You learn that they are the Fa-Thae, a small consortium of eight worlds allied with the Grand Federation. The Grand Federation? Why, that’s the great council that makes up nearly all races, rules the galaxy, and sets laws. Nearly all? Only the Inheritors oppose them, but they were sealed away long ago. How big is the Federation? Why, nearly three thousand systems! All of the known universe, save the Inheritor systems! A small system map of the area confirms... the “Grand” Federation stems from a single secondary node, composing the gated worlds within the subnet and several close subsidiary systems around each. All it knows of the Inheritors is the name and that they are warmongering conquerors, supposedly desiring to destroy all life or some such propagandized foolishness.

But no, there are more important questions to ask. The most important of all being: Why? Why rip apart the shipyards and structures?

The answer is both simple and enraging. For profit. Structures made by the Precursors are valuable beyond words. Even those that have been looted for thousands of years can still be scavenged for wondrous materials that sell for high prices, though always at the risk of being killed by ancient traps and defenses. This bird-thing claims to have been doing nothing more than trying to make a quick buck.

And of the Ophidian Empire? Nothing at all, save completely fabricated mythology about ones called the Precursors. Great advanced beings whose works can still be found in some places and who mysteriously vanished long ago.

After a bit of persuasion the giant “Pharor” in the next room corroborates the story, far more cooperative than the Fa-Thae next door. It also mentions that the mighty Federation Battlefleet will destroy you soon for what you have done, and you don’t see any particular need to disbuse it of the notion the battlefleet can even reach you currently.

Outside, Dr. Burr busies himself reviewing the aliens vitals as Ivanova unseals the suit’s headgear. “Is that the information you required, Captain?”

“Yes, thank you very much Lieutenant,” you respond, voice emanating from the speakers in the corridor, “do you think they know anything else that would be relevant?”

She shrugs, “I don’t doubt they have more information, sir. I just do not know how valuable it would be to us. What they have already told us should be the key points and they do not seem to have access to the local primary node.”

“Well, they seem stable enough at least captain.” Burr joins in, nodding as he walks over to your second in command. Naturally shorter than your tall XO, he is now positive dwarfed by her figure in the armor and is forced to crane his neck upwards to address her. “I was able to monitor the aliens as you questioned them, there don’t seem to be any adverse reactions. Though I must say, we won’t have the rations to feed them for too long.”

Ivanova nods, “Well sir, I will return this suit to the armory if there is nothing else.”

“Very well, dismissed Lieutenant. And good work.”

“Thank you, sir.” With that she departs, the thudding of the suit receding from the brig as you turn your attentions to Burr.

“On the subject of patients, doctor, how does my Intelligence Officer fare?” You soften your tone as you speak, hoping at least for some good news regarding the troubled man.

Your physician sighs and shakes his head, “There is progress captain, but it’s clear this has been an enormous shock to him. Kara simply speaking to him and listening seems to have helped a great deal and stopped the paranoid delusions, but he’s lost everything. From the reports he was engaged to be wed on his return and his fiancee was already expecting a child. And then there’s the fact he was from a Great House and now is... well, possibly nothing at all. It’s a difficult case.”

“Do you have any idea if he will recover? Or when?”

A quick negative, “Unknown. I’m giving him medication as you instructed and it seems to be helping, but the fact is that some depression is genuinely justified. As he comes to terms with his situation he will return to what he was before, I think, or at least some resemblance of who he was. But as to when?” Another shake of his balding head, “Only time will tell, captain.”

“I see. Thank you doctor, is there anything else?”

“Just one. Your, ah, body.” Burr turns and pulls down one of the fold-in steel benches from the wall and sits, dabbing at his face with a towel before continuing. “I’ve been working on it these past few weeks with doctor Dai and think that it could be ready soon. Very soon, in fact.” He hesitates briefly before continuing, “Tomorrow or the next day it will be ready to try, but even with everything I can do I’m not a miracle worker. I’ve replaced the eyes, stomach, and liver with cyberware but it’s possible that during the time we were drifting there was too much damage done overall. We don’t have all the specialized equipment here to tell, so the only way to know for sure would be for you to, well, attempt to reactivate it.”

Well shoot me in the dick, it's Void Quest!

And just starting when as my power got turned back on too.

“Why is this such a problem, doctor?” you ask, confused.

“Well, sir, I’ve seen reports that some EIs don’t react well to death. Involuntary system overloads or shutdowns, severe lingering phantom pains, or even mental, err, programming damage. You shut down before your body succumbed last time, so we don’t know what will happen if I’m wrong. Then again, there are records of EIs being completely unaffected by even the most traumatic deaths of their bodies. It all seems to vary with the person, perhaps their state of mind or willpower.” As he speaks the man sounds grave, but you detect an undercurrent of nervousness and perhaps even curiosity. “Either way, the point will be moot if your body is still functional, but I thought you should know.”

#####################

>Atmosphere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koj-Cnxf-hc

“Three. Two. One. Jump.” Ivanova’s voice fades with the final word, flowing into the once-again familiar feeling of space being shred and twisted by your drives. The snap of arrival, a silent concussion along the skin of your hull which leaves ethereal streamers of white energy trailing from your dark form.

“Jump complete.” she finishes, immediately looking to the dual displays of the XO’s screen and sensor readings. “Transition successful, Captain. Sensors read the red giant Waran ahead as predicted, stellar instability prevents further readings from extra-system scans. Proceed?”

“Any abnormal readings other than what you detect from Waran itself?” you ask.

“No, sir. Not that I can tell, at least.”

“Very well. I’m taking us in carefully, stay on alert.”

A brief consultation with a harried looking Chief Dai and you fire the engines, propelling the ship forward. Before long you reach the edge of the interference ring and pass beyond.

Waran Base, sometimes known as the spiral gateway. A critical strongpoint here on the other side of the galactic core, chosen because of the unique star at its center which is undergoing a rare process termed “Pazlov Expansion” after the researcher who discovered the phenomenon. Not even the most advanced sensors or suites of ECM compensation software are able to take accurate readings from within the star’s sphere of influence, yet readings taken from inside the system to scan approaching ships are as accurate as ever. The strategic advantage of a base that can never be accurately probed for the forces within it was immediately obvious, and thus Waran Base was originally constructed. Soon the ship traffic and rallying required support facilities, docks, and eventually shipyards too. By time time you were dispatched on campaign Waran Base was the largest military hub in the sector.

What greets you here, however, is something you would never have expected.

As soon as you pass through the interference ring the sensors light up. Thousands of tiny objects flying through the system, caught in the gravity of the star and now dancing across your shields.

“Contact!” says Ivanova, “Multiple vessels! At least two capital ships! Beginning scans.” Your probing gaze reaches out, sorting through the interference even as you prepare to receive both hails and weapons fire.

Neither comes.

“Sir, scanners are saying...” Ivanova begins, only to trail off. In truth, no words are needed.

Floating through the system on strange eccentric orbits of both planetoids and the star itself are over two dozen Imperial ships, all gutted and savaged beyond repair. Even more of a shock are their IDs, matched against your databases even now. The Gallant and the Parsimony, two destroyers whose captains you knew. The Gallant drifts around Waran IV, the system’s lone gas giant, in a tumbling erratic dance. Even as you watch components trail from an enormous gaping gash spanning an entire side of the warship, leaving a beautiful glittering arc into the gravity well of the teal-hued planetoid as the vessel slowly tumbles end over end around it.

Then there is the Parsimony, captained by one of your old friends from the Academy, Nanjar Rho. Commissioned only the year before you were, the once-proud destroyer’s prow is now a burned-out lattice of superstructure support beams. Even the more intact rear shows signs of horrific damage, pieces blasted from the armored hull in great gashes.

Most disturbing of all, however, is the wreck immediately before you. The cruiser Asura, on which you served as XO for nearly thirty years. The once gleaming silver arrowhead-shaped ship now lies rent in twain, ripped apart by titanic forces of battle halfway along its length; the rear half of the vessel circling Waran even now... slowly but surely being drawn into the star’s massive gravity well. The prow is nowhere to be found, save the trail of debris plunging into the star’s depths. A mute prediction of the fate the rest of the poor ship will eventually suffer.

“Sensor readings complete, sir. There is a lot of debris, though, and some of them are either wrecked beyond identification or are likely to have fallen into gravity wells.” Ivanova says, pulling them up on the main holo-display:

Vedibere i love you.

>Confirmed:
>Cruiser-class: 3
>Destroyer-class: 5
>Frigate-class: 9

>Estimated:
>Carrier-class: 1
>Cruiser-class: 1
>Destroyer-class: 2
>Frigate-class: 5

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” you say, calmly. Her results are roughly the same as your own, and you turn your attention to the objectives you came here for in the first place; the base and shipyard. But as you had feared -- no, even worse than you had feared -- they have been brought to ruin. Where the Waran Shipyard once sat there lies only a thick cloud of atomized gases and rent debris, being fought over by the masses of Waran’s planetary bodies as well as its own gravatic pull.

And of course the base, located on the planet Halbios. What was once Halbios, at least. Where once over seventy million military personnel and shipwrights lived in enclosed enviro-domes there is naught but a sphere of glowing rock; even now a glowing ember thousands or tens of thousands of years after whatever it was dumped enough energy into the planetoid to turn it molten.

Oh hell yeah, been waiting all day for this quest.

Previous Threads:

1: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/15474877/
2: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/15527576/
3: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/15547424/
4: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/15558914/
5: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/15581324/
6: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/15603188/
7: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/15626860/

>>15671322
Transmit on a general Imperial Armada frequency:
"This is the OIS Harbinger. We are ready to render assistance. Please respond if you are able. We are now launching repair drones and shuttles to assist.
"I'm back, lads."

They fought long and hard for this place, and to no useful end it looks like.

Well, we may as well salvage what we can from the hulks. There will be spare parts, and we will be able to retrieve logs. There could even be survivors in cryo.

We need to salvage what we can, see if any of the EI's or crew survived.
We also need to see if we can get critical components from the completely dead hulks.

Out first priority should be to our ship. Lets scan the hulks for any systems that could still be salvageable, they've probably drifted here for as long as we have, and some of our systems still work so one can only hope right?

It looks like these ships died fighting, can we scan to see if they took any of the enemy ships with them? If logs are ship personal sealed in cryo are out there (highly unlikely) we need to find them.

Observe balistic damages to the ships. Perhaps we can learn what got them.

Search for scavangeable railgun parts to repair the damaged parts of our compliment.

==Map Legend==
Green Dotted Arrow: Last Jump
Yellow Dotted Arrow: Last-1 Jump
Red Dotted Arrow: Last-2 jump.
Green dot: Current position. (Currently Waran)
Yellow dot: Glassed planet and wrecked shipyard
Red dot: Orrin
Yellow Square: Your awakening position
Teal dotted zone: Hundred Systems Territory (Hundred Worlds Rebellion)

==Command Staff==
Lieutenant Kateryna Ivanova - Executive Officer
>Second Lieutenant Dray Parson - Intelligence Officer (Incapacitated)
Second Lieutenant Robert Tynes - Steward
Chun-Fan Dai - Chief Engineer
Third Lieutenant Mardigan “Guns” Rinn - Weapons Officer
Dr. Christof Burr - Physician

==Junior Officers==
Ensign Fie - Communictions Officer
Ensign DuBois - Staff officer
Ensign Tremko - Staff officer
Ensign Rao - Staff officer

>Note, accidentally forgot to change the position in the upper left of the OP map.

If only this were in New Eden I would lend my "Villified" Myrmidon battlecruiser as assitance.

Priorities:

Broadcast for survivors, probably pointless But an important gesture nonetheless.

See if we can place the weapons that damaged these ships. Does it match up to anything? Are the telltale signs of certain things?

See if perhaps and of the ships (preferbly a smaller one) can be at all brought back into working condition. Obviously we'd need to board if we found one that isn't obviously destroyed to tell, but if I recall we were pretty dinged up and came out of it alright the Empire seems to make a sturdy ship. The advantage of having an escort of vessel would be worth a good bit, even if we lack an EI or the parts to make it much more than a wagon, should be rather obvious.

Look for functioning cryo. We need all the hands we can get, even if we can't house and feed them all just yet.

Salvage. Unisteel, other alloys, munitions, drones, fighters, whatever may be left. I understand that will be a massive undertaking and require much time devoted to scanning and boarding.

>>15671498
Don't forget, look for intact computer cores or EI systems. We need to see combat logs and what they were fighting, and if there any systems that they passed through that they know were mothballed.
Those are the systems that would still be intact.

>>15671498
Also medicine and rations, bean paste seems to hold remarkably well. Even if we're good on them, pick up more anyway.

Medical equipment would be nice, if only for extra spares of what we have. I imagine that carrier would have some nice bits on it. If it isn't utterly picked clean. Maybe better workshop machines.

When it comes to scanning ships or boarding them, we should turn a good bit of attention to that carrier, and work our way down the capital line.

>>15671498
Seconding.

Second on the medical supplies, and on the ship scanning order.

I'd like to reccomend stabilising the orbits of any ships we can. It might be necessary to come back here some day and make use of the hulls, however damaged they might be.

Can we estimate roughly how long they've been sitting here dead in space? +60,000 years is a long time, there must have been a literal fuckton of ships here whose orbits decayed over that time.

>>15671569
It would be nice if we can, but we don't exactly have space tugs. Just some shuttles, and drones.
I'm not sure if it can be done.

>>15671536
>I imagine that carrier would have some nice bits on it. If it isn't utterly picked clean
Really? Like, for serious? After I just said it's so badly blown to hell that you can't even tell if it was really even a carrier and/or might have only been identified by select bits left behind as it spiraled into the star?

If you guys are planning to systematically scan everything in this system then plan on a six month+ timeskip.

>>15671598
`no, just look at intact ships that might have power cores/intact weapons we can use.

>>15671598
Oh! Oh! I know! Lets only scan the ones that appear as if they can be salvaged!

Also, My ship is on the 88 quadrillion lightyear journey here. Expext my arrival in another 30 trillion years.

>>15671598
Restrict our salvage operations to just the ships that aren't obviously gutted.
Our priorities are EI/computer cores, crew in cryo, and salvageable shield generators, energy cannons, and railguns. If we can get all of that in a month, then we can move on to medical and other supplies.

Also, can we get a galaxy map with the area of the Grand Federation indicated?

>>15671598
Sorry, I guess I missed the part about the carrier's fate.

Still kind of missing it, but I'll lend a more careful eye towards looking again.

I wouldn't be adverse to spending that level of time looting what's left, if it would mean getting more of our guns and shields back online. And maybe net us some deck plates to replace our bigger breaches with should we ever find a dock that isn't utterly destroyed.

But the possibility of netting some survivors makes it worth checking out anything likely to still house them. Obviously we won't dedicate much effort to sifting through dust clouds, and the good doctor seems to have lamented our medicals stocks more than once.

>>15671675
The part about the carrier isn't explicitly stated.
It's implied by how it's not a confirmed wreck, only an estimated one.

For derpy sentimental reasons, is there by any chance something identifiable of the Asura may be reclaimed via drones? I dunno, like a plaque or somethig?

Cap'n seems to have some memories of that old tug, and it'd be nice to give him something, ya know? Though, by the sound of it, there's not much of anything left whatsoever.

Look in the obvious places for stuff we need.
Joke now:
Get into cryo and wait for me.

>>15671598

I'd like to look at the most intact hulks, such as they are. Finding logs and potential survivors are the two top priorities.

>>15671798
Who the fuck are you? Why are you shitting here?

Check the cryo chambers of the most intact ships. Some of them might have done the same thing we did with their crew when things went to hell.

>>15671327
Is there some military policy concerning emergency data storages?

Maybe some hidden sensors on asteroids recording the events?

Or a satellite acting as a relay that might have recorded the last traffic coming from the system?

>>15671849
Im Malflorr, Im shitting here because my toilet is backed up.

im assuming that these ships have a "black box" device or something similar, something that holds information about the ship's last actions? if they do, we should send a small group of drones to board one of the smaller ships first, like one of the destroyers, asses the damage to the black box (as it would probably be a good indicator of how the other "black boxes" will be on the other ships) and attempt to retrieve the data.
... and if we recover any corpses, we should take a DNA sample (if any of its viable despite such exposure) and give them a proper burial.

Dispatch a drone to obtain a sample of the glassed planet. Make it a standing order to collect one from every glassed Imperial world we encounter (unless there are more than one in a system), if it isn't already.

>>15672153
It's not glassed, it's molten.

>>15672168
Consider the order corrected, then.

“This is the OIS Harbinger, standing by to render assistance to Imperial vessels. Please respond if able. I repeat, this is the OIS Harbinger, standing by to render assistance. Please respond.”

You broadcast on all frequencies -- both civilian and military, coded and open -- for nearly half an hour. More than enough time for your message to reach anywhere in the system. More than enough time to receive a response if any were coming. As expected, it does not.

Still, efforts must be made. You dispatch drones to the three most intact wrecks, those of the Asura, Gallant, and Parsimony. The Parsimony is easiest to board, both floating on a regular orbital course and with nothing more than the twisted outline of the superstructure intact in the front, you are easily able to fly a drone directly into the wreck itself to scan. No power signatures save the reactor core itself appear, though that is hardly shocking considering the gutting of the front half and the myriad holes punched through the rear. Still, valuable supplies and salvage can be found, and with no immediate danger you give the word to dispatch an engineering team and set of drones.

The next most viable wreck is the Gallant. More intact than the Parsimony but tumbling rapidly while caught close to a gas giant, the approach is tricky indeed. Two drone fighters are lost to the blender-like field of debris being slung from the gaping rend that takes the place of where a full quarter of the the hull should be, as well as the plethora of breaches dotting the rest of the ship. As the rest of your task group safely flies into the lee of the storm and matches velocity you shake your virtual head at the memory of the valiant men and women who gave their lives aboard the vessel. Still, damaged though it is you can make out a few intact weapons emplacements -- though how you are going to get them off without a shipyard is another matter -- and several intact bays for cargo and drones, though you can only hope time has not stolen the contents of those bays.

Finally, the Asura itself. Only half the ship left and dipping close to the star’s corona periodically on its breakneck orbit, you lose six drones while scanning the hulk. All consumables or delicate equipment would no doubt be utterly destroyed by the heat and magnetics by now unless shielded, however you do detect some minor power sources. Even more interesting, the reactor containment field seems to be functioning properly and though less advanced it would likely share some parts to aid in repair of your own.

The myriad other hulks are in even worse states of disrepair and damage, though some of them are easier to investigate. You find a frigate’s prow with a nearly fully stocked drone bay, (minus the drones, of course) another destroyer’s holds are partially intact and provides a plethora of missile warheads, and finally one of the cruisers, the Serpentine, appears to have some of the areas shield generators are placed in mostly intact -- though you do note that they would at best provide select spare parts even if fully intact since it is a Hydra-class cruiser rather than a Harbinger-class.

>Deploy salvage teams? If so, to what and what/who will be on the teams? What will their priorities be?

>>15672223
First priority: Safety.
Second priority: Any information on what happened here.

We're not exactly a salvage or engineering expert. Let's ask the crew most knowledgable about such things.

>>15672223
Deploy salvage team with heavily shielded suits and mostly drones, with Dai supervising, to the Asura to get spare parts for the reactor and to see what those power sources are feeding.

You said that a salvage crew is already assigned to the Parsimony.

Send another salvage crew to the Gallant; check out those intact bays. Have Dai try to figure out how to get those guns off of her, or break them down for spares.

Last, salvage the Serpentine's shields and attempt to bring some more of the Harbinger's shields back online. The warheads and the drone bay can wait.

>>15672223

First, recover any cryopods you find. If they are working, bring them onboard and thaw them. If not, give them a proper burial.

Prioritize search and salvage of the Parsimony, since it is the easiest right now.

If practical, begin destroying the debris field surrounding the Gallant. Have the drones already there search it thoroughly. For now, I'd say we should survey the weapons for salvageable components, but not actually remove anything or attempt to detach the weapons themselves, due to the risk of losing them to debris impact.

Search the Asura thoroughly. Have the drones broadcast our earlier message on a loop within it. Sorry if I should know this, but is there any way we could tow it without great risk to ourselves?

Have drones salvage what is useful from the other wrecks you noted. I don't know if there's any point at sending our people out before our drones have performed a more thorough sweep of the derelicts.

Continue scanning.

>>15672223

would it be possible to have specialized drones salvage reactor bits from the Asura or is it required that we send engineers?

with the Gallant, can we access those intact cargo/drone bays using drones? If they're empty, no point in sending salvage teams unless we can dismantle those intact weapons for parts.

Any chance Dai can give us an engineer's opinion on who to send where and when?

Asura first.

If possible, we need to see about arresting her fall, and getting her into a stable orbit.

Same for the Gallant, that tumble will make salvage a bitch, and we need every drone we can avoid losing.

Then we start looting like a mo-fo.

I don't think we can afford to loot so many at once. With things like medical supplies, food rations, and a general picture of warheads and the like we can have drones to stock of and maybe begin moving these things to speed up the eventual salvage operation. The Asura should come first, which we'll need Dai, and his usual cadre of engineers. We should keep at least one person who can fathom our drive onboard just in case though, can't really afford to fuck around with a singular by doing things in halfs.

Have fighters try and clear up some of that debris around that Gallant. But our main efforts and resources should be concentrated on one ship at a time. At least the ones which need our experts on them. Can't afford to lose someone like Dai.

>Drones
The ones you dispatched originally were interceptors for basic scanning to see what all could still be working through the star-haze. You'll have to send a shuttle to get actual hands on to see exactly what is there unless you want to try and have an interceptor try to fly through hallways a quarter its size or something.

>Sorry if I should know this, but is there any way we could tow it without great risk to ourselves?
No. For just so many reasons, not the least of which is /how/. You can't just tie a rope to the other ship and gun the engine.

>We're not exactly a salvage or engineering expert.
Nobody on the crew is a salvage expert, they're highly educated and specialized warship engineers. This is a command decision.

>First priority: Safety.
This is like saying First priority: Victory! in a fight. Well, yeah, but how are you going to do it? And do be aware that sometimes risk can never be completely eliminated.

>Salvage drones with no engineers
You can send drones only if you want but the work will be much slower and you'll lose any effects having trained engineers on the scene would provide. (Ex. When CPO Wright was on-scene with the alien monitor in the bay.)

>>15672330
Seconded. Asura's power readings may make it possible for cryopods to have survived aboard.
Gallant could potentially replace some of the drones we've lost.
After that in priority are the shield generators off the Serpentine.

I wonder. Have the xenos in our brig ever heard of something that looks the way we do?

These Inheritors also seem like they may be of some interest. I'd suggest pressing for more info on them when we get around to it.

Hey guys, drones aren't free. We just spent 8 here, around 1% our total remaining complement.

We're going to need to be clever if we want some of this stuff.

>>15672330
How. Or at the very least who do you consult.

>>15672429
Why don't we ask Dai and Ivanova how they think we should go about this. No sense making even more avoidable mistakes. You can just summarize their opinions, you don't have to write out a page of dialogue. Unless you want to.

The longer we stay here, the greater risk of psychological damage to the crew. This is a depressive sight, they might start thinking that all systems are like this and there aren't any humans left in the galaxy.

Okay, Have Dai and his boys. Get ready for checking out salvagable engine bits. And maybe tell him to toss around the idea of looting some guns and how we could go about at the very least collecting them. I'd don't like the idea of sending too many important people off at the same time, but we may also want to send someone like Lt Ivanova with them. For the sake of A) being an intelligence spook B) knowing how to use a gun. Presumably, rather well.

>>15672214

Can our point-defenses clear the crap around Gallant?

Since Parsimony is easy and low-risk we should look for whatever we can find in it. Computer logs, supplies, whatever else.

Asura is going to be a bitch to perform a salvage mission on. Getting replacement reactor parts may not be worth the risk of taking a dip in a solar prominence..

>>15672444
They both agree that you would have to fire up the engines. Assuming they work. And have power. And won't explode. And the reactor can support them. And the reactor won't explode.

Ivanova is against it, phrasing the idea as "suicidal" though Dai shrugs and says "Why not? Would be an interesting challenge."

>>15672459
I disagree. We have here the very real possibility that more humans survived in cryo, or as EIs (doubtful though it may be). At the very least, there should be useful information that will help us piece together the history we missed. This is a place of hope, and we should convey that to the crew.

>>15672485

This is why checking the wreckages for cryopods should be our first priority, far more important than looting materials is the morale of our crew.

>>15672484
We might as well see if it's actually possible.

Now what do they think about all the other salvage operations?

Asura needs to be priority one.

This is a potential rescue OP, salvage can wait.

I for one, agree with the engineer. Lets see if we can fire up her engines, and get her out of that wonky orbit. >:)

With the amount of cybernetics he has, cant he jack into a small drone and work via telepresence?

>>15672472
>Can our point-defenses clear the crap around Gallant?
Hmmm. Good idea, they should be able to.

>With the amount of cybernetics he has, cant he jack into a small drone and work via telepresence?
At vastly reduced efficacy. Like trying to fix a car while only looking through a cardboard tube.

>Do stuff
Remember, you have to say who will be on the teams too.

>>15672411
Dude, did you get too little sleep again?

Ok, guys, our current strategy of randomly jumping to old military bases in our databanks isn't working out very well. We've always clung to this belief that payday was just one jump away, but we need to be realistic: we're so long forgotten nobody even remembers the Empire, all we're known as are the Precursors. To find paydirt, we'd need to hit a place that hasn't been ransacked in sixty thousand years and hasn't just decayed to uselessness. To put this in perspective, it's like a Bronze Age civilization expecting to find their cities preserved today.

If we want to rebuild our Empire, we need to temporarily align ourselves with a faction. Right now, we have zero industrial base and few people. These two are critical to building up and sustaining a force.

>>15672608
No, why do you ask?

>>15672619

Yes, I agree. I say we find the Federation and open diplomatic relations with them. We can't fight a war against the entire goddamn galaxy all by ourselves.

>>15672640
If the Federation's military is as shitty as it seems to be, we probably can. In any case, we should discuss this at length with the crew, because cooperating with xenos, instead of conquering them, is not normal for us. But we are not in a normal situation, either.

>>15672619
Have to disagree. Working with the xenos would be a bridge too far.

We don't even know that humanity is gone yet. Picking at these scraps is fine as we're still to beat up to hold our own. Once we're in a more combat ready standing we can go give these xenos what they deserve. Until then we need to scavenge what we can, while we can.

>>15672640
No, I disagree.
We should instead search out these Inheritors, and see what they have to offer.

>>15672619
Could always just warp in to one of their system shut down the gates to cut off reinforcements then take over one of their shipyards.

>>15672683
Unless they happen to have completely preserved an intact capital-class Imperial shipyard, it is likely to be of limited use to us. But there is the prospect of capturing and subverting alien ships to our own purposes.

Huh, did we ever look at what it would take to start producing food of our own. I know we established that we can't right now. But would we be able to rig some hydroponics up, and rip up some edible stuff to grow from the next planet we happen across that happens to be uninhabited?

>>15672704
In the words of Han Solo, "Yeah, but who's going to pilot it?"

We have 24 doods and a bunch of drones. The ships we would get from aliens are crewed not drones or do you plan to refit a huge number of alien ships somehow when we cant even fix ourself.

>>15672640
One advantage we do have is our advanced technology. We shouldn't be so eager to pick and choose sides when we can play them against each other. How much do you think these guys would be willing to pay for what we've got?

What we do need is a better idea of the politics of the galaxy.
>>15672672
No, we can't, you idiot. The galaxy is fuckhuge and we're only one ship with limited crew.

>>15672683
We don't even know if their shipyards would be of any use, not to mention shipyards need to be staffed. Automation in this setting appears to be very limited.

>>15672728
I didn't say it would be easy. It's a possibility. There are a number of ways we could go about it, but what we would do depends on information we don't have yet. No reason to get up in arms about it when we haven't even decided if we're going to TRY capturing ships.

>>15672634
You seemed a bit vexed. Although I can understand that, /tg/'s reading comprehension seems at an all-time low.

>>15672600
Alright, let's use the point-defense lasers to clear the area around the Gallant, and get rid of any other debris that poses immediate danger to operations around the Gallant, Asura, Parsimony, and Serpentine.

Salvage team to be 2 engineers and support of 5 drones, or however more they deem necessary.

On top of priorities which are unique to each ship, finding occupied cryopods and intact computer cores is of paramount importance.

Dai and salvage team in the most protected suits we have, go to the Asura. They're to see if we can get any reactor spare parts, and where that power is being fed to.
Another salvage team to go to the Gallant, and check what's in those bays.
A third salvage team to go to the Parsimony to look for medical supplies and consumables.
A fourth salvage team to enter the Serpentine and get shield spare parts and use them to repair our own where possible.

>>15672749
>No, we can't, you idiot.

There's no call for that. I shouldn't have said we could fight the whole galaxy. But I do think we could take the Federation.

>>15672725
That would depend on said planet having planets that are edible by humans, and that contain the nutrients and vitamins we need.
Your idea is such a laughably long shot, that it's not even worth considering right now.

Ok, we can clear the debris field around the Gallant. All that leaves for hazards are any normal events associated with gas giants. Radiation rings if it's a jovelike, for instance. We should be able to deal with those too, since the gas giant will be in our database and will have been well observed.

So, salvaging the Gallant is a "go." Just how we're going to get the weapons off their mounts will be an exercise for the engineering team.

Ivanova is right that the Asura is a suicide mission. As much as I'd love to have those replacement parts, we're nuts if we try a mission that puts men aboard it in its current orbit. We can't really afford the drones to try mucking around with telerepairs either.

It's got to be moving FAST to be so close to the sun, which means that if we were to try towing it out (somehow) we'd be putting a big strain on our engines.

Maybe we could turn one of the hulks here into a salvage-sled? Get the engines working again on the Parsimony, strip it down to bare essentials and a capture rack of some sort designed to cup the Asura, and then have it push Asura into a safer orbit? If we lose the sled we just lose some time.

>>15672801
*plants edible by humans

>>15672766

Putting people on Asura is nuts, can we leave whatever we do with it for last please? It's going to be the most complicated one.

>>15672757
It's GM-omniscience syndrome. They always have their own ideas of how everything works, but they never explain anything yet still expect players to be psychic and know it all.

For the sake of my brain meats, I was operating under the assumption that we were only on a galatic scale (think we were told this, but can't recall) but the "federation" makes claims of a universal one. Just to be clear, they are simply misguided, right?

>>15672801
>>15672725
We've already hit that base for food, it's not an immediate concern. Frankly, we don't have many mouths to feed.

>>15672801
Such a long shot that we passed up such a planet already. So laughable is my idea that we have the capability of processing food into something humans can eat. So out of this world.... Oh, wait.

>>15672831
No, players in this quest have a well-documented tendency to not comprehend what they read correctly, or miss information that has been presented in a post.

The Reactor parts- and whatever the online power signatures are- on the Asura make it worth the challenge. if anyone can do it, Dai can. I vote we give him a shot at it.

>>15672757
>You seemed a bit vexed.
Just at repeating myself.

>>15672831
No, I don't mind that at all. People not reading and then asking questions already pre-answered in my posts, though... that does tend to get my goat. Also, u mad?

>>15672860
We were testing the plants and animals of Orrin, and were coming up negative on anything that could be eaten by humans.
Where do we have this capability to process food? All of the food our crew has been eating till now, and will be eating for the next year, are all military rations, pre-processed and ready to eat.
Where is this capability to process matter and create human-edible food coming from?

>>15672891
Magic and space elfs.

>>15672837
>but the "federation" makes claims of a universal one. Just to be clear, they are simply misguided, right?
Well obviously you can't know for sure, but considering they only claim a few thousand systems (of which only a fraction are colonized) when the Empire had many billions explored and millions inhabited...

It's probably safe to say they are just being a bit haughty.

>>15672925
'Kay, that's what I thought.

>>15672881
>Just at repeating myself.

You can't really expect everybody to have read every thread before. But as I said, /tg/ is rather derpy when it comes to processing and memorising text.

>>15672860
Yeah, your idea is laughably stupid, considering that the two things you mentioned, the former showed no signs of any plant that humans could eat, and the latter doesn't exist.
Your just making stuff up at this point.

>>15672872

Let's run the sled idea by him first, huh?

>>15672953
It's only 7 threads.
If this was Zeonquest, or Commander Quest, with their over-100 thread long history, maybe.
But it's only 7, and you can still just do a keyword search to see if your question came up before.

>>15672957
>>15672891

Can it, you boners. Arguing over something completely unrelated to the current challenge is noise at best.

>>15672972
I thought commander quest switched settings every 30 or 40 threads?
And both quests seem to have terribly low populations. Although I haven't seen Zeonquest for quite some time, is it on hiatus?

>>15672989
Zeonquest just ran today. It's not on hiatus.

Vedibere, are you writing, or waiting on us for something?

>>15673021
Writing. Feel free to discuss future plans. Asura mission is not going to be in this update because opinion appears divided, so feel free to discuss that as a short-term plan, other things like what you plan to do next as medium-term plans, and even long term plans if you want.

are EI cores volatile or non-volatile systems? If we were to locate an intact (or even a damaged) core that had no power, could we "revive" the EI by powering the core, or would the EI have been wiped/lost when power failed?

>>15673072
Non. Yes, you could revive a downed EI or AI. Mind, if their core template was damaged they might not be able to be revived at all and if their databanks were damaged they might not have perfect memories and stuff like that.

Everytime we jump, we risk the reactor destabilizing and a catastrophic failure.
Also, with power working, the Asura is the most likely place to still have working cryopods.
Dai can also examine the engines and the reactor to see if it's feasible to boost the hulk into a more stable orbit.

Wasn't the EI of the Asura our mentor?

Where on a ship are all our EI bits stored anyway?

>>15673060
After a short stay in this system, taking everything we deem of value, we'll move on to the next objective. What that is depends both on the information we gather here and our whims. In the medium-term, we need to continue gathering resources to prop up our damaged ship and leads to point us toward surviving relics of the Empire. I guess our long-term goal is still to reach Sol. I wouldn't be surprised to find Earth glassed, which would no doubt be an extraordinary shock to the crew. We're gonna go there anyway, because it seems to be the best chance we've got of finding out what really happened and reconnecting with whatever remains of mankind.

rolled 10, 1, 67 = 78

>>15673123
No, that was the Hydra.

Secret rolls. Also need you guys to give me 6d10.

>>15673072

addition:

if we located a damaged EI core, would it be possible to remove a storage portion and attempt to read it with our own EI core?

say we found X different cores that were all damaged, but together had enough to form a single functioning core, would it be possible for our engineers to kitbash a working, (possibly schitzophrenic) EI core?

data on the past, man! WE MUST HAVE IT

rolled 1, 1, 1, 10, 4, 9 = 26

>>15673152
Ah, forgive me haven't had me tea yet.

>>15673152
Oh-ho ho, wow.

That's amusing.

rolled 4, 7, 3, 3, 9, 2 = 28

>>15673152
Rolling, may the spirit of humanity guide my dice.

rolled 7, 9, 2, 9, 9, 6 = 42

>>15673152
Great. What's going on now?

>>15673177
>rolled 1, 1, 1

>>15673177
The dice say you do not deserve any kind of tea.

>>15673152
>>15673177

rolled 2, 4, 1, 10, 9, 10 = 36

>>15673181
Spirit of Humanity can suck my skull throne.

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

Ah, I seem to have killed us all...

Er, I'll get back to you once my tea is done. Uhm, ouch...

rolled 8, 5, 10, 5, 3, 10 = 41

>>15673203
I vote that, if we manage to survive this, and somehow rebuild the Empire. Tea is banned, Forever.

rolled 2, 8, 4, 8, 1, 2 = 25

>>15673203
I hope you burn your tongue on your precious tea.

>rolled 1, 1, 1
>solar flare
>Asura explodes
>singularity swallows salvage
>yes, all of it
>somehow it's parson's fault

rolled 5, 8, 4, 3, 7, 5 = 32

>>15673240
PARSON HOUSE!!!!!!!!

rolled 9, 8, 8, 8, 1, 1 = 35

Well, now that I've got my tea, let's see if I can redeem us.

rolled 100 = 100

We NEED to begin retrieving cryo tubes.

Even if the men and women within the cryo tubes are dead, their genetic diversity NEEDS to be sampled and preserved for the New Ophidian Empire. Furthermore, these samples can be stored with no upkeep and no downside.

We have a chance to revive the human race, and it MUST be done.

Also, quick question, Vedibere, did the Ophidians have forge worlds, or were materials constructed on-base in military systems?

As of right now, our primary directive NEEDS to be the recovery of EIs and human crew. Without personnel, the Empire will never be restored.

Humanity Over All.

>>15673282
This is why the captain needs a body again.

>>15673306
Nice roll. Too bad it won't count for anything. :/

>>15673306
>100

I see the die god's sense of timing is impeccable as always.

First things first. You maneuver your massive bulk closer to the enormous gas sphere and match paces with the circling Gallant, rotating in place to present the maximum number of working guns toward your objective. Power surges through your superconductive veins and outward, delicate traceries of light flitting from object to object as each evaporates into clouds of superheated particles and harmless debris.

As you methodically clear the area around the tumbling ship, however, you also deal with other tasks. Namely, the salvage of the Parsimony and Serpentine. The Serpentine provides decent supplies for repair of the shield generators and some spare parts. The real find, however, is the unexpected stock of pristine unisteel blocks in the lone intact cargo bay, ready to be crafted.

The computer cores, however, are either destroyed (as on the Serpentine) or wiped as per standard procedure when a ship is critically damaged in hostile territory (as with the Parsimony). Any further hope is finally dashed upon inspection of the cryo bays, utterly devoid of any presence. Honestly quite typical, anyone able would head for shuttles rather than cryo when on a dying ship in the presence of even one friendly vessel. The medbays, at least, contain a standard stock of medicines -- though nothing you don’t already have, every bit helps when you don’t have any idea if human-compatible medicines even exist in other places anymore.

Finally, your clearing of the debris cleared, you send a team of engineers and drones to the Gallant via shuttle. What meets them as they disembark is naught but a silent derelict, groaning with eons of abuse at the hands of physics. The main destination, after the computer core (wiped... yet another good soldier and friend likely gone) are the intact bays your interceptors spotted before. As you should have expected from a warship in a warzone, however, the complement of fighters and interceptors are all gone... as are the shuttles, likely taken in the exodus from the dying vessel.

All that remains of the Gallant is the weaponry, and that in and of itself will be a herculean task. Mainly medium guns with a few heavies, the destroyer was hardly meant to be disassembled in space... indeed, to even remove one of the enormous turrets would take weeks even with drone workers equipped with plasma torches. Spare parts for easily replaced systems are one thing, an entire weapon and mount is something else entirely. Even salvaging the main parts for the guns themselves would be an enormous feat for the same reasons: What you are attempting is no longer repairs but construction and deconstruction instead.

">>15673306

Just thinking about our image here: "New Ophidian Empire" doesn't sound particularly menacing, especially as nobody here remembers who the Ophidians even were.

The Human Remnant is more fitting in my opinion; a blunt and stubborn name. And if they don't know what a human is? We'll show them.

Let's not overlook information gathering while we're at this. Set our weapons officer to looking over the scans and see what he can reconstruct about the battle and the weapons involved. We're still not sure of the Ophidian Empire fell to civil war or outside invasion, and it'd be good to know.

Also, intact data recorders or other records from the ships would be good to have. Yeah, it's a long shot, but we should still make the effort. We might get lucky.

For the record guys, rolls give me a general idea on how some things go. Likely not even the things you expect. They don't change facts about the setting, they don't increase or decrease what is there, and "critfails" or "critwins" don't mean anything to me. A 100 is simply one number higher than 99, and neither of them will allow a starving weaponless peasant to do more than make the mailed knight on horeseback take two swings of the sword to disembowel him instead of one. Rolling a 1 when shooting someone doesn't make the gun explode or even necessarily cause you to fail if you are a master marksman.

So basically, the system I use is cause and effect; not dice. Dice determine things like which idea I use if I am torn between two of them equally and other crap like that.

>>15673384
I think we should simply make sure that the Gallant is in a safe orbit, make sure that the guns are mothballed properly for long-term storage if possible, and left here until we have a place where we could mount the guns. Without a shipyard to do the proper installations, we could end up introducing a lot of flaws and problems when we remount the guns.
Let's see if the salvage of the Asura goes any better.

Could this federation be the result of the hundred world's war? And if they are, the Inheritors are what? Human hold outs? Allied or subjected xenos?

We should ask for a history lesson next interrogation session. On both the federation, and whatever is known of these inheritors.

Xenos are xenos, and must be purged. But if these xenos are the successors of that war then we have more than just duty motivating us to strike them down.

Also, regarding what we know about the galactic situation. We're the Precursors. Mythic godlike ancients who left unpredictable technological remnants behind. It thus stands to reason that the Inheritors consider themselves the heirs to the Precursors.

They might be actual humans, but I'd judge it more likely they're aliens who have turned the Precursors into a religious figure. Probably following some thousand generations distorted fragments of the laws of Ophidia. If so, they might welcome us as returned gods. Or blasphemous demons masquerading as gods. Or I could be totally wrong.

Also, "sealed away" suggests to me that the gate path connecting to Inheritor space was disabled somehow. Something to file away for future reference.

rolled 16 = 16

>>15673384

Hmm.

Well, it appears that repairing our heavy and medium mounts isn't really worth it to start; as long as we stay in Federation space I doubt there isn't anything we can blast to shit even with our limited weapons complement.

Well, to be quite honest, there's nothing really else to do. With our salvaging complete, I suggest we repair our reactor as much as possible, and use the unisteel stock we've recovered to begin replacing some of the patchwork repairs on our hull.

In the meanwhile, we should attempt to reactivate our physical body.

However, given that we've been previously warned about EI mental instability regarding death of physical form; I suggest we activate our form remotely and monitor our reactions closely. If and when our body has been rehabilitated, we should then move to link our minds completely.

Also bear in mind that everything you get from these salvaged ships will be inferior to yours if they are the same designs as when you left. You were equipped with the best; high efficiency guns, quad-layer shields, more processing power, blah blah.

The more things you replace wholesale the worse you become overall.

That said, once again, it's a question of cost/benefit. Can you afford to wait around until you get all the ducks in a row to get your perfect super-advanced shipyard with all the super-advanced weaponry? Your choice.

>>15673515
i doubt a super advanced shipyard that is not in enemy hands does not exist.

We need to build our own.

We should capture or salvage a ship to use as a salvage boat as a top priority. Salvage boat needs to be used to go from here (or any other finds) to our 'home system' (the original gate world).

That place is perfect, just needs some work. It'll take a few years, but we got years.

>>15673489
>I suggest we activate our form remotely and monitor our reactions closely. If and when our body has been rehabilitated, we should then move to link our minds completely.
It... doesn't work like that. It's an all-or-nothing thing, you can't be 'sort of' alive. You have to regulate the body's functions. Remember? Complete nervous system replacement?

>>15673384

Let's leave the Gallant aside for now. Get Dai to make us a list of what parts we're most in need of and make those a first priority, second priority is the most easily salvaged materials.

Then we're going to have to start thinking about where we go next. Obviously we got lucky the first time, hitting a place that was both off the gate network and not important enough to fight over. Our last stop was on the network and picked over, our current stop was too important and got slagged in the war.

We may have to make a choice. Do we continue to keep a low profile and try to jump to somewhere else remote. Or do we jump to the capital of this alien Federation, declare ourselves the Precursors returned, and offer them the chance to pledge their fealty. A combination of carrot (unlock a few of the less important Ophidian techs for them) and stick (annihilation of all who oppose us) may get them on board.

Well, non functional equipment is doing nothing but taking up space. This is good to know, all the same. But how would we even repaire what we have? I mean wouldn't the replacement stuff just be the same as what we're looting?

Also, I was under the assumption that we were replacing components and not full pieces of equipment. Like our broken guns. Are they utterly ravaged and nothing more than scrap? Or would a few little pieces here and there get them working again (if not 100%)?

As a person, I'd say getting our body back should be kind of important. And as such I'm open to risk trying to.
At worst it'll bring a new dynamic to the quest with a crit fail.

>>15673559
>Also, I was under the assumption that we were replacing components and not full pieces of equipment. Like our broken guns. Are they utterly ravaged and nothing more than scrap? Or would a few little pieces here and there get them working again (if not 100%)?
For the most part you are. That said, you just don't have the equipment to do some of the repairs even when you have the materials. You're pretty much already at the limit of what you can do without a shipyard.

We still need to check out the Asura and see what's being fed power.
Let's do that before we start doing any planning that might have to get scrapped.

>>15673606

Going after the Asura is a fool's quest. We should look into novel ways of changing its orbit without risking ourselves, or our crew.

The real question is, do we want to take the time to strip the weapons from Gallant, and what do we want to do with our alien prisoners? They're going to run out of food if we spend much time here.

Hm. We need better infrastructure. We can't really build it from the ground up with what we have in a reasonable time frame. And this place, which should be about as secure as anything the Empire held is... well, rather fucked.

Hm, that first world we were at was largely meaningless. But it was intact. A few small guns were enough to keep anything and everything out.

That this place was sought out and destroyed means that something with a good grasp of the Empire is what ended them, but also that they were not systematic with it.

If we could find another small outpost of negligible importance with even the smallest of ship repair facilities, we could probably rig the existing equipment into something that at the very least could help us rig up our guns.

Though, ship yards seem fucking rare, and whatever wiped out the Empire seemed to be in the know. Wonder of our guests know about any other particularly impressive bits the Precursors left behind. Maybe highly defended, but it would draw a better picture of what survived, and more importantly where.

Of course, for that very reason the Inheritors seem like something we need to know more of too. But making such a move may be too risky in our current state.

I wonder... if the federation had control of a working Imperial shipyard could we fight our way to it and bring the defenses online to aid our cause? We're tough, and there's a chance that the very defenses they would hope to rely on would turn against them leaving them seriously unprepared for us.

But if such defenses existed, then they would have never got to such a thing in the first place.

>>15673648

The Empire is what ended the ships here. There was a civil war, and the records we pulled from the FTL base suggested that OE fleets were firing on each other toward the end of the decline.

>>15673639
Oh, and we're just going to leave the reactor components and whatever is still drawing power down there?

The only person who has any plans on getting the Asura to a stable orbit is Dai. And he needs to check the engines and the reactor to see if they would survive being activated.
There's no way around that.

With that in mind, are you abandoning the Asura, or not.

>>15673660
What? There were absolutely no such indications in the Orrin base FTL comm buffer.
Where are you getting these completely erroneous ideas from?

>>15673668

There were three sorts of fights it recorded: Large numbers of ships wiped out by overwhelming firepower from a few vessels, large numbers of ships interspersed with a few powerful vessels fighting a few ships (kills still being mostly one-sided but including some kills on the latter force by the powerful ships working with the zerg), and fights where a few powerful ships fought a few other powerful ships.

That pretty much screams "civil war, alien sympathizers" to me.

We should find out where these Inheritors are and make contact with them. I think there's a good chance that they were client race(s) that were still loyal to the Empire and might be helpful to us. Certainly we're not in a position to take on the Federation until we get our big guns fixed.

Vedibere, most of the posters wanted to salvage the Asura.
Can we have Dai actually go there and see what shape the reactors and engines are in, to see if it can be boosted to a safer orbit? He'll also need the best harsh environment suit we have.

>>15673695

It's still an assumption, and not one we can bank on yet. That's why I want Rinn going over our scan data, maybe Ivanova too. They job is to play detective and reconstruct the battle as best they can. There's a noticeable lack of alien ships here, so were they shooting at each other or did the enemy not suffer casualties? Is the damage constant with Ophidian weapons or not? That sort of thing

>>15673723

You guys are gonna get Dai killed. We can't replace him, you know that right?

>>15673723
I'm all for the salvage operation. But don't send the man alone. I'd say send at least three. Preferably five, with a compliment of drones.

We can do this, it'll just take some serious concentration, and a bit of luck.

>>15673734
The original plan WAS for Dai to go there with an engineering team and a full complement of repair drones.

>>15672816
>Maybe we could turn one of the hulks here into a salvage-sled? Get the engines working again on the Parsimony, strip it down to bare essentials and a capture rack of some sort designed to cup the Asura, and then have it push Asura into a safer orbit? If we lose the sled we just lose some time.

Hey how about that idea? What do you guys think?

>>15673723
Sure you can have him go.

>He'll also need the best harsh environment suit we have.
I hate to break it to you, but if the ships shields barely stand up to the heat of a star then what makes you think that there is personal gear that can?

If there's a flare or that ship dips into the corona then everything on there is a write off. Period. While on board anyone on there would be relying on the ship taking the brunt of the heat, either with shields or structure.

>>15673768
Let him do it via telepresence.

FFS people, yea it'll be harder, and he'll be slower, but safety first.

I hope we get to experience EI Haaaaaaaaax dream-like mindfuck reality states with the Asura.
Maybe if we can get the thing out of the Sun, we can link with it and try to establish wtf's going on.
Still, getting it out of the sun is super dooper risky. I honestly don't know how you'd go about doing it. The obvious choice is to fly interceptors/missiles and repair drones, Weld the interceptors/missiles to the Asura's hull, and push the fucker.

>>15673768

Hey can we map out the orbit and figure out when the safest periods of Asura's orbit are?

>>15673763
That we would crush anything of worth aboard the vessel and spend years here trying to make the sled.

>>15673668

The fact that the OE was "inherited" by someone only a fraction of their power is enough to suggest a civil war. If the OE was wiped out by competent aliens then why didn't they usurp the OE as the galaxy's superpower?

We have also found zero evidence of alien ships in this massive battle. This was some good old, Earth style human-on-human fighting.

Our main line of enquiry should be into these Inheritors. If they are regressive human holdouts or a trustworthy race engineered or uplifted by the OE then their claims to our legacy have a shadow of legitimacy. Humans can provide valuable gene-stock at the very least, and aliens can be made into auxiliaries or examples depending on how polite they are.

The other possibility, that the Inheritors are simply vultures seeking to boost their legitimacy with our glory, is unfortunately the most likely one as in 60,000+ years they have failed to break their dependence on the Gate network: this is indicative of them being inferior xenos.

The OE was often willing and always able to eradicate entire planets. This is something we should look into.

When we left this galaxy it was an orderly place, with humans fostering and protecting those alien species who were appropriately obedient: it was neat and clean. We have returned to a galaxy of carrion where hapless scavengers, still chained to ancient Gate technology, form pompous leagues even as they pick from our bones.

We have returned to a galaxy which truly needs the strength and order of humanity. It shall be clean.

>>15673768
Yeah, we can't risk him in conditions like that. I'm guessing we can't just tow the hulk away from the sun?

>>15673785

Center of balance issues are going to be a complete bitch. So would getting it out of the sun before it got lit up again.

The very fact that the Empire needed the gateway suggests they were churning out ships in great numbers and were cutting costs by forgoing FTL tech on them.

Vedibere, you writing or still waiting on us?

>>15673824
Waiting.

>>15673818
Or maybe they just ran out of black holes.

>>15673818

Not necessarily, the gates made it possible for civilian trade to take place. Any ship that could support an FTL engine would need a powerful generator. Something perhaps powerful enough to mount credible weapons on, even. Gates meant that civilian ships did NOT need such expensive and weaponizable parts.

>>15673837
Suggest Dai give us his most sensible plan, that WOULD NOT INVOLVE HIM LEAVING THE HARBINGER.
Enact that plan.
Long term, we're looking to find these "Inheritors" and see wtf they're on about.

>>15673837

How about we ask Dai what he thinks of the idea of using one of the old hulks as a salvage-sled?

>>15673858
Not possible; it won't warp with us or follow us as it can't be towed, and there's no hulk intact enough to use it for.

>>15673865

No, that's not the idea. The idea is to fix up a hulk enough that its engines work and we can remotely control it, and build a large cup or lattice or something with contact points that we can use to press against the Asura. Then we use the salvage sled's engines to shove the Asura out of the sun's orbit and into a much safer orbit where we can put people aboard it safely.

We're just going to have to take the risk. There's no other way around it.

I for one vote we send Dai and whatever and whoever else he needs to get the job done. Not having him there is the difference of using the engines to boost it to safety, and having the whole thing implode.

>>15673842
exactly, you do not want to mount singularities on civilian ships, unless you enjoy the thought of any two bit terrorist group getting their hands on planet crackers done cheap.

>>15673837
Calculate the orbit of the Asura, and find safe zones when drones and crew can be safely sent to it.
Have Dai tele-operate one of the drones to take a look at the engines and the reactor, while we remotely operate some to find what's drawing that power.
Have Dai brief us on the feasibility of the plan to turn on the engines to boost the Asura to a more stable orbit.

We should salvage the raw materials we can use and try to stop the rest of the things that might be useful in the future from falling into the sun if we can.

PRIORITY NUMBER ONE should be finding an old Ophidian shipyard to repair us. There must be at least one that is still intact in the middle of nowhere that hasnt been salvaged by xenos or destroyed by whoever killed this place.

Do the sensors pick up any strange matterial not matching Ophidian specs Vedibere?

just want to point out that getting a human body again is just a waste of resources at best and a massive risk at worst, for very small gain. sure the crew might have a human face to salute at, but it wouldnt be increasing survivability, or efficiency. we just don't need it at the moment, and if there are any risks it could damage us, it's not worth it.

Wait a second. Where we are, it can't be scanned from the outside. After we get our looting done, or maybe some other time we could make a phone call to Sol from here without playing our hand.

ACTION - Talk to Dai
RE - Telepresence operations on ship caught in gravity of sun.

PRIORITY - 1
Investigation of power usage of ship.
PRIORITY - 2
Investigation of computer systems for information that was not wiped.
PRIORITY - 3
Feasibility study of moving ship to higher orbit using on site resources.

>>15673858
You don't even need to ask Dai to recognize that if you can't even repair your own self then *cutting apart and reconstructing a capital ship* is probably out of reach too.

You could try a controlled ramming, but that's all it would be. Assuming there are any hulks with engines close to being workable.

>>15673857
To do what? Fix the engines? Send some drones over and he'll try to see if they are fixable, though it will take a while to check them out without being onsite.

To look around for where power is going? That shouldn't take more than a day or two.

To dismantle complex systems effectively and/or salvage them? It would be like using a pair of pliers to handle a screwdriver.

also voting for trying to remotely salvage the asura, no human bodies that close to the star though. asking Dai to see if the ship could be remotely triggered to accelerate around and away from the star. (slingshotting away)

>>15673907

It would increase morale, which is going to always be a concern. We've been taking pains to make people more comfortable with our current, very weird, situation. It would also make it easier for crew to approach us about concerns. Don't underestimate the value of a human face.

We've already spent the effort on having Dai and Burr repair our body. We've got the mental fortitude to have even risked it in the first place, so even if the body doesn't work and it dies on the table, we're unlikely to let that make us crazy.

You people have to try and risk something here or just give it up.

>>15673933

A controlled ramming sounds good to me.

>>15673933
A controlled ramming sounds like a terrible idea. We'd be far more likely of just crumpling the Asura rather than actually moving her safely to a high orbit.

how about robotic drones to search the asura, see if there's anything worth it in there? before sending people into harms way to find out, oh someone left a light on, it's been going for 65k years.

>>15673933
can we use the drones and such to get some acceleration on the ship? that way we don't need to worry about getting our people close. i mean send ALL the drones, attach themselves to the ship, and burn like no tomorrow.

>>15673956

It wouldn't be just banging into it.

First we'd have the hulk match orbits with the Asura. Then we'd nudge it up against the Asura. Then we'd start pushing. We could gently increase the thrust and then hold it at a safe place while we push the Asura out of that crazy orbit.

>>15673982

That sounds like a good way to lose all our drones. Let's not risk more of them than we need to.

I don't even...
Do you people even read what you type up?
Vedibere even specifically addressed some of the thing you're still trying to suggest, marking them as impossible or otherwise terrible ideas.

>>15673933
Vedibere, I think most of the posters who actually read what's going on, have already suggested independently and agree with having Dai remotely check out the engines to see if they can be repaired, and to see what's drawing power.

So can we move forward now?

>>15673989
Do you have any idea of the number of thrusters and fine engine required to perform what you suggest?
That could barely be done if both ships were fresh out of the shipyard, let alone the condition they're in now.

>>15673996
obviously we check to see if there's anything of value, but we can still use them to atleast get it in a stable orbit. or extend the time it survives.

>>15674023

These are ships with >infinite delta-v<

The only limit is how much time it takes. If the engines are in crappy shape, don't push them harder than you need to. Even if the net trust amounts to a stiff breeze, you're going to eventually impart enough momentum to move Asura into a safer orbit.

I think we've got too many people with too many ideas trying to suggest things and it's turning into a giant clutter.

>>15674003
Agreed.

If we are going to take a crack at the Asura we do it right and we do it fast. These dont have to contradict each other.
What I propose: Get a good workup on the ship's orbit calculated and scan down the various regions of solar flare activity. We should be able to figure out when and where it will be in the most danger and how long. We send in a fast shuttle with Dai and they have a time limit on doing a quick inspection. He tells us what exactly inside is worth risking follow up boarding missions for. (If anything) Using just Drones would take too long.

>>15674004 >Yes.
>>15673943
aw but i like being the faceless warship ai. how will we go WOOoooOOoo now? we'd just look like a crazyperson. instead of the mysterious EI who knows everything.

>>15674056
this, if only because its sounds like someone thought before they posted

>>15674054
the drone idea prevents any risk to our ship though. if the worst happens we lost a few drones, no biggie compared to the WHOLE DAMN SHIP.

it's a horrible idea, you;re assuming the hull can take the kind of stress we'd put on it after a major battle ripped it in half, and 64,000 years of orbiting a rather intense star. the drones won't put all that stress at one point, it'll be dispersed.

Your trio of autonomous shuttles whisks along between clouds of debris, shunting away the occasional shard that impacts their shields. Onboard each is a sortie of 20 drones covered in heat ablative coating, and their trifold purpose is in reality singular: Reach the Asura with their cargo intact. The edge of the approach is upon them. It is time.

As the Asura comes hurtling around for another pass you slam the acceleration of all the shuttles to full, barelling toward the crippled cruiser’s projected intercept point. Ten seconds in. Twenty. Already you feel the waves of solar heat washing over the craft’s shields, the pressure as the fields strain under the influx of heat and light energy.

Intercept soon. Soon...

Out of nowhere a molten glob of metal hurtles past at dizzying speeds, a blur to human eyes even if it did register. Then a second. A third. Bits of shrapnel, of the battle that took place here long past being dawn into a fiery demise ever so slowly. Careening about at inconceivable speeds as they spiral into their doom...

*BOOM*

Shuttle two is struck, wavering. You watch in agony as the precious shuttle and its drone crew detonate in a fiery flash as the shield buckles, already strained to the limit by the heat and unable to take the force of impact.

A bit farther... just... just a bit farther. Interception is soon. Shrapnel and death flit by, now a jagged crisscross of streaks from all sides.

*BOOM*

Shuttle three is hit, careening awkwardly as it regains a stable flightpath. The shields hold -- barely. It was only a tiny fragment mere millimeters wide, fortunately.

And then they are in the shadow, the blessed shield from the flaming ball of death. You almost sigh with relief as you divert power back to the engines from shields, accelerating even more to match speed with the Asura.

The rest seems almost like child’s play. Docking at a savaged and hazardous bay with no smooth landing platform. Maneuvering the drones past melting and superheated hulks inside the ship. And finally... finally arrival at the reactor core.

You withdraw and speak, “Chief Dai, she’s all yours now. Please keep me appraised.”

The huge mechanical man grunts, quickly bending to his task and linking with the conduit you left him.

################
>22 hours later

“Captain, I’ve found something.”

You switch down to the engineering room, tasking the automated collection of unisteel to a subprocess to find your Chief Engineer sitting down heavily on a bench. For the first time since his frantic work immediately after defrosting the man seems weary. “Yes, Chief?”

He taps at a built-in holoprojector in his arm and a diagram of the remaining Asura materializes over it, “Found where the power is going. Reactor, here. Some improvised shield generators, here. Radiators, here. And linked to it all... the lines for the main EI core and databanks, inside the ship vault. Nothing else has power. Not cryo, not engines, not drone bays, not comms. Nothing.”

“Chief Dai, are you telling me... the EI is still operational on that ship?”

He gives a clanking shrug, “Could be. Could be just raw data too. Or could be the core is wiped and the shield is protecting whatever is in the vault. Can’t tell.”

>>15674126
And some people wanted to send our best bro Dai into that shit.

Okay, who agrees with this simple set or oders? After we get all the other stuff done with this vault (damn my timing in posting)
1. Cursory scans of ships that will not endanger our probes, searching for materials we can easily use in reconstructing our ship.
2. Cursory scans of systems on ships that will not endanger our probes. See where power is going and if there are reactor components we can salvage
3. Scans of ships that will not endanger our probes searching for components that we can't immediately salvage, but might be of use in the future.

As for the Asura, we should know the floor plans of her from when we served aboard her. What was normally located in the sealed and shielded area?

>>15674126
We need to map out the solar flares of this star, and the orbit of the Asura.
We need to see when it will be relatively safe to work, and when they'll need to leave.

Dai needs to see if the engines can be repaired to boost the ship out of its orbit.
If he needs parts, Have the other engineers look through the remains of the Parsimony to see if any of the components needed have survived.

Salvage core from easier to access ship.
Set up wireless connection for data transfer with EI to salvaged core
'Rescue' EI out of the frying pan and away from the fire, without risking anything else in that deathtrap..

Well, we're "onboard" if there is anyone way of communicating with the EI we should probably move to try that first.

If not, I expect we'll need to hack defenses and work our way into that room.

Any functional systems or terminals we can interface with should we have to?

>>15674126

EI or not, whatever... or whoever... is in that vault is probably very valuable.

But it's also very obvious that trying to get close to the Asura with out shuttles is crazy dangerous.

Since all we have aboard the Asura are drones, getting her engines running again is going to be impossible. So that means either we gamble with our crew, or we try rebuilding a hulk and moving the Asura with that, or we move in ourself and push Asura with Harbringer.

That last option risks everything, but Harbringer was designed to take a lot of punishment, and she has point defenses.

>>15674204
That assumes that it's actually an EI in there.

Why don't we connect into the system via one of the drones before trying to come up with plans that might not work.

Keep in mind we don't know what shape the EI is in, if it's operational at all.

>>15674234
given the time it might be mad...

or just did what we did. only instead of fixing its self it hoped for quick pickup. eitherway it might feel betrayed by the empire. and since we were part of the empire, it might be hostile.

also: did we know the EI for this ship Vedibere?

>>15674234
But if it is, it means that we could run another ship should we ever find one in decent condition.

And if it's not. Well, it's certainly something valuable, and worth investigating. I mean, we still have hopes of looting the engine bits, right?

try the same interface we did with the mil base computer? i have a feeling we could be mind-duelling again.

>>15674253
You were the XO on the ship for three decades. Assuming they didn't switch the Captain for some reason then yes, you would know him.

>>15674278
Vedibere, is there an interface we can use to connect a repair drone to the ship's network, and communicate with the EI core, or at least, what's inside of the vault?
Or do we have to unlock the vault door somehow?

Is there some way we could interact with the shield to send a morse code like signal? The AI might be able to pick up on that even if it is in minimal power mode.

The Ophidian Empire anthem, secularity codes. Since we likely know the captain is there something they would recognize as a codeword between us?

How dangerous would it be to bring the Harbinger close to the Asura and try to use our point defenses to clear our some of the debris around it? Space debris always has predictable orbits; if we spend a couple days on a careful approach analyzing sensor data, we might be able to clear ourselves out a relatively safe window for trying to get in there and hopefully drag the Asura away. If we can get the dangerous space debris out of the equation, it should be relatively simple to get either the Harbinger or some shuttles to act as a tug and being the Asura somewhere in the system where we can deal with it, even if that takes a matter of days or weeks to do carefully.

>>15674304
The core is severed from the rest of the ship, that is highly unusual in most situations but there are quite a few reasons it could happen in theory. To get in you would have to get into the vault.

If we retrieve this EI we may be able to uncover what went down long ago.

Is there some way we can create a small hole in the shields without overloading them that will allow some of our drones to pass through and interact with whatever is inside?

Is there any chance of there being munitions powerful enough to clear our way into that vault?

Somehow I doubt it, as they'd be in an armory that no longer likely exists on that ship. Is there anyway we could interface with the power control options to the shields/doors/whatever else is in our way? I mean we have manual access to the power source, so we should be able to do something no matter what. But hopefully we can do it in a nondestructive way.

Are your shields strong enough to survive a quick flyby of the Asura? Because if we can match speed and orbit if even for a few seconds that would allow a shuttle to get aboard without being exposed.

>>15674353
Alright, are the locks on the vault still working? Will it accept our authorization codes? Or are teh locks also offline, and the vault will have to be cut into?

>>15674346
>How dangerous would it be to bring the Harbinger close to the Asura and try to use our point defenses to clear our some of the debris around it?
In your current state? Expect problems. The gravatic stresses on your still-compromised hull alone would be painful even discounting the radiant energy on your shielding.

>Is there some way we could interact with the shield to send a morse code like signal?
That's... actually a really good idea. Bravo. Yeah, you could do that.

>>15674353
I guess open Sesame isn't going to cut it, right?

>>15674385

Then let's try that first. Standard Ophidian hailing code, followed by our personal identification.

Fuck yeah! >>15674336
you may have just saved us some serious buttache

>>15674385
>interact with shields to send code
Okay, do so, and send this message: "This is the OIS Harbinger. We are now in-system, and no hostiles are present. Please respond. It's me, Ged. Captain, are you in there?"

ACTION: Send our drones towards the EI core and see if the blinkenlights are still on.

ACTION: As soon as possible, contact Guns and get his impressions of the obvious weapon damage done to the warships. We've spent a lot of time in and around these blasted hulks, so he should have seen everything there is to see by now.

Somebody blew the most advanced warships in known space to fucking shreds. These are the first corpses we've found. I'd sure like to know what they were shot by.

>lol unisteel stock

For the record I apologize for my raging unisteel boner, Vedibere. I am happy and will never mention those fucking unisteels again.

>>15674385
>>Is there some way we could interact with the shield to send a morse code like signal?
>That's... actually a really good idea. Bravo. Yeah, you could do that.

Awesome. I'm not the anon that thought of it, but if it should work lets go for it.
The Imperial anthem sounds like an awesome choice.

>Establish cierri
Also, Captcha wants to establish a cierri.

>>15674411
>I am a faggot who cannot read the fucking thread
>WELP

The shield morse-code trick is nifty. I would have used a drone to simply knock on the vault door; but after 64,000 years a bored/insane EI might not bother with audiovisual sensors.

>survive whatever the hell hit the system

>stay hidden as they nuke the fucking planet

>for 64k years you endure

>a few months before you'd be melted by the sun you get rescued.

>cap'n is gonna get raped in joy.

(if it is an EI it would know what happened here, and if it was a civil war we'll probably be outed as traitors and have to fight it.)

>Arrive over the molten remains of a long-dead military base
>The tumbling, shattered hulls of ancient and long-dead warships are scattered through the system
>The silent bones of an ancient and horrible battle
>And in one ship, desperately clinging to life after sixty-four millenia...

I am enjoying this shit. You hear me, Vedibere? This is fun.

Lurker, F5ing so hard that the key is starting to smoke.

So are we trying some morse code on their shielding type thing now? i hope that the ship 1. notices it's a code as opposed to 'they're shooting at me retaliate immediately'. and 2. whatever we're beaming at their shields does not cause a failure and we end up blowing it to pieces.
maybe something simple.

· — ·
·
· · ·
· — — ·
— — —
— ·
— · ·
is RESPOND in morse code.

>>15674587
Maybe something a little more...approachable.

.... . .-. . / - --- / .... . .-.. .--.

>>15674603
Oh, right. That says 'HERE TO HELP'.

Unless there's a more military way to say that I don't know about.

>>15674587
>retaliate

Yes, the ship that has been SHOT IN FUCKING HALF is going to retaliate with all the power not diverted to the AI core and support systems, which is nothing.

The only way I can forgive this foolishness is if you post the adviceharbinger template please please pretty please

DICE IN ALL FIELDS
also, just saying we're the 'Harbinger', our infantry wear 'Sovereign' class armour. our first act was basically smashing through some system defenses and then shutting down (a small part of) a gate network. We want a body so we can ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL and possibly have a fetish for exotic alloys. We could let the prisoners go and no-one would believe we exist, as they've 'already dismissed these claims.'
also template attached. i uploaded it to memegenerator as well, i hope the original creator doesnt curse me with voodoo.

Tapping out a Morse code message with a powered-down point-defense laser... first human contact that (possible) EI has had in 64 million years... the opportunities for simple, yet profound statements, and horrible, wicked trolling tax the imagination.

What about identifying ourselves, in addition to offering help?
"OIS Harbinger. Here to help"
--- .. ... / .... .- .-. -... .. -. --. . .-. /

>>15674642
What?! That took me like, two minutes to make in MS Paint. I am now cursing you with voodoo.

I have taken six d100's (twelve d10's), and I am smashing them into tiny pieces while thinking of you really really hard.

>>15674663
I only did the OIS Harbinger part in code because someone else did 'here to help' above already.

>>15674642
APOLOGY ACCEPTED.

Yes, I expect that if there's anybody "in" that ship, they'll think the message is their imagination finally going screwy on them. Until we repeat it ten times.

There's no telling what systems any potential surviving EI will have available to respond with - at best a few point-defense lasers to talk back in kind, at worst the vault door will open.

>>15674684
Won't you step into my parlor?

rolled 39, 10, 56, 92, 10, 88 = 295

>>15674642>>15674669>>15674684

well yeah, more then likely it'll just cause the weakening of their shields and we blow up the ship. or destabalise their orbit. or Parson plots something. he may have everyone else fooled with his crazy schtick but i've got my eye on him. Devious bastard.

>>15674669 Augh I knew it! but i saw that last thread and was surprised no-one used it yet, it's good work. people were going around typing advice-harbinger.jpg and everything.

>dice. ugh i'm LOOKING at tg's friggan first post and i still mess up. 3rd times the charm.

We could just tap out the first ten prime numbers for ten minutes or until something happens.

Send, "knock, knock".

>>15674764
Yeah, because after 64K years the thing that would interrupt his solitude would just have to be a knock knock joke.

If there's one thing that would guarantee us dying, it'd be that.

>>15674746
he'd assume we're xenos trying to make first contact.

something familiar is best. OE anthem or introducing ourselves as the harbringer would be best. probably the first.

rolled 5, 1, 5, 10, 2, 2 = 25

Wreck orbiting volatile star
>advice harbinger
Send Chief Engineer in!

Roll 3d10
>advice harbinger
1, 1, 1

Also one more vote for "here to help"

Avoid mentioning that we're the harbinger, because our destruction/disappearance could have sparked the conflict in the first place.

I WAITED FOR YOU, HARBINGER.

okay, for the morse code, something officious would be best, follow protocol, and identify ourselves by name.

No jokes, no witty one liners, no grand speechs. We're a military vessel trying to rescue an old comrade. Keep it short and too the point

This level of anticipation, it's off the charts!

You've done your job, Vediberem and you've done it well.

The image floating above Dai’s arm, the potential it represents. A link to the past and, maybe, to the future.

“Chief, I’ll be taking over now. If possible I would like you to stand by here while I attempt some things, in case we need to beat a hasty retreat.”

The man simply nods, climbing heavily to his feet and walking over to the reactor core as you flick over to the Asura. All around the drones swarm, the original fourty that made it having been worn down to 33 so far, with several more having slagged components or limbs. Still, as you link each in turn to the reactor core you know that they are enough to serve their purpose for now.

The first step, disabling safety interlocks on the core and taking control of the power stream. Easy enough. Next, the message. Your name, rank, ship, and affiliation. Standard Imperial practice and form, all transmitted in extremely rapid dips and surges in the shield power... more than enough to be detected by anything on the other side of the shield.

No response.

You change tack, proclaiming yourself a rescuer. An ally. A loyal Imperial.

Still nothing.

What is wrong? Tsk. Your mind wanders, sliding back to the days when you were yet entirely flesh and blood. Well, not quite. But before you were an EI. Your time here, on this very ship... XO of the mighty cruiser Asura and serving under Captain Kurar Razon. Searching. Searching for something, anything, that would identify you or could be used as a way in. Old jokes, friends, family... nothing. No family save the Armada, no friends save his compatriots in the military. Old jokes aplenty, but none that defined or stood out.

Wait. Of course.

The code is simple, the process ingrained. Something every Imperial soldier has drilled into them from day one, something they all know, something the old man loved to play every time the ship left dock.

The Imperial Anthem.

Still, nothing. Nothing at all.

>>15674810
Bunch of civilian craft in the way
>>advice harbringer
SET RAMMING SPEED AND NUDGE THEM OUT OF THE WAY

>>15674828
I don't think it would matter.
Besides, it would become pretty apparent once we got to talking.
Our military ID is probably placed into every data packet we send out as part of the header.

Well, you suppose it was worth a shot. Perhaps a message sent in military co-- *THUNK*

A jolt sounds from the vault door, conveyed over the distance to you by the lone drone you positioned outside of it.

*THUNK*
*THUNK*
*THUNK*

Over and over, slowly and ponderously, you hear the enormous steel lugs that make up the bolts surrounding the door slide free. Eighteen in all, each bigger around than a man’s leg. In unison you feel the inner layers of the shield weakening slowly, spooling down from eons of constant use and now protecting only from the wrath of the giant outside the ship.

Finished.

Slowly, ponderously, the massive reinforced unisteel doors slide upward into the corridor’s ceiling one after another, drawing back before your drone body as if before an approaching king. Until before you lies the vault itself in all its glory. In all its terrible, horrific glory.

Set into the far wall is the central computer core itself, lights blinking the golden yellow of a partial wipe. Against it is the shriveled corpse of what, judging from the augs, can only be your former Captain; a morbid smile stretched across his mummified face.

Flanking him along the walls to either side are no less then eleven sealed cryopods, all occupied. All blinking the soothing green light of life.

And from each of them and the core itself trail wires. A single one from each, running to the middle of the room. Hooked into a bracketed sphere. A warhead. S-class. A Clustereater.

A contained, weaponized supermassive singularity capable of devouring a hundred cubic lightyears..

And judging by the single crimson eye staring at you balefully, it is most assuredly armed.

>I need to call it early tonight since I got up at 5 AM this morning.
>Will have another thread tomorrow, Saturday, at 18:00 which will run the normal length.
>Post suggestions about what to do next for me to make an OP out of.

>>15674828
although honestly it's a wreck orbiting too close to a star and he still has time to be pissed off at US being late, then uh. screw that guy.
>We WAITED for you Harbinger
>Well fine, be like that, we'll just fly off over here, find some more unisteel...
>.. WAIT! stop we forgive you, please pull my ass out of this star.

>>15674855
>Still, nothing. Nothing at all.

We were too late.

It's dead.

>>15674868
Ha! yeah fuck that shit. fucking clustereater!
Who said a wrecked ship had no way of harming us? if it's armed, does that mean set to a timer, about to go off 'armed' or just 'still working' but not on a clock?

>>15674868
Nyo my gawd

>>15674868
Well, we need to get Ivanova, Rinn, and Dai hooked into this video feed for analysis, but it looks like a dead-man switch from all of the cryotubes and the EI core, to the warhead.
Any one of them dies, and it blows.

So, do we try to rescue them, or GTFO?
I say we need to find a way to safely boost the Asura into a safe orbit, disarm the warhead, and get those people out of cryo.

>>15674868
You devious, devious man. This is the haul of the century, so long as that warhead doesn't go off.

I'm too wracked with emotion and too tired to offer anymore than the suggestion of trying to play a hologram of what we look like from the drone. Failing that, trying to vocalize who we are.

That's so not fair!

11 intact occupied crypods a fuctioning EI and weapon of mass destruction?! We can't just leave this behind!

sounds like we've got a bomb diffusal sequence coming up, word of advice ved, if you dont want the harbringer to get snuffed by antimatter bombs, dont use the tg dice, it'll only get us killed.

>>15674868
Vedibere, I think people do not tell you this often enough: I love reading your quest.

<3

>>15674950
/tg/ dice are fine, just let me fetch some tea.

>>15674922
>functioning EI
If you read again, the EI has been partially wiped.
There's no telling if he'll even come back; there might only be memories left to help whoever rescues them to disarm the warhead.

>>15674916

who would do that though?
like if one fails they all die? that doesnt make sense. could the bomb be powering the cryos?

I'd still vote for getting the 1 cryos rescued. we could get alot of info about at least the 50-60 years we were missing.

I don't think we need to disarm it, we need to REASON with the other EI. He's clearly awake as he opened the doors for us.

>>15674922
>11 intact occupied crypods a fuctioning EI and weapon of mass destruction?

It's like we opened the vault and got three wishes.
Something for the crew.
Something for us.
Something killy.

>>15674975
oh yeah.
also called it. next thread is mindHAX.

>>15674975
You don't think that the partial wipe of his core might prevent him from doing so?
The remainder of the core might have just been set to respond to the Imperial Anthem, and there might not be anyone left in there.

well, leaving at this point would be just silly. Even if we all die, I'm pretty sure it'll be quickly enough that we won't notice.

We are rescuing these brave men and women. No doubt about it. Whatever it takes. We shouldn't need to brute-force into the core since apparently playing the anthem did the trick.

Controlled ram seems like the best idea unless someone else has a better idea.

>>15674997
Could just as well be that everything but the other captain was deleted from the core.

>>15674970
The dead-man switch would have been put in place to make sure that whatever military secrets they had, could not be recovered by an enemy. It makes sense if they were in a war, and believed that they would be rescued eventually, but were currently in hostile territory.

We are going to do this very, very carefully. We're going to do this without the least bit of hurry, we're going to save our sleeping comrades, and we're going to get some answers.

Firstly, there is obviously someone or something still active enough to open the door for us. Possibly with a finger on the detonator for that bomb. We need to make contact so that we can remove the cryopods without triggering it.

Secondly, we need to get the cryopods on board the Harbringer intact. This should take priority second only to the preservation of the lives of our existing crew.

And as a side thought. The last survivors walling themselves up and going into coldsleep to await rescue is one thing. Sensible thing to do after a loss. Rigging themselves to a multi-star system annihilating bomb is another. It means they seriously didn't want to be rescued by the wrong people. That makes me nervous.

>>15675011
What? The Captain IS the core.

>>15675003
There is a very real possibility that we have an engineer on board who could nudge us out of danger. We just have to thaw em out and nurse them to health.

>>15674863

I'm still disappointed that we couldn't get in line.

>>15675024
I thought we had a good bit of extra data on ours when we woke up.

>>15675003
maybe if the vault could be resealed and moved. getting the whole ship might be more difficult than just part of the ship. it looks like it all depends on if we can talk with the ship core and see if moving the cryos is possible.

okay, so its a booby trap, but its obviously one designed to stop scavengers or hostile forces. The EI is valuable to an enemy, but the crew aren't. If it was designed as a final fuck you to anyone who came to salvage, the weapon would be tied to sensors not to the crew/EI. The bomb is set to go off if the crew or EI are tampered with, something that would only be done by friendlies or dedicated hostiles.

So we can conclude by the fact that it hasn't already gone off: It was not designed to simply kill any scavengers who wanted parts.
It was designed to kill anyone who tried to steal the crew or EI.
Two types of people would want to do that; 1. friendly search as rescue teams (us), or 2. enemy intelligence retrieval teams.
The EI obviously set itself and its top officers up into this so they COULD be saved if S&R did show up, ergo they would have left some way to disarm it, some way that only Imperial forces S&R or Naval personell would know.

Guys, we're gunna have to be careful, but this should be very doable, guessing that the EI wasn't functionally retarded when it designed this set up though...

we'll see.

>>15675003
No, I think it would be safer to use the engines to boost to a higher orbit.

Rescue is paramount. Those people were around during the war, They could give us a much better idea of what happened and what other assets may have survived. They should at the very least be able to tell us what was destroyed before the engagement that resulted in the destruction of this particular base.

>>15675044

We might've unlocked it already.

Problem is getting them off the highly accelerated burning hunk of starship.

>A clustereater
>On a deadman switch

"... hey Dai, wanna make a buck?"

>>15675041
its rigged to the engine core, i dont think we'll be able to extract it.

Quick question though, what would be the procedure for removing an EI from a ship, can we put it on a flash drive and bring it over, does it have specific memory sections that must be moved, can it be emailed? also if we bring it on board will it have the same access to ship functions that we do? Would we want it to have this access?

>>15675003
We can't use a controlled ram; the Harbinger's damaged enough that going into that gravity well could greatly worsen our damage and/or undo some of our more ad hoc repairs.

So, correction, we could use a controlled ram- it would just hurt us like hell and set us back a bit, potentially destroying even more irreplaceable components than we've already lost on this venture.

We can't safely extract the cryopods while keeping them active. We can't deactivate them because the crew wouldn't be able to survive in there. We can't yank that section out of the ship to bring it to us...

We desperately need proper tugs, and ships which can withstand the gravity well and have point defense weapons capable of clearing some of the debris. I wonder, could we just drop in on some alien civilization and threaten to glass their planets unless they supply us with some ships capable of doing this job properly? It would be time-consuming, but I don't think another few weeks or months will damage the Asura or her crew any more than the tens of thousands of years already have, and it might work, assuming that we can actually get sufficiently capable small craft to the system to do our work- none of the aliens around here seem to have jump drives so we'd be limited to carrying ships onboard.

Alternately, our shuttle has docked with the Asura; depending upon comparative mass, just lashing it to the ship and then firing engines could let it put the Asura on a trajectory to leave the gravity well and get dragged out of danger. No friction in space to slow it down, so it would drift to where we could salvage it- eventually. Potentially could take months or years, though.

>>15675017
>Firstly, there is obviously someone or something still active enough to open the door for us.

EI had a "partial wipe," Clearly it has memories left, and can respond to them, but the man, the Captain, is effectively gone.

Before anything, try and introduce yourself. If we succeed in not blowing up everything from here to Sol in the process, pause long enough to flit back word to Dai/The Bridge and let them know we've found survivors and that we should prepare to receive them.

Boy, this'll show Parson!

>>15675076

Reads like the EI is already "gone" in a sense.

>>15675098

Lieutenant, inform the men that I have made it with an EI.

>>15675088

Using the shuttles leaves them exposed to the fucking mess of superheated shit churning in that orbit. We lost one already, lost 20 drones aboard it too. The shuttles just don't have the shield power to stand up to the conditions there.

Harbringer is the only thing in the system that can do it today. There's the other option of repairing one of the hulks to try it, and there's getting outside help too. Both require time, and we're not sure how much.

Then there's just saying "fuck it, caution to wind, everyone aboard the suicide express" and sending a manned shuttle. We'll probably get fucked doing that though.

Maybe we could give the shuttle better shields. Probably not.

>>15675100

Well, if his personality is damaged he's going to have a lot of trouble. If just his memories are damaged he'll be able to recover normally.

There was enough there though, that he remembered the anthem. So that's a good sign. Not great, but mildly encouraging.

rolled 7 = 7

I have a possibly not completely terrible idea.

We get a shitload of plating together, and weld it into a big, thick sheet. We put drones on one side and push this towards the sun, in such a way that it gets directly behind the Asura (behind meaning the direction it's coming from).
At the same time, we have our shuttles carry the pods and whatever we're using to transport the EI (who knows, it might not want to be rescued, maybe it just wants the crew to make it out). We will use one shuttle per pod, yes it will cost us shuttles, but it's worth getting those humans. Each shuttle will be flanked from all sides by two drones per side.
The giant sheet will stop any debris that are moving faster than the ship from hitting us (at least until it falls into the sun), and the drone escort will serve as a secondary protection layer.
If the sheet is a stupid idea, I still like the drone-guard system. I'm also thinking maybe a dome of drones around the whole squad of shuttles, but that might be overkill unless we don't use the sheet, in which case I would seriously consider it.

Thoughts?

>>15675128
>Using the shuttles leaves them exposed to the fucking mess of superheated shit churning in that orbit. We lost one already, lost 20 drones aboard it too. The shuttles just don't have the shield power to stand up to the conditions there.
The only shuttle I was considering using was the one already docked with the Asura. It's got working engines. We tie it to the Asura, rig up a power feed from the Asura's reactor to give it effectively infinite fuel, and then use it as a really shitty tug. The fact that its shields are weak is irrelevant in this case because it's already past the zone of danger.

>>15675128
send Parson.
>>15675123
abbaddass go home you're drunk and this is'nt your ship.

You know, we can at least try using the engines before we send the Harbringer hurtling to it's death. I mean we're here and everything. It's worth a shot. We don't have to kamakaze out of hand. What I'm saying is, please dont' hurt yourself, /tg/!

>>15675088
>I wonder, could we just drop in on some alien civilization and threaten to glass their planets unless they supply us with some ships capable of doing this job properly?

I was thinking the same thing myself. Strictly speaking, we could probably replicate most ANY tech from the Ohpidian Empire with the resources of an alien ally at our disposal - even if we, as a warship EI, don't have all that technology in our databanks, we have senior command staff who were legendary in our time and could probably write those textbooks ourselves.

It is only a matter of practical feasibility; ranging from "pretty simple" to "lolno." How far towards the "lolno" end of the spectrum something falls depends entirely on how many tools are needed to make the tools to make the tools to make the tools. (Or synthesize the materials, for that matter.)

So salvage tugs and serviceable drones? With the co-operation of an alien civilization, (which we could probably buy for pretty trivial, incremental improvements to their technological knowledge,) we could manage that shit easy. A replacement shuttle at least somewhat capable as our own ancient tech? Sure.

... fully repair the Harbinger? Welp, this looks like a great star system to chill for a few hundred years.

>>15675152

I don't think the unisteel is going to protect better than the shields.

Use our guns, blow shit out of the way is likely the best we'll manage.

>>15675170

Er. Write those textbooks THEMSELVES. Themselves.

>>15675128
>>15675088
The problem with using an Xeno tech, besides the problem them possibly not have FTL Jump drives on anything non-military and therefore not on a tug never meant to leave a system, is that given their level of technology, they likely don't have anything that could survive anyway.
Then there's the whole problem of "we can't fix up any of the ships here to be mobile, because if we could, we could have repaired the Harbinger already". Vedibere already shot that plan down.

So, we need to get the cryopods out of the gravity well of a star. While the fires of hell lash at the ship. With a bomb in the middle of everything.

Perhaps try cutting just that section of the ship off? That sounds like a bad idea for many reasons, and there's still the issue of bringing everything back.

Consult with everyone on board, to make sure we do nothing stupid.

The bomb is probably powering the cryos and the core. Would we be able to cut the cryovats out and transport them back, along with the bomb? Get the engineers to put all the shields we possibly can on one shuttle? Replace the bomb with some sort of battery while we cart the survivors back?

Don't do anything rash, especially if we can guarantee the bomb not exploding.

>rip the vault out

>get xenos to help us

>RAM IT RAM IT RAM IT RAM IT

Wasn't our grand plan to just use the ship's engines to boost us a bit farther away from instant super inferno volume 5? Could we give that a shot?

>>15675074

But seriously. This is definitely my vote. Ask our crew if they viddy THIS shit.

Moving the vessel away from the star can be done by powering the engines... but to do that, we'll need to harsh the reactor's mellow, which is also wired to the MOTHERFUCKING CLUSTER EATER.

Everything depends on disarming that bomb, soon, and before we do that I'd like to ask our command staff WAT TEH EFF.

>>15675206
>>15675188
>>15675179
By the way looks like Ved has gone to bed. just FYI.
Thread is archived and um. goodnight to all. see you 6pm EST or ... damn, 5am my time.

Obviously we have to have a digital thumb war with our old CO.

>>15675206
I'm still saying that the warhead is on a deadman.
This is one of the first questions we need answered next thread.
I honestly hope you guys are right, but I think you all are woefully mistaken.

>>15675158

The shuttles that made it are only out of danger because they're hiding in the Asura's shadow. To push away from the sun in a useful way, they'll need to be exposed to it (because otherwise the engines will be washing over the Asura, and end up imparting no thrust). It's like that physics experiment, can a fan on a boat push the sail on it?

Now, maybe we could do something with vectored thrust and bullshit. Probably not. But I wouldn't throw the idea out completely yet.

>>15675152

Won't work, it's not the hull that's protecting the Asura, it's her shields. Once you get close enough to the sun, only shields can save you.

>>15675206
>The bomb is probably powering the cryos and the core. Would we be able to cut the cryovats out and transport them back

How the FUCK do people not recognize a goddamn landmine when they see one? Some of the people reading this quest are actively retarded. I swear to fucking God.

>Parsons is crying. XENO TRAITOR ROBUST HE
>Oh look, a black-hole bomb wired to the cryopods and the reactor. LOL PROBABLY JUST PLUGGED IN LETS YANK ON THAT SHIT.

You people need to check your fucking heads. Do you hear me?

>>15675158
>The only shuttle I was considering using was the one already docked with the Asura. It's got working engines. We tie it to the Asura, rig up a power feed from the Asura's reactor to give it effectively infinite fuel, and then use it as a really shitty tug. The fact that its shields are weak is irrelevant in this case because it's already past the zone of danger.

This might work. There's no such thing as "space drag," so things don't lose momentum unless they collide with something.

Not sure how long it's going to take a puny shuttle to push a giant warship to a safer altitude, though.

>The bomb is powering EVERYTHING

What? We know for a fact that the core was routing power here and nowhere else. The bomb is just to make sure none can do nasty thing to the bodies and minds of the surviving crew.

>>15675225
Goddamnit, the reactor is not connected to the warhead.
The warhead is connected to the data core, not the reactor core.
Read through the post again.

>>15675246
hey how about you offer some constructive criticism instead of just negating others' suggestions.

>>15675261
>The warhead is connected to the data core, not the reactor core

The data core that is most CERTAINLY monitoring power flow and flux, as obviously evidenced by it's responding to our manipulating of the power flow to send a message?

Yeah, I'm sure powering the engines will end SPLENDIDLY.

>>15675290

I already did, in other posts, BUT I'M NOT A FUCKING ATTENTION-WHORING TRIPFAGGOT WHO MUST TAKE CREDIT FOR EVERY SINGLE FUCKING THING THEY SAY

rolled 4 = 4

>>15675172
Hull plating from ships floating around the system should stop anything small enough to be moving faster than the ship, and even if something big hit the sheet, it would slow it down enough that it can't catch us.

And there's no fucking way we could blast all of that shit away from the sun, even if we could hit stuff that was micrometers in size. The plating would stop it. The only debris that would be dangerous to us would be shit that was moving faster than the ship but was right next to it when we dropped the plate, most of which we can wait out for a few seconds while it passes us, and debris that was just about matching the ships velocity, which we could go around. Now that I think about it, slower debris would be just as much of a problem as fast debris, because it's still going to hit us at speed if we ram into it instead of it into us, but the drones could just form up heavier on the side without the plate to protect that way.

Hell, the drones could even be holding little pieces of hull like a shield. That's actually a good idea. And also, they would be far enough away from the shuttles that if they did take a hit, they wouldn't crash into it.

>>15675306
>debris

They're dodging bits of ejected plasma from the Red Giant itself.

>>15675290
No, I agree with that guy. Most of the ideas you're spouting out have already been slapped down earlier in the thread, or are just unfeasible.

rolled 17 = 17

>>15675306
Also, the shuttles went down because their shields were already taxed and couldn't handle the impact of debris. I'm going to assume unshielded machines would be fucked, but do we have shielded drones?

Could we just flank the shuttles carrying pods with even more shuttles?

>>15675348

The pods are wired to the fucking bomb. If we disarm the bomb then we may as well fire up the engines of the derelict and boost it to a safe orbit instead of all this fucking around.

rolled 9 = 9

>>15675348
I'm just going to go ahead and rephrase my whole idea (fuck the giant sheet, unless something comes up that makes it seem useful):

One pod per shuttle, we just ferry them out. Each shuttle is flanked by a shuttle on four sides (top, bottom, rear, sides), and/or drones with shields, if we have those.

Guys, shouldn't we wait until next thread to start arguing about this?

rolled 3 = 3

>>15675377
True. Still, last known surviving humans besides out crew. Safety first, we'll need protection around the shuttles anyway with all the random shit flying around the system.

okay so let me break this down so i can understand it:
The pods are connected to the EI
The EI station is connected to a fuck-off large bomb
The powerplant of the ship is powering this room and its required shielding
The ship is otherwise mainly destroyed with few operational systems.
It is very close to the red giant, too close for the Harbinger to approach safely and posses a risk to any shuttles going too and fro

The cryo-pods are part of the detonator, and to remove them the bomb must be removed and defused.
The cryo-pods require constant power to maintain the humans inside.

Okay, so what we need to do is:
Step 1: Disarm the bomb, preferably by drone just to save the risk of having Dai fly over there, but if it goes off it really wont matter if we're onboard it or not.
Step 2: Secure the EI, or whats left of it, for extraction.
Step 3: Secure the pressure inside the room such that we can revive the 11 officers in place
Step 4: Extract the now awake officers and EI back to the harbinger.

>I don't think we need to disarm it, we need to REASON with the other EI. He's clearly awake as he opened the doors for us.
i think this guy had it right. but anyways wait for next thread 6pm EST(-4GMT) tomorrow.

>>15675241
>The shuttles that made it are only out of danger because they're hiding in the Asura's shadow. To push away from the sun in a useful way, they'll need to be exposed to it (because otherwise the engines will be washing over the Asura, and end up imparting no thrust).
We should be able to repeatedly tack to dodge this problem. It'll take longer but it's far from impossible. Also, I don't know if this even is a problem at all depending upon how exactly the physics of our engines work.

>>15675451

Tacking works great if you're in a boat and you have a whole mess of air and water molecules to tack against, but we're in space. Without the ability to thrust away from the sun, we're just changing the inclination of the orbit.

>>15675472
but by increasing the velocity it orbits you eventually get a straight line path away from the star.

>>15675441
Doing delicate control work via drone is the equivalent of manipulating a screwdriver with a pair of pliers.
Chance of failure goes up dramatically if we have Dai do all of this remotely.

Also, the internal atmosphere of the ship does not appear safe for humans right now, since some of our droids have melted arms.

>>15675472
>>15675491
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity

>>15675392

These people are literally managing to IGNORE

THE SMALL, ITTY-BITTY MATTER

OF THE MOTHER-FUCKING BLACK-HOLE BOMB.

THAT IS A BLACK HOLE, THAT IS A BOMB. A BLACK HOLE THAT CAN INSTANTLY EAT EVERYTHING IN ONE-HUNDRED CUBIC LIGHTYEARS.

WE ARE TALKING ABOUT DESTRUCTIVE POWER SO FUCKING VAST IT TAXES THE IMAGINATION. WE ARE LITERALLY TALKING ABOUT SOMETHING TEN THOUSAND TIMES MORE TERRIFYING THEN A WEAPON THAT CAN MAKE STARS GO NOVA. SUPERNOVA, EVEN.

AND IT IS WIRED UP AS A BOOBY-TRAP. A FUCKING *BOOBY TRAP.* SANE PEOPLE USE HAND GRENADES FOR THAT. INSANE PEOPLE USE NUKES. BUT THAT PSYCHOTIC MOTHERFUCKER, THAT OLD PAL OF OURS, HE USED A WEAPON THAT CAN MAKE AN ENTIRE CLUSTER OF SUNS, AND DOZENS OF CIVILIZATIONS WITHIN ITS REACHES, VANISH INTO THE NIGHT.

LOOK AT THAT THIS FUCKING PICTURE, HEREIN ATTACHED. LOOK AT THAT. THAT LITTLE BLUE DOT? THAT IS EVERYTHING, LITERALLY EVERYTHING YOU HAVE EVER KNOWN OR DREAMT OF KNOWING. ALL THE HUNDREDS, NAY, THE THOUSANDS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATIONS THAT HAVE WARRED ON THIS PLANET, FROM THE TINIEST INDIAN TRIBES TO THE MIGHTIEST EMPIRES MOBILIZING MILLIONS OF MEN, FROM PAST TO PRESENT. FROM T-REX EATING BRONTASAURS AND SHIT TO YOU STUFFING YOUR FACE WITH CHICKEN NUGGETS FROM MICKY-D'S. THAT ALL TOOK PLACE ON THAT TINY BLUE DOT.

THERE ARE APPROXIMATELY 14,600 STARS WITHIN 100 LIGHT-YEARS OF EARTH. OF THOSE, ABOUT 511 ARE G-TYPE STARS. IF YOU ASSUME ONLY A FRACTION OF THOSE STAR SYSTEMS HAVE BEEN COLONIZED - LETS SAY 20 - THEN THAT IS 20 ENTIRE PLANETS TEEMING WITH INTELLIGENT, THINKING, DREAMING, LOVING, HATING, SINGING, EATING LIFE. TWENTY PLANETS WITH HISTORIES AS ANCIENT AND COMPLEX AS OUR LITTLE BLUE DOT. AND PERHAPS MANY MORE THEN THAT.

100 CUBIC LIGHTYEARS IS WHAT THE S-CLASS WARHEAD CAN ANNIHILATE IN A MICROSECOND. THAT BOMB IS TWENTY APOCALYPSES IN ONE. OR AS MANY AS FIVE-HUNDRED AND ELEVEN APOCALYPSES IN ONE.

I THINK WE ALL NEED TO SIT DOWN AND HAVE A THINK ABOUT THAT.

>>15675472
We can create a movement vector away from the sun without leaving the Asura's shadow. By "tacking" I meant "repeatedly manipulating vectors to create a desired net movement vector out of the sum of many indirect movement vectors". It'll work and requires nothing whatsoever to push against as long as we have some kind of functional engine capable of moving our shuttle.

>>15675514
in that case RAM THE BOMB! With Parson!

>>15675536
>in that case RAM THE BOMB! With Parson!

I JUST SPIT MY COKE ALL OVER MY FUCKING MONITOR. I AM NO LONGER PERTURBED.

Regular lower-case text... returning. External monologue... ending.

>>15675536
Meaning 'Gently bump the bomb out of the way'

>>15675514
>THERE ARE APPROXIMATELY 14,600 STARS WITHIN 100 LIGHT-YEARS OF EARTH.
One hundred cubic lightyears is not the same as a 100 lightyear radius. It's more like a ~2.88 lightyear radius.

>>15675546
Yay. like i've said about 3 times now 6pm (EST(-4GMT)) tomorrow is when all of these things should be argued out.>>15675550

Void Quest, or How I Learned to Ram the Bomb, With Parson.

>>15675573
Let them get it out now. We'll argue about something else tomorrow. I'm sure of it!

>>15675579
mixing paranoid schizofrenics with singularity wmd's since 2011

>>15675562
cubic means 100 ly by 100ly by 100ly for a cube i thought. so yeah.
— · — · — · — — — ·
I am the EI of my ship.
UniSteel is my body, a singularity my core
I command over five thousand drones
Unknown to Death, Nor known to Life
Have withstood pain to glass many planets
Yet, those hands will never hold anything
So as I pray, unlimited void quests.

>>15675562

You have no fucking idea how much I despise engineering majors.

>>15675625
Actually, it's 1,000,000 cubic light-years. A cube 2ly by 2ly by 2ly would be 8 cubic light-years, not 2.

This bomb would swallow the entire system, but not an entire star cluster.