Ch1: Disaster!

[Mr. Handy]

"That exosuit's a lot better than what you had before, huh?" Sam says to Seth with a grin. "I think we should check out the infirmary first, as long as we're out here. We might be able to find some clues as to what happened."

[DrPeterson]

"I concur, let's investigate."


Hattie looked up at the ominous sky of the moon and the distant flashes of light. She'd always found it beautiful, eerie and majestic, but now it seemed like something was lurking in the darkness. A shiver ran down her spine and she tried to shrug it off. Primitive superstition, millions of years of condition to avoid predators, nothing more.

"Let's see what's inside."


She made her way to the airlock.

[aine]

Seth follows the other two towards Alpha Base infirmary. He's glad of the exosuit; it's brand new and the latest model. He's impressed by the whole outfit here, there's been some money spent and he wonders what it is the team have really been investigating. He switches on a powerful flashlight as it's unlikely to be any power in the quake-struck infirmary. He shines it unnecessarily onto the airlock controls for Barton, just to make a point that he hasn't got anything else i.e. a gun to hold.

[Supercape]

The holes were not quite big enough to crawl through, at least safely. Maybe the diminutive Seth could have, but it would risk a tear in the suit. The conventional door was a better bet.

The Airlock's electronics gave a brief *fzzzt* before failing. Power had been cut to the Infirmary. Emergency lighting had been activated, a chemical battery which was already starting to fade. Perhaps another hour or two of juice left.

It was left to the three investigators to wrench open the door manually. Despite the low gravity, it took a fair bit of force.

The Infirmary was a mess, at least half of the instruments broken, and many more on the floor. There was signs of a fire near the entrance, presumably the oxygen and methane rain had reacted explosively for a brief few seconds. Only a few shelves were intact.

Apparently inert, the Robot "Pal" lay on the floor, its slender but elegant form slumped against a precariously leaning shelf of drugs and chemicals.

[Mr. Handy]

Sam peers into the darknees. "Oh, Pal, you poor thing!" she exclaims when she sees the damaged robot. Using her multiool's torch function, she makes her way over to it, shining her light at whatever appears interesting. Once she shores up the shelf to make certain it doesn't collapse, she examines Pal, but she isn't quite sure what caused the damage.

[aine]

Seth looks at the fire damage, "Do we expect another explosion if we attempt to enter the rest of the facility without a proper airlock? Assuming there's still oxygen in there of course?" He then looks at PAL over Sam's shoulder. "No 'Boss' to welcome us here? What if we get this bot operating, maybe it can tell us what happened." He also kneels down next to PAL and uses his multiscanner. "He looks to far gone to me; look - half his head is missing!"

[Mr. Handy]

"Yeah, I was hoping he could tell us what happened if we fixed him," says Sam. "We probably could, but it would take too long. The infirmary was sealed off from the rest of the base because of the breach. It's too dangerous to try to enter the rest of the base directly. We'll need to go back outside and then enter through a regular airlock. Once we're in the base proper, we should be able to communicate with the computer here."

[DrPeterson]

Hattie looks around, her suits light combining with that of the others in a feeble attempt to break the broken Sickbay's gloom.

Spot Hidden 25%,[dice]0[/dice]

She lets the other two take their turn at Pal, but when they fail to produce any results, she chimes in.

"I could try linking up with Pal's mainframe to retrieve his memory banks, maybe that'll give us some insight into what happened."

Hattie crouches next to the downed robot and connects her multiscanner to Pal.

Electronics or Computer Use 55%,[dice]1[/dice]

[Supercape]

As Hattie leaned over to inspect Pal. The electronics operation would be reasonably straightforward.

But the damage was...odd. Dents; damage from the titanquake, surely. But also, Pal had been disabled. Its internal circuits seemed to have been fried. Rescuing the data bank might be difficult.

And more!

Behind the Robot was a booby trap. Hattie and Sam spotted it; thank goodness. Some chemical mixture, designed to stew together if Pal was moved. Acid, maybe. Explosives, maybe. Whatever it was, moving Pal would have lead to a potent mixture...

[DrPeterson]

"This is strange...it looks like someone purposefully overloaded Pal's circuits and th..", Hattie shuts up rather abruptly; just as she was about to shift the robot to plug in her device, she spotted the trap.

"A trap!", she exhales. The darkness seems very oppressive all of a sudden, the possibilities of what was waiting on the inside, or out there...

"Don't touch Pal, we need to stay calm." The latter was more to herself than anyone else.

[Mr. Handy]

"I see it too," says Sam. "Why would they sabotage Pal and set a trap like this? It sounds like they've gone paranoid and space crazy. Fortunately, with the dome sealed off, it's not likely that anyone else will set off the trap. I could disarm it, given time. Speeding things up could result in an explosion. Unless..."

[DrPeterson]

Hattie frowns, deep in thought.

"The foam of our sealant pistols might be able to neutralise the chemical reaction...or it might act as a catalyst. I've no idea what's in there, not without taking time to look at it with proper equipment, so I can't make a definitive assessment."


"I think we should move on, see if we can find Drake and find out what happened here."

[Mr. Handy]

"Agreed" says Sam. "I don't know if the foam would work either. Let's go back outside and try one of the regular airlocks."

[DrPeterson]

Hattie carefully backs away from the robot, the light of her suit shining on its metal frame as she recedes.

"Let's see if we can enter via the workshop, I'm sure that's what Drake would have tried."


Before heading on, she cast one last look at the robot booby trap.

"This looks like George's doing, doesn't it? I may have a thought...Wait!"

Hattie moves to one of the table and puts it upright, installing her multiscanner on it as she starts operating a few buttons and sliders.

"If the dome's structure doesn't interfere too much, I should be able to pinpoint Drake's chip, ...and George's. If we know where he is, it might give us a clue as to what other doors he may have boobytrapped."

Scanning 55%,[dice]0[/dice]

Hattie growls as she frantically taps away at her machine.

"I'm assuming the residual energy left by the lightning strike is interfering with my reading, perhaps we can boost our signal if we create a stable scanneing perimeter by triangulating our different scanners, setting them up over there and there.", she points at two other points in a rough triangle."

[Supercape]

The chips were still functioning. Despite the interference, the signal was strong enough to broadly locate them, even if not accurately pinpoint them.

Bergman and Drake were, it seemed, in the hydroponics dome. The seemingly mad George Long was in the workshop dome.

[aine]

Seth has a rummage round to find anything useful, like a med kit and something that might knock a madman out, like tranquilizers.

rolls,Spot hidden, Medicine, 25, 20 [url=http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4869276/]1d100=61, 1d100=57[/url]

Then he gets ready to go back outside to find an airlock.

[Supercape]

The Infirmary had plenty of drugs, and it was not hard for Seth to spot an Med-gun full of Omnicalm...Normally these things would be under some kind of lock and key to prevent drug abuse, but with the power failure and quake damage, things were in quite the state of dissarray...

[DrPeterson]

"I suggest we try the hydroponics dome first, they might need our help..."

Hattie didn't sound too sure of the fact that either of the men could be saved, it must have been the chaos of their oppressive surroundings.

[Mr. Handy]

"Agreed," says Sam. "Let's go find them, and fast. Every minute counts!"

[Supercape]

The Hydroponics dome looked undamaged from the outside, a cold dome on a cold world, occasionally lit up by the EM storm flashes in the high atmosphere, dull as they were. Lit up with beams of light as the three men and women examined it.

Airlocks were somewhat cramped. The thud of closed, air-tight doors. The slow hiss of oxygen being added to nitrogen. The evaporation of methane and ethane, promptly eaten up by the hydocarbon scrubber.

And then, the slow hiss of the inner door.

The hydroponics dome was lit, brightly, with wide spectrum lamps all over the high ceiling. It was divided into four sections, again, a limited precaution against thermal and atmospheric breach. Rows and rows, layers on layers, of shallow vats stretched everywhere, linking to deep-drilled earth, with tubes of nutrients flowing everywhere, like veins. Bland fungal greyness lay in still repose on every vat.