IC - 20 - Waystation - Everyone except Kiara

[Starspawn338]

Jojo follows the footprints with his gaze and then shouts up to the others.

"There's two sets of footprints heading from here to the complex. We should follow them."

[aine]

“Let’s find Kiara and she can do it then.” Nicole says to Sam. She takes a look round but doesn’t spot anything.
“Coming!” She calls down to Jojo and then heads down to join him.

Hard spot hidden, roll 43 fail

[Mr. Handy]

Sam follows her.

[Mephistophilis]

Following the footprints in the snow, they move away from the dark watchtower, along the landing strip, and towards the main body of buildings, where the mobile derrick protrudes above the metallic prefabs. Passing the gigantic storage silos or tanks, there are four of them. Three marked 'Fracking Fluid', and one 'Cyclohexane.'

Approaching the main cluster of buildings, they surround a central cleared area with what appears to be a jagged crater cut out of the crust of Titan, at least thirty metres across. Piled around the derrick are several hundred metres worth of pipes, along with a now-iced over bulldozer and the top of what might be a power loader exosuit. Some piping runs all the way to the storage silos. To the south of the site is what looks like a storage shed and a prefabricated building that could be a small administrative office. On the western edge are four barracks-style buildings.

[Mr. Handy]

Sam looks around for tracks to see where the people from the shuttle or Kiara may have gone.

[aine]

Nicole leans gingerly over the crater and looks into the hole and at the pipe work.
“Is this usual?” She asks. “What are they extracting into those storage vats?”

[Mephistophilis]

Nicole peers over the edge of the crater, she sees several metal ladders descending down into the darkness. She struggles to make out anything else except for a diffuse blue glow. As she looks over the side, Nicole can hear a noise, well she can more feel it rather than hear it. A high-pitched throbbing noise. It has an odd cyclical pattern, speeding up and rising in pitch until reaching a crescendo and then starting over again.

Although there's a lot of pipework and tubing around the derrick, it seems to have all been pulled back from the hole in the crust, like maybe something disturbed what they were doing.

Anyone wants to have a think about what is going on in the vats try rolling Planetary Science or a hard Physics. Looking for the tracks and where they lead in the complex is another Spot Hidden (or Track if you have it - you can roll a bonus die if you use Track)

[Mr. Handy]

Sam can't find any recent tracks, but she has a good idea what's going on with the vats.

Science(Planetary) roll (41% skill) to understand the vats:
d%
Spot Hidden roll (55% skill) to look for tracks:
d%

[Starspawn338]

Planetary Science 1
1d100

Spot Hidden 50
1d100

Jojo walks around the central area but doesn't see anything of note.

"Where do you think we should check next?" He says to the others.

[aine]

Planetary science 1 roll:99 spot hidden 60 roll:91

“Looks like a load of spaghetti.” Nicole says of the pipe work. She’s too busy looking in the hole to notice anything else.

[Mephistophilis]

The footprints they'd been following become indistinct around the site. There are tracks heading in all directions, and it is not possible to figure out in what way they went from the shuttle, assuming that was even Kiara and Li.

It's clear that someone is conducting high pressure cyclohexane fracking. Cyclohexane is a valuable precursor to the ubiquitous plastics used throughout the outer colonies. But fracking on a planet like Titan with a subsurface ocean is both illegal and dangerous. It might even be contributing to the tremors they've been feeling. But fracking is likely to contaminate the water supply of an entire planet, something that could bring major sanctions down on Richter Dynamics if it got out.'

Nicole thinks she can hear something. Maybe not hear, maybe feel. Something nagging, painful, at the back of her skull. She gets a flash, an image, ice fields under an orange skym it looks like Titan but seen from high up. And there's something in the sky, getting bigger, casting a shadow across the surface, bigger and bigger, falling maybe, blocking the red sun.

[Mr. Handy]

"They've been fracking here!" says Sam. "That's how they're getting the cyclohexane they need to make plastics, but it can contaminate Titan's entire water supply. That's why it's illegal, and the company could be in big trouble if word got out. The fracking may be causing those tremors."

[aine]

Nicole looks quickly upwards.
“Never mind the fracking, let’s get under cover- there’s something big up there and it’s coming down!” She points up at the sky and looks wildly around for somewhere to dash to.

[Starspawn338]

Jojo looks up at the sky.

"What do you see? He says and then he looks around. "Who's fracking? What does that have to do with the alien life form? Are you two feeling different since we got here?"

[Mr. Handy]

"The Company, who else?" says Sam."Maybe the fracking brought the alien life form to the surface, I don't know. I don't feel any different than I did before. Let's get inside, Nicole is right."

[Starspawn338]

"Well I'm out of my element here so I'll just follow your lead until we find the others or the aliens." Jojo replies.
"I don't see anything falling from the sky though." He continues as he looks around.

[Mephistophilis]

There's nothing coming out of the sky, it remains the same hazy orange.

Nicole looks back up into the sky and she can see nothing, shaking her head the memory seems more like an image, a vision. There's still a nagging pain at the back of her skull. She doesn't know why but she has the strong sense that someone, or something doesn't want her to get any closer to that pit.

[aine]

Nicole stands back from the pit, rubbing the back of her neck.
“No, there’s nothing up there. How strange- it was only whilst I was looking over the pit- an image, like a warning.”

[Mephistophilis]

Where would you like to go next?

[Starspawn338]

"Let's get inside the main waystation complex." Jojo offers. "Keep monitoring the radio frequencies in case someone tries to reach us. Do you think we should send a broadband message that we're here?"