We are back on Absalom Station! It feels like we’ve been away for centuries. In other news, the PDSU is also back. It arrived, devoid of Brock or any pilot whatsoever, and parked itself down in the Puddles, which meant we had to take some interesting routes to avoid having to swim. Luckily, the ship itself isn’t a huge lake. Sadly, with no Brock here, we have to go looking for him. First, we have to reinstall much of what we need to the remaining computers on board, as it is all wiped. Hard to tell if Brock did it or whoever stole it.
Crew Personal Logs
Diaries of the crew on this mission.
Coming Home
So, we are sitting there in the submarine, looking that this ancient looking city, with a vaguely looking Vesk 2 architecture. We are suddenly contacted by Vakpod city– the Celi are asking us not to venture any further. Well, I normally like a good dig into ancient ruins, but I’m not interested in exploring this one. We all pretty much agree we are done with Vakpod, and we return to port. It takes four days, but we’ve had so little sleep that we pretty much enjoy the downtime.
Surprises await us. Cornpuff and Jasmine departed a day after we left in the submarine, presumably to find our ship. Widget seems confident about it. We head up to the orbiting station finally, and I may have started demanding a ride back home in a ship I feel Vakpod owes us after losing our ship. And suddenly, I look up and there’s Venn, here to rescue us again! The trip back to Absalom Station on the Resolve will take two days, but it’s just so nice to be back in space after all that… water.
Life goes on while you’re miles away
So, we were just going over logs, and Ash was hacking into a Nautilus crew member’s tablet. Normal stuff. I headed down to engineering, since two of Orca’s crew stayed behind on the Nautilus. There was a brief flash of light– or maybe a brief outage, but suddenly, the Orca was a lot fuller. Ratchet Strap, the missing Ysoki engineer, was standing right beside me.
A few of the missing crew are still missing– I know their pilot is. They had no idea 60 hours had passed since they were last on their submarine. It took a few seconds for them to realize they were on the Orca. And a few of them think they remember a group of grey creatures with bulbous eyes.
We’ve been radioing back and forth with the other sub and ships we can pick up from here. No other people arrived on the Nautilus. And the signal we’d been following has gone dormant. However, we have arrived at where it was coming from, in a flat region at the of bottom of the ocean, 2000′ below the surface, where ice has cracked. We can also see black shapes/foundations of ancient ruins just under the cracked surface.
I guess finding the PDSU will have to wait a bit longer….
He had yellow eyes!
Well, we’d managed to get the diplomats for the Pack Worlds ensconced in their new roles, figured out how to find and destroy doppelgangers, and helped with security to the point where shuttles could land. Our part was done, and shuttles were coming in with regular workers and visitors, including two ysoki I did not particularly want to see. As we considered how we could get back to Absalom Station (I really think AbadarCorp should provide us with a new ship, since we were stuck here while doppelgangers stole our ship from Vakpod’s station), Ash suddenly said, “Very Low Frequency!” and dashed off.
Huh. Why hadn’t I thought of that?
Anyway, we dashed off after him. Apparently, we can check for things other than submarines. He yells “-2!” and suddenly….
A new shuttle is docking, and we race back up to do one more check for doppelgangers and other unsavory types.
If I recall, Cornpuff wasn’t always called that. I think his name at birth was Conway, as his fur is completely yellow like a big… big… yellow thing. He also has yellow eyes! I may have inadvertently spurned him many years ago. He now hangs out with Jasmine (from the red-eyed side of the family). We stop to address them, but they turn and talk to Widget! I interrupt, letting them know he’s done nothing wrong and there’s no bounty. They agree, and tell us Widget hired them to get our ship back! Not even sure how the two of them can walk and talk at the same time, but they do have a decent ship….
Ash says suddenly that he’s triangulated the signal with some ships and the low frequency signal that probably shouldn’t be there is underwater and towards the planet’s southern pole. We have a decision to make– stay and solve a mystery? Both the Starfinder Society and the Stewards would be fine with that. We decide that one quick adventure is worth having. AbadarCorp is also happy enough to provide us with a submarine (Orca!) trip in that direction. We will try to hail the sub (Nautilus!) that Ratchet Strap was working on, too, as it is apparently behind schedule with no contact for six hours. We borrow a few engineers (Darius and Jules!) and head out.
We find the sub, strangely still, resting near some rocky outcropping. It’s “parked” well enough that we can position our sub with some docking clamps and a contraption that extends from our ship to make an airtight seal to go right in through the other sub’s hatch. The air is stale and it is dark. We fumble our way to engineering to turn power on. After we have light and air, we start a search. Not a single person on board. No bodies. No notes. It looks like they all, quite suddenly, were not there. We have to at least find a ship log, and we do. There was an EMP pulse that had crippled the sub. However, all diving suits and gear are visible and they had no other way off the sub, so where are they?
Better to burn out. . .
So… we got I-9 back, as well as Ash’s sniper rifle that was stolen from the ship. Somehow, a doppelganger, disguised as a purple skittermander, made it as far as the warehouse and reassembled Ash’s weapon. Lucky for us, it didn’t know how to use the weapon, and we dispatched it quickly. All the skittermanders working on the dock that happened to be purple, shrieked and started hiding– hopefully they are not still hiding.
I saw security come in just as we liquefied the doppelganger, so I took off with Widget and a case full of disassembled I-9. I’d already procured a new power core, so he just needed put back together. He seems fine, honestly. He said the virus had forced him to go to the shuttle bay, and was to steal a ship and take it to specific coordinates via Driftspace. I-9’s powercore was set to burn up if he didn’t succeed. I realize he didn’t mention if he’d burnt it out himself instead.
He’s off to help Widget with something in security already. Main power has been restored!