08/01/2020 - Ship in the Atmosphere (2)

Gas Giant Atmosphere

Del and Drent ask Orac a number of questions about the implications of taking the Liberator deep into the atmosphere of the Gas Giant. Orac suggests they should avoid going beyond 35,000km deep and they are likely to be destroyed at 40,000km.

Orac suggests it is unlikely that the Navigation Computers of the Liberator have sufficient competence to pilot the Liberator automatically in such an environment and it will be necessary for manual operation by a skilled pilot. There are two people on board who have that skill.

Drent volunteers to be that pilot, supported by Del. He begins by programing routes that involve dipping down into the atmosphere and pulling out again.

Diving into the Gas Giant

The first route takes the Liberator to 5,000km depth but nothing in detected. Drent then programs a 10,000km drive. At the lowest point, the G-Band detector registers a significant disturbance. Orac calculates that it is approximately 35,000km depth and a prime location within the area that previous readings have indicated.

He also recommends activation of the Force Wall beyond 10,000km depth and switches it on.

After some discussion, Drent’s next dive into the atmosphere is 25,000km but they are disappointed when nothing new is detected. Zen warns that Liberator is operating in a dangerous environment and the Navigation computers do not recommend going deeper into the atmosphere.

Deeper and Deeper

The next dive is 30,000km. Liberator is now significantly difficult to pilot at such a depth and the ship buffets and shakes. At that depth, Cyrus picks up something on the sensors that is a few thousand km lower.

Del has Zen push the Force Wall beyond its recommended power level. Zen suggests no higher than 120% of capacity, which Del orders him to push it to 120%.

They go to 35,000km. Liberator shakes alarmingly. Del orders Zen to push the Force Wall to 125% and he has him override safety protocols.

This time, Drent slows their acceleration and has the ship hover at around 35,000km with the main drive thrusting against the gravitational pull of the planet. The Force Wall is holding the pressure effectively.

Large Unidentified Spacecraft

Cyrus can definitely detect a source of complex metals and alloys only a few 1000km below them. Drent drops Liberator’s acceleration slightly and slowly begins to descent towards the sensor location, letting gravity pull them in.

At around 35,500km depth, Liberator comes within a few kilometres are a large object about ten times larger than the ship. It is some sort of alien space craft, which is projecting an energy field over its upper surface. It is also lit up and they catch a brief glimpse on the main screen of the ship, when suddenly some sort of hydrogen squall hits them and Drent loses control of the ship.

Crash Landing

Liberator begins to spin and fall downwards towards the alien ship at high speed and then hits it, bouncing off its energy field. Zen begins to report partial collapse of the Force Wall and damage to the hull, but the crew are too affected by the spin of the ship to pay too much attention.

Drent begins to bring the spin back under control, but gravity has now begun to draw the Liberator back towards the alien ship, though much slower than the first time. Drent tries to stop another collision but is unable to.

Unexpectedly though, the energy field of the alien ship now opens up a hole sufficient for Liberator to pass through. Drent continues to correct Liberator’s spin, but not in time to prevent the ship colliding with the surface of the alien ship. The impact is at a reasonably low speed and Liberator skidds along the surface briefly before coming to a halt.

Damage!

The collision throws Cyrus and Grant across the flight deck, injuring them both. Drent, Dirk and Del manage to hold onto their seats and only take minor injuries.

The lights have dimmed and Zen begins to report significant damage to the ships’ hull, engines, power conduits and one of the outer nacelles has been partially crushed by the impact. Main power is down but will be auto-repaired in a few minutes.

The crew recover from the experience, with Drent first back to the controls. Liberator is now stationary but with main power down almost all the systems available on the pilot’s console are out of action.

After a few minutes, main power is restored, but Liberator is not in a good state. Zen estimates it will take 18 hours in order for the Automatic Repair system to restore primary systems sufficient to get underway.

Spaceship of the Ancients

Orac meanwhile is fascinated by the sensor readings and is absorbing all the information he can about this ship, which he believes belonged to the Ancients. He reports he is completely unable to interface with the computer systems of the ship. Their design is simply too advanced for him to understand.

Orac shows them a re-construction from sensor logs on the main screen that they were not able to notice. It shows that the large Ancient ship is projecting a stable force field over its upper surface, but not its lower deck. During their approach, it attempted to raise a force field over its lower deck. The field projected to about 75% then seemed to flicker and glitch then cut out. At that point, the G-band detector registered an anomaly.

The Ancient ship appears to be around a mile square, consisting of flat central hull with a surface above and below. The upper surface, covered by the force field, has a small number of buildings on it, one looks like a large cone, another a sphere and two square buildings towards the rear of the ship.

In the middle of the main surface is a large damaged area that is a hole in the deck, a few hundred meters across, going through to the lower deck. A force field projects along the surface of the hole.

The lower deck appears to be a series of spheres attached to the central hull. There is no force field on the lower deck and there is significant damage to parts of the lower deck.

Let’s Explore

They have eighteen hours to wait before Liberator is fixed, so they resolve to go and explore this ship, using vacc suits. They identify the airlock that is closest to the surface of the Ancient Ship and will have to descend from there.

Orac announces that he wants them to take him with them. He is unable to comprehend or break into the computer system on this Ancient Ship. It may be that with close proximity to the systems he will be able to gain more information and control.

They arrange for Dirk to put Orac into a travel box and then onto a small grav platform. Then they move to the airlock and disembark, using the grav belts they obtained from Beck’s World to descend to the surface of the Ancient Ship.

The force field on the upper surface is providing light, as bright as daylight on a planet. The atmosphere is a human-friendly oxygen / nitrogen mix and there is gravity to approximate 1G. However, the stay in their vacc suits.

Primitive Farms

The ship has some odd looking areas on its surface. Closer examination shows them to be patches of soil arranged like fields, although any vegetation has clearly died off a long time ago. There is a thin layer of dust on everything.

There are also what look like primitive huts, which crumble to dust when touched. They realise that some sort of lifeform once lived on the surface of this ship in primitive conditions, but long since died off.

The Horn

Drent is keen for them to keep moving and they go to the large “horn” protruding from the hull. It appears to be around ten feet tall and cone-shaped, starting off with a diameter of around three meters on the surface of the hull and thinning to less than a millimetre 10 meters up at the tip. At the end is a small sphere which rotates.

The “horn” appears to consist of thick “wires” made from the same material as the ship’s hull, which are woven around and around and become thinner until they are a few atoms thick at the tip.

Damaged Section

There appears to be no way to affect this thing, so they move on the sphere, which is a good 15 minute walk to reach. They have to walk around the big central damaged area. The “hull” of the ship is around 10 meters thick and the damage goes all the way through.

They see that the apparently solid hull is in fact composed of thin “tentacles”, which are frayed along the edge of the damaged area. In places the “tentacles” are moving with a purpose, binding themselves back together and repairing the damage, but a few meters behind them others are unravelling and undoing the repairs.

They speculate that the repair system of the ship must be damaged, like the force field generator on the lower deck.

The Sphere

The sphere has a clear door at ground level which is a different colour to the rest of the sphere. They approach it and the door opens automatically. Inside, they see the walls are covered in large display screens with controls around them. In the centre is a column or plinth that has a lot of symbols on it. The symbols are like hieroglyphs in an incomprehensible alien language.

Del ask Orac if he can translate the language, but Orac is unable to at the moment, nor can he access or work out yet what the purpose of the sphere is. He can only say his initial analysis suggests it is designed to provide information.

Stellar Maps

Cyrus presses one of the symbols on the central plinth. Nothing happens, but after pressing a few, suddenly the lights dim in the room, the doorway seals over in darkness and a spectacular display of stars appears above them, detailing the planets orbiting the stars. Those with astronomy or astrogation knowledge recognise the Regina sub-sector, with the Bourghene system, their current location, central to the display.

There are some anomalies though. One system that only has asteroids, Shionthy, is showing having a planetary system on this map. There are also three stars showing that are not on the current star charts. Del gets out his PDA and checks its star map to confirm those stars do not exist.

They speculate that the map must be old and possibly that the Ancients had the power to move stars.

Cyrus gets bored and starts pressing buttons on the screens around the walls of the room. He eventually gets one to turn on and it shows a planet in the Bourghene system. Turning others on shows other planets, though there is no sign of the scout base that is in orbit around one planet.

Moving On

Del checks the door and discovers that it is not sealed, just there is dark filter to help reduce the lighting in the room. After a while, the star display turns off, the lights come up and the doorway clears.

Orac announces that he has been able to work out how to give instructions to the systems in the Sphere room, which is some sort of Star Map / Astrogation chamber, to carry out the operations it has been design to do. However, he is completely unable to penetrate any further into the system or “hack” into its inner workings. It is simply too complicated and its security and encryption protocols too advanced.

They move onto the first square building, which is not too far away. Its double doors slid open when they approach and they enter. In the centre of the room is a single large panel standing upright and made possibly of a glass-like substance with a smokey, cloudy texture. Next to it is a small panel with a large central button, five smaller buttons around it and three stick-like controls under them. Some of the five smaller buttons are coloured red, others blue.

Teleportal

Cyrus presses the large central button. The panel suddenly changes texture and becomes silver and smooth and the atmosphere in the room seems to change. He presses it again and it returns to a smokey texture and the atmosphere returns to normal. Another press returns the panel to smooth silver.

Del believes the panel is a teleport terminal and he has his small floating drone pass through it. It reveals on the other side a spherical room with three columns and a large ball floating centrally above them. Del has the drone come back.

Cyrus then begins to experiment pressing the five smaller buttons, but nothing happens and they buzz as though there is an error. Del presses the big button to “turn off” the panel and then, when one of the smaller buttons is pressed, it reacts, changing from blue to red. Pressing it again turns it back to blue. The other small buttons do the same.

Pressing the Buttons

Cyrus then turns all the five small buttons blue and presses the main button. There is some sort of flashing error and the panel does not change.

Cyrus then changes one of the buttons to red and presses the big button. The panel turns silver and Del sends his probe through, but it quickly seems to error, the display showing darkness then the display goes off then all signal is lost.

They realise there are around 30 different combinations and they do not have enough drones to test them all.

Drent has become restless again and agitates for them to check out the final square building, which they agree to do.

The Last Building

When they enter that building, the ceiling above them slides back to reveal the force field and the atmosphere of the gas giant above them.

In the room are three columns with a central ball floating above them, very similar to the room Del saw via his drone. In between the columns, on the floor, is a white slightly glowing hexagonal panel.

Cyrus states that the ball is the main control for the whole ship and they need to get to it and manipulate it.

They examine the columns and discover each has a small console with a few controls on them. Two of them appear to be lit up, while a third is dark.

Playing with the Ball

Cyrus plays with the controls on the lit-up console and after a moment manages to get the ball to power down and float to the floor. This also causes the other lit-up console to go dark. A closer examination of the ball reveals that it is buzzing with energy and has a strong static-electric field. It does not feel safe to touch and Cyrus realises this is not the main control of the ship, but something else.

Cyrus then presses the buttons on his console again and the ball activates and floats back up. The second console lights back up and Grant plays with its buttons, until he is able to make the ball rotate around very fast.

The third console now lights up and Drent steps over, pressing what looks like the main button on it.

Deadly Weapon

Suddenly a powerful purple beam of energy launches from the ball and fires into the sky. When the beam hits the energy field around the ship, it causes the field to collapse.

As soon as the energy field collapses, the dense atmosphere of the gas giant starts rushing in.

Desperately, Drent presses the button on his console again, but that just causes the ball to fire another beam.

End of Episode Two