Will wrote:"Maybe Gout," she thinks aloud, as the treasonous miner grouses and reluctantly cooperates,"gets his fresh leaf from the Cloverdale."
Musing over what Jeffers had said earlier, she adds,"they are an ag ship, and from what little I know concerning marroine, it can be grown pretty much anywhere, in a relatively small space, and an ag ship would have the necessary gear to hothouse enough of the plant to feed the planet's population."
"Oh," she says sweetly to the miner,"you probably won't be sent back to Clarion."
"Death," she adds,"is the usual fate for traitors."
"Lady, your bat house nuts! The corporation didn't feed us nothing they crack down on the drug trade when it suits them. Most of us just turned to alcohol or drugs to relieve the boredom. Streel's money is made is made in banking or did you never read the corporate entries in Zeb's guide. They use the mining here as an excuse to stay in system after all that trouble years ago. Traitor! You're a vogging lunatic since when did the Royal Marines start recruiting at the asylum? Get me out of here. Your all freaking off the hook."
OOC: The miner will no longer talk to you all and he and the doc leave.
IC: The Streel security and the miners leave the hanger and depressurization starts immediately forcing Ventura and Slayerian to rush to close the hatch. The massive landing pad/lift is immediately in motion rising toward the opening hanger doors. The robotic grapples release before the lift has stopped moving and the shuttle rocks a little as the pad locks into place. There is no communication from the base's flight control.
Back at the ship:
The captain is livid over personnel trying to send half baked reports back to Clarion to stir up trouble and NCO's who don't report back to her and act on their own initiative creating an incident where the vogging Streelies can tout the heavy handed treatment of them by RM which they've been saying for years but now they have video to prove it. Syranno catches the usual punishments handed out on a naval craft and is put to work with scut work. Blue has been given a direct order to not discuss this incident with anyone on Clarion till the tour is finished.
Alone in the conference room with IKe, she gives him a less volatile butt chewing but warns him that this sort of thing cannot go on as this is not the "wild frontier anymore."
"I'm willing to grant some latitude due to the nature of our emergency deployment but this sort of thing is exactly why the RM discontinued the posting some many midies to one ship straight out of the academy. I don't want to muck up anyone's record with letters of reprimand but I will if forced to do so. Hell I hate Streel as much as the next marine but we can't behave like loose warheads without good reason."
On the bridge Tanar has been number crunching the data concerning filed flight plans and observed departure and arrival times from Wandren for the Cloverdale and has tried to narrow down the field of search for the missing Cloverdale. [Astro sciences skill check is 48% or less roll= 03] Taking a wild guess that if drugs are a factor in the Cloverdale going missing then the closest approach to Planaron Ore Processing Station might be the best place to look. Plugging in variables into the computer and training the telescopes in that direction he had a "hit" within a few hours. At maximum magnification, the computers had spotted a glint of light off what appeared to be a ships hull in slow tumble.
"Damn!" the captain said slapping Tanar on the back, "That's pretty much one in a million that you'd find that at this distance. It may be nothing more than some old debris or space junk but it's in the general vicinity of where and when the Cloverdale went missing. Lay in a course to micro jump and bring us to a zero zero intercept of the object but continue trying to refine data to confirm or exclude that object as the Cloverdale."
Over the course of accelerating to 1% of light speed Tanar was able to confirm first that is was a ship and eventually that it was an ag ship in slow tumble. With only five registered ag ships in system it was a high likelihood this was the Cloverdale and the jump was made.
Once in the vicinity of the tumbling ship Tanar was able to refine imagery of the ship and identified damage to the drive section consistent with beam weaponry and one of the domes had a breach. As the Pelican matched the drift of ag ship its registry became visible, SCS Cloverdale. The energy sensors show little to no heat, the engines have been off for a while, and there is no trace energy registering on the EM spectrum. The work pods are missing on deck 5 (same deck as the forward hatch) as well as the ships launch on deck.
OOC: RL is calling this morning so I'll get up some diagrams latter tonight. Tanar located a 15 year old magazine article with deck plans for the modular freighter hull that the ag ship is based on but only for the forward section; a copy of those plans are in PDF as the Castor Class freighter over at
http://starfrontiers.us/downloads/3444You can all update these deck plans to your body comp on your combat harness but there is no way to know if the Cloverdale conforms to those plans since they're 15 years old and the ship is modular anyway. Update your character sheet with equipment carried (there are 5 of you and its easier if you do it once than I do it 5 times plus for the npcs) Some or all portions of the ship could be depressurized (at least one dome is) and its 99% likely life support is off line. You have a forward and aft hatch and a hull breach in an ag dome for entry points as well as fiddling with going through the work pod hatches or the launch's hatch (which are not air locks and will have explosive results if there is atmosphere on the other side.
Your mission is to clear the ship, check for survivors or bodies and investigate what happened to the ship.
Of priority is information on who attacked it, was the Cloverdale indeed the source of the cannabis poppy.
I need to know what your plan of attack will be here; where and who is going in, the Pelican wont dock with the Cloverdale directly so Alyssa will have to pilot the Pelican's launch or the Golden Hind across. The only other way to get across would be allowing Ike or Dudd to pilot the workpods based off their engineering experience by default despite not having the space vehicles skill which I will allow but it does seem silly when you have other means. Also which NPCs do you want along (its not so critical they go in as chronocoms allow me to still use them as a voice but you may wish to have Niss or Dudd for their skills Spacer Dudd is an engineer's mate and Niss is a combat medic same as Ajax. I'm assuming all PCs are going and an Npc can be used to guard your vehicle.
like I said I'll try to get a visual diagram of the outside of the ship up latter tonight. and you have limited deck plans available to you.
Happy Hunting.