Before we leave the ship to examine L476, I have to check all the sensor logs again. We arrived as expected in a system with a red giant sun, a gas giant, two asteroid belts, and a terrestrial planet. We kept scanning for a day just to make sure the system wasn’t swarming with anything hostile, then gave it another day for the gas giant and asteroid belts, and finally concentrated on the terrestrial planet and its two moons. We scanned that stuff for hours. I wanted to make I-9 feel more included, so I asked him what he knew about L476. How did we not think to ask him anything before? I guess he was so focused on restoring main power to Osiris Station that we assumed he hadn’t known anything.
Anyway, I asked him, and he went on and on and on, with more detail in a few minutes than we would have managed in another full day’s scanning. He gave us latitude and longitude of the ancient ruins that were of such interest to the Orcus project and the Corpse Fleet.
We stayed in orbit above the planet, close to one of the moons. It was hard to see the surface thanks to an electrical storm which seemed to be focused on a large obsidian pyramid. Scans detected an old wrecked warship in a huge excavation site and a smattering of smaller buildings that were obviously erected for the excavation crew. I realized I’ve missed doing this type of stuff, though I might have passed on a mission like the one we were scanning.
Lexx very politely attempted to contact anyone down on the surface. We found their shuttle, a Ringworks Wanderer class, and are planning to check that. I can see Ash already getting upset that we won’t be able to take that with us if it’s truly abandoned. The Please Don’t Shoot Us is bigger than the Rambler was, but we don’t have a bay large enough for a shuttle.
Okay. Am going to go see if Sresaka needs help strapping on a bunch of weapons, in case something shootable is down there… I don’t have a good feeling about any of this. Hopefully Brock will let us know if he detects anything else on or coming towards L476.
Addendum
Widget and I-9 were planning to flood the maintenance shafts with rerouted water to make a waterpark, whatever that is. We caught them in time. They were later observed sneaking down there with a sheet of cardboard and Lexx’s boombox….