"I know I said there were multiple sites to investigate but distress signals are distress signals, dead men or no dead men. They might have a lot of information on their computers, and, if so, it could be very helpful to our work here. It's a long flight and you'll be out of contact with us again until you get back, of course..." she frowns, "I realize this could be a trap, but it's too important to ignore. Isaac will be going with you to assist with the Pioneer's systems- he already called shotgun and is probably up in the cockpit doing pre-flight checks. If any of you want out or have anything left to do here, now is the time to say so."

All said and done, Sandra looks at the assembled away team expectantly.

The dropship itself is hardly... easy on the eyes. The vaguely aerodynamic hull is the same rusty red colour as the Antygias', with a large rear ramp that doubles as an airlock door. Beyond is another large door, the other half of the airlock, and beyond that the small(ish) cargo bay, which has a number of crates and a six-wheeled ConFed armoured personnel carrier next to a four-wheel ConFed scout car, both fitted with machineguns on low profile remote-operated turrets. Both vehicles are a slightly more orange tone, but still fairly red. Behind all that is a smaller double door leading to the crew areas - a small mess hall, bathroom, bunks, common room, and finally the large cockpit at the very front. Four tilting engines provide most of the thrust... this thing is an intercontinental shuttle!

   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.

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."

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.

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?"

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.

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?"

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."

"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."

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.

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.

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

"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.

((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. :U))

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."

   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.   

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.

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.

((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."

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?"

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."

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."

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."

   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."

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.

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."

((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...

"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."

"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.

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."

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."

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."

   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.

Isaac shakes his head, "No way MarsCon could hide satellites like those in planetary orbit, not with the Anty's sensors. Pioneer's a survey ship too, not much room to spare, much less carry a bunch of satellites... no external rigging, see?" he gestures to the shining white upper hull of the Pioneer settled in the clearing, underbelly of the surveyor blackened by atmospheric entry. There are no external mounts a satellite could be fitted to, only extra fuel tanks. No way to launch a missile satellite from inside, either. Well, not without depressurizing the entire cargo bay. Technically possible, but hardly practical.

"Besides, why would they leave a bunch of missile satellites in orbit? If they were dropping satellites, it'd be a relay sat, like ours. Something they could send a big distress signal with. I don't think MarsCon were planning for this sort of thing to happen."

Isaac wanders down into the clearing proper, peering at the tents before heading over to the distress signaller 'bin'. He kneels down next to it and slides one hand across the frame until he finds a recessed catch, flicking it and pulling a piece of the casing off to reveal an old-looking display and a set of input controls.

"Looks like they set this thing up maybe a few days ago, but they can't have headed out until recently by my guess. It's possible they ran into trouble with the satellites too, figured we were with whoever set them up, and decided to head for the mountain for safety. The Anty'd be hard pressed to pick the Pioneer up after the EMP hits in the air, and there's no way we'd see it from our landing site even after the main array got put back online..."

The launcher's crate is a bit heavy... it actually has a pair of straps on the back so it can be worn like a backpack. The launcher itself is fairly lightweight (well, relatively speaking), and hums quietly as Jaks plugs in, bringing up a window on his AR. Some kind of longwinded legal disclaimer about safety and biometric security systems and being preprogrammed with data on the specialists to prevent it from being used by enemy forces. It has a camera aligned over the top of the barrel as well as a manual display window that can be folded out on each side of the main body, allowing use by any handedness of person and/or augmented user.

   Jaks looked out the window after Issac spoke. "...Hrm, you know, you're right about the satellites. Well dang, that means that, yes, there is in fact a third party running around this place. My, this planet seems popular all of a sudden. Still, I think it's a good diea to check the ship's data first, to get better clues on who it is wer'e searching for and a more precice idea of where they went. Heck, depending on how functional the Pioneer still is, we may even be able to use it's own deep scanners to survey the surrounding area, see if we can't find the crew that way."
   The cyborg was then quiet for a moment as he read and absorbed the information from the launcher's minicomputer. He took another minute to run through the procedue of registering the biometrics to be recognized as an authorized user, then put the launcher back in its carrying crate and strapped it to his back, taking a moment to steady himself under the bulky weight. One of his two larger robots suddenly appeared at his side without any beckoning, and he took the three missiles for the launcher and secured them to the robot's back. Finally, he made sure the battlerifle was well-set under his arm, and moved towards the exit ramp, waiting for the others to make their final decision.

Rebecca gave the crate of firearms a forlorn look before turning back towards the others, "as a doctor, my concern is with the crew at this time.  I do not discount the importance of information gathering and will abide by the majority decision."

"On general principal I don't object to information gathering, but leaving to find people at a time that is not immediately will greatly reduce the chances of finding them.  Fat lot of good finding a bunch of dead or finding no one at all will do any of us.  But hey at least we will know about them after they're gone."

Marianne furrowed her brow as the others debated over which place to search first. "Now hang on a minute," she said, temporarily halting the conversation. "We've got, what, 8 people or so? Is there any radio jamming preventing us from just sending maybe two o' three people to search the ship while the rest of us search for the crew?"

"Well, if we are sure to be able to contact the guys remaining here.. A compromise then, like Marianne suggests? Two stay here with Isaac and check for information and they can take the car if we need them, the rest in the APC tracking down the missing crew. Means we can both get the information and bring any equipment we might find we need but have left behind. Also if something does happen we have at least three people who are certain not to be stuck in whatever situation we get into."

Isaac looks up from the bin, raising a brow slightly at Marianne. "Y' sure you want two to stick around here? I can sift through the logs here easy enough by myself, unless you enjoy standin' around lookin' pretty there wouldn't be much to do. Nothing came at us on the trip over and hasn't hit here yet... I'd say we're safe for now. I can handle myself... besides, if someone came here in force we'd probably be screwed either way."

Marianne returned the raised eyebrow at Isaac. "Well, if ya think ya c'n do it all on yer own, yer welcome to it. I was just providing a spare in case there was more to the ship than just logs."

Wolfe make a dramatic pose to point at the APC, "Right, so APC, it's over here. Tally ho and all that.  To find people."

Wolfe makes his way to the entrance ramp of the APC, hoping that someone who can drive it will be cooperative.

Becky giggled a bit at Wolfe's exaggerated antics.  If anything, it broke the seriousness a bit, but there was still important business at hand.  Grabbing a handy medical field kit, she followed him up to and into the APC.

Isaac continues looking mildly puzzled. "It's a survey/recon ship, the worst I might have to deal with is a locked door. Go on, run along after the crew, I can take care of m'self."

   Seeing that everyone else appears to have made up their mind, Jaks shrugged and followed suit. "Into the forest, then? Very well..." He carried the rifle and missile naucher he'd claimed towards the APC, with his two larger robots following behind and the smaller one perched on his shoulder.
   "Anyone else up to driving, or shall I take the wheel again?" He said, as he reached the APC and put the launcher carrying crate and his rifle in the back.

All Aboard!
Since Isaac can handle himself, the APC seems like the safest bet. Looks like Jaks gets to drive... the forward armoured compartment is quite cosy, with some nice camera displays of the outside of the vehicle and all the blinky lights a blinky light fetishist could ever want (and then some!). The engine revs up with menacing rumbles, and once everyone is inside, away we go!

Isaac meanwhile heads into the Pioneer. As you head away, you can see him locking up the dropship and the Pioneer. At least he'll be safe in there.

~~

Pathfinding
The forest path is a little narrow and quite bumpy (good thing the APC has six wheels and good suspension). The passengers can bring up displays of the outside as well, if they please. The sensation of continued monitoring seems to fade slightly amongst the thicker trees away from the clearing. The trees themselves are conifers of some kind by the looks of things, and they can even spot the occasional brightly coloured bird.

After about fifteen minutes, Isaac manages to hail the APC. The line is good quality. He hasn't turned up anything important yet, just some recent log entries from the crew. They all note feeling the same... watchful presence as the team have been noticing, and one of them seems to be convinced it's coming from the mountain. Evidently he persuaded everyone to investigate. Isaac hasn't managed to pick up any more activity on the island, although there's some very faint, large heat signatures very far down... too large for the crew, likely just potential sources of geothermal energy.

The path seems to be going for a good while yet... you have a little time still to talk between yourselves and ask Isaac if he can dig up any specific information.

Ari went with the others to the APC a bit reluctantly. Not because he didn't like them, or wanted to stay, or was put off by the phantom eyes (though he was, despite anything he may say to the contrary), but mostly just cause he felt uneasy leaving anyone on their own. Still, Isaac seemed to know what he was doing and was technically in charge so what he said went for the most part.

Meanwhile on the APC, Ari stared out a 'window' and watched as the scenery flashed by while mulling things over when suddenly something occurred to him. Moving to the radio com, he pushed a button and said, "Hey, Isaac? Ari here... just wondering if you can check how these people got here. If they really did have slower than light travel, how'd they get here so soon? Like Sandra said, even given that they were off course and we left far later than they did, this far out we should have beat them here."

Wolfe enjoyed the view.  Birds were always such pleasant creatures, no matter how weird the xeno birds may look.  He also took the chance to look over everyone again, see what they took with them.

Wolfe could only hope that the heat signatures were geothermal power, and not geo "spring up from the ground and eat us" hostiles.  Still, no need to be paranoid about remote posibilites.  Not when there are greater threats near by.

"Isaac, did he say why it was coming from the mountain?  Was it something that came from the mountain or the mountain itself?"

Taptaptaptappitytap~

"Ari... trust me, if I had an answer to that one, I'd tell you. To be honest, I think this whole planet is screwed up something serious, and the satellites and the Pioneer are just the tip of the iceberg here. Why did nobody colonize Kaukai until now? It's not that remote and nowhere near alien territories. People don't simply forget about Earth-like planets... we have maybe half a dozen of them tops. Everywhere else is domes and tunnels. It might be home to some, but the demand for habitable planets like Kaukai here is higher than ever. My best guess is we're going to have to sift through the flight logs for the Pioneer and Antygias, then compare them and see if there's any anomalies in there."

Isaac sighs.

"Anyway... I'll see what I can dig up... hold on."

Another pause for more tapping and searching, lasting a few minutes. Enough that the mountain is in plain view now, the track leading up towards a distant cave entrance.

"As far as I can tell, the guy thinks it was coming from inside the mountain. Unfortunately his log entries before they set out start to get a little... incoherent. Nothing too crazy, no prophetic ramblings of doom and destruction, but he mentions 'voices'... nothing we've heard yet, and 'eyes'... pretty obvious huh? Anyway, if it was coming from inside the mountain, something could be tapping those geothermal sources for power. If they're not geothermals then things could get even more interesting. Stay sharp."

Rebecca watched a camera display occasionally as she pondered the situation to herself.  She listened to the information Isaac discovered and the speculation he added.  The possibilities bothered her, and ran amok with her imagination.  All manner of dreadful things danced about within her buzzing brain until she visibly shook her head as if to clear it. 

Rubbing her temples she pulled off her glasses and sighed, focus on the people, do your job, we'll worry about this when we need to.  Speaking aloud, Becky observed, "so I suppose they'll be a bit unstable, likely paranoia among other things.  Dashing about, brandishing weapons is probably not our best icebreaker.  Let's be careful shall we."

Marianne got a little anxious at the mention of "voices." At Rebecca's remark, however, she slowly tucked Ol' Faithful into a safe pocket. "Well," she fretted, "y' can't blame us fer bein' a tad jumpy, as y' c'n imagine. Ah mean, c'mon, this news's a trifle moah disconcertin' th'n we expected. Ah'd rathah not leave this heah ahland with mah brain in a bushel."

Isaac somehow manages to convey a shrug over a purely audio medium. "Just 'cause one of 'em's feeling a bit loopy doesn't mean the rest are. Anyway, I better concentrate on searching these logs. Radio me if anything interesting comes up."

With that, he closes the line.

The APC can go no further once you reach a small plateau on the mountainside, which opens into a cave tunnel. There are no signs of the Pioneer's team just yet, but they appear to have left a series of light-stick like rods behind, presumably so they could find their way out again. The cave tunnel inclines fairly sharply a dozen or so meters into the mountain however, preventing the your team from getting a good view of what's up ahead.

Wolfe hops out with the rifle on his back, thinking that one of the smaller guns may have been a good idea.  Too late for that now.

"At least they won't be hard to find.  And only reasonable people leave behind glow sticks to find their way out.  This should be much easier then anticipated."

Wolfe rummages through the stuff they brought looking for a flashlight.  Preferably the sort that isn't attached to a gun.

As Marianne climbed out of the APC, she spotted the tall man in military pants and untucked button-down shirt digging through their supplies. "If'n yer lookin' for a flashlight,  make it a red one. Keeps from goin' night-blind, y'know? 'Sides, rather not blind the folks in there if they went outta the way o' those lightsticks."

"Nobody approach the cave entrance just yet, I want to take a look at it." stepping out of the APC, he casually walked over to the entrance with his Neutralizer out, but pointed down in a nonthreatening manner, well at least as nonthreatening as possible.

Reaching the entrance, he took off his shades and slipped them into a pocket on his suit. Crouching down, he studied the mouth of the cave. Taking a few deep breaths through his nose, he focused his senses to the best of his ability, looking for any recent disturbance in the dirt outside the cave, any smells indicating people had come by. Ultimately he was trying to discern if the people had entered the cave or left it, how many, and how long ago.

The hazard-suits have compact handsfree flashlights mounted on the helmets, along with cameras so you can get a nice view of what your teammates are looking at. Handy that.

--

A human nose is only so good at this sort of thing... which is to say that smells alone don't reveal much to Marcus as you're still fairly close to the sea, but what's much more obvious are some rough tracks in the grit and dust outside the cave entrance. The tracks only go in, and they look fresh alright, not more than a few hours old. It looks like they were walking double-file, which makes it harder to gauge the number that went in, but there can't be too many on a scout ship like the Pioneer.

Right, handy indeed. Almost handy enough to not forget about it. After briefly looking silly Wolfe made a mental note to not checkout any asses while he has a camera.
"Right, so they went into this cave right?"
He sticks his head into the cave and looks around.

Linking her wrist unit to the suit, she sets the unit to record all linked feeds.

Rebecca sneaks up behind Wolfe and peers into the cave as well, "anything out of the ordinary?"

Marcus nodded, "Yeah, I'd say a group went in a no more than a couple of hours ago." Holstering his sidearm, he reached into one of the pockets of his suit and brought out a small black metalic case, opening it up it revealed several small rows of darts in it. Picking one out, he closed the case up and pulled his rifle forward. He opened the chamber on the underside of his gun, and inserted the dart inside. Sealing the chamber, he gave his gun a soft pat, "Just incase."

   Jaks had driven the APC up to the target area without incident, People had been asking Issac to retrieve information from the ship's computers while they were riding, but it seemed they covered the important things and he didn't have anything more to add.
   He gets out, double-checks the seal on his hazmat suit, and gets his battle rifle ready. He considered the launcher for a moment, but that thing's bulky case would just get in the way in the cave. Better really hope now they didn't need it.
   He walked near where the others were, and his cybernetic eye's HUD highlighted a few things, namely, the lightstick trail. "Well, that's convenient." He says. He then notices one guy starting to get ahead of the others, and just inside of the cave, there's a step upward ramp that makes it hard to see what's next. "Oh, hold on a second there, Marcus." Jaks said. Meanwhile, the big neon name above his head acquired the caption 'eager beaver'.
   "I can look ahead. Sorta. Just gimme a minute." He looks down at one of his two larger robots. "Deimos, forward."
   The robot then skitters forward, going right past marcus and up the ramp. Jaks started focusing on his remote implant, and jacked into the suit's own transmitter. Oops, wasn't going to be much range with this thing through solid rock. He moved forward up to the mouth of the cave to keep line-of-sight with the robot.
   The little robot approached the top of the ramp and started looking over, it slowed and stopped until it had a decent view without revealing itself. Back at the mouth of te cave, Jaks concentrated intently, and started to get the video feed from the robot in his cybernetic eye.

Deimos slows as it approaches the top of the ramp, peering over the top cautiously, just as intended. The resolution is low, the feed is a little grainy and the lightsticks don't cast enough light on their surroundings to be much help for illumination further along in the cave, but Jaks can make out what looks like some kind of metal structure or frame of some kind up ahead. It's hard to gauge what it is from here, but it does not seem to be a building or a wall.

There is no sign of the Pioneer crew.

Wolfe looked to Rebecca, "Nothing to see so far.  Other then a little robot thing going up the ramp."

Not about to be one upped by a robot Wolfe follows behind it.  Once it's head fails to explode for looking over the edge Wolfe peers up and over to see what is in there.  Upon noticing the metal structure that Deimos saw he will try and identify what it is.

Wolfe squints hard... trying to see if he could make out anything.  Alas, all he could see with any clarity was the robot.  After a little bit he again remembered the flashlights on the helmet and, after double checking for anyone, turned them on.

Wolfe spys... a cave.  It really isn't much of a cave either.  In face once above the ramp there is very little cave after that.  Though there is the large metal structure.  Though structure is being a bit generous.  With some small guard rails around a metal platform it looked too much like an elevator to ignore.  Around 5 meters on each side and with one section of rail missing, a handy entry point.

Wolfe turns to the little robot and pokes it several times, "Are you getting this back there? I'm going to go check this out."
He steps over the edge of the ramp and approaches the thing he is calling an elevator and starts looking around it, careful not to push any buttons.

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."

   "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.

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?"

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."

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?"

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.

   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.

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.

   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.

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?

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?"

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.

   "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?"

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

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."

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.

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

   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.

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.

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?"

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."

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.

   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.

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.

((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.

"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.

   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.

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

"Onwards and forwards I suppose"

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

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.