Play@YSDC

Day 1
11th March 2189
19:00 Earth Central European Time
Barnard's Rest Colony, Titan

Sam and Moses arrive back in the Engineering Facility. It is even more chaotic than the last time they were here. There is an atmosphere of palpable tension. Towards the centre of the open space Sam can see Chief Engineer Arnold White hobbling about, directing a number of technicians and scientists including Mike who they met earlier. A number of rotating red flashing lights are accompanied by blaring klaxons and sirens.

'This doesn't look good' says Moses.

"We're here to help," says Sam, getting out her tools. "What's the situation?"

Chief White looks up at Sam and Moses, 'Who the hell are you?' he asks impatiently.

Before they can answer he continues 'Shit, it doesn't matter anyway, we have a situation here, if you think you can help realign the conductors from the wind turbines stay here with me. Mike there is trying to fix a fault in the emergency generator.'

Moses points to the power loader where one of the technicians is struggling to strap herself in, 'If you need someone to drive one of those I'm your man.'

"I'm Samantha Golightly, engineer," says Sam, joining Chief White. "The company sent us. I was one of the ones who found you outside and saved your life."

White looks embarrassed and struggles to say something clearly, eventually he manages to mumble 'Thank you.'

He quickly regains his composure. 'Right. Here's the situation, the colony receives its power from wind turbines mounted on pylons in the upper atmosphere, he shows Sam a schematic on his datapad. 'We can't use microwave or laser transmission due to the opacity of the atmosphere so physical power conduits run down to the surface, helped by the low gravity.

White shows another schematic, 'The tremor has caused the station to shift and torqued the conduit, misaligning transmission. There are two independent cables running down the pylons from each turbine, we need to reroute power to the auxiliary pathway or reconfigure the primary conduit. Either way we will need to reinitialise the output grid for each turbine.

He looks to Sam, 'You think you can do that for these?' and he points to several turbines. 'Oh, and by the way, we've been locked out of CENTRAL so you'll need to do all this manually.'

OOC,San is going to need to make an Electrical Repair roll to figure out what she needs to do to try and get some of the turbine power conduits online. Feel free to make up some technical mumbo jumbo to explain it

While Sam contemplates how she is going to reconfigure the whole energy output grid from several turbines using only her datapad she watches Moses clambering into a power loader, he looks remarkably cheerful given the circumstances.

The grid is unfamiliar to Sam, but she soon acclimates herself to the system. "If we reverse the polarity of the magnetron, we can redirect the electron flow via the auxiliary pathway and bypass the conduit entirely," she says as she works on her datapad.

OOC,Electrical Repair roll (50% skill) to understand how to reconfigure the energy grid: [dice]0[/dice] I'll spend 7 Luck to succeed.

After several minutes of trial and error Sam has figured out how to redirect the power from the turbines. After starting the reinitialisation sequence on her turbines she shows her solution to Chief White. 'Ah, good idea, good idea, bypassing the conduit.' After White has shows Sam's approach to the other engineers they set to work and before long he says 'Okay, they're all reconfigured, we just have to wait half an hour for them to reinitialise.'

On the far side of the room Sam can see Moses thumping about in the power lifter. He seems to be hefting great metal canisters into openings in the wall. 'Just tell me where to put them'. Mike and some of the other technicians have a panel off the wall and they are busy inside with various tools, 'I think we've found the problem Chief, fuel rods have become decoupled, should be able to realign them.'

Keeper rolls,Electrical Repair 60%[dice]0[/dice], Operate Heavy Machinery 50% [dice]1[/dice], Mechanical Repair 50% [dice]2[/dice]

"Thanks, Chief," says Sam, rubbing her hands. "Do you remember what happened out there?"

White holds up his hands, 'I was sealing a leak in the pipeline out by Station 1. My radio went, it was blaring static, then...I dunno...a few minutes later maybe, blam, something crashes into my helmet, great big crack appears in the visor and then black. That's all I remember.' He shakes his head, 'The Doctor said something about ARM tracks but I don't remember anything about that. I'm very lucky to be alive. Thank you. I've been working out here for a long time and that's the closest I've come.'

"You're welcome," says Sam. "It could happen to anyone. I took a tumble myself when I went to rescue you. Luckily for both of us, my suit wasn't breached."

White nods, 'Aye, you don't get long on Titan to seal a suit breach. I'm lucky you were there.'

"Do you know Sergeant Montrose well?" asks Sam.

White shrugs, 'I wouldn't say we're best buddies but we've both been out here a while. He's a...complicated man, has a few demons of his own, if you know what I mean. Come to think of it I haven't seen him for a while, why do you ask?'

"He's locked himself in his quarters, apparently with a shotgun," says Sam. "I just came from there when the emergency happened. There's a Colonial Marshal with our group who knows him, and she's trying to talk him down. A couple of my other colleagues are helping her."

'Shit!' he laughs. 'I wouldn't like to be facing Montrose armed with a shotgun, even if it is just one of those riot guns from the security centre.' He looks more thoughtful, 'I wonder what's happened to him to go all crazy like that? And he's not the first one either, you heard about Dr Holzer? Real shame, he was a good man.'

"Yeah, that's part of why we came here," says Sam. "My job is to look into the reported inefficiencies, but there's been much more for me to do. I'm not sure what happened to Montrose to make him this way. It does sound oddly like what happened to Holzer. There was some weird stuff he wrote found in his quarters. Has anyone else been acting strange?"

White looks uncomfortable, 'Not strange as such, some of the miners working over at Pumping Station 4 have complained of odd dreams, but that's about it.'

"Dr. Holzer was having strange dreams too," says Sam. "Maybe Montrose as well. It seems to be contagious."

'Well space madness is more common than you'd think,' says White. 'This far out in the solar system, surrounded by a hostile atmosphere, crammed into these little tin cans with a bunch of other inadequates. A lot of people crack.'

"I've seen space madness before," says Sam, "but it affects everyone differently. I've never heard of a group of people all experiencing the exact same delusions. Dr. Holzer, in his writings, said that some of the men found religion, and they used the same bizarre words he did. He wondered if they were hearing the same voice he was."

'I dunno much about religion, never really seen the point, but some guys seem to take to it after being out here for long enough, a few of them meet in the interfaith...' Before White can finish there is a cry from the far side of the room where steam is gushing from an open panel, 'Oh shit!'

-----

In less than a second the weak illumination from the green emergency lights blinks out.

The room is pitch black and completely silent for a few seconds before voices start shouting out in panic.

-----

After about ten seconds floor level LED lights come on, bright pinpricks of intense white light that flash progressively indicating the direction to follow for evacuation towards an assembly point. After another minute there are red flashing beacons spaced widely along the walls and a whining siren starts.

"Is there anything we can do about that steam leak?" asks Sam, raising her voice to be heard above the siren. "Or do we need to evacuate?"

Sam hears Moses from the other side of the Engineering Facility, 'This is more than just a steam leak, the backup fission generator is down, it's going to require some serious work.'

Nearby, Chief White says 'The turbines should be back online soon. But we need to have power in the meantime.'

'What about the old methane compression generators that came down with the initial colony construction module?' asks Mike.

White grunts, 'Good idea, each of the pumping stations has their own compression generator too, but we need to send people down into the sublevels to restart them. No one's been down there in years.'

Sam notices the temperature seems to have dropped, it is difficult to be sure in the limited illumination but she thinks she can see her breath condensing into misty water droplets.

Skidding to a halt behind Li and Isabella, Kiara takes in the situation.

“Anything we can do to help? Oh, and don’t rely on CENTRAL; it’s gone into shutdown.”

"Hey, good to see you," says Sam. "The power's down, and we need to get a methane compression generator from the sublevels. They're older tech, but they're reliable. It's not like we're going to run out of fuel. I'm willing to go, but I could use some company. What happened with Montrose?"

“Last I saw they were still trying to get his door open and ply him with whiskey,” admits Kiara with a shrug. “I went to the corporate suite to run some tests using CENTRAL when everything went haywire.”

She nods to Isabella and Li. “We were heading to the AI core when the alarm went off.”

"We're going to have to get the power back up before we can deal with the computer," says Sam.

"You're right. I'll help you, if you like," Kiara volunteers.

Chief White grunts, 'Okay, sounds like we've got a crew - I trust you have the mechanical know how to restart the generator?' In the weak LED and flashing red illumination they can see him looking sceptically at Kiara.

'I can join you' says Moses, I know my way round a hydraulic wrench. Isabella and Li look at each other and speak in unison, 'I'll come too.'

'Fine, that's enough, you'll get to the sublevels from the Admin block, there's an access shaft from the transport hub. It might be partially flooded, no one's been down for months, even years. You'll need some light, I've got some headtorches, there's a couple of portable toolkits you can take with you. Do you need anything else?'

"I brought my own tools," says Sam, "but thank you. I'm sure the others will find the toolkits useful. Headtorches will help a lot too. If there's flooding, maybe an inflatable dinghy would be useful, if you have something like that. Rope or cord might be useful too."

Kiara bristles at the look White gives her.

“I’ll take a toolkit and a head-torch; datapad to equipment-port interface cables too if you have them, so we can directly access any control sub-systems, valve actuators and limit switches.”

'A dinghy? This is Titan, not Earth, we're not into watersports' scoffs White. He raises his voice to be heard over the sirens 'But I can get you some rope'. He turns to Kiara and gives her a quizzical look, 'And there's plenty of patch cables lying about'.

Moses hefts a toolkit and he mounts a headtorch along with Li and Isabella, 'Anything hurt us down there?' snaps Li, 'Got weapons?' White looks uncomfortable, 'There shouldn't be anything too terrifying down there, maybe a few rats, only weapons I know of are with security.' He scratches his head, 'I suppose an incinerator would scare off most things.' White points to an incinerator unit and Li picks it up and tucks it under her arm. Isabella looks at her, eyes wide, 'Expecting trouble?'

"If you think we need weapons, we can stop by security," says Sam. "I'm trained with pistols, though not as well as Marshal Favre."

“Don’t rely on me if there’s a fight,” Kiara warns. “Let’s get this over and done with, yeah?”

'Look, look, I don't anticipate any trouble, rats at most' says White. 'Up to you if you want to go to security for weapons but I don't know whether they'd let you have anything and I expect they only have non-lethal weapons for riot control.' He pauses for a moment, 'And you might struggle navigating your way there in the dark.' He looks around, 'We might have another incinerator unit, or maybe you could take a cutting torch.'

"Thanks, I'll take the other incinerator," says Sam, putting on a headtorch and slinging the rope over her shoulders.

“Guess that leaves me with the cutting torch,” says Kiara nervously.

Kiara takes a cutting torch and Sam the remaining incinerator.

OOC,If you need to use them the incinerator has a 10yd range - skill Flamethrower with base 20% - increase to 30% if you have a Firearms skill above 50%, one shot per round with two reloads (i.e. 3 total) - and the cutting torch is touch range, skill Fighting (Brawl)

At an impatient look from Chief White, Kiara, Sam, Moses, Li, and Isabella start heading off to the Administration Building looking for the access shaft to the sublevels. Fortunately the LED floorlights indicate the way.

OOC,We're moving here: [url]https://www.callofcthulhu.org.uk/pbp/viewtopic.php?f=472&t=7279#p244170[/url]