IC- 22 - Reunion - Everyone

[Mephistophilis]

The running figure slows down and puts his hands in the air. Don't shoot me.' Up close they can see it is Jojo through his visor.

Before him, in a Titan surface suit, is Isabella with a shotgun levelled at his chest, 'Is that definitely you Jojo?'. Behind her are Sam and Nicole, both aiming incinerators past Jojo, into the darkness. They all look tense and ready to open fire at the slightest provocation.

Jojo looks back over his shoulder, scanning the ceiling looking for his pursuer.

Hard Spot Hidden please

[Mr. Handy]

"It's Jojo, all right," says Sam, though she isn't entirely sure she trusts the synth.

[aine]

“Get behind us, Jojo. What the hell’s happened to Kiara?” Nicole growls through gritted teeth, trying to make out the pursuer.

[Starspawn338]

Spot Hidden 50
1d100

Just missed Hard Spot by 6. Can't use luck though as an android.

Jojo will go behind the weapon wielders as he continues to look for the clicking creature.

"I don't know where Kiara is. I saw Sergei Petrov but he seemed dead or reanimated or a zombie or something. I didn't get a chance to examine him as I had to run for my life from the alien impaler creature."

[Mephistophilis]

The clicking has definitely stopped and Jojo can't see any sign of his pursuer, either in the gloom of the corridor or in amongst the cables and strings of lights running from the surface excavations. Isabella keeps her shotgun trained on Jojo, 'Where have you been Jojo?'

Remember you have Kiara's datapad

[Starspawn338]

'Where have you been Jojo?'

Jojo feels a sense of calm and relief that the others are safe and finally down here with him.

"I've been trying to get to the bottom of what's going on. Obviously, going down was the only way we can get to the bottom!" He replies. "I'm glad that you haven't been infected by whatever has been taking control of the other humans. While I haven't seen Kiara, I did find a datapad which, if my memory is correct, was last in her possession. I haven't had a chance to analyze it yet as I was running for my life from the alien."

Jojo holds out the datapad. "Though I'm a doctor, not a computer scientist, so if one of you wants to check it out, you're welcome to."

As an afterthought, he also adds, "Oh, by the way I think I found an alien spacecraft with the mummified body of an alien in the control center but unfortuately, I could not move it because of it's decomposition and I couldn't figure out how to activate the control unit. When I came back through the area, the alien corpse was gone."

[Mr. Handy]

"How can you be sure it was dead?" asks Sam. "This is an alien life form, and we've never found one before. There's no telling how it works. It's life, but not as we know it. Maybe it has a dormant stage in its life cycle where it appears to be dead. Perhaps I could find a way to activate the control unit." She examines the datapad.

Computer Use roll (55% skill) trying to access the datapad:
d%

[aine]

“Ur, well, welcome back, Dr Johnson. We’re glad to see you.” Nicole keeps peering into the darkness for the pursuer.
“Where’d it go? Do you think it recognised our weapons and backed down? Which means it’s intelligent.
“So there was no sign of Kiara near her datapad? Damn it, I wish we knew if she was still alive or not.”

[Starspawn338]

"I could hear it gaining on me with it's click, click, click, but then when I came into sight of you, the clicking started trailing off. I know it went though the vents on the station so it could have climbed into the cables and such to monitor us. I can't see it anymore though." Jojo watches as Sam attempts to use the datapad.

"And although it's an alien, I am a doctor and I could tell that the alien I found had been long dead. I am beginning to suspect that the clicking creature is some kind of robotic helper that is still operational and following it's protocols pertaining to the crashed ship."

[Mephistophilis]

Sam examines the datapad. Generally they all look the same, dull grey plastic rectangles, but the crack in the corner does resemble the one that Kiara was carrying the last time she saw her. Her initial attempts to unlock the device are unsuccessful but a simple manual override gets her access to the device. Examining the access log confirms this was indeed Kiara's - she's used it scores of times over the last few days. The last several hours ago.

[Mr. Handy]

"I got in," says Sam. She shows everyone the contents of the datapad.

[aine]

Nicole drags her eyes from the distance to view the datapad. “Just two hours ago, Kiara was alive.” She murmurs.

[Mephistophilis]

What are you looking for on the datapad?

[Mr. Handy]

I want to see what Kiara has done with the datapad since the last time we saw her, up until the final entry.

[Mephistophilis]

The last time they saw Kiara was on the 12th March 2189, around midday Earth Central European Time, in Benedict's Rest. She was with Ling Li then. Scrolling through the access logs, Sam is surprised by just how much use Kiara has made of her datapad since they last saw her. That's scientists she thinks.

Looking at her datapad the first thing she did after that was to use it to access the Shuttle Bay security cameras at 13:10. Then shortly after that she accessed the memory dump left by Jojo after his attack. Then she uses the datapad to coordinate some experiments she was conducting in the Medical Bay looking at the alien samples. Then she made an all frequencies transmission a few hours later - one that they all received - outlining her findings that light and heat seems to accelerate the alien mould while cold slows down or stops the infection. There's a message received from Sam in response. She then searches the Benedict's Rest manifest, looking for emergency flares, incinerators, and...tanning beds!

After another half an hour or so she accesses the security cameras outside the Landing Bay followed by activating the fire suppression system. A few minutes later she accesses the Benedict's Rest comms relay and sends an all channels transmission warning of a shuttle launch breaking quarantine.

For a moment everyone thinks back to the sight of the shuttle shattering into a million pieces in an orange-red explosion on the edge of space.

Not long after the message about the shuttle sent via Barnard's Rest she uses her datapad to try and send a transmission from the copter communications array to the surface rover but it seems she received no response.

Around 19:00 she uses her datapad to take some readings of Waystation using the copter sensor array. There seems to be something wrong with the sensors because the measurements of density, magnetism, and a whole host of other parameters are fluctuating wildly and completely uninterpretable. Then she accesses the Waystation network and communicates with the CENTRAL intelligence there. Then connects to the copter comms and sends a hail to the shuttle without any reply. Then she tries to hail the surface rover, again without success. She uses her datapad to record a faint transmission, a cyclical whining sound, rising in pitch until it reaches a crescendo, a pattern that is familiar to everyone.

Ten minutes or so later she makes a plaintext entry into the datapad, it reads Activation code 59276. Another five minutes later she attaches a hard data connector but then doesn't seem to connect to anything. Or whatever she connects to isn't working. Then she uses the datapad to scan something, from the readings it looks like a frozen corpse, but with some odd anomalies around density and silica contaminants. Then she uses her datapad to access the shuttle logs but they're encrypted. She then accesses the peripheral components which shows the fuel was topped up week before and now it's empty and none has been used for the last few days. She then accesses the comms meta-data which shows that the shuttle has not made any contact with the Barnard's Rest Colony, or Waystation directly, only been sending messages back out into space, maybe to Ganymede. Then she browses the shuttle access logs which seem to have been Richter Dynamics employees until a week ago when a number of 'classified' designations' are recorded. She's appended a note that she thinks there seven people onboard when it touched down on Titan and has written, Where are the other six?.

Then she tries to hail the surface rover using the shuttle comms relay, but no response. And then she accesses the sensor array on the shuttle and scans Waystation again, it mostly confirms her previous readings, sonographic, seismic, and broad-spectrum electromagnetic readings are all fluctuating wildly, with measurements of gravity, density, magnetism, and vibration uninterpretable. It does look like she detected something under the surface with seemingly impossible mass, but at other times it didn't seem to be there at all, like there was just a void, a hollow cavern. She also picks up that repeating pattern again, across a range of different sensors, sometimes it's a vibration, other times a fluctuation in the measured effects of gravity, and often a burst of electromagnetic radiation in a narrow band.

Then she disables the shuttle transponder and finally makes contact with the surface rover. After that she starts scanning with the shuttle comms array across a wide range of communications channels. Eventually she seems to pick up a faint signal, it's difficult to localise but seems to be coming from nearby. Whatever the content of that signal it isn't recorded on the datapad. Then she immediately accesses a secure channel on her datapad, one that Sam can't seem to get access to, and sends an encrypted message using the shuttle communication array. It's directed towards Ganymede Station as far as Sam can figure. Then the datapad is powered off and is not turned back on again until just now.

[Mr. Handy]

"I can't access the secure channel," says Sam. "I'd like to see what's in this encrypted message. Jojo, can you interface with the datapad directly and try to crack it?"

[Mephistophilis]

Although he doesn't really like to do it, So demeaning, Jojo is technically able to interface directly with the datapad using a concealed data connector and then utilising his internal computational systems to try and decrypt the message.

OOC:   The long and the short of it is that Jojo can roll Computer Use with a Bonus Die to see if he can crack the code.

[aine]

“She’s been busy. And there’s something definitely odd about Waystation. Do you think there’s an alien ship here that’s causing all the reading anomalies?” Nicole says.

What do we know about Ganymede? Did we explore the whole shuttle?

[Mr. Handy]

"Unless the aliens are native to Titan, or they have some other means of traveling through space, there must be a ship here," says Sam. "We'll have to keep an eye out for it. Imagine the technology they must have!"

[Mephistophilis]

I don't think you even got past the door to enter the shuttle.

Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system, orbiting Jupiter, a rocky moon-like satellite without an atmosphere but some water-ice. From a practical perspective, Ganymede is where everyone started this journey to Titan, and it's the main base for corporate and government operations in the outer parts of the solar system. While it is not a true habitable colony, Ganymede hosts a number of corporate stations, surface habitats, mining headquarters, and military bases. Both on the moon's surface and orbital facilities. It's from where you'd be hoping rescue would come. Richter Dynamics has a significant presence there.