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Post by Nepty on Oct 18, 2015 17:39:23 GMT
I felt that only non-pre-associated music, made in the public domain would be fitting for the 'opening sequence'
"I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” Neil Armstrong on looking back at the Earth from the Moon in July 1969. -
"We aren't alone" Lujendra Ojha, announcing the discovery of archeobacteria on mars in June 2019 - "For years, we have thought that we might be the only one of our kind. The only blue planet. I am proud to have been given the highest honor of announcing that we were wrong. There is another." Alyssa Wright, announcing the discovery of Primordia in October 2025 -
"We have left our fragile world, traveled trillions of kilometers, and now stand upon another. This is the greatest moment of our lives." Felix Adler, on stepping onto primordian ground in March 2115 -
LANDING ONE KRUPP STAHLWERKE --------Staff Commander: Gunther Immelhof Administrator: Pierre Duchamp Chief of Security: Colonel Felix Adler -Inf Com: Captain Otto Koch -Special Com: Captain Helena Vogel -Air Com: Captain Herman Werner -Naval Com: Captain Johannes Herstal Chief Engineer: Hernan Martinez Science Dept Head: Dr. Saeed Satrapy Foreman: Anja Chopin Admiral: Hans Lars ___________________ SUPPLIES _________________ Surplus Inf Weapons: 50% Surplus Vehicle Weapons: 50% Ammo: 100% Explosives: 100% Laser Cells: 100% Sundries: 100% Spare Parts: 100% DAY ONE 0300 HOURS : Briefing After a lengthy, hung-over discussion aboard the IST Shell Und Deutschland, as it orbited primordia, massive interstellar engines still glowing red-hot from the heat of a five-year interstellar burn. With only a few of the hundreds-strong passenger compliment out of hibernation, the command staff present reached a consensus, with only mild disappointment from several parties. Dr Saeed Satrapy returned to his personal items locker to retrieve the camcorder he’d chosen for this very purpose, and then settled in for the long, six-hour wait before he would touch the ground of an alien world. His mind buzzed with excitement, only slightly disappointed that he would be in the second flight to the planet, not the first. Colonel Adler, meanwhile, briefed his troops: twenty of the exhausted-looking men of the first company and Chief Engineer Martinez. The large, imposing old Austrian made them repeat what he’d told them, from the procedures involving their filter masks, to the ‘do-not-fire-until-fired-upon’ standing orders until they knew his words by heart before he let them file onto the shuttle. Martinez flipped him the bird behind his back. 04:00 HOURS : Loading twenty panzergrenadiers, twenty five engineers, five doctors and forty assorted civilians anxiously buckled themselves into the crash webbing of Shuttle A at 04:00 hours, then watched silently as a defoliator and a slash-burner were trundled aboard by a group of mechanics and chained down securely to the floor of the cargo bay. On Shuttle B, clamped to Airlock 2, the pilot and copilot waited in the cockpit, checking and double-checking their systems as their cargo bay, exposed to vacuumed, was loaded with it’s payload, two gigantic Massive Ordinance Obstruction Removal charges. When the astronauts loading the MOORs gave them the all clear, they closed the huge cargo doors and prepared for detach. 05:00 HOURS : Detach While it was still nighttime at the projected landing zone, both shuttles simultaneously detached from the Shell Und Deutschland’s top and bottom airlocks, and drifted away from the vessel. The passengers felt their stomachs roil with nausea as the IST’s meager artificial gravity fell away and zero-G took hold. Moments later, both shuttles fired their main thrusters, propelling down towards the planet below, aiming right for a heavily overcast area on Cretacia, where they were due to land in an hour, timed to local sunrise. 06:00 HOURS : Landing The two Atlases entered the mesophere, re-entry plating growing red-hot from trans-atmospheric acceleration, then, they began to bank, entering an S-shaped speed burn, making a smooth transition from the mesosphere, into the stratosphere’s upper cloud layer, traveling over what pre-programmed maps tell them is the Agean Sea, before leveling off at fifteen kilometers high, in the lower stratosphere. The onboard computer estimated the sea-level temperature at roughly eighty seven degrees Fahrenheit. As they exited the cloud layer, the pilots got a first glimpse at Primordia. The sun was just beginning to rise. Deep blue seas, almost black in the early morning half-light stretched ever onward in all directions but north, where the landmass of Cretacia’s “Peninsulae Truncatis” filled the view-screen. The pilots steer the Atlases towards the pre-programmed landing area, selected as the best landing site in within fifty thousand kilometers. It is well away from any nearby Terassis Emperor Trees and most of the flora seems to be house-width, two to five hundred-meter tall arborex trees. Only one Emperor Tree juts out of the jungle, far off in the distance. The copilot of shuttle A nudges his companion and points to the horizon, where a flock of indiscernible flying organisms are disappearing into the jungle, The pilot smiles. The copilot is the first human being to see alien organisms with his own eyes. Shuttle A banks, circling at 1,000 feet, while Shuttle B slows down its approach, and drops to 600 meters, skimming only 100 feet above the canopy’s highest trees. The shuttle bay slowly groans open as the Atlas roars overhead. Thankfully no humans were inside, or the acceleration would have sucked them out. The copilot hits the first release button and turns upwards. The shuttle groans and tilts to one side imperceptibly as the MOOR slides out of the cargo bay, off the ramp and tumbles into the forest below, flipping head over tail. It disappears into the canopy behind the shuttle, which fires its jets to escape the blast radius. Moments later, the forest shakes with a dull, muted thump. The crew of shuttle 2, watching as they bank overhead see the forest shake, and moments later, a huge column of smoke rises from the bramble. Seconds later, the tops of dozens of monarch trees collapse, severed off at the midway point by the blast. The MOOR must have hit a branch or a trunk instead of the ground. It’s only leveled half the site, so Atlas B comes in for a second approach run. This next one does the trick. The visible fireball blows the blasted foliage and shattered trunks away, making a large, semi-clear site, just big enough for a single Atlas to squeeze in. Normally, this clearing would be too small for procedure, by it’s a race to the surface. Atlas A slows to a hover, balancing on its massive jets, and slowly eases in. The shuttle makes headway for the first half of its descent, as the pilots watch, slightly unnerved, as they descend 500 meters into the rainforest. Only some hundred meters from the ground, however, they hit a snag as one wing scrapes a gigantic branch. The pilot swears as the vessel pitches wildly before righting itself, but the damage has been done. In the cargo bay, two civilians are bleeding from their heads, and one of the panzergrenadiers is totally unresponsive, neck hanging at a strange angle, head lolling. One of the civilians, a blonde woman, buckled in next to the injured soldier is screaming hysterically. Moments later, the shuttle comes to a halt, massive wheel wells depressing as it lands on the ground. Colonel Adler unbuckles his restraints and leaps up, ordering everyone to remain seated as he rushes to the injured grenadier, ordering one of the doctors out of his seats as well. The cargo bay waits with baited breath as the man is unbuckled. Moments later, the man is pronounced dead. His neck’s broken. Everyone else is ordered to unbuckle, one by one, according to careful procedure. The shuttle is still depressurizing, and, though it now rests on Primordian ground, procedure for a ‘crash’ demands a short wait period as damages are assessed. The two injured civilians are brought to the small airlocked medical bay, both with concussions, and the screaming woman is calmed down and ordered to the bay too, for rest and relief. Adler calls everyone to him, and prepares for debark. This shuttle is carrying him, Helena Vogel, the spec ops captain, who’s accompanied by a pair of force recon troopers, Hernan Martinez, the chief engineer, and infantry Captain Otto Koch, who’s taken the role of platoon leader for this mission. Adler orders everyone to put their EVA-masks on, (Extra-Vehicular-Activity) and line up in preparation for their sojourn. A group of techs begins to unchain the Slash-Burner and Defoliator. 07:00 HOURS : Debark The Cargo ramp hisses open and alien sunlight spills in, followed by the highly concentrated primordian atmosphere. Colonel Adler hefts his HK39 rifle and taps his helmet, then proceeds down the ramp at a brisk trot, slightly unbalanced, unused to the .9 gravity. Or the unusually thick air. He halts briefly at the ramp, contemplating the action he is about to take, and then takes a step. Felix Adler’s name will go down in history as that of the first human being to walk on Primordia. His boots sink somewhat into the soft, earthy ground. He turns to the nearby cameraman and says to the lens.""We have left our fragile world, traveled trillions of kilometers, and now stand upon another. This is the greatest moment of our lives." Then, he turns back to the mission at hand Devastation abounds for a mile-radius. Some fifteen stumps, blasted to pieces at around 5 feet off the ground, jut up like jagged spurs. A few embers smolder here and there, and the destroyed remnants of understory foliage lies strewn about like a thick carpet of twigs and leaves. No more than two dozen meters away, the ‘clearing’ ends and the forest begins, a wall of dark primality. The panzergrenadiers set up a circle perimeter, one man every dozen meters, in a circle around the Atlas. The vehicles are rolled out, under the eagle eye of Martinez, who orders them to begin clearing this zone of refuse immediately. Once everything is unloaded, Atlas A lifts off. The next Atlas is due within an hour. 08:00 HOURS After several sightings of tiny airborne alien creatures the size of flies, or a few hopping ground-based ones, the first encounter with a hostile organism occurs. The Slash-burner has just begun its first incision on a nearby monarch tree, watched over by a pair of grenadiers, when an engineer helping clear away refuse by hand suddenly screams and throws down the bundle of wood he’s been carrying to tear at himself. A panzergrenadier rushes over, rifle raised. The engineer falls to the ground, thrashing, as more people gather round, curious about the commotion. Martinez pushes his way through the crowd, pulling a doctor behind him. Together, they restrain the screaming man and the reason for his discomfort is discovered. An alien creature, roughly the size of a human hand has latched onto his chest with what appear to be four bladed claws, that have pierced his clothes and sunk deep into his flesh. Small wings buzz slightly, as it grips tighter, body pressing against the man’s shirt. Martinez reaches out to pull it out, but a knife-shaped tail flicks out and stabs his hand, cutting straight to the bone. The chief engineer falls back and bites back screams of his own. Various personnel murmur to themselves. No one wants to be injured like Martinez, but no one wants the thing to keep tormenting the engineer. Finally, the doctor administers a shot to render the engineer unconscious. It’s decided that the thing has to come off. A pair of doctors, one armed with industrial pliers borrowed from one of the civilians, get to work. The one with the pliers secures the organism’s tail, and the second man tries to pull it out, but it’s clearly on there to stay. The bladed limbs have seemingly rooted themselves in the engineer’s body, and a pair of forward-facing fangs or mandibles are sunk deep into his flesh, which is now bubbling and hissing around the wound. The doctors settle for trying to kill the thing, and end up simply stabbing it with a scalpel until it stops moving. The wounded man is brought to a small tent set up as an emergency medical station. He will need surgery to remove the organism. The Organism 0600 HOURS The next Atlas arrives, with several other defoliators and slash burners. They make decent headway in clearing the nearby forest. Dr Satrapy comes in on this one, video camera in hand, and rushes to get film of the apparently dead hostile organism that’s still latched onto the engineer. Martinez, whose hand is being bandaged nearby, makes several comments about Strapy’s ghoulish behavior. 09:00 HOURS The slash-burners have fully cleared a football-field sized area by this point, and the third Atlas comes in. As they return to orbit, each one makes sure to do a sweep of a nearby sector, so it can be mapped. However, one pilot notices that none of the sensor equipment is working at 100% spec, instead idling at around 80% 10:00 HOURS A second attack by a hostile organism is discovered. Seven hours into the mission, it’s discovered that a mechanic has gone missing. After some searching, he is discovered. The soldier in question who has discovered him quite literally throws up inside of his EVA-pack. The mechanic is clearly dead. His chest cavity has been reduced to a puddle of slurry, and most of his equipment is melted. His hair is singed, his eyeballs melted in his skull and his Eva-pack has also been melted, most of his face, head, and a portion of his brain gone; rendered down into a bio-soup or charred beyond recognition. His limbs are desiccated husks. With nowhere to put it, the body is stuffed into an empty PMT crate. 11:00 HOURS The dozers are landed. Now that the slash-burners have widened a 2 km square area, the dozers now begin constructing a road to the proposed gravel mine, 5 km away. Half of the panzergrenadiers go with them to defend them from anything, possibly from whatever killed the mechanic. The slash-burners go in their wake, and the defoliators begin totally clearing the 2 km area of any plant life to prepare to build the base. The engineers begin hacking at the ground with hand tools and PMTs, setting the foundations for the eventual prefabs. 12:00 HOURS (LOCAL MIDDAY) More dozers are landed. Now, there’s roughly four hundred personnel groundside. Administrator Duchamp is making the rounds with the miners, prepping them to begin getting ready to break ground by nightfall. 13:00 HOURS The dozers break into a grassy knoll, scattering a herd of large, elephant-sized bipedal creatures with horns on their heads. Several of the larger ones stand their ground and bellow at the dozers, raising their bulbous tails high over their heads, prompting a nearby grenadier to aim his rifle and another to wave over backup. The creatures charge, both of them closing the distance in seconds, sprinting at speeds approaching sixty kilometers and both of them aiming for the man calling for backup. One hits him after the other, throwing him a good seven meters into the jungle. Return fire from the panzergrenadiers drives off one of the creatures, however, and the other is gunned down by a soldier with an MG7. The alien animal is left to rot, as there’s no way to analyze it at the moment. A sketch of the organism. (Dr Satrapy notes that this creature is possibly one of the last of a now-nearly extinct genus of earth-like creatures, as it seems to have very little in common with most other life so far discovered) 14:00 HOURS A quick sweep locates the grenadier’s body, which had fallen into a bush some ten feet into the jungle. A doctor pronounced him “extremely dead” his entire ribcage and spine had been pulverized. Meanwhile, 2 Panther IFVs have been brought down, and are sent to guard the Dozers. 15:00 HOURS Adler convenes with his staff. Captain Koch, who’s been assigned to guard the main site, and Vogel, who’s job it is now to protect the dozer crews, are told to adopt a ‘fire-on-sign-of-aggression’ policy. Satrapy, has been assigned to testing the local air to make sure it’s safe for humans to bare skin, but Adler decides that a legitimate medical station is needed. He orders one of the Atlases to land and not lift off again, to be used as a medical station, changing area and pressurized break zone. He also informs the planetside staff that tents must be set up. It’s going to be nightfall in three hours. 16:00 HOURS As the shadows lengthen, the forest turns pitch black. It’s roughly 4 o’clock, by standard earth time. The clearing still gets some sunlight. 17:00 HOURS As the sun descends behind the trees, the dozers break into the mine site area and slash-burners and defoliators begin clearing it. 18:00 HOURS: LOCAL SUNDOWN Sundown. A light fog rolls in from the sea. 16:00 HOURS The gravel mine site has been cleared. Duchamp and his miners begin the hike out to there. 17:00 HOURS A FORCOM is landed, and the gigantic box is laboriously pushed towards the hole. Many engineers complain of the lack of APEs to help. They could help this job get done in record time. 18:00 HOURS The FORCOM’s box is finally fit into the hole. Meanwhile, at the mine site, work halts as a cacophony of trills and hoots erupt from the trees. The miners finish loading up gravel into one truck, and send it back, with an IFV and a fireteam of soldiers running escort, and then warily watch the nighttime forest. It’s much darker than night on earth, and Administrator Duchamp orders spotlights turned on the trees. Little is illuminated, considering the sheer size of each tree, but the noises die down somewhat. 19:00 HOURS A miner looking for PMTs suffers a nervous breakdown when he opens a crate and discovers the dead engineer’s desiccated, now rotting remains in there. The corpse is hastily re-crated and marked “DO NOT OPEN. DEAD INSIDE.” It’s approaching midnight, and Duchamp orders his miners to get some rest. Minutes later, Captain Koch arrives at the mine site in an IFV and hastily debarks, yelling at Duchamp for slacking off, then demands the miners get back to work. Duchamp says that Koch does not have authority here, and the two almost come to blows before Dr. Satrapy convinces the two that nothing will be gained by fighting. 20:00 HOURS Another herd of the horn-headed creatures (dubbed “Ramheads”) bursts into the mine site clearing. The soldiers and miners freeze, staying very still so as not to provoe the creatures, until Captain Koch throws a flashbang, which sends the herd scrambling off into the jungle. 21:00 HOURS A soldier reports to the temporary ER at midnight after having felt his arm go numb. The result was apparent when his clothing was removed, and a bulbous, winged creature the length of his finger, with a pair of wings on its back was discovered hanging off of his arm by its proboscis. Some of the flesh had already been dissolved, but the creature was simply pulled off by the doctor, then analyzed by Satrapy before being flash-frozen for later analysis. He surmises it was probably a less dangerous relative of the thing still attached to the comatose engineer. The soldier was given a bandage and told to go to sleep in the Atlas The Creature 22:00 HOURS Come 1 AM earth time, Adler rules that it’s time to turn in. He doesn’t want to risk accidents from working in the unnaturally dark environment, or exhaustion from working overtime. He orders 6 Atlases to land to serve as sleeping quarters, and convinces Duchamp and Martinez to draw in their men for the night, but also agrees to post guards. The Engineers will keep setting up the FORCOM 1:00 HOURS The FORCOM’s skeleton is finished. The end result should be up sometime during the week. 2:00 HOURS Sensors detect a mass of local life, approaching, consistent with 20 beings the size of the horned creatures from earlier. Two squads of panzergrenadiers, led by captain Koch load up and exit the Atlas, and get to the perimeter, but by the time they’re there, the mass has dissipated into a loose blob of heat somewhere ahead of them in the trees. Koch reports the situation to Adler, and asks permission to investigate. Squad one covers squad two, which slowly advances into the rainforest, picking their way through the loose scrub, shining flashlights about. Koch reports back that he’s discovered nothing except a few of the small rabbit-sized leaping organisms that seem plentiful on the rainforest floor. As the squad falls back, the forest erupts into a wall of noise –hoots and trills noises abound. The soldiers quickly continue to fall back to the base site, and no further excitement bothers them. 3:00 HOURS The noises from the forest abruptly end, and the heat blob re-clusters and leaves, withdrawing out of sensor range. The first twenty four hours on Primordia have been tumultuous, but the overall goal has been accomplished. A human colony has been founded on Primordia.
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Post by Nepty on Oct 18, 2015 18:31:34 GMT
"GO, GO, GO!" LRI Ranger lance corporal Unga Hurst's first words on Primordia
LRI LANDING 04:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME At four in the morning, Agean local time, March Fifth, Two Atlas transporters entered the Primordian atmosphere. Vladinkov and Khulan Bagger sat next to one another, deep in conversation about their plans. Vladinkov was gesturing to the E-Pad on his lap, which was projecting a holographic image of the planet, the landing zone a red dot on its surface. Khulan, meanwhile was silent, listening to Vladinkov go on at length about how they don’t actually know what the surface will be like, and to be prepared for anything. Khulan smirked dryly. “I’m always prepared,” he responds, patting the Rhino Buster on his hip. He wears it like a gunslinger, a fashion most of the nominally Russian, Mongolian or Mongolian-Americans in LRI have retained from their western heritage. Khulan was dressed in digital-pattern camo, like most of his rangers. On the opposite side of the hull, the French woman Jeanine Dufrense was going through her notes, ignoring the two Mongolians opposite her. It wasn’t not hard. A large, dormant APE suit lashed to the floor blocks them from view. She paid no attention to the soldiers in the crash seats beside her, who were assigned to her guard either. The rest of the men and women in the Atlas’s cargo bay were doing similar. Some talked, others swapped jokes, many spoke excitedly about what it will be like to set foot on an alien world. Word is that the Germans had already launched. The Mongolians want to be right after them. Most of the personnel however merely stared blankly into space, contemplating the enormity of their mission. The speakers crackled to life. “Entering approach run. If you are not already seated, take your seats immediately.” There’s a pause, and then the copilot continued. “We mean it. We’re coming in fast. If you don’t want to end up as a thin film on the back wall, get in your damn seats.” There is a scattering of laughter at this. Vladinkov switched his E-Pad to show the visual feed of the shuttle’s nose cam as the ship accelerated. His earpiece chimed. It was the copilot. “Sir, we’re having some problems. Atlas B dropped both her MOORs and they only knocked a few trees down. Stand by; we’re calling down Atlas C, she’s carrying the other two.” Vladinkov watched the feed with interest as the third Atlas shot by, skimming over the tangled rainforest canopy to the blast site and pulled up, releasing both MOORs at once. “Interesting idea,” he mutters as the dark shapes plummeted towards the canopy then vanish into the tangled green. There is a flash of light, and then the treetops sagged inwards and collapsed. Vladinkov allowed himself a small smile. Khulan, observing over his shoulder grunted. “That’s one tough forest” Atlas A approached the blast site and descended into the hole in the canopy. It was roughly 5 AM, judging by earth time. The thirty hour day here might necessitate some changes in their schedules. The sun was just poking up above the horizon. He grumbled to himself as they descended into an oppressive fog at three hundred meters and the nose cam became useless, showing only a blank, roiling whiteness. Vladinkov turned it off. A short while later, the ship settled down on the alien ground, hydraulics hissing. The pilot’s voice blared out over the loudspeaker once more. “EVA-packs on, repeat, EVA-packs on. The Primordian atmosphere is highly toxic. Do not take your EVA pack off outdoors. Man it’s a fucking soup out here. Be ready for low visuals.” Workers and soldiers all stood up, unbuckling their crash webbing, stretching after the two hour flight. Khulan flipped on his speaker-comms and began to bark over the loudspeaker. “Alright everyone, ready up! Come on you bastards and bitches, let’s kick some ass out there!” He gestured to a couple of drone technicians and jerked his thumb towards some twenty dormant, dog-sized drones in racks in the cargo area. “You and you! Get those Zogii’s ready to get up out there first!” Then he turned his boisterous wrath on the twenty rangers with the ground force, bawling at them at the top of his lungs until they got into formation near the closed cargo bay ramp. Jeanine Dufresne stood up and hurried to the front of the double line forming in the cargo bay, sidestepping the Zogiis, which were being online and hovering very unsteadily up above their heads, one by one. She was intercepted by Khulan, who had put on his EVA pack, a special model, with a decal over the clear faceplate that depicted a demon of Mongolian myth. “Hold on there sweetheart, let the guys who actually know what they’re doing get off first.” Jeanine scowled. “What on earth do you mean ‘know what they’re doing’? no human has ever even set foot on this planet before. Your men know about as much about what they’re doing as you do…which isn’t a whole lot.” Khulan took her by both shoulders and turned her away, roughly frog-marching her to the rear of the line. “Get back there, smart stuff, and put on your EVA pack” he added insult to injury by slapping her rear before turning around and abruptly leaving. Jeanine watched him swagger off, glaring. “C’est imbecile,” she muttered. Khulan approached Vladinkov. “Everything’s set and ready boss.” 05:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME The huge transporter’s ramp lowered, flooding the cargo hold with damp, toxic air and heavy white fog. Khulan whistled, and the Zogii automatic drones buzzed slowly into action, propellers working unnaturally hard, and wobbled out into the fog, sluggishly rising towards the sunlight far above. The ramp hit the ground with a damp splash. Khulan peered outside and saw that the ship had landed in three feet of water. Good thing he was wearing mud gators. “Well I’ll be fucked sideways,” he said to himself. “We landed in a goddamned swamp.” Something splashed in the distance. He scowled and nodded to his rangers. “Alright ladies, get out there!” The first squad sprinted down the ramp, and rushed into the water, fanning out into a semicircle around the shuttle’s rear. Khulan gave a grin and thumbs up to the cameraman behind him, then jogged after them with the second squad. “Right boys, spread out, let’s check this place.” Inside the Atlas, as the Bartaat jeeps rolled down the ramp, Vladinkov hurried over to where a civilian drone operator was frantically waving at him from. Along the way, the science officer, Jeanine, tried to tell him something but he shooed her away. “What is it tech?” “I’ve lost contact with half the drones sir,” said the tech. “The rest are really fuzzy. I don’t get it, it’s like they can barley transmit their signals.” Vladinkov frowned. “Keep them up there. I don’t want anything getting the jump on us from the sky.” Meanwhile, the rangers were fanning out. It was becoming increasingly clear to everyone involved that they had just landed in a gigantic swamp. Khulan was standing on a Bartaat directing the rest of the vehicles with sweeping arm motions. “Come on, come on.” He frowned behind his mask. “Let’s find some damned high ground.” 06:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME Khulan, Vladinkov and a highly irritated Jeanine were standing in the water, looking at a map of the area spread out on a Bartaat’s hood. “Right,” said Jeanine. “If my degree in geology means anything, I say there’s a hillock about a mile due west. We could walk there then clear it off with the Bartaats and PMTs” The second Atlas was approaching now, so everyone had to shut up, since the thing was so loud no one could hear themselves think. It quickly offloaded its cargo, then lifted off again. The next one would be incoming in half an hour. “Why can’t we just drop a damned MOOR on the hill?” demanded Khulan, once the tremendous noise of the trans-orbital jets had died away. Jenine smiled condescendingly at him. “Because, if this is a swamp –and it certainly seems to be one- the hillock is likely made from soft earth. Do you want to have high ground to build a base on, or a ten foot deep crater?” Khulan grunted. “Looks like it’s time for a walk.” 07:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME The force of humans, now in significant strength, stood about in the waist-high water. APE suits manned the perimeter. The fog was clearing, slightly, and as it did, it became clear that, aside for a few spots of high ground here and there, the swamps seemed to stretch on forever. Jeanine had managed to locate a deposit of gravel some three miles to the south. It would work as a gravel mine to help stabilize the hillock. Meanwhile, a path of sorts had been established between the hillock that would become the base, and landing area. Fortunately most of the larger trees seemed to be spaced quite widely apart, and the miners attached to the flights were able to use their PMTs to cut several of the smaller ones down. However, by this point, many people were feeling quite unsettled. They’d been on Primordia for over two hours now, and no one had sighted any alien creatures beyond some fleshy insect-sized flying creatures that quickly buzzed away. Jeanine was running the primordian water through a testing apparatus she had brought down, as the attached cameraman filmed. She confirmed that it could be drank by humans, if properly detoxified. Then, one ranger yelped, and leaped up out of the water. He was dancing around like a madman, grabbing at his groin and crying. After the initial commotion had been calmed, he was rushed to a table that had been set up on one of the patches of high ground and had his pants pulled down. Dr. Jeanine took one glance at what it was and squealed with delight. It was clearly an alien organism. She looked closely at it and narrated for the camera. “Appears to have long, sinuous body approx. ten inches long. Seven legs to a side. No visible eyes, and two large pincers.” “Will you just get it off of my dick, lady?” demanded the soldier, prompting Jeanine to fetch a laser. A quick zap managed to cause the creature to release its death grip of the ranger’s junk and, hissing, it ran over his leg and leapt into the swamp, where it began to swim away like a water snake. “Someone grab it!” yelled Jeanine, prompting several soldiers and workers to dive for it. Eventually a man managed to capture it in a sample container, and it was bagged and tagged. The Organism, dubbed "Sentapede" A report follows. (note. Report is incomplete, without SCIMOD analasys) Sentapede (Sentapede Extremis) Height: 1.5 inches Length: 10 inches The fourteen-legged sentapede is a venomous ambush predator. The Sentapede lives at all levels of the forest. It subsists mostly on decaying organic matter or what it can hunt. If a large creature approaches, it will attack in self-defence. It is a muted brown in color, and is capable of surviving long periods underwater, where it will bury itself in the mud and attack any waterborne organisms above it. It's venom is not harmful to humans. 08:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME As Jeanine analyzed the alien, Vladinkov nodded to himself in satisfaction. The Bartaats and miners working hard in concert had been able to get a good start on clearing the weedy trees off of that large hillock, which was about two miles in total area. They’d said that they’d probably be done clearing the hillock of trees by twelve O’clock, and could then start on the smaller underbrush, most of which was already being melted away by the acid sprayers, or cut by men with waterjet drills. 09:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME An hour later, as Vladinkov smiled appraisingly, watching his miners clear the hillock of vegetation, a ranger ran up to him, out of breath. He immediately feared the worst. “What happened?” The ranger pointed behind him...“Sir? You might want to follow me…and maybe bring the scientist chick. We found something…well…you gotta see it to believe it.” Jeanine and Vladinkov followed the ranger in question, who led them to a clearing in the swamp and pointed off in the distance, where a pair of huge shapes lumbered through the swamps. Both of their massive, shovel like heads were low to the ground. One appeared to be drinking, while the other pulled up aquatic roots and vines and pulled them into its huge mouth with a hydra-like tongue. “Holy shit,” said Khulan. “Oh my God,” said Jeanine “Jesus,” said Khulan. “It’s bigger than an elephant. Does it look like it’s going to attack?” “No,” said Vladinkov, making way for the camerawoman, who was rushing to get as many pictures as she could of it. “It looks like its just eating.” “I think it’s a herbivore,” said Jeanine. “Right, well whatever it is, I want everyone to stay far away from it. That kind of thing could cause a lot of damage. Have the rangers track them, make sure they stay away from us.” “Gotcha boss.” Info on this creature is sparse, as it has not been dissected or analyzed in depth. -Appears to be herbivore -Appears to be social -Appears to eat water plants -Appears to be capable of limited bio-luminescence from 'Sail' 10:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME Despite the “Sailback,” as the men dubbed it, apparently content to feed and leave them alone, the miners had begun to work double-time. Jeanine had given everyone some sort of lecture on that, while the large creature seemed to be a herbivore, the presence of the earlier “snake-a-pede” as she’d nicknamed it, implied that there were carnivores, which could mean carnivorous megafauna. Everyone was worried that they’d be cought with their pants down, so everyone was working fast. As they did, some civilian techs put together the pair of Buzzard light transports that the last Atlas had brought down, and gave them the go-ahead for takeoff. Khulan elbowed his way onto one of them, sitting down on the floor, with his feet resting on the landing skid. “Alright girls, let’s lift off and see what we can find! Yeah!” He had armed himself with a short-barreled SARB assault rifle and was rarin’ to go. The Buzzards both lifted off and began to circle the area. Khulan watched the swampland fall away as they rose up, up and up, above the trees , and began to fly low, about ten meters above the canopy. The sun was high in the sky, the day was hot, and Khulan’s was in good spirits, even though he hadn’t killed anything yet. Khulan watched as various small flying creatures and leaping animals fled from the noise of their Buzzards, flocking up out of the canopy like windwash. Khulan laughed and let off a couple of bursts of gunfire at them. “Come on boys,” he hooted, “Let’s have ourselves a hunt!” 11:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME As the men on the hill begin to finish clearing it ahead of schedule, the equipment for the first modules was unloaded. The mods were safe for now, in their armored, boxed containers, but Vladinkov wanted to get them up as soon as possible. He was going to say as much to the most senior miner before he had an idea. “Look, I know you and your men aren’t engineers, but we won’t be getting the slash-burners or dozers until late afternoon, so here’s what I need you to do. Build me a road, from the landing site to the hill where we’ll set up our base, got it? That way we don’t have to stand around in three feet of water, worrying about some alien fish coming to bite our junks off.” “Got it boss,” the miner nodded. “We’ll have that road done by nightfall. It’s only a mile, after all. Just let us take the dirt from some of these here small rises.” “Then do it.” A while later, one of the miners stumbled across yet another alien, but no one was able to get it on camera. “It was like a squid-fish thing,” he said. “Kinda creepy, honestly. It was in the water. Went right by me.” 12:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME Everything had seemed to be going according to plan before this happened. Vladinkov knew he should have expected something like this to happen. He was in a tent set up on the hillock, which was being leveled to accommodate the base. The zogii coordinator shrugged. “Look sir, I don’t know what happened to them, but I’m getting a lot of problems. Half the zogiis are vanished, and I think they went totally offline. The rest are either unresponsive or their feed is fuzzy and they can’t tell if anything’s a target or not. They’re useless right now sir. Vladinkov sighed. “Alright, call them back.” “Thank you sir. I think it’s the local atmosphere.” “And get me that frigid science bitch. Maybe she can explain it.” 13:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME The groundworks for a raised road, roughly six feet tall, twenty feet wide and a mile long were being laid down. It would be a road made out of pressed earth, but at least it would work. Vladinkov sat down on a bench inside the Atlas, now able to get out of his now-filthy work clothes and EVA mask and pulled off his boots. Water cascaded out of them. He envied the other men, who had mud gators. He hadn’t anticipated the swamp. He and many of the miners and troops had taken fifteen minute break in the breathable air of one of the Atlases, which he had ordered stay put for half an hour to act as a makeshift commissary, so everyone had time to eat lunch. It wasn’t particularly interesting lunch. Protein gel molded into pizza shape and texture, spiced with pizza flavoring. 14:00 HOURS, LOCAL TIME The Buzzards took a moment to land and refuel, then were up again. Khulan contemplated trying to shoot another few of those small flying things, but decided not to. He couldn’t retrieve them from the canopy anyways. Suddenly, the Buzzard shuddered and dropped dangerously close to the canopy. “What’s going on?” he demanded, as the leaves and branches of the rainforest canopy rushed by only three meters below him. “There’s something attached to the ship,” responded the pilot, sounding nervous. Khulan leaned out and saw that the man was right. There was a thing about the size of a toddler latched onto the side of the cockpit. It looked like a cross between a helicopter, a fleshy coil, a squid and a flower. Khulan sighted down his gun barrel and shot it off the side of the Buzzard. “Problem solved.” 15:00 HOURS, LOCAL TIME The Slash-Burners and Defoliators were landed at around 2 PM, earth time. The bulldozers would be down with the next wave, but for now, the Bartaats were doing a fine job of helping to lay that road. Vladinkov smiled to himself. His smiling was interrupted, however, when gunfire erupted from on the other side of the hill Vladinkov ducked habitually and grimaced. He called up Khulan. “There’s shooting! Khulan! Someone’s shooting!” “I know, Vlad!” bellowed his brother over the comms. “Now get off the air!” _________________________________________________ Khulan’s Buzzard slowly descended through a gap in the trees, and he peered over the edge. Far below, he could see his rangers shooting at a group of milling grey-pink shapes. The creatures were surrounding what looked like three of his men, trampling and jumping up and down on then. He swore and let off a long burst of fire. The Mongols in with him did the same, and after several seconds of concentrated fire, the creatures fled, leaving one of their number behind, bellowing like a wounded buffalo. The second the buzzard touched down, Khulan jumped out. “What the hell happened?” He had to shout to make his voice heard over the noise of the buzzard’s rotors “Those things jumped us sir,” responded one of his troops, as a medic rushed over to the three men who were lying in the water. “Those three tried to scare them off by yelling, but they went berserk man! Berserk!” The three wounded men were pronounced dead, having suffered from massive whole-body trauma. The Ramhead Jeanine Dufresne's Dissection Notes without detailed SCIMOD analasys -Herbivore -Low brain-to-mass ratio -thick skulled head -capable of running at up to 60 kmph (Observed) -grey-pink coloration, with green mottled bands -thick neck muscles -Appears to have filed down horns, possibly on trees. Horn sizes vary between observed specimens 16:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME Someone had had the great idea of taking the dozer blades off of the Bartaats, and bolting them onto some ACTs. The ACTs had so much more horsepower, and they proved instrumental in helping to get that road and landing pad set up. The miners quickly began clearing the space around the hillock, road and LZ as well, and Vladinkov ordered more dirt to be brought up to build a semi-permanent landing pad for the Atlases. The miners began to shore up the road and ‘landing pad’ with bits from the trees they had cut down, while the ACTs-turned-dozers moved the massive felled trees away from the base. 17:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME “Hey boss,” Khulan said over the radio. “Guess what?” “What?” asked Vladinkov, looking over the crude sketch of the proposed base. He slapped the radio. The feedback was quite bad. “The men have come up with a name for this place.” “Oh yeah? What is it?” “Camp Dismal, boss.” “Wonderful.” 18:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME At 6 PM, the sun was beginning its slow descent towards the horizon. Vladinkov watched his men dig out the foundations for two HABMODs. Khulan continued patrolling, and all was uneventful for the rest of the hour. 19:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME-SUNDOWN The sun was definitely dropping towards the horizon now. Vladinkov watched the Ops-Center’s initial foundations be laid out. He’d strong-armed a few sheriffs into helping out, and already they had the first floor built, if not sealed off. Jeanine was in the ‘science tent’ with a combat medic who had volunteered to help her analyze the local plant life. She had gone on at some length about how there seemed to be two different types, until Vladinkov had lost interest and excused himself. 20:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME DUSK Khulan’s buzzard made what must have been the hundredth round of the site, and he yawned, and contemplated napping, when someone gave a shout. “What the hell is that?” Khulan’s eyes shot open and he followed the mongol’s pointing finger. The man was pointing at a dark shape bounding across the freeway-sized branches of one of the huge trees that jutted above the canopy. Khulan saw that it appeared to be running on all fours, but looked like it had another pair of legs not in use in between them, and had dark bands on it’s back before it vanished into the canopy. “Take me in close,” ordered Khulan. “I want to get a look at this thing.” “Why, sir?” “Maybe if I show it to that geek chick she’ll fuck me!” Khulan and his men shared a round of boisterous laughter, and the buzzard slowed to a halt right over the huge branch. Khulan and one of his mongols hopped out. He waved away the buzzard. “Don’t come back unless I call.” “Gotcha sir.” Khulan walked over to the edge and grimaced. It looked like half a mile down. “Tengri’s ass, man, that’s a long drop.” The two of them walked down the branch a ways, but there was no sign of the creature. Khulan sighed and called the buzzard back. 21:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME, NIGHT Jeanine ignored the building of the ops-center as she wrote down what she could about the local plant life. Most of it seemed to be remarkably similar to earth plants. They photosynthesized and took in nutrients from water. However, a portion of the plants had strange, sticky, feathery organs that she couldn’t quite ascertained the use of. She had initially thought it was for capturing the insect-sized organisms, but none of the feathery strands had the tensile strength for that, and most other small creatures were at least a few inches long. She glanced up as the buzzard descended on the base. The larger bagger brother, Khulan, stepped out and started gesturing wildly to his companions. Jeanine sighed and ignored him. She turned to her assistant. “It’s too dark. Get me a halogen lamp, I’ll want to keep writing.” She glanced at Khulan. “And please tell Ranger Rick to shut up, I’m concentrating.” 22:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME, DUSK The soldiers were on edge. Nothing like a night on an alien world to put you on your toes. Vladinkov watched as miners patted down the road. It was perfectly level with the now-flat area they had for their base. The distaint earthen landing pad would be finished sometime during the week, and the ACT-dozers were working on clearing the trees between Camp Dismal and the landing…mound right now. Vlad was convening with Jeanine –apparently there was something about the atmosphere’s ‘flux magnetization vortices’ that interfered with drones. It made them more or less unusable, until a decent workaround was fixed- when an ear-splitting howl rang out. He looked around. All about him, people were looking up worriedly. The scream suddenly cut off as soon as it started. Vladinkov stood up and hurried over to a spot near the swamp bank where half a dozen people had clustered around. Several rangers were shining flashlights out into the bog, white beams piercing the darkness, and everyone was muttering. Vladinkov looked down and saw a bright red smear of blood. The smear led straight into the swamp, and didn’t come out. With a growing feeling of disturbance, he asked what was going on. “Something took one of our miners.” Vladinkov gulped. “Double the patrols.” 23:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME The Ops-Center’s next layer was finished. Vladinkov ordered all non-military personnel to go to bed, and added the APEs to patrol duty. 24 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME Nothing to report 01:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME Nothing to report 02:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME Nothing to report 03:00 HOURS, AGEAN LOCAL TIME Jeanine stood at the edge of the level zone, hands in her bog-suit’s pockets. She’d tried to get sleep, but had only managed two hours before some creature’s cry out in the swamp had roused her. She sighed. “Something up?” She turned around. Vladinkov was coming out of one of the communal tents that had been set up for sleepers. She shrugged. “I doubt you’d care.” “Try me.” “We’re on a new planet. A totally wild, unspoiled planet. This is both the best and worst accomplishment of our lives.” Vladinkov looked out over the dreary swamp. “I can see how it’s the best, but how is it the worst?” She shook her head and sighed. “If you can’t see it, I won’t bother telling you.” “Fine then,” Vladinkov scowled. “Be that way.” He turned and stalked off back to the tent. She looked out over the dark bog again and sighed.
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Post by Nepty on Oct 18, 2015 19:33:21 GMT
"Nice planet" Yekaterina Yevseyev, on landing on Primordia, March 5th, 2115AFCR 04:00 HOURS AFCRIST Conqueror’s Atlas A shot towards the Primordia landmass, skimming a mile above the vast ocean, white contrails trailing behind her wingtips. She was due to arrive at the landing zone in roughly one hour, at local sunrise. Aboard, Major Yevseyev Katerina was already having problems. “What do you mean ‘won’t work right’?” she asked, her voice low and dangerous. The drone tech cringed. “Major, I’m sorry, but the drones are having problems. They can follow their own subroutines provided you program them manually, but even then…” he shook his head. “Look, as far as I can figure, we’re getting severe electromagnetic interference. We can probably fix it, but we’d need a signal booster on every drone. It might take us up to three weeks” Yevseyev did not smile. She looked up at the bulk of the Phalanx drone, which was standing upright in the hull, online, but apparently having severe problems. “Explain.” “Okay, it’s like this,” said the tech. “Any high concentration of magnetism is going to fuck with the signals, but most of our SMART systems are equipped to deal with minor magnetic interference like cell phones and computers and all that, all the way up to dedicated jamming or EMPs. What we’re dealing with here though, is a planet rich in superconducting magnets. Each fleck of Avenite is extremely magnetic, and it’s always conducting.” “Go on.” “Okay. Even though it’s always conducting, individual flecks have negligible magnetic pulls. The magnetism in some places on this planet’s probably high enough to warp the path of a bullet a bit, but that’s probably rare. What’s going to be far more widespread is a much stronger electromagnetic field than Earth’s. I admit, we didn’t foresee this problem, because we didn’t take into account the latent field of superconductivity inherent in the ecosystem because we didn’t know how much there was…basically, the entire planet generates high-grade electromagnetic interference. Like a minor, constant EMP, in a way. The Orion probes probably only worked because they had superpowered transmitters for sending info back to earth. Radar, heat sensors, and cameras and all that jazz will work, because they mostly rely on either bouncing a blip, or internal, wire-based communication, but transmissions through the atmosphere are where we have problems. The broadband interference is going to screw up any sort of information transmission unless it’s a really powerful signal too.” “Meaning?” “Meaning that we’re gonna be in trouble when it comes to drones. Short-wave comms will still work, and the super-powerful transmitters on some of our best equipment, but we’re going to need to totally boost our smaller SMART systems with some extensive hardening. I mean the Husarias and Reiters will probably work, but until we amp up their transmitter power, forget the phalanxes or any squad level transmission over a couple of kilometers. It’s just that the small systems can’t be adequately protected yet. They’re not big enough to have extensive hardening like a Husaria. We’ll want to built backpacks for the Phalanxes or something, maybe an antennae. That’s probably work.” Yevseyev swore under her breath. “Bhoze moi.” She turned to address the rest of the landing party, comprised of one squad of AFCRCC, several scientists and several engineers. “We’re proceeding with the landing,” she announced. “But drone support will be unavailable for the time being.” She paused and looked hard at the drone tech. “We’re going to work on getting that fixed. Aren’t we?” “Yes ma’am,” he squeaked. One of the engineers looked like she was going to say something, and Yevseyev nailed her to the wall with a glare. She closed her mouth. “Alright, everyone, strap in.” 05:00 HOURS The Lagoon Beach, with Primordia's close-orbit moon, Sin, visible in the background. The Atlas banked as it flew low over the alien beach. Flocks of avian creatures fled into the sky in the wake of the tremendous noise, and a thirty-foot-high wall of spray was kicked up by its massive VTOL engines. The pilot considered his situation, then informed the passengers that he’d have to stack them up for a MOOR drop. The beach was clear, but it wasn’t big enough for the Atlas to land and lower its ramp. Atlas A banked and came around, while Atlas B shot in low, cargo ramp opening, one of the massive bombs sliding out, and impacting on the ground near the beach. The light shrubbery and trees of the beachside were blasted away in a massive explosion. Atlas A deftly slid into the space, nose pointed towards the forest, aft, and ramp towards the sea. Yevseyev was up instantly. “Alright, everyone, EVA packs on, get moving! We’re debarking in ten seconds!” The AFCRCC lined up at the ramp, which hissed as the air was cycled, the breathable earth atmosphere being replaced by the toxic primordian one. The ramp hit the sea, and Yevseyev and one of her commandos crab walked down, weapons panning left and right, checking for threats. They halted at the base of the ramp, and Yevseyev took two steps forward, boots making contact with the sand. She allowed herself a half-second of quiet contemplation. “Nice planet. Now, get down here you lot, and spread out, cover pattern!” The squad spread out, five soldiers having to deal with a job that had initially included three teams of drones. Each commando had to cover a forty meter wide zone themselves. Yevseyev took the honor of covering the shuttle’s point, watching the jungle. As she observed the blasted treeline, she watched a large, pale pink bird-like creature shoot out of the jungle and fly over her head. It looked a bit like a flying snake, with no mouth, and many multicolored fleshy wings beating at hummingbird rates, giving it the appearance of an airborne flower. She turned her attention back to the treeline as several scientists spotted it, and began filming, talking excitedly. (Incomplete biopsy. Complete biopsy would require SCIMOD analysts) Flower-Wing (Loluftero Magentis) All info thus known Wings are brightly colored Vegrandid 06:00 HOURS With the sun definitely visible in the sky now, the second flight landed. Each Atlas was given half an hour to unload before it had to take off to make way for the next flight coming in in another half an hour. The men were in good spirits. Despite the electromagnetic interference that disabled most small radios and standard transmission packages that served as communications between the Atlases and the ISTs were still functioning. Yevesyev assigned one commando to guard each slash-burner, two of which had been offloaded on the last flight, and were making progress in clearing the jungle. 07:00 HOURS The Engineers and scientists had reached a consensus on base layout. A large fence to keep the perimeter secure, then an interior base, with storage space for vehicles, an Ops-center, a few tower modules, a landing area for the Atlases and a dock for the ORDs near the sea. There had been no creatures yet spotted, beyond a few tiny flitgnat-type things fluttering through the air since they had seen the earlier flying organism. Yevesyev had a good feeling about this. It seemed her internal fears of an inhospitable death world were wrong after all. 08:00 HOURS Now that the sun was high in the sky, the heat was beginning to set in. The Commandos, encased in their cooled armor were untroubled, but the engineers and scientists were beginning to flag. Then, the unmistakable dull beat of a thumper opening fire rang out. Some sort of large alien, clearly a predator by the size and shape of its jaws, had come out of the underbrush and made straight for the commando guarding one of the slash-burners. He’d opened fire, but the creature seemed to leap before he shot at it, and had crashed into him, bearing him to the ground. Yevseyev arrived on the scene just in time to see the raptor-like organism bite down on the soldier’s torso. She took aim and opened fire, hitting the thing with her second shot, and blowing it’s main body cavity clean out. Within seconds, the area was crawling with medics and researchers. Thankfully, the commando was banged up, but alive. The bite had scored deep marks into his torso, but none had penetrated the armor. The creature was approached, but turned out not to be dead when it nearly took a scientist’s hand off. She fired four more bursts into its body and head, turning it into a heap of flesh and organs. After a preliminary autopsy, the scientists dubbed it “The Gyrojumper” for its apparently gyroscopically aligned organs. However, due to the damage done to it from the Thumper, nothing else could be learned from it (Incomplete Biopsy. Complete biopsy would require SCIMOD analasys) Gyrojumper (Sandorapax) -Extremely strong jaw and leg muscles. Given enough time, jaws may be able to damage even carbon-fiber armor. Teeth do not appear to be made of the same structure as it’s bone, but rather, a super-hard, super-sharp enamel-like material, and fused directly with the jaw. 09:00 HOURS Another squad of AFCRCC troops landed at 0900 hours, and Yevseyev was able to make sure the area was secure. The slash-burners and Dozers were working overtime, set to clear out the zone up to five kilometers in area. The last flight had also brought down a Husaria, which, bar a slight fuzz in its visual feed and some minor twitching, seemed to be working well enough. People seemed to feel safer with the gigantic robot guarding them. Its rotary side mounts and 75mm cannon would no doubt prove a boon if any other predators showed up. Yevseyev was glad that the Husaria seemed to function fine, but was unhappy that it too was suffering minor problems. According to what one of the geeks seemed to be saying, if Avenite was this powerful in planetary-grade quantities, the levels at large, natural concentrations would render any drone, flight instrument or other transmission-based electronics completely inoperable, no matter how much it was hardened. 10:00 HOURS The zone was expanded further, widening it out to three kilometers in area. The dozers and slash-burners were having an easy time of clearing the jungle. The true rainforest, further inland, however, would be much more difficult to clear, apparently. The trees were massive. According to the science team’s reports, the loose, sandy earth here made it difficult for the larger trees to take enough nutrients from the soil. 11:00 HOURS Near midday, a 15 minute break for lunch was called in the latest Atlas, which was bringing down the defoliators as well. The Defoliators cleared the ground that the dozers and slash-burners had taken care of earlier that day. Yevseyev finished her MRE and was back out in the field within minutes. The defoliators would totally clear the area, getting rid of all the wood and vegetation before the foundations for the first mods were laid down. 12:00 HOURS One of the Defoliators turned up some charred bones around midday when going over an area with its rear hoe. The bones were turned over to the science team. Evidently they’d been around for several months, and the team wanted a look at them. They weren’t identifiable as anything recognizable yet, without a Scimod, but Dr. Richards, who’d come in on the latest flight ordered them bagged for later identification. 14:00 HOURS Two hours after discovering the bones, the slash-burners moved deeper into the jungle to clear it further, and prepare for the eventual fencing zone. As the engineers began hacking at the ground with hand tools, one AFCRCC, Sergeant Elgort, assigned to guard the deeper-jungle slash-burners abruptly went offline, seemingly vanishing from the comms. No trace of sensors, and no trace of the homing beacon that was supposed to position him for the command elements. Fearing the worst, Yevseyev ordered all her troops to spread out and begin a search, but no man was to leave another’s sight. 15:00 HOURS The vanished soldier was found, just into the jungle, having been obscured by a large-leafed tree. Sergeant Elgort was clearly dead. Yevseyev was called to the scene immediately, and watched impassively as the cameras zoomed in on the body. His cybernetics were fried, and his chest armor was melted open, it seemed, and all that was left inside of the armor was a few traces of goop that a survey by Dr Richards proved to be a mix of extremely concentrated acid and human flesh. “There’s not enough in there for him to simply be melted. The acid clearly rendered down his body into organic slurry either vaporized the rest of it, or took it away…” he paused. “I would naturally assume that it was some sort of advanced weapon, considering the characteristics of what appears to be extreme electric shock…which is probably what turned off his armor and tracking beacons, but we didn’t detect any sort of cities by earth standards, so…I’m at a loss, honestly. I don’t know what did this. Possibly some native phenomena?” 16:00 HOURS Several small specimens of local organisms were bagged and tagged for inspection. 17:00 HOURS “Dr Alan Richard’s log…Five PM, Earth time. The local fauna seems to exhibit several monodominant traits, despite the obvious differences in several genuses. I’ve dissected only the one that Mrs Yekaterina killed earlier today, as in case any are sentient, I do not wish to incur local wrath. I can’t quite identify any familiar organs. The large predator from earlier proved difficult to analyze, as It was more or less blown to pieces. The smaller creatures seem to exhibit the following tendencies, however. -fleshy insectoids: Many of the small creatures that seem to take up the evolutionary niche of the insect on earth are much larger here. Most of them also have dedicated circulatory systems, with a sort of scaly, fleshy skin. They’re far more complicated than earth’s small life. -Orifice-based-consumption. All creatures so far identified seem to eat through holes in their faces or bodies that could loosely be called ‘mouths’ -Ten orifices, purpose unknown. I’ll need a dedicated science module, but I am interested in the fact that each creature appears to have ten holes in their ‘heads’ usually five to a side. I can’t identify the reason for this, however. -Blindness, or near-blindess. Most creatures thus far identified seem to be either blind, or near-blind. Those who are blind actually seem to have micro-receptors, or vestigial eyes of some sort located in what may have once been an ocular pit on some description, but these would be useless for anything other than vague shape dissertation. Some creatures have identifiable eyes, of a sort, but they have no whites, nor irises nor cornea. Instead, they seem to be mostly dark and primarily comprised of a material harder than human eyes. I can’t quite identify it, and it may be unique to this world. Their eyes seem to have no nerve endings in the ‘cornea’ itself, leading me to believe that this semi-cornea is more likely some sort of naturally translucent membrane. End log.” 18:00 HOURS The sun began to set as yet more people were landed. A Reiter drone was in among them, and, despite a fuzzy camera feed, proved to work. However, Yevseyev denied permission to launch it, as she didn’t know how far it’ signal would carry, and didn’t want to lose it in the jungle. 19:00 HOURS, LOCAL NIGHTFALL Night came swiftly on Primordia, and with it came the slash-burners finishing their clearing of the main habitation zone. The next Atlas down brought floodlights that were spaced in and around the area. 20:00 HOURS As the engineers and miners continued digging the foundations for the prefabricated buildings, another Atlas landed, and offloaded the first of many mechanic squads, who quickly set about checking the vehicles, and making sure they all worked. 21:00 HOURS Dr Richards whistled as he looked at the machine’s readouts. The Atmospheric Scanner had been brought down with the mechanics, and it told an interesting story. He explained it to Yevseyev. “Aeroplankton.” She looked nonplussed. He sighed and elaborated. “The air on Primordia is infused with trillions of small, semi-microscopic creatures. They’re floating around in the air, basically. That’s possibly another reason for the transmission issues, though I would still expect that electromagnetic interference is the largest culprit, in that regard.” He nodded to the Reiter. “We’ll want to be careful with those craft. If they fly too fast, they could tear their own wings off in the soup they call air here. Jet-based VTOL significantly smaller or less well bonded and armored than that of an Atlas would be almost non-viable until the system was overhauled. Thank god for rotors. We'll get you a VNE (Velocity-Not-To-Exceed) sometime tomorrow” 22:00 HOURS A small rockpool was discovered by one of the slash-burners working at night, teeming with miniature creatures that appeared to resembled alien seahorses with wings. (no image available, it's yet to be scanned) 23:00 HOURS Nothing eventful to report 24:00 HOURS Nothing eventful to report 01:00 HOURS Nothing eventful to report 02:00 HOURS Nothing eventful to report 03:00 HOURS At the night cycle ended, the engineers were fully ready to bring down the prefab modules and set up the base in earnest. Yevseyev sent a transmission back up to the Conqueror. “Landed, one casualty. All told, things seem to be doing well.” She paused. “Interesting planet. Nice place for a vacation.”
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Post by Nepty on Oct 18, 2015 20:35:48 GMT
SOLARIS UNLIMITED (Structured as Solaris’ Commander’s audio journal reports back to earth) 0:400 HOURS, DR. IRIDINE GRAY, TO JEREMY CLARKSON, CEO. AUDIO JOURNAL Hello sir! Hope you and Laura are doing well. Here’s my mission report. Ahem. Detached on schedule. We got through the atmosphere with minimal problems. The away team was three Atlas transporters and a pair of Zephyrs. I was in Zephyr A, with Dr. Ramirez. We spent the flight mostly in silence, or comparing notes on our landing one. Orbital imaging showed what appeared to be an open plain about the size of Rhode Island, so we were headed there. 0:500 HOURS, LOCAL SUNRISE Well…I’m on Primordia. It’s amazing. We arrived at the equatorial plains area at local sunset. It quickly became apparent that we’d…misjudged. What had appeared to be plains from orbit turned out to be…it’s difficult to explain, but later analysis proved it to be a bit like “grass-cactus.” We call it “Greatgrass.” It’s a plant, each stalk twenty to sixty meters high, that grows in huge masses and forms a plains-like carpet with irregular clumps where some stalks just seem to mat down. Each stalk is also extremely tough, and retains water very well. The whole plains area looks like the ocean, with gigantic clumps of tangle greatgrass irregularly appearing every few dozen feet, going up to fifty meters high, and then all of a sudden falling into vallies. It's quite the site. It's also a total maze of clumps. We call them "Green dunes" We didn’t have to drop a MOOR, like we’d feared. Instead, we landed right on top of a shallow patch of greatgrass between a few dozen large green-dunes. The stalks bent or burst open under the Zephyrs and Atlases. I set foot on Primordia first, followed by the camera crew, who made sure to catch my lading words. “This is one great step for me,” I said. “One giant leap for mankind.” Misquoting Armstrong. Yeah, I know, not the most creative, but I hadn’t made a speech beforehand. Anyways, as I was in the middle of my speech, something incredible happened. A group of…well, they looked like Taun-Tauns from those old Star Wars movies, if Taun-Tauns were the size of elephants and bright green. I’ve included sketches attached to this recording. Anyways, they wandered right into our clearing. Dr. Ramirez was squealing with delight and the myrmidons were watching them warily. We really didn’t expect this, right off the bat. We got a lot of good footage, which should be with you shortly. The creatures ended up wandering out soon enough. We’re not sure if they knew we were there or not, but I forbade going after them, despite Dr. Ramirez’s nagging. We had to get set up first. We debarked and quickly offloaded the Slash-burners. Our biggest worry was the grass snapping upright with us still on it and flinging us into the ionosphere, or tripping up in it. The nearby green-dunes had to go too, so we quickly got rid of the nearby dunes that hadn’t been flattened with slash-burners, then the shuttles dusted off, leaving us in our small field. 0600 HOURS Well that was some work. We spent roughly an hour cutting the plains area around us to the size of a Zephyr’s landing zone. The greatgrass was tough, but not so tough it could stand up to slash-burners. It took us about an hour, maybe. This is way easier than clearing trees, I’ll say that. I helped a bit. Go team! Right? Wow nevermind that sounded kind of stupid. 0700 HOURS Well holy shit. I don’t know what I saw but…holy shit. Okay let me start from the beginning. We had cleared a decent area, about a square kilometer, and had piled all the greatgrass that we’d cut down into a big pile off by the southern side. The plan was to clear a 10 km square area for the city itself, and possibly further if we wanted visibility. So, speaking of visibility, Colonel Myr had come down and had immediately started complaining about how we had no visibility to scan for threats, so she ordered a couple of her teams to get ready to climb or jump-pack the grass to the top of the green-dunes and see what was out there. Of course, the camera crews wanted to go too, in case anything new was found. They’d been filming nonstop since we landed. Anyways, as Kesa was telling them why they couldn’t come with her, someone suddenly shouted “Look out!” and I looked over to where the shout had come from. One of our guys was pointing upwards, and a second later, there was...well...the man who was pointing just vanished in a spray of gore as a dark blur shot out of the sky and then went back up, taking half his torso with him. He was wearing the myrmidon armor and everything. God, it was the most violent thing I’ve seen all my life. One second, the man was pointing into the sky, the next, this dark shape flashes right through him and his left arm, head and most of his body vanish in a spray of blood, and the rest of him just flies backward and hits the ground with a wet slap. I don’t even know what it was that took him, Even the cameras only show a dark blur. I think I’m going to take a break now. That was just too gory. God I swear, if I ever find out what did that there’ll be hell to pay… 0800 HOURS Okay, I’m feeling better now. Sorry about that. Right. So we’ve cleared out the rest of the ground cover area, and I managed to stop everyone from panicking about death from above. That was a nasty wakeup call. We need to remember that this isn’t a tropical vacation, this is an unknown world. We probably ran into Primordia’s tiger or something. Or Pteryodon, maybe. Kesa's posted sentries atop the green-dunes, so if they see anything approaching, they'll tell us. 0900 HOURS So we’ve cleared everything else out. I’m pretty happy with progress. We put a tarp over the man who got killed (Thomas Czarick, Louisiana, age twenty six, xenobotanist, by the way. I thought you would like to know.) and got to working on landing the Ops-Center. That thing’s in a big box, let me tell you. Anyways, we got it to the surface, no problem, and then started digging the hole to put it in. Should be done by midday, then we can start building the ops-center itself 10:00 HOURS Not much to report for the past hour. We found a few tiny insect-like animals and gave them to Ramerez and her people. Then someone had the idea that we might be able to find out exactly what the…shadow…that killed Czarik was, or at least how it killed from looking at his wounds. Unfortunately, when we went to go get his body, we lifted up the tarp to find out that…let’s just say that apparently the tiny necrovore life on this planet works fast, okay? I really wish my EVA pack filtered out smells. 11:00 HOURS Well god dammit. It’s raining like hell. A storm blew in a few minutes ago. No lightning, but it’s raining really heavily, and a few of the engineers have put up temporary shelters from tarp. Hopefully this storm should blow over soon, because the water’s beginning to build up. According to Ramirez, there’s something in the ground around here that makes it…repel? The water. It’s already half an inch deep. 12:00 HOURS Well we’ve got the foundation for the ops-center dug, and the last Zephyr in brought down some dominuses with industrial configurations to help set it up. Rameirez took soil samples and apparently the greatgrass (She’s calling it “Magnafaenum” literally ‘great grass’ in latin) secretes an oily substance from it’s base that mixes with the water and repels it from the ground. This would A: Explain why there’s nothing but the greatgrass and a bit of moss growing here, and B: would apparently make it easier for the greatgrass to absorb the water through the holes in it’s ‘trunk’ 1300 HOURS Well, the ops-center is in the hole. A hole in one. Heh. Anyways, we have the ops-center in the hole, as we said, but not set up yet, because, while the storm just blew over about half an hour ago, we’re still three inches deep in water, and if we open up the ops-center now, we might risk fouling up its more sensitive systems. Unlikely, but enough of a possibility to wait. So, I guess its lunch time now. I’ll be having mine in a dozer’s pressurized cabin. 1400 HOURS Okay, we really need to get rid of Czarik’s body. With the scavengers and the standing water, it’s starting to break off and float about. Two unlucky fellows got the job of packing him into a crate. Eugh. Hold on. Ramirez wants to talk. Pause log. THAT DAMN THING WAS BACK I don’t know if it was the same one or what, but it happened again. I was talking with Ramirez, and she was telling me about how the water should be all drained off by the magnafaenum within an hour, and then I hear this scream and gunfire from behind me. I looked around, and a couple of the sentries we posted earlier were shooting into the air. They wasted a fair bit of ammo before Kesa got them to stop by shouting enough. Apparently the full story is that a big dark blur came out of the sky again and this time one of our dozer drivers, who was taking a break, just vanished. A bit of blood, but he just…like…got grabbed or something. The myrmidons tried shooting after it, but it was long gone. That thing must be traveling at jet speeds. The sentries say they saw this black speck that grew huge in seconds rise out of the maze of dunes to flash by them to get to us before they could even open fire. One of them swears he nicked it, but I doubt that. That thing goes so fast even cameras can't get it. 1500 HOURS Great news! The drones are fucked! We brought down some Turtles and a section of Legions, and they just refuse to work. I don’t know what it is, really. I mean, they work a bit. You can program them manually, but drone communications are fried. Oh wait, nevermind. Doc just told me it’s probably EMI. Of course. Because nothing can go right for a change. We also found out that general squad-level communications have difficulties at any greater than two kilometers. Lots of interference. Same with visual feeds. Basically, anything that relies on transmissions, and doesn’t have a really powerful transmitter. Ironically, some of those old radios from the Indochinese wars might have been helpful. 1700 HOURS Well, its approaching sunset, and we have the first few levels of the ops-center set up. The slash-burners are really pulling out all the stops here. The dozers do ass-all against the magnafaenum, but the slash-burners get them down in record speed. We still haven’t pressurized the ops-center skeleton yet, but all in good time. 18:00 HOURS Sunset’s getting closer. The camera crews got a few more shots of the same bipedal creatures we saw earlier. (Our IST crews were talking with the German astronauts while we all confirmed our arrival insystem. Their ground guys ran into the same thing. They call the “Ramheads.” Pretty apt.) A couple of them looked like they were going to cause trouble, doing that whole ‘paw the ground’ thing, and a lot of noisemaking, but one of the myrmidons tossed an FB and scared them off. I’m putting him up for commendation for quick thinking. 1900 HOURS Well, the sun set, and guess what? Another storm! We put a tarp over the electronics for the ops-center and resealed them, but we’re going ahead with building its exterior. I am tired of breathing through an EVA-pack already. God, I’ve got five years of this to do. All joking aside, I wouldn’t trade my place now for any life I could otherwise had. This may be dangerous, but this is an incredible job. Unless it was maybe married to Daniel Harman, a mansion and a billion dollars. God, have you seen Harman’s movies? Stupid question. Course you have. Uh anyways, that’s not important. What is important is that it’s pouring rain again and now its pitch black too. 2000 HOURS It’d be eight PM back home on earth, and I wouldn’t have to worry about death shades from the sky coming to get me. I fucking miss earth. We lost two more to those black things. One of them was a myrmidon this time. One of the sentries Kesa posted earlier. It’s impossible to see them in this rainy dark mess, and heat vision is iffy at best. We get a lot of interference from the plankton in the air. However, we have found out a way to figure out if they’re coming now. There’s a slight hum in the air as they approach. It sounds a bit like a…WUMWUMWUMWUMWUMWUM only really, really fast. There’s usually a dwindling scream when it takes it’s prey. One of our guys heard the hum and jump-packed way to the left. He knocked over an engineer, but he's ninety percent sure he lived because of that. I’ve ordered everyone to keep within the range of the floodlights we’ve set up. The Ops-Center plating should be up by midnight. Ramirez says that it obviously doesn't hunt by regular sight, and probably not by sound. 2100 HOURS Coming to you from the north portion of the clearing now. Some engineers had a pretty good idea. They’re digging up a bunch of dirt to make ditches around the whole perimeter. This way, hopefully, if it rains again, the water will run off into the ditches. I’m with Administrator Smith here. Say hi to the boss Arty! “Um…hello Mr. Clarkson…” Real eloquent, Arty. 22:00 HOURS I think I’m getting numb. That thing was back. Got one of Rameirez’s scientists. This time it was like with Czarik. Got ripped in half. God, we need to get air cover. We considered going into the grass, but at night, it's literally pitch black. Like, tehre is no light. At all. It's abyssal. We'd get lost in minutes. I’ve ordered the mechanics to get at least two argentavises fully assembled by dawn. The Ops-Center’s outer shell is done except for the actual command module itself, and there’s no internal systems yet. Kesa’s got all the myrmidons watching the skies now. That thing comes back, we’ll fill it with lead. I’ve sent for a Zephyr to bring down an Argentavis. I don’t want to risk a quetzl in this…Ramirez calls it a flux vortices, and I gotta agree with her. We'll want it hardened first. 23:00 HOURS We got the Module finished. I’m calling in ten Atlases to serve as sleeping quarters overnight. We should be able to fit roughly four hundred people in each one, if everyone doesn’t mind sleeping on the cargo bay’s floor. We’ll pressurize them and all. Kesa wants to post guards, but I’d prefer not to leave anyone outside with that shadow thing or things still out there. Hold on, I’ve got to talk to my team Okay, we’ve reached a consensus. We’ll post a team of Myrmidons in foxholes around each Atlas. A zephyr will periodically come down and land on the south side of our clearing for unloading new equipment, then bug out. If they hear the wumming of the approaching creature, they’ll hunker down. 24:00 HOURS Well, this is Dr. Iridine Gray, talking to you finally without a damn EVA pack on. I’m in the cockpit of Atlas Y. The crew gave it up so I could have a room to myself, which is really nice of them. No activity outside, and our myrmidons are squared away in their foxholes. If anything tries to crawl in there with them, they can jump-pack right out, but hopefully that black thing is the only alien we have to worry about eating our faces. I’ll get back to you tomorrow morning. For now, this is Dr. Gray, signing off, from day one on Primordia. I’ve got to get my beauty sleep, haha. No but in all seriousness, we’re all waking up at 4 AM tomorrow to finish the ops-center and the drainage ditches. Early to rise, early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead.!
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Post by Nepty on Oct 19, 2015 15:42:40 GMT
REALSTEEL (due to the amount of landings, I won’t be doing them all the way through, only from morning to evening) FIRST LANDING 0600 HOURS, LOCAL SUNRISE Dr. Jane Crowley, Science Officer Holy shit holy shit holy shit holy shit. I’m about to land on Primordia. This is all I’ve dreamed about for five years. Five. Years. Jeeze, was I asleep for that long? I was. Okay. Okay, I’m calm. We’re landing in a few minutes, and I’ve got to get my EVA pack on. There’s a lot of cameramen here, and Sergeant Hertz and his squad of RSSO, and their supporting Python just in case we run into something hostile. I don’t know what we’ll run into. Atlas B just dropped a MOOR, and we’re cleared for landing. The logging won’t start until the second ship…this one is about exploration. Oh my god the ship just landed. Time to explore a brave new world. My past is behind me. Time for a new adventure. 0700 HOURS I…I can’t explain what I saw. The ramp opened up, and the Primordian air came in. It was like a dream. The trees…my god the trees here are massive. You could drop New York City on this planet and you’d never know it was there from orbit, the trees are just so…tall. I was first down the ramp, as per protocol. My first step onto primordian soil…I’ll remember this moment until the day I die. I am humanity’s ambassador to an alien world. This is my life’s works and hopes and dreams realized. The forest was beautiful. There were all kinds of trees. The huge monarch trees, “Arborexes” then the smaller, but still massive other trees, eventually coming down to the understory, and the forest floor. Life is everywhere here. It’s just…so abundant. Small creatures were flitting through the air, and here and there a larger, iridescent-winged creature buzzed by. I turned back to the camera, hoping it could still see my face through my EVA pack’s clear facemask (I checked later and yes, my face is very visible) I had my speech prepared. “Friends,” I began. “Family, countrymen…humanity. We have slipped the bonds of our earthly cradle, and now, we can truly say that we have begun to reach out into space, to boldly go where no man or woman has gone before, to see sights unseen by human eyes. We are the noble, the savage, the beautiful, the ugly. We are the teachers, and warriors, and learners, and healers…and most of all, we are mankind. This is our hour. Our day. Our millennium.” I turned away from the camera at that point. They cut in filming, and then were back up to recording every last detail. I took a breath of fresh air…well, filtered air, and got to work. We’d be filming as much as we could, and taking as many samples as possible for the next hour before the second Atlas arrived and began to clear an area for the base. The area itself isn’t exactly flat. We’re in a big river valley, and there’s mountains behind us. Far off in the distance, you can see them rise into snow-covered peaks, but they’re mostly covered in jungle. Through the periodic gap in the trees, you can spot the distant brown winding river going towards the blue-green smudge of Viridis Lacus. It’s beautiful here. 0800 HOURS We didn’t find any particularly large aliens, but we found a decent-sized life-form! It’s around the size of a large rat, with seven legs to a side. Haha, it tried to bite Dr Lang when he picked it up, but he got it into a specimen container quickly. It’s got five sort of pits in it’s head, and no visible eyes. I suppose the pits may be how it navigates? Sensors, of some sort. It’s got a pretty sizable pair of choppers on it’s face though. Those might be able to take your finger clean off. You’re a feisty little guy, aren’t you? Coochie coochie coo! Whosagudboy? “Dr Crowly, are you…tickling the alien?” Oh…hey Thomas. No, I was just, uh…nevermind. Back to business. 0900 HOURS The second Atlas came in, this one with the bulldozing equipment and slash-burners. Looks like it’s time to set up base. 1000 HOURS Oh my god it’s an alien! A real, honest to god alien! I was out by the dozers, when Sgt Hertz shouted “Alien! Holy shit it’s an alien!” I spun around, and Sgt Hertz was pointing at one of the slash-burners, which was offline (one of its treads had been fouled by a vine of some kind) It was…well it was an alien. It looked actually remarkably like us, in fact, if not for its hunched posture, it’s flicking tail, or the fact that it was perched on the Slash-Burner, grunting to itself and shaking an empty water bottle. The most interesting things about it though were that it was probably eight feet tall, and that it had a pouch of some kind slung over its shoulder, with a bunch of wooden stakes hanging from it, it looked like. Everyone was absolutely still, and watched as it tossed the bottle over its shoulder. It couldn't be whatever made those lights, could it? Whatever it was though, it was clearly intelligent. Then, it looked up and screeched at Sgt Hertz, and leapt off the Slash-burner and was swinging away through the jungle in an instant. I’ve never seen anything like it. It didn’t use the…arms, I guess? On it’s body, and instead used its pivoting legs, which were huge and incredibly muscular, to swing from tree to tree like an orangutan. Sgt Hertz raised his rifle but I convinced him not to shoot it. We got it on camera. 1100 HOURS Nothing much happened for a while. I’ve decided that if we see another alien like the one from earlier, we’ll try and capture it….am I an alien abductor? Rest assured, there will be no anal probing (Don’t even know if they have anuses) 1200 HOURS We spotted an interesting creature. A sort of birdlike snake. Couldn’t capture it though. 1300 HOURS We’ve got a lot of digging to do. Busy. Still hoping that alien comes back though. 1400 HOURS Still nothing. We’re gonna start leveling the ground with dozers soon. 1500 HOURS Leveling’s begun. Soon enough, we’ll have the mods set up. I’m going to go and run some tests. 1600 HOURS Oh man, this isn’t good. Corporal Henderson just got stung by some sort of animal. It flew up and stabbed him in the neck with a proboscis, is how he describes it, and then sucked something out while he tried to bat it off before flying away. The flesh around the wound’s starting to dissolve - Oh god, it’s still dissolving. His jugular vein is right nearby! Holy shit! He’s spurting! Someone get me a compress, oh my god! 1700 HOURS Corporal Henderson is stabilized. We got a compress on the wound, and he’ll be okay. Here sending him back up to the Neptune with this Atlas, which should be leaving in a few minutes. He’s being brought onboard on a stretcher, just sort of mumbling about his terrible luck. I should probably give him another shot of sedative. We can’t have him thrashing around during the dustoff. 1800 HOURS, LOCAL SUNSET This was an exciting day. I got to see a new planet, make a speech that will go down in history, see a primitive alien, then stop a man from bleeding to death….This is incredible, but I’m getting off world to sleep tonight. It’s a four hour flight, and I’ll be back in the morning, but I’m not feeling like trying to sleep in a landed shuttle. I’m in for the next Atlas out of here. I’ll be here for the next five years. No need to get greedy. LANDING SITE B (RSESC02) (Garden of the Gods) Recorded Messages, from VOYT, WILLIAM, CAPTAIN. 0900 HOURS Well, that’s a wrap. Dropped both our MOORs, landed, now we’re setting up. I’ll tell you, it’s a trip, being on an alien planet. Fucking incredible. One note, though. There’s an active volcano in our backyard. (And even so, this place was the best landing spot we could find in fifty thousand klicks. This whole continent is a total wilderness) Gonna want to get some geologists to look at that later. We’ve unloaded our slash-burners, dozers and all that. Had my boys and the engineers get to chopping at the wood they take down with hand tools. We’ll make a wall eventually, I think, just in case. Right now the idea is to just stick up a bunch of logs and make a few log cabins to store our electronics. We have a lot of guys, so we should be done in a few hours. 1000 HOURS Well aside from the small things, we haven’t seen any real impressive life forms. There’s some monkey-hoppers, and some roachlike things, and some beetle like things, but they’re kinda weird. They’ve got no hard shell, it’s all about this leathery material here. Most of them get interesting scale-like patterns on their backs. Four legs seems to be common, though I’ve seen some critters with up to eighteen or so. Nothing’s got any noticeable eyes though, which is kinda freaking me out. Oh well. No casualties, so my looks like the media was right about this being a ‘garden world.’ We’re gonna start getting the pits for the habs done now. Just a note, long range radio is on the fritz. The Atlases can still talk to each other, though itis fuzzy, but none of our personal radios have managed to raise the landing site at viridis lake. The atlas pilots can talk though, and apparently everything’s going smoothly. 1100 HOURS Well, one of our guys just got stung by a plant. Yeah, I said that. He saw some purple oblong pod growing on a tree and went to check it out, and the thing nailed him with a goddamned sniper round! Oay, exaggeration, we was a few feet away and the thing launched a needle of some kind at him. Got into his cheek and then pulled a fair bit of skin off when it reeled the needle back in. It’s some kind of bug-harpooning thing like we got on earth. Trippy. Anyways, the guy got pissed off and shot it up. No cell samples from that thing. 1200 HOURS Well the dozers have really started to go to town. We’ve got a lot of space cleared. Keep in mind, our landing site is one of the more lightly forested regions, so we can’t expect this kind of headway elsewhere. The next Atlas in is bringing in the habmods. 1300 HOURS I took a couple of guys and went for a stroll outside the wire. (Here meaning inside the treeline, haha) and boy it’s thick jungle here. Had to get machetes out and cut ourselves paths. We went about fifty meters into the green before we decided to head back in case we got lost. Honestly though it wasn’t hard to find the camp. Probably why we don’t see any large animals. Those dozers are hella loud, and the Atlases coming in are even noisier. We’ve finished the mod pits, but before we get them in, I got something to do. Time for lunch. 1400 HOURS Well fuck me sideways. I can die happy now. I’ve seen a dinosaur. Or a dragon. Or an alien. Or something. I’ll rehash. The Pythons were helping lower the first habmod into it’s foundation bed and then we hear this loud scream. Not a human scream, like an animal scream. Like the kind an eagle makes, yet really, really different. Everyone looked up and I saw it. How to describe it? Dino. Okay, honestly it looked a bit like if you blew up a parrot or something to ungodly proportions, then took away it’s feathers, smoothed out it’s beak and gave it membranes on the wings. We only saw it for a sec, but that was enough. It was diving down towards the trees, maybe going after something in the woods. The trees here are pretty young, and only go up to a hundred meters or so. Apparently it’s because the volcano erupted sometime in the past and killed all the trees, and these are new ones. 1500 HOURS Three in the afternoon. Huh. Time sure flies on an alien planet. Anyways, I’m off with Dozer Team Two to go check out the eventual Avenite mine site. It’s on the other side of this volcano, so we’ll clear a path around its base I think 1600 HOURS GOD. DAMN. IT. Well this world has a few nasty surprises in store for us it seems. So we were clearing the path to the mine. I was in my Python, helping to get the logs out of the dozers’ ways when all of a sudden someone shouts “Contact!” and there’s a god-awful roar. There was this thing that looked like a T-Rex had fucked a lion, and then the kid had fucked a nightmare tearing open the lead dozer. And yes, I mean tearing open, like, those claws ripped open solid steel in seconds and that huge armored head snapped up the driver like he was a peanut. Everyone was shooting. My boys were blasting away at full auto and everything. I pulled my Venom APE rifle off of its housing and took aim and let rip. The shots just spranged off its head and it pounced on a couple of my guys and ripped them to shreds in as fast as you could blink. It’s tail, which had some sort of club on it smashed a dude’s ribcage in and then did for another two. I ended up switching my fire to target it’s flank, and blew a bit of a chunk out of its hide, and it turned on me and roared. Jesus, the sound of it. I'm only alive today because Pythons 2 and 3 came up and started shooting at it. Didn't kill it, but we hurt it, and drove it off into the forest. I never want to see that thing again. I get the feeling it was just playing with us that first time. Maybe it's just territorial. I get the feeling it's still watching us. The scientists have decided to call it a "Bellator" which means "Warlike." Damn straight. The Bellator 1700 HOURS It’s getting towards nightfall. We put the three dead guys under a tarp and sent the wounded back up to the ship on the last Atlas out of here. We should hit the mine site by late evening. 1800 HOURS, LOCAL NIGHTFALL Well, we’ve been on the planet a day later than everyone else, unfortunately, due to the timezone difference, but it’s not that bad. We’re still the brave explorers and all that. We just broke ground at the Avenite mine with hand tools. We’ll want to be able to get the main excavator set up within a few weeks. Bar the god damn superpredator attack, I think it’s gone well…more or less. Now…I’ve got four letters to write. LANDING SITE C, TROJAN PENINSULA, LOG, KNIGHTLY, ARCHER, CAPTAIN 0900 HOURS Morning chaps! Up and at ‘em, we’ve got a bloody schedule to keep and I won’t have any slackers! Oh, damn, was this thing on? Bloody hell. Right. This is Captain Archer Knightly’s report, Site C, Trojan Peninsula deposit base. We’ve got enough materials to get a moderate base up. So, all’s well, I suppose. Dropped one MOOR, got everything unloaded, no native fauna of particular regard. I’ll be working with the digging teams. Time to get a habmod up. 1000 HOURS Still no sign of native life in any particular degree, thank god. I’ve not got much time for reports. Got to stay within the mission time allotted, after all. We unloaded the dozers last Atlas in and we’re going to clear the forest now. 1100 HOURS Bloody hell, we’ve got a problem. One of our defoliator drivers is concussed. Apparently something rammed him from inside the forest, bowled his defoliator and got away. No one saw what it was, but he wasn’t lying. I’m calling another ten of our Pythons down from the Journeystar, and putting them on perimeter duty. 1200 HOURS Lunch break, Then it’s time to dig latrines. 1300 HOURS We’ve cleared the site to about three km. Want to get another two before we’re ready to set up the base in earnest. 1400 HOURS Bloody hell am I supposed to log each hour? I don’t have the time for that! *sigh* We’re working on the habmods now 1600 HOURS God Damn but it is humid here. It’s probably upwards of ninety degrees. I think I’m sweating from my eyeballs. Oh, wait, no, I’m crying because some idiot bloody well ruined my afternoon tea with bloody milk. I’m putting the blighter on KP- no, extended KP! 1700 HOURS Right, we’ve got the Hab in its foundations. Time to start setting it up. 1800 HOURS Five O Clock and we’re done clearing the perimeter. No native animals to speak of still. 1900 HOURS Well, I say. It’s getting rather dark. I’ll have the Pythons turn on their panoramic light systems. It’s good to have walking floodlights. 20:000 HOURS, LOCAL NIGHTFALL. Well, that’s been my first day on an alien planet. Rather interesting experience all told. Bloody hell I’m stuck here for five more years. I’m not used to this damn heat, I’m English! I need a constant supply of drizzle and rain to…oh look at that, there’s a thunderstorm coming in. Ahh…just like home. Only it’s too fucking hot.
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Post by Nepty on Oct 25, 2015 18:13:24 GMT
2015 Primordia Day (30 hours) MISSION LOG Ori 1, Ori 2, Ori 3, Ori 4, Ori 5, Ori 6, Ori 7 (Ori: Primordian Day) PART 2: PIONEERS (Longhorn Ranching Limited) --------STAFF ROSTER Commander: Vladinkov Bagger (Camp Dismal) Administrator: Boris Lenin (Staging Ground 01) Chief of Security: Colonel Khulan Bagger (Camp Dismal) -Inf Com: Captain Julius Helman (Staging Ground 01) -Arm Com: Captain Lin Lau (Camp Dismal) -Air Com: Captain Nergui (In orbit over Cyrus) Chief Engineer: Buck Henderson (In Transit from Staging Ground 01 to Camp Dismal) Science Dept Head: Jeanine Dufresne (Camp Dismal) Foreman: David Howe (Camp Dismal, preparing for transit to Staging Ground 02) Admiral: Iosif Chenkov (In orbit over Cyrus) _____________________ SUPPLIES Surplus Inf Weapons: 50% Surplus Vehicle Weapons: 50% Ammo: 80% Explosives: 90% Laser Cells: 100% Sundries: 80% Spare Parts: 110% _________________ WEEKLY DEPLOYMENT ___________________ MONDAY, MARCH 6TH, 2115 Camp Dismal, Primordia Weather: Heavy Cloud Cover 0500 HOURS Roughly two hundred more personnel and quite a lot of equipment is brought down the first morning on Primordia, after everyone’s woken up. The shuttles make perfect landings on the landing pad area, and the personnel disembark, where Khulan, who’s been waiting there for them with a squad of Rangers, aggressively barks at the new arrivals to ‘fucking run’ and shouts at them all the way down the road into Camp Dismal. It’s hit the ground running on Agea. They’ve also brought Osels, and everyone at Camp Dismal is thankful for the firepower. Later that day, more hillocks are identified and slated for bulldozing. The ones not bulldozed yesterday are dozed today, and the earth is piled into the backs of the ACHs, and carted off to expand Camp Dismal and its nascent road system. Late in the afternoon, The Ops-Center is finally finished, electronics installed and all. However, before it can be brought online and made livable, it’s got to be hooked up to a power source, and the Atlases aren’t available to land nearby, so for now it simply looks over Camp Dismal, empty and dark. Tuesday, March 7th, 2115 Camp Dismal, Primordia Weather: Foggy, Clear later in the day The excess wood is chopped or cut with Slash-Burners and PMTs to make slats and palisades. Most of the wood is cut into long, ten foot stakes, planted in the ground, facing out towards the bog as a makeshift perimeter fence. A portion of the rest of the wood is used to make watchtowers, four at each edge of the island, each thirty meters tall. Each watchtower mounts one machinegun. Later in the day, the remaining wood is used to shore up the road, nicknamed “Bleak Street” which is now finished. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7TH, 2115 LRI Atlas A, over Terra Mysterium. Infantry Captain Julius Helman frowned and ordered the pilots to check their instruments again. “Are you sure?” he asked. The pilots nodded. “Yes sir. There’s a diffuse heat blob over the main Avenite deposit. Periodically, a small white hot blob flares up, but most of the blobs vary between fifty to a hundred degrees farenheit.” He shrugged. “Geothermal vents, probably.” Julius nodded slowly. “Well, we won’t be getting to the Avenite for another few days. We can worry about it then. How far away from the Avenite mine is our projected landing zone?” “About a hundred and fifty five miles from the deposit sir. We can’t get any closer from the air. The green’s too thick to clear with a MOOR here. It’s all Terassis trees and oppressive fog.” Terra Mysterium wasn’t known as “The Land of Mystery” for nothing. All year round, it was shrouded in a thick fog brought about by its placement at the convergence point for no less than seven major cold-hot ocean currents. Helman nodded. They would be landing some hundred and fifty kilometers from the avenite mine, then using dozers to clear a road through the rainforest, bypassing the massive trees and knocking down the smaller ones. It would be slow going, but once they got to the site, they’d make a concerted effort to clear out a landing zone from the ground, so choppers could deliver their stuff. _ Landing had gone smoothly, as anticipated. With several veteran rangers with them, they had expected more swamp. Instead, the terrain of the super-island seemed to mostly be extremely dense rainforest. It took the last two MOORs that the fleet carried with them to clear the jungle. Now, the three Atlases assigned to conduct the landing were unloading their men and equipment. _ Headway had been made in clearing the rainforest floor and understory of obstructions, though the Emperor Trees were another matter. The MOORs had damaged them badly, but not enough to make them come tumbling over, so it looked like this camp would have to be set up in their shadow. Helman was not pleased about the fact that it seemed that where Emperor trees grew, the rainforest could not be cleared, but it was a fact, and he had to face it. _ With the last of the equipment landed, and the 1-KM square area cleared of shrubbery, the main foundations for the camp were laid. The setup was simple- A ten foot deep trench in front of a ten foot high wall would surround the camp. Helman shanghaied all people involved in the landing into helping build these. Regulation was all well and good, but sometimes a helping hand was needed THURSDAY, MARCH 8TH, 2115 LRI STAGING GROUND A, TERRA MYSTERIUM, ACA “ORION” SYSTEM Boris stepped to the side as a pair of Cowbows carrying a stretcher rushed past him, heading for the landed Atlas that took up most of the space inside the earthen perimeter wall. A moaning, bleeding form was on the stretcher. Boris grimaced. He stopped an engineer jogging after them. “What happened?” “We were clearing some shrub. He fell into a Sentapede nest,” Boris grimaced. He’d heard about Sentapedes. Fourteen-legged, ten inch blind snakes with bites powerful enough to amputate a finger. “Carry on.” He passed them, navigating his way through the controlled chaos of LRI Staging Ground 01, better known by by the name the grunts had festooned on it: The Jungle. Heavy tarps lay across the ground in some places, where structures were due to be set up, and large piles of muddy soil rose in places, marking the sites of future bunkers or earthen rain shelters. They were living like they were in world war one here. Boris arrived at the impromptu command center to find Helman and Chief Engineer Buck Henderson already there. Henderson was on loan to them for the first week from Camp Dismal, to help them set up their base here. Both men were looking intently at the holotable that had been dragged out of the Atlas, power cords still attached, and set up as an impromptu command post. “If the soil’s as good for building as you say, then I’ll want earthen bunkers here, here, here and here.” Helman was saying, jabbing his finger at each corner of the square fort that was The Jungle. “Each one two stories tall. A sentry gun on the roof, a firing slit on the second story and a small armory on the first story.” “What about living space?” asked Buck. “People can triple up,” said Helman. “And we’ll keep the garage in the FORCOM sealed and convert it to living space too. That should be enough for four hundred people, unless you got any better ideas.” “Can’t say I do,” replied Buck. Then he looked up. “Morning Administrator.” Boris scratched his head. “Da, morning. Is it still morning?” “It’s eleven AM,” explained Helman. “Or at least I think it is. Timekeeping’s kind of wonky with all this magnetic interference.” Boris nodded. “You’re right. My men have been complaining about their schedules messing up. We need to just set a time and be done with it.” Buck nodded. “True enough. So,” he turned to Boris. “How do you find Primordia?” Boris grimaced. “It’s a deathtrap, but it’s pretty.” He shook his head. “Enough of that. What’s the plan?” Helman zoomed out on the holotable’s display, depicting their section of Terra Mysterium. “We got three options to get to the deposit” He said, pointing at the highlighted glowing red dot. “Option one, we go through this pass here,” he pointed at a deep valley pass. “It’s called Rawth Vallis, and’s got trees making an arch over the entirety of the pass, and we sent the geosurvey to Camp Dismal to be analyzed. Dr Jeanine says the soil of the valley is probably strewn with rocks from rockfalls, and since this is the monsoon season we’ve landed in, we’ve got to worry about potential mudslides.” He shifted his finger north. “Our third option is my least favorite. We go over these hills. Less worry about mudslides, but we don’t know how the ACHs and Bartaats will do in the highlands.” Finally, he pointed directly south of them. “About forty mikes due south, there’s an area of extremely dense rainforest lowlands. It’ll be swampy and unpleasant, and the foliage is layered so thick our radar can’t penetrate at all, but we might be able to push through. It’s probably the safest option.” Boris nodded. “They’re my ACHs, but this is really the commander’s call here. I’ll send him a message.” He forwarded off a detailed message. Minutes later, the answer came back. They would take "Route Irish" the road through the jungle lowlands. Friday, March 9th, 2115 Atlas D, In Transit To Eventual LRI Staging Ground B Site, Primordia, ACA-Orion System Foreman David Howe rubbed his head irritably. He’d left orbit no more than three hours ago. He had woken up from MET only six hours before that. He still had the headache, the mouth feeling like it was stuffed full of cotton and the minor bouts of nausea that came with waking up. He was dressed in a pair of khaki pants and a blue shirt and collar. He also wore boots, in case it was also a swamp here. They’d be landing in an open area this time. They had no MOORs, and the radio was acting up, so they were going to land in a large clearing of open grassland. - The copilot of Atlas D checked his systems again. They were showing substantial overheating on the left thruster. His brows knitted. Atlas D had been stored atop her mother IST during transit from earth. Each IST comes fully equipped with laser arrays and foil shielding to protect it from dust and micro-meteor impacts. However, Atlas D was older model, a 2060 second generation Atlas Lifter, not one of the newer fifth generations that comprised most of this fleet. She had only foil shielding and none of the minilasers that would vaporize micro-asteroids on contact with the hull in outer space. As it had happened, roughly 2 years ago, as the IST entered Orion’s outer oort dust cloud, a small micro-meteor, no larger than a watermelon seed had been floating into her path. At 99.9% of the speed of light, the ship passed the micro-meteor and was hundreds of kilometers away before a human being coule even blink. However, what had actually happened was that the micro-meteor had been perfectly positioned, as it drifted through space, to collide with Atlas D’s drive intake. Unnoticed, the shuttle, which had been going at near-lightspeed had gone so fast that it had obliterated the micro-meteor. The space object, however, had been hit by the ship’s left thruster, and by freak chance had slipped in between her armor plates where there was no bonding, to allow for the heat shields to open. The tiny object had perforated the right left engine. The copilot turned to his partner. “Hey, Jer? When we land, I want to check out the main left drive thrust-” The main left drive thruster made a horrible metallic smashing noise as the turbine slipped its damaged rod and tore through the fuel line, which ignited milliseconds later. The temperature in the hold rose several degrees, and alarms began to blare. David looked up at the flashing red lights. “All personnel, secure seatbelts immediately. Prepare for emergency landing protocol,” an automated voice spoke over the loudspeaker. “EVA-packs on immediately.” He felt the blood drain from his face. A huge metal crash bar descended from the ceiling, clanging to a halt as it rested in front of him. People were screaming, and he realized belatedly he was one of them. _ Outside, automatic firesprayers were already working on dousing the blaze, and the turbine had been cut off from it’s power supply. The fuel line was severed by the main computer, and the flames died down to a flicker, then to nothing. The huge Atlas banked to a slow descent, wheels coming out of their wells. She eventually came to a halt as she impacted heavily on the ground of a large clearing, bumping several times, before finally coming to a halt right before hitting the trees. _ David Howe was one of the first out of the cargo hold and out into the Primordian clearing. He heaved a sigh. Three people had been seriously injured, but no one harmed. He looked around. This was a big clearing, and would work, he guessed, for setting up a base if they cleared it…but no Atlas could land in it with their own taking up space. He glanced back to the atlas. With her main turbine out of order, she wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. He looked back towards the clearing and began considering his options…then stopped and stared. People were murmuring all around him, pointing and gasping. Ten huge polyhedrons of cut stone, ten meters tall, one wide, and freshly cleaned of encroaching plant life were arraigned in a semicircle around a central stone slab. - “Well, our schedule is fucked, Dr., fucked!” said David, over the radio, trying to still his shaking hands. “We can communicate with you, but there’s no way for an Atlas to land within three hundred kilometers of here. We don’t have any materials for clearing the forest or fixing the Atlas, and all our vehicles are with the other Atlases.” He sighed. “And we’re out of a Buzzard’s operational range.” He looked back outside, where his companions -25 Cowboys, 25 miners, 20 engineers, 25 mechanics and 5 rangers- had set up a makeshift campsite. They hadn’t run into any native fauna yet, but the structure was still creeping him out. There was something about its stark loneliness…and the discolored stained stone of the altar that disturbed him.
FRIDAY, MARCH 9TH LRI CAMP DISMAL, AGEA, PRIMORDIA, ACA ORION SYSTEM
Jeanine sighed. The radio conversation was painfully slow. Atlas D was transmitting to the IST, which was in turn transmitting to the ops-center’s main comms array. For the past several days, LRI had made Camp Dismal a home of sorts The Ops-center in the center-southeast of the camp controlled all the other buildings, and thankfully Jeanine had actual quarters now. Right now, she was standing in the austere metal environment of the ops-center’s command module, staring out the huge reinforced windows, as the quiet hum of machinery soothed her mind, and the quiet buzz of conversation among the twenty personnel in the command module put her at ease while listening to David panic over the holo-transmitter. “Just keep calm David. No one died, and the Atlas hasn’t been permanently damaged, has it? the administrator’s on his way up. We’ll discuss this more later,” she said to David’s holographic face. She nodded to the communications officer, who turned off the visual feed. She had sent off a message to Commander Vladinkov, asking him to come as quickly as possible. One of their Atlases had gone down due to mechanical problems, and was now stranded in a dense rainforest, with no safe landing site for forty kilometers. Furthermore, they’d found…something. Jeanine cocked an eyebrow as Vladinkov suddenly burst into the room, wearing foul-weather gear and filthy mud gators, literally elbowing the doors open, panting, clearing having run the entire way there. He jostled his way to Jeanine, who took a step back. "I want a full status report, how many injured we might have, and option for recovery of men and equipment." Taking a moment to catch his breath, he stood up straight and brushed down his hair and uniform a bit, obviously trying to regain a posture of calm command. Jeanine grimaced. "Atlas D was headed to site three, to help set it up, when her left thruster caught fire. The copilot reported it was overheated several moments before the blaze. She was forced to make an emergency landing in a clearing, and her left thruster's been melted to slag." She consulted the E-notes again. "There's three people wounded. Two broken ribs, one ruptured kidney and a concussion. We'll need to get the second one out of there as soon as possible or he'll die within forty eight hours, but there's no other atlas landing site within forty kilometers, and we used the last of our MOORs without Primordia fleet for clearing site two and it's far, far out of buzzard range from Camp Dismal." She cleared her throat. "Also, Forman Howe is on Atlas D and stranded as well. He says that the clearing they're in has...structures in it." Vladinkov was scratching his chin up until the last moment. "You said....structures? like....non natural- wait no" he shook whatever thought was in his head out and changed subject quickly. "Our main goal is recovery, no matter how amazing a find. Someone get me Buck, I need to know how soon we can get a Khalim put together if we dedicate all resources we can to it." "But commander," said Jeanine, "It's a structure! And it's been cleared of moss! This almost certainly means there's intelligent life on this planet with us! Surely you can at least let me go along with the recovery team! To study it" Vladinkov lowered his hands from his chin and stared Jeanine in the eyes. "And we have an entire Atlas of supplies as well as 3 men who need medical attention. If there is intelligent life still on this planet making our priority our own lives will not suddenly make them go extinct." Jeanine grew silent. "Yes sir." She was about to route the order through when she paused. "Could you at least let them drop a beacon off at the site when we go for recovery, and me and my team could take a look at the structures at a later date?" "Of course, though I’ll be sending an escort, Don’t want your aliens coming home and finding free lunch. now, do we? Now where the hell is Buck?" Vlad said, turning to the comms officer. "Umm...Buck went to Site 2 yesterday," muttered Jeanine. "He's helping oversee the construction of the base there." Vlad cursed, "well then looks like it’s about to be Christmas for him soon. Have an Atlas land at his site with a Khalim and instructions to get it built ASAP along with ATLAS Ds situation and coordinates." - Back on the transmitter some half an hour later, Jeanine was finishing up. “Alright David, hang in there. We’re sending a Khalim to go get you and your men. It should be with you in around twenty four hours.” “You’re cutting it close Mrs Dufresne,” complained the foreman. “It’s the best we can do.” “He calm down any?” asked Vladinkov. He was standing at the main holotable, looking at orbital imaging of the crash site, sipping coffee, back in his trousers and buttondown now. “Not as far as I can tell.” She raised an eyebrow. “I’m going to be getting together my team for when we go out to analyze those structures soon, though. He seems to be describing some sort of henge, or stone circle.” “I’m sure you’ll look into it,” waved Vladinkov. Jeanine was about to reply, when David’s panicked voice came through again. She sighed and picked up the receiver once more. SATURDAY MARCH 10TH, 2115 AGEA, ACA ORION SYSTEM Security Lieutenant Barnes: Report Not much to report on Sunday-Security ever since the Khalim took off to go get the crash...survivors? However, at around 4 AM, there was a large “boom-and-zoom” somewhere out in the swamp, consistent with a sonic boom. Either an asteroid came down, or somebody’s been spying on us. SUNDAY LRI STAGING GROUND 01, TERRA MYSTERIUM, SILURIA, PRIMORDIA. 1333 HOURS
Buck Henderson scratched his ear as they rolled over the soft ground. The exploration team was composed of three Bartaats, including the one he was riding in, three Loshads, and a Buzzard flying air cover. He was mapping the ground terrain. Thus far, it was incredibly slow going. The IFVs could slowly make it through the thick vegetation, but the cowboys flanking it had to cut a path for it with chainsaws or pressure jets. Forty minutes in, a cowboy bagged a live alien, a tiny little “monkey-rabbit” and handed it off to Henderson to ship to Jeanine for study. An hour later, Buck decided he’d ride on top of the IFV, where it wasn’t so swelteringly hot. - 1400 HOURS “So there’s a clearing about a quarter klick from here,” said the buzzard pilot over the radio, his voice scratchy. “It’s got something in it. Not sure what it is.” “We’ll check it out,” said Buck, nodded to the driver to get them there. “What exactly do you mean ‘something’?” “Organism of some kind. Looks wounded or dead, I think.” “Nice.” Buck dismounted from the IFV and walked along with the cowboys for a bit until they got to the clearing. The clearing in question was large enough to land a Khalim in, and there were a few boggy pools of water here and there. What captivated their interesting, however, was the grunting, snorting creature in the center, under a small stand of trees. A big Ramhead was clearly mortally wounded, a giant gash taken out of its side, giant black eyes rolling madly in it’s head. Buck lipped his lips. Maybe a wounded lion could still bite. He nodded to one of the Cowboys. “Finish it off.” The contractor nodded and walked up close to the creature and raised his rifle to deliver a killing shot. The cowboy lowered his rifle after several seconds of standing still. “Hey boss, check this out.” _ Buck Keppler’s Audiovisual Report. Well we found something very, very interesting today. Hunting darts embedded in a still-living creature. Very primitive weapons. Each one is made from obsidian, weighted and tied off, with whittled fletching, but the speed they must have been going to get that deep into Ramhead hide doesn’t bear thinking about. They’d go right through hard body armor from force alone. Looks like we’ve got neighbors. They probably got scared off of the kill when we showed up _ LANDING PAD CAMP DISMAL, AGEA, PRIMORDIA, ORION SYSTEM SUNDAY, 1500 HOURS, Captain Lau watched as the Khalim offloaded the crash…survivors? The worst case was an unresponsive man who’s kidney had ruptured. He was run to the medical module as quick as possible by a pair of stretcher-carrying medics. She pursed her lips. This Khalim’s trip had delayed her landing, but it was of course necessary. The men came first. She waited until David came out. “Good morning David.” The mining forman blinked dazedly. “Morning Lin.” “So what’s this about structures?” He groanded. “Oh please, not this again. Can’t I go five minuties without someone asking me about structures? They’re thousands of miles away now, okay?” “But-” “Just give it a rest Lin. Can we go someplace more private?” _ OPS-CENTER CAMP DISMAL, AGEA, PRIMORDIA, ORION SYSTEM SUNDAY 2200 HOURS
Khulan smiled contentedly to himself as the elevator came to a halt at the ops-center’s military officerial staff housing level. It was time to turn in for the night. He’d spent most of the week overseeing the setup of the various modules and generally to the camp’s defence. Now it was time to turn in and prepare for week two on Primordia. There’d been no deaths at all this week, thankfully. He checked his E-pad. He still had one or two things to do. Cheifley among them was see captain Lau about when there was time to bring her tanks down and set up an armor pool and ramp. They’d need more space for that. He stopped by the door to her cramped, but still private suit and rang the buzzer. “Captain Lau,” he said into the speaker. “We need to talk about the flight schedule in relation to your tanks.” “Just a minute commander.” The captain’s voice sounded flustered. Khulan arched an eyebrow as banging and scraping noises like the moving of furniture emenated from the room. “Come in.” The door released and he stepped in, ignoring the rumpled sheets and half-ajar wall-fixture wardrobe. “Am I interrupting something?” “No, no colonel. What was it you wanted?” Khulan remained unconvinced. “Right. Well, I wanted to tell you that there’s one flight tomorrow that can carry some of your tanks down and get them assembled. The crews are already down, and the mechanics should get your toys assembled by the evening. Is that satisfactory. “Of course, colonel.” Khulan nodded and left. Right before he stepped out of the door he paused. “Oh, and tell David to get out of the closet and put some clothes on.” He stepped outside. “God forbid you see him out of uniform.” He winked boorishly. Captain Lau, adopted a stony expression and shut the door on his leering face and he laughed about it all the way to his room.
WEEK ENDS Mining ReportNo mines yet established REPORT INBOX: COMMANDER From: Dufresne, Jeanine, Science Head So I’ve been looking at the fauna we’ve taken apart in the science module’s lab. Most see in most known spectrums, using photoreceptors in their sensor pits (the five holes on each side of their head) and breath through a secondary orifice atop their back. This orifice is covered by both a protective membrane that can be closed at will and internal pressure that prevents liquid from entering. It also has a rain cover, of a sort. I believe that this is to allow these creatures to freely breath while eating, much like the palatal plate in earth’s mammals, only their nose is located atop their back. The nose-like structure on their face is actually a resonance chamber (their ears) for pinpointing sounds. Though some have this resonance chamber covered with a taut layer of skin to prevent anything from getting inside. From: Lenin, Boris, Admin Well, we’ve begun our travel along Rout Irish through the lowlands. We should get to the Terra Mysterium lode within two weeks. Side note. This base is bloody miserable. Could we have a Khalim quartered here? We may need to make medevacs every now and then to Camp Dismal, and it’s not such a long flight. From: Nergui, Aviation Captain (Cyrus Orbit) Can we just land already? I’m getting antsy. From: Henderson, Buck, Engineer Chief So you want me to deconstruct a Khalim for materials, is that correct sir? Here’s my idea for a roster 2 Khalims: Quartered at Staging Ground 01 2 Khalims: Quartered at staging ground 02 4 Khalims: Quartered at Camp Dismal 1 Science Khalim (They’ll want one, sir) 1 to be deconstructed and used for materials (What is it you want me to use it for again sir?) From: Henderson, Buck We’ve used a lot of the extra carbon fiber be brought in making a fence around the camp we have so far, commander. No wildlife incursions so far. From: Bagger, Khulan Hey bro, guess what? We’ve got all our personnel down. Guess what else? I’m taking the next flight out of here to staging ground 02. Tomorrow morning. I’m headed off to staging ground 02 to oversee our construction of a base there (Building base 02 was kind of hampered by the crash) Furthermore, at somepoint in the week we know the geek chick and her cronies are going to want to go jack off to that alien structure, so I’ll go with them. I’m interested too. Always wanted to shoot an alien. From: Dufresne, Jeanine Update. The soldier with the ruptured kidney is stabilized. They called me in personally to conduct the surgery. Eugh, I hate being a doctor sometimes. Anyways, I’m having him sent up on the next flight into orbit to heal in the regenerator. Total change of topic now. The science and medical modules have stuff strewn about everywhere. The engineers never finished installing the cables so there’s open wires all over the place. Could you get someone on that? Thanks, Jeanine. From: Howe, David Can we get that gravel mine set up at some point? My miners are feeling like there’s nothing to do around here. Also, tell Khulan to be less obtuse. Also, we were forced to leave Atlas D behind in the clearing during the evac. We’ll want to recover it at some point. From: Dufrense, Jeanine I’ve Identified another animal. A native to these swamps. We’ll want to be careful when patrols enter the water. It’s a two-foot long creature, and I’ve analyzed it in the scimod. The men call it a “Viper-Pike” It’s mostly head. Its main body is used as propulsion while the two vestigial fins are used for steering. It’s got a painful but non venomous bite (We found it after it bit one of our men) that’s not particularly harmful either, but studies show it’s metabolism could support it growing up to 5 feet long, at which point it could take a man’s leg off. It has one long sensor canal on its head, and neck spines that are covered in a toxin of sorts. I highly advise not leaving the camp without mud gators. If those spines brush you, you could end up with a nasty fever. From: Chenkov, Iosif Having scanned Cyrus for available landing spots, we are noting extreme magnetic vortices (called Violent Vortices by some of the men. Xa xa xa.) We can’t ascertain their strength, but it is no doubt massive. The world will be perpetually shrouded in darkness, and extreme winds are to be expected in the upper atmosphere. After a week of scanning, we have determined several safe paths through the vortices. From: Dufresne, Jeanine. Well, that's week one done with. Good god but it is hard living out here.
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Post by Nepty on Oct 25, 2015 19:00:52 GMT
Part Three Drang Nacht Alpha Cenauri KRUPP STAHLWERKE --------Staff Commander: Gunther Immelhof (Festung Ruhr) Administrator: Pierre Duchamp (Festung Ruhr) Chief of Security: Colonel Felix Adler (Festung Ruhr) -Inf Com: Captain Otto Koch (Festung Ruhr) -Special Com: Captain Helena Vogel (Festung Ruhr) -Air Com: Captain Herman Werner (Festung Ruhr) -Naval Com: Captain Johannes Herstal (Orbit, Primordia) Chief Engineer: Hernan Martinez (Festung Ruhr) Science Dept Head: Dr. Saeed Satrapy (Festung Ruhr) Foreman: Anja Chopin (Festung Ruhr) Admiral: Hans Lars (Orbit, Primordia) ___________________ SUPPLIES _________________ Surplus Inf Weapons: 50% Surplus Vehicle Weapons: 50% Ammo: 75% Explosives: 100% Laser Cells: 100% Sundries: 100% Spare Parts: 100% DEPLOYMENT ______________ WEEKLY REPORT
Time: Monday, March 6th, 2115 Location: Atlas A, Festung Ruhr, Cretacia, Primordia, ACA-Orion system Chief engineer Martinez groaned and opened his eyes. “Ai way,” he muttered, rubbing his head with his non-bandaged hand. His hibernation-hangover was still coming on strong. He felt like someone had run a jeep into him. There was work to be done though. He rose in the darkness of the Atlases cargo hold, crawling out of his sleeping bag and slapping the alarm off. The cargo hold was dark aside from a strip of soft blue lights on the ceiling. He carefully tiptoed through the four hundred or so people sleeping in the shuttle. “WAKE UP PEOPLE, I WANT SIX TONS OF CONCRETE MIXED FIVE YEARS AGO!” The lights all came to life and Martinez repeatedly slammed his hand down on the button for cargo bay’s loading horn. He grinned as his personnel groaned and moaned awake, any of them slamming their hands over their ears. With the engineers up and active now, Festung Ruhr slowly came to life. After a light breakfast, soldiers and civilians began to shuffle this way and that, carrying crates or PMTs. A light fog had rolled in one hour ago and the whole zone was shrouded in it. It was time to work. The dozers sputtered back to life, headlights piercing the darkness, and soldiers groggily walking alongside as they prepared to deforest the whole thirteen kilometer area needed for the eventual base. At sunrise, when Adler deemed it safe enough to return to the mine site, the miners return to digging up rocks at the gravel mine, which by now was a sizable pit some four meters deep and a hundred wide. As they dug, a team of mechanics began installing twelve sentry guns in the mass of logged trunks and devastation that was the deforested mine site’s perimeter. The weapons were placed, loaded and armed without issue, but a lack of foresight on Forwoman Anja’s part means that the weapons are inactive. There’s no power source for them yet. In the meantime, a company of panzergrenadiers and four IFVs were deployed. The grenadiers took up positions in foxholes and complained of the growing heat for most of the day. Roughly half of the mining equipment was sent down to the mine by 08:00 hours. At the end of the day, commander Immelholf made his presence known, coming down to the site on an Atlas and unloading just as the clearing was widened to four kilometers in area. TUESDAY, MARCH 7TH, 2115 Festung Ruhr, Primordia, ACA-Orion System. 0500 hours Breakfast today was imitation ham and eggs with vitamin pills in Atlases A, B, C, D and E. Colonel Adler finished his early, and then went to atlas C, where the security personnel were eating, to give everyone a brief pep talk. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s our third day on Primordia. Yesterday, we had no deaths!” There was a ragged round of applause at this news. “Let’s make today the same.” He immediately took on a more serious demeanor. “We’ll need to know more about the air. The combat aircraft are finishing assembly today, so we’re going to run the Mowe 18s and Hammers through some systems checks and test flights. The Eagles will be assembled tomorrow and the next day, but for today, I want all pilots and drone operators to report to your birds or stations immediately.” _ Festung Ruhr, Primordia, ACA-Orion System. 1200 hours
“So we’ll be able to fly,” Werner told him over lunch, after the test flights. “But we’ll want to spend the rest of the day going through flight tests before we try any long range flying. Furthermore, nearly all of our fight instruments are totally screwed, and there’s no way to ‘fix’ them. More than half of them require a magnetic north to be relevant to, and with the crazy magnetism all over the place here, there’s no way we’re going to be able to make that work.” He paused to eat another spoonful of imitation tomato soup. “So we’re stuck flying like the Luftwaffe.” Adler winced. “Right. Like old time pilots.” - “Critical systems normal,” replied the copilot. “Some noncritical are still on the fritz though.” “Right, lets get some lift.” Werner flipped the switches on his dashboard. “This is Mowe 18 10, getting airborne. Several hundred people stopped mid-work to watch interestedly as Werner’s Mowe rose to ten feet, then slowly drifted forwards, turned, then rose another hundred feet, before sharply diving and coming to a complete stop. The Mowes would work. The Hammers were another story. Each one of the strike drones was suffering some sort of issue. The VTOL couldn’t get enough propulsion to lift off and the sensor array was heavily hamstrung. Adler ran his fingers through his hair irritatingly. “Scheisse. For every step of progress we make, we step on another caltrop.”
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8th 2115
Festung Ruhr, ACA-Orion System.
After a 4:30 AM breakfast of Imitation spaghetti, during which Forwoman Anja was heard loudly complaining about how undercooked the vermicelli was, the people filed out of their Atlases once more and the night guards were relived. The first order of the day was hooking up the industrial batteries to the six stationary Atlases currently serving as cramped sleeping spaces for the planetside contingent of Festung Ruhr. This was done while it was still dark out. Excess power was then run through more than three dozen industrial extension cables along the road to give power to the sentry guns, five kilometers away. At sunup at 5:34 AM the fifty men of Force Recon re-entered their Atlas and locked and loaded. Each man or woman armed and armored themselves. Captain Helena Vogel, their commander announced that she would accompany them on their mission today. She put on thick, Kevlar body armor with a heavy steel ballistics plate over top and a helmet. Meanwhile, Herman Werner watched unsmilingly as the techs rushed about on the cleared dustoff spot for his crown jewels, his squadron of 10 Mowe 18 Attack tiltrotors. His 20 pilots were going through their preflight checklists. At 6:30 AM, as Duchamp’s miners slaved away in the gravel pit, and Martinez and his engineers worked with Anja and her mechanics to finish the FORCOM, the off-duty personnel gathered around the Mowe’s cleared spot and watched with interest as the Special Forces Atlas’s ramp lowered and the fifty men of Force Recon rushed out onto the field with military precision, each squad getting in their assigned chopper. Captain Vogel followed them, and nodded to Werner. Shed’ be in the copilot’s seat of his best flier this mission, despite the captain having offered to let her ride with him, insisting that “I don’t need a copilot,” Nevertheless, this joint operation necessitated the commanders be in separate locations. The seating in the Mowe also allowed her to coordinate her ground troops if need be. Today’s op would be close recon. The Mowes would fly in two groups of five, one going west, the other east, for twenty kilometers, at a slow speed of twenty knots, to fully map out their covered area, periodically dropping sensor disks. They’d then both turn left and swing around in a semicircle, the total force overall covering the entire twenty kilometer ring near the main base. There was some worry as to navigation, but both captains were adamant that they could navigate by visuals and radio alone. The choppers took off at 7 AM, to a ragged cheer from watching personnel, some of whom called out at the recon troopers to bring them back trophies. After the expedition left, work continued as normal, with only minor excitement when the sentry guns at the mine site opened fire on a lone Ramhead, and scared it off. The FORCOM was finished, save for the command systems, life support and guns, which would take the rest of the day to complete installation. _ At 9 AM, both Mowes reach their destination. The ones with Vogel’s northern group have made some headway into the foothills of the nearby range of hills, (the tallest peak estimated at 1000 meters above sea level) Werner’s southern group had gone some 8 kilometers out to sea, where land was just barely visible on the horizon. Vogel’s unit descended into the jungle and dismounted, the twenty five recon soldiers spreading out. Vogel waved away the Mowes. “Get up in the air. If we need cover, we’ll call you. Stay in radio range.” The gunships lifted off and all was quite. Vogel nodded. “Let’s spread out” - Meanwhile, Werner buzzed the ocean. Ocean-dwelling creatures were leaping up out of the spray, riding the waves. He banked towards the coast. “Right, let’s drop these grunts off on the beach.” - Vogel and her platoon slowly advanced through the dense rainforest. A light fog had already rolled in, and they were making slow going uphill. One of her men made a disgusted noise and pulled a slimy organism off of his thigh as they trudged through the ecosystem. They had a job to do. “Another hundred meters west should do the trick,” Vogel muttered. They pressed on through the damp forest for several minutes before reaching their mark. Vogel called up one of her men and he handed her a sensor disk. The sensor disk is a piece of equipment carried by any recon teams of a modern army. Put in a location it moniters the local ecosystem with radar, heat and pressure sensors. It deletes most of its own information, but retains imperative data. It is left abandoned for weeks or months, then recovered, preforming the job of a hidden sentry, more or less. Vogel selected a likely nearby tree trunk and jammed the sensor disk into it by its bladed edge, then turned it on. It beeped to itself, then a light on the side glowed with a soft red LED. She nodded to herself. “Think we could rig up some sort of transmitter to it?” one of her men asked, scanning the surrounding rainforest. “I doubt it,” said Vogel. “We’d need to rig up legitimate sensors to fully understand our environment, but once we have the ops-center set up, that should boost its sensor range significantly.” She turned around and prepared to tell her men to get back down the rise and into the clearing again when one of her men raised his rifle above his head quickly. Sign language for “Enemies” Everyone silently crouched. The soldier pointed to a branch some four meters ahead and ten above them. Vogel watched the three raptorlike creatures slowly pace along the road-sized branch. She silently gave the “Get back” order and her men began to slink down the hill. Salonychous Terriblis The plan was shot to hell when one man slipped and tumbled the rest of the way down, making a god-awful racket as he did so. Vogel immediately turned on the wolf-liked things, which were all looking straight at them now, and opened fire. The first burst shot one of them right off the branch as the other two leapt. “Run!” She stood her ground and kept firing, gunning down the second as it sailed through the air towards her. The last one hit her with a crash, powerful legs smashing into the special forces captain’s chest, knocking her down onto her back and a huge, crocodilian mouth lunging at her. She fought back, holding its mouth at bay with one hand, fumbling for her knife with the other. The neck was too powerful though. A fanged maw clamped down on her arm, and she lost her grip. She could feel her bones being pulverized. Then, there was a burst of gunfire, and the predator hissed in pain. She pulled her numb arm out of its mouth and kicked it square in the head, knocking it back. It hissed and reared, but Vogel had managed to pull out her service pistol with her unmaimed hand, and blew out it’s braincase with one shot. “Schewinhund,” she muttered, and staggered upright, before her troops got back to her and hauled her back to the chopper. She blacked out sometime between dustoff and arrival at base. _ At 10 AM, A solitary Mowe returned from the northern expedition, carrying with it the medevaced captain Vogel. Upon landing, she was moved to the medical care Atlas, where Dr Satrapy analyzed her. It was determined that she’d broken a rib and sustained multiple fractures in her arm. She’d need to rest up in a dedicated medical module for at least a week and a half, regenerating the bones in her arm before going out again. MIDDAY At 12 PM, Captain Vogel was brought up to the Shell Und Deustchland. Meanwhile, the rest of her and Werner’s team continued their sweep without her. AFTERNOON Anja and her mechanics finished installing the airlocks and gun emplacements on the FORMOD, and lay in the wiring and begin to pressurize and sterilize the internal building. The mechanics, suited up in HAZMAT suits, walked through the FORCOM’s hospital, habitation and command module sections, spraying water and low-intensity cleansing acid on every surface with high-powered hoses. The runoff is collected in dehumidfyers and pumped out with water pumps. At 4 PM, the internal sections are fully dried, and CO2 and oxygen tanks are installed, along with the air scrubbers. The detox filters are the last, installed in the airlocks, and the FORCOM is brought online FORCOM interior At 5 PM, the Mowes return, with only a few complications as to navigation. There were no further casualties, but there were several close calls with local wildlife. NIGHT At 6 PM, a pair of PADMODs are flown down. Duchamp is heard to complain that Martinez and his men can only do so much. They will finish setting up the scientific and medical modules by tomorrow, and work on the landing pads the following day, he states. At 7 PM, an Atlas carrying 100 engineers, 20 Force Recon troops of engineers escorted by a pair of Mowe 18s take wing, making hard for the coast under Adler’s orders, to guard the pieces of BB1, which will be parachuted down from orbit at midnight for construction at the seacoast. THURSDAY Festung Ruhr, Primordia, ACA-Orion System. MORNING
After breakfast, the engineers begin pouring the foundation for the eventual concrete habs. Later that morning, the various groups got to work on their projects, mechanics and engineers getting to work on the SCIMOD and MEDMOD, which should get up in two days. Around 10 AM, The FORCOM is fully finished and furnished, and commander Immelhof takes up temporary residence, as do the 10 civilian FORCOM staff. MIDDAY The area is cleared to a full 12 kilometers. All that remains is the last one kilometer exclusion zone, which will be cleared tomorrow. At 12:54 AM, construction begins on the battleship. It will be done come next week. AFTERNOON The DEFMODs and TOWMODs are flown down, for assembly whenever it is appropriate. Commander Immelhof also orders a fence to be built, but with no metal to use, the order is unexecutable. Administrator Duchamp suggests that either an iron mine needs to be found, or the company must start scrapping extra materials. FRIDAY The 50-meter TOWMODs are erected, and the guns installed atop them. In the absence of fencing, the engineers dig a shallow trench roughly a foot wide around the central housing complex. The habitat pits, with concrete foundations poured, however, have been abandoned, as the engineers have been working nonstop on the modules. When r is informed that he has a further MEDMOD and SCIMOD to construct, in addition to an elemental refinery, all later that day. He flies into a rage and punches the astronaut who informed him right in the face. The Elemental Refinery, and an additional MEDMOD and SCIMOD are flown to the surface during the day. They will be set up over Saturday, Sunday and the following week. SUNDAY Festung Ruhr, Primordia, ACA-Orion System.
BB 01 finishes construction. Systems will be installed on Monday and Tuesday. BB01 will be brought online and launched next Wednesday. INBOX: COMMANDER From: Lars, Hans, Admiral -Guten morgen, commander. We’ve arrived at Alpha Centauri A (Orion) and have been on our insystem burn for ten hours now. Sorry about the heat, but antimatter drives tend to bleed off a lot. I’ve sent a medical tech to help get you up to speed. That headache should clear up in no time. From: Satrapy, Saeed I’ve been looking at the “Crocuta Sauria” or “Pit Wolf” as the men call it, the creature that attacked Captain Vogel. It seems to be a pack animal, Looking at it’s jaws, this creature chould be ranked at threat level eight. It’s extremely dangerous. It appears to be capable of adopting a cuttlefish-like camouflage, hunts in social groups, and has jaws powerful enough to bisect a full grown human being in one bite. The one Captain Vogel killed was an adolescent, it seems. We can probably expect to see these things in groups of ten to twenty, based on region. Side note: Can we spend the rest of next week bringing down the rest of our things? I think everyone wants to stop living in the Atlases. From: Vogel, Helena Morning Commander. I just woke up. Sorry about getting wounded. This planet’s trying to kill us all, I swear. From: Satrapy, Saeed Commander, I was wondering if I could accompany Herr Werner on one or two of his flights, as a safari of sorts.? From: Vogel, Helena. Now that 've had some time for introspection...I love this planet already.
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Post by Nepty on Oct 26, 2015 7:39:03 GMT
The Writing On The Wall ANDERS FAMILY CYBERNETICS AND ROBOTICS --------Staff Commander: James Ander (Lagoon Beach) Administrator: Stuart Michals (Lagoon Beach) Chief of Security: Colonel Brian McKliny (Lagoon Beach) -Inf Com: Captain Yekatarina Yeseyev (Lagoon Beach) -Air Com: Captain Gabriel Ben-Tov (Lagoon Beach) -Naval Com: Captain Jack Colins (Orbit, Primordia) Chief Engineer: Connor Adams (Orbit, Cyrus) Science Dept Head: Dr Alan Richards (Lagoon Beach) Foreman: Andrew Campbell (Lagoon Beech) Admiral: Commodore William Leybourne (Orbit, Vortex --------Supplies Surplus Inf Weapons: 50% Surplus Vehicle Weapons: 50% Ammo: 90% Explosives: 100% Laser Cells: 100% Sundries: 100% Spare Parts: 100% ________________ ________________ WEEKLY BUILDING REPORT MONDAY Work begun on Ops-Center, SCIMOD TUESDAY Ops-Center skeleton finished. SCIMOD skeleton finished WEDNESDAY Ops-Center Finished. SCIMOD finished Habmods landed THURSDAY Habmod skeletons finished FRIDAY Habmods completed ORDs landed, begins construction SATURDAY Personnel begin to move into HABMODs SUNDAY ORDs finishes construction. Monday, March 6th, 2115 Lagoon Beach, Siluria, Primordia Major Ben-Tov brought his AACT in for landing with practiced ease, the skids bumping along the ground, and he began shutting down his bird’s rotors. He flipped on the main radio. Feedback was bad, but he ignored it. “Command station?” “This is command station, we read you.” The pressurized tent that served as a temporary command center was situated next to the skeleton of the ops-center, a veritable porcupine of dishes and antennae. “The initial sweep didn’t tell me too much. It’s light jungle for around two klicks out. All my navigational instruments are totally fucked by the way. There’s no magnetic north discernable here.” He ran a hand through his short brown hair. “Past the jungle, we get rainforest. Average height on the trees is maybe a hundred meters or so. Fair few heat readings there. Radio range is down to twenty five percent, but a booster or transmitter could probably fix that.” “Copy that. Logged.” Gabriel switched off the radio and opened the cockpit, making sure to fasten his EVA-pack first, and hopped out. The rest of the AACTs were similarly parked, near the waterfront of Lagoon Beach, as the men had started to call it, or just “The Lagoon” Gabriel wove his way through the controlled chaos of the camp, passing mechanics tweaking several drones, and men running hydraulics and tubing through large prefabricated foundations, until he got to Atlas E, which was serving as the commissary and meeting room for the time being. After the air in the airlock had cycled, Gabriel got his lunch, an imitation clam chowder today of all things. He wondered if it was kosher for several minutes, before deciding that it was only imitation clam, after all, and accepting his food. He sat down at the mostly vacant officers table, across from the wild-haired Dr Richards, who was adding a drop of something to a beaker of clear liquid. “What have you got there doctor?” Dr Richards waggled his eyebrows. “Water,” he said conspiratorially. After Gabriel did not appear suitably impressed, Dr Richards shook the beaker. “Primordian water. I’ve been testing it and detoxing it. Watch this.” Without warning, he stuck the beaker’s throat in his mouth and tipped his head back, chugging the alien water. “Meshuga! Are you nuts!?” Gabriel almost leapt out of his seat to snatch the beaker from the doctor’s mouth, spilling water everywhere. “That stuff might kill you!” Dr Richards grinned manically. “Not anymore!” He pointed to the mostly empty now beaker that Gabriel held. “I’ve neutralized the flora in there and replaced them with earth bacteria. Not easy. Those buggers are much tougher than our bacteria, but a high concentration of chlorine still got them.” Gabriel sniffed the beaker. “Blech, you’re right. Smells like a pool.” Richards waved a hand. “Have no fear, I isolated the chlorine with another tablet. All it takes is one chlorine tablet, one chlorine neutralizer, and a half a packet of flash-frozen earth flora to make that water drinkable with no adverse effects.” He made an exaggerated “I’m-at-a-loss” face. “Being fully honest, we could very easily drink it straight. I’m just not sure that we want to purposefully introduce alien bacteria to our digestive systems.” Gabriel nodded slowly and began eating. He was left in peace for about twenty seconds before Dr Richards slid a few pictures across the table to him. They seemed to show microscopic organisms. He sighed, realizing that this is what mealtimes with Richards would be like from now one, and picked one of the images up. “What are these, doc?” “Well we’re all allowed to have one crate of personnel effects, as you know.” “Yeah.” Gabriel had brought his yameka, menorah, tora, yad, four paperback books, his computer-pad, a soccer ball and a small album of personal photos. “Well among other things, I brought my best microscope. I was able to use the medical module on this very shuttle to analyze the local cellular life.” Gabriel nodded. “Right. Find anything interesting?” “Indeed.” Richards pointed to a large blob in the picture. “This is a nucleus of one of the Gyrojumper’s cells.” He pointed to another blob on a different picture. “This is the nucleus from one of the Sentapede’s cells. Notice how neither of their nucleus contains the characteristics of a human or earth animal’s. It doesn’t contain encoding nucleic acid. These creatures don’t have DNA. In fact, what appears to be their nucleus seems to actually be more similar to a fuel cell. It seems to synthesize the cell’s proteins with a biological micromachine. As you can see here, this bit spins and produces torque, of a sort, though that is probably an unintended coincidence. The actual proteins are synthesized with this engine here.” He shifted his finger several degrees to the left. “Rather than DNA or RNA. It’s more like a mitochondria” He pointed to another picture. “This organelle here seems to be what creates their genetic information…what we would call DNA, only it’s obviously not DNA, though it functions in a similar vein. It’s kept in this circular organelle here…” Gabriel nodded. “How about the drones? Made any progress there?” Richards nodded and took back his findings, stuffing them into a folder. “Yes, indeed. It’s rather boring though. It will take us about a month to install signals boosters on all the drones, as well as increase their power output, and the Phalanxes won’t be able to function too far away from their control stations unless we use relay boosters, or make mobile central control stations. How did your work turn out?” Gabriel ate several more spoonfulls before responding. “We found out our navigation is shot, and have a definite VNE now. No flying over 400kmph, or we’d tear our own wings off.” “Not something you’d want,” mused Richards. “Not at all. Though, now that they’ve set up the perimeter fence, flying long distances shouldn’t be a worry now, should it? Tuesday; March 7th, 2115 Lagoon Beach, Siluria, Primordia “What do you mean, 'no'?” demanded the security guard. “I mean no. N. O. Negative,” retorted Andrew Campbell, crossing his arms, face unreadable. The guard slapped his own EVA-Pack, facepalming. “Look buddy. Company orders say we find a supply of gravel. There’s one a mile away. Why the hell shouldn’t we use it?” “Because,” groused Cambell, “It’s only half a mile away from the sea and the area’s thick with rockpools We’re miners, not scuba divers. They identified a site four miles away. We’re using that.” He turned away and began addressing his miners, ordering everyone to get ready to move to the second gravel deposit. “Hey man, you don’t get to make that decision!” yelled the security guard at his retreating back. “Watch me!” bellowed back Campbell. The security guard flipped the uncooperative scotsman off behind his back, swearing under his breath. At least they’d gotten the last of the damned fence up today. A Four-Kilometer fence had been installed, facing the jungle in a rough semicircle, though it ended once the beach began. They’d be hooking it up to the industrial battery grid today, lightly electrifying it, which was good news, after another Gyrojumper ate a cook who had decided to go for a piss in the woods. _ Wednesday; Wednesday: March 8th, 2115 High Orbit, Vortex “Commodore Laybourne, we have the scan results” Laybourne didn’t take his eyes off of the enigmatic blue-white orb below him. Vortex was covered in hurricane swirls, each one shot through with strands of pure black. “Send them through. What have we got?” The tech grimaced. “Not too good sir. Cyrus has got some major issues. We can’t get much magnetic scan of it at all. It’s got crazy vortices down there It’s a miracle that planet's crust hasn’t been ripped apart. Still, it’s got some life at least. The storm ceiling is still non-penetrate-able, but we’re getting about 17% of the surface covered in vegetation, most of them in small bands. The rest is either seas or possibly rock flats or mountains. The atmospheric pressure is about twice what we have on earth, so walking on it will feel like walking while scuba diving. And the atmosphere has just under earth amounts of oxygen, but highly toxic.” “And Vortex?” “You won’t like this sir. Vortex is suffering from a hyper-inflated version of the greenhouse effect currently. There’s half a million active volcanos, probably, and each one is spewing out pollutants like there’s no tomorrow. Its asteroid ring has begun to deteriorate at an accelerated rate, so it’s also being constantly pelted with asteroid impacts. There’s global force-five hurricanes all over the surface, and the upper cloud layer is crazy thick. This has been going on for millennia, so Vortex is just going to get a thicker and thicker atmosphere until these volcanoes cool down or it's seas boil away. Geology predicts one of these will happen in around six hundred years, and we can’t exactly wait that long. Finally, its increased atmospheric density means it’s going to be a sauna down there. Turns out our initial probe scans from seventy years ago were pretty off. Average temperature is one twenty…two degrees below lethal heat, which means once we land, our cells will start to die. We can probably take it, so long as no one exerts themselves and we constantly hydrate…though the water will have to be kept cool because it’ll heat up to lethal temperatures if left in the sun. Plastic will melt after a while too. But Vortex is still in the local winter right now. Come the summer in a couple months and it’ll hit temperatures of one seventy or one eighty on the hottest days, and one ninety at the equator. That’s immediately lethal heat, and that would be an agonizing way to go.’ Tuesday; March 8th, 2115 Mine Site Apha, Siluria, Primordia They’d named the gravel mine “The Vine Mine” for some reason. Possibly because it was deep in the tangled jungle near the beginning of the rainforest proper. It had just gotten set up yesterday. Administrator Michaels stared at what he’d been called up for. He’d gotten up this morning to a pretty good breakfast of imitation pancakes with imitation syrup, and had had a good feeling about today. So far there had been no injuries at the work site either. Then one of the guards had spotted this, and they’d come up to investigate it. “What exactly is this?” The miner who’d found it shook his head. “Search me.” Michaels blew out a breath. “The Commander will want to see this.” _ The bus rolled to a stop just outside the freshly dug gravel pit, with a heavy sigh James Ander, Mission Commander of the AFCR Primordia expedition stepped out. Running a hand through his ragged hair he glanced around, trudging onwards into the smell of fresh cut rock he hit his personal comm, "Alright Michaels, I'm here.” Around him, miners were working feverishly to haul buckets of gravel out of the pit under the scorching midday sun. The administrator's voice was laced with static, but it came through much clearer now. "Good, good. We have an...issue just beyond the wire. One of our guys found something that you might want to see." "Alright I'm coming" Skirting around the pit mine Ander made his way around the perimeter of the site. He found Micheals with a squad of AFCRCCs about ten meters into the jungle. Michaels was looking up at a tree. "Check that out," Ander looked up. Seven feet high on the otherwise unremarkable tree's trunk, were crudely daubed red, green, and blue squares. On the ground below them was what appeared to be some sort of furry brush and clay pots, with red, green, and blue paint inside. "We didn't do that," said Michaels. "Fuck" Was all Ander could think to say at first. "Get Dr Richards out here" He ordered after a moment of thought. "Already called him, sir. He's coming from the Scimod." Michaels blew out a breath. "I really hope this is some miner's idea of a practical joke. And if it is, I'm having that man horsewhipped." "Whatever you do, don't fuck this stuff up. I don't want any natives pissed off at us for ruining their masterpiece" Ander sucked in a sharp breath and ran a hand through his ruffled hair "Thing looks kind of...simple though," said Michaels, frowning. "Ever seen Celtic art Michaels?" "No." Micheals turned around. "Did it look like a child's color test?" "Geometric shapes for the most part. Same with ancient Japanese clan symbols, pretty much any really old markings." Michaels leaned over the pots of paint. "Man, these look fresh." He shivered and looked around. "Hey guys, you see anything?" he asked the AFCRCCs. "No sir," came one soldier's filtered voice. "Nothing on thermals but a few small organisms in the undergrowth." Ander's earpiece buzzed. Doc Richards' voice came over it. "Commander? I'll be there in two minutes, but all I got from Michaels was something about a tree. What's going on there?" "You'll have to see it to believe it Doc." "Very intriguing, commander. You've got a flair for mystery. I'll have figured it out by the time I get there, mark my words." "I doubt it." Ander pointed at two of the commandos, "You two, if these pots are fresh then whatever made them might still be around. Take a quick look around, and don't shoot anything if you can avoid it." "Oui, sir," said one of them, a corporal. Both men vanished into the green, picking their way through the foliage. Richards trotted up less than a minute later, accompanied by a man with a Universal Medical Tool. "Alright, who needs me to name a new creature?" he asked. "What did I tell you? Mind of a psychic." Wordlessly Ander pointed at the tree "Oh that's just an Arbore-" the doctor trailed off. "I take it you didn't do this," he said after a while, his voice sounding…strained. "We didn't." One of the Commandos replied. "And we didn't see any of the miners or other workers come over here." The doctor speechlessly opened his mouth and closed it for several seconds. When he finally regained his composure, he harrumphed. "Right...some sort of tool using creatures, evidently." He looked around. "Has anyone tampered with this, or is this how you found it?" "They're professionals Doctor, they know better than that." Ander chided "Of course, of course," muttered Richards. "Well...let's see...I've got a degree in anthropology. I assume you called me up here to analyze these markings?" "Anything you and your team can tell us about this stuff will help Doctor Richards." Richards hummed to himself for several minutes, tapping his chin. "Normally, I might consider some form of territorial markings, but it seems too simplistic for that. While it's not out of the question, very few cultures use lined up squares for art." "Religion?" "Possibly. Could be a pictographic language. The square may denote a deity of some sort...the colors may differentiate between deities." He got a strange look in his eye all of a sudden. "Wait." Richards inspected the pot, brush and squares up close, scrutinizing them with one eye, and other; then he stepped back and laughed. "Oh, commander. I think I've come up with the answer." "Do tell Doctor" "Ah ah! If you play guessing games, I get to too." He waggled his eyebrows. "Now, first. The square is one of the simplest shapes to make. Second. These colors. What's common about them?" “They're primary colors in the RGB model." One of the soldiers added. When everyone looked at the man he shrugged. "My kid's an art student alright? Err, was. Still getting used to the five year sleep." “Congratulations to your issue on his graduation, soldier. Also, well done. Yes, these colors are the primary three colors. One of the few things that we share in common with primordian life is that, while their sensor pits are also photoreceptors, with one pit on each side of the head seeing in different spectrums, the primary pit sees with a three-structure rod and cone layout. In short, they see red, green, and blue, just like humans. Of course they also have sensors all over their bodies and see in the electromagnetic, infrared, polarized, multispectral and ultraviolet spectrums. They can also see thermal signature, and navigate by sound. They would experience the world utterly differently than us. But their primary photoreceptors seems to be based on red, green, and blue, the primary colors.” "So, it's a sign of some sort?" "What I think it is," said Richards, "Is even better. We're being evaluated. Think about it. If you found a possibly sentient alien in your home, would you run up to it, and hope it didn't try and eat you, or would you try and see if it's really intelligent? Ladies and gentlemen...I believe that the natives are testing us for sentience. They want to see if we recognize patterns and colors" "Which means they are also sentient." Ander said, the weight of that statement settling over the group. “Alright." Ander said after a moment, rubbing his eyes as he spoke. "Doc, I want samples of these paints analyzed, if we can figure out what they're made of maybe we can estimate how developed the natives are. You and you." He said pointing to two soldiers, "get the other two on your comms and get them back here." "Of course sir," said the doctor. "But we haven't taken the test yet. I believe that we're intended to mimic the colors with the paint provided, mirroring their order" "I suppose that job falls to me." Ander said, mouth dry. "Of course sir," said Richards, jealousy only slightly audible in his voice. "You are the commander, after all. Take me to your leader and all that." Chuckling at the doctor's joke Ander stepped forward and picked up the brush, slowly and carefully mimicking the pattern on the tree, after a few moments he stepped back. "There, now, I want those samples analyzed yesterday Doctor Richards." "One of you soldiers go find a bucket of paint at the base, leave it here as a gift. And I want the name and number of whoever found this, they're in for a raise." "Of course sir." Richards glanced at the foliage as the two commandos returned. "We should probably vacate the area. I doubt they're going to return until they can view the conversation in solitude." Richards knelt down and took swabs from each bowl of paint. "That'd be Boris Khrushchev sir, who found it. Security guard," volunteered one of the soldiers. "Good man, I'll be sure to put his name in the report. Now, someone go get that gift and let’s clear out." "At once sir." _ Richards lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. It was well after eleven PM and the day shift was sleeping now. The science head’s quarters had much in the way of ostentation. Charts of the orbit of the local solar system lined the walls, along with pictures of the local fauna. One wall was a poster board, covered in dozens of tacked on notes. A desk held a microscope and racks of slides. Richards was contemplating what he had seen. “Three squares,” he muttered. “Is there some significance to the number? The shape? The color?” He propped himself up on his elbows. “Good grief, what if I was wrong? What if they take offense? What if it WAS a religious sculpture.” He scowled. “No…there’s no use agonizing over it. What’s done is done.” He rolled over, turned off the light and closed his eyes. Wednesday; March 9th, 2115 From: Campbell, Andrew, Mining Forman To: Ander, James, Mission Commander Subject: Mine Scouring
So we went and looked for the southern avenite deposit in Atlas A. It’s the only thing we have with the sensors to find much below treetop level. The Lode’s about a hundred klicks to the south of us. We stayed about five klicks away from the lode at all times, as nothing transmission based works at all within five klicks of a lode that big and I didn’t want to take the chance of falling out of the sky or something. Long story short, it’s got a lot of vegetation, as expected. Doc Anders said that that had something to do with the high salinity levels, and simply that earth plants grow really well in higher magnetic fields, so it makes sense we had some big trees. But man. “Big Tree” just doesn’t cut it. We got a Terassis Emperor Tree to take down. The thing’s one thousand two hundred meters tall, measures roughly a half a kilometer wide at the base, and its crown covers a three kilometer area. Side note. There were quite a few heat sigs. We saw these dragon-like things up in the highest branches and a few went to follow us. Doc Anders thinks they probably nest in the tree. I’m not too keen on taking this big damn treehouse down with a hundred of these things living in it. Each one’s thirty feet long and has a wingspan of fifty at the least. They got heads the size of full grown adult humans, and big old crests on their heads. Each one’s really colorful too. Mostly blues, greens and a few red and black stripes here and there. Different for each one. Doc Anders named them “Crested Versicolors” Anyways, that’s my report for the mine site. Here’s doc’s image, attached. Crested Versicolor, here shown preying on a Frogfoot aerial vegrandid, followed by a Blue Iris aerial Quadriform James blew out a breath. It seemed everything on this planet was trying to be difficult on purpose. He began composing a response letter. Thursday; March 9th, 2115 IST Droid Brains Report on Scanning Order Directive: Scan Vortex and Cyrus for landing sites. Report follows. Vortex: Lowlands, near the coasts. Highlands unsuitable for landing, heavy volcanic activity. Small islands unsuitable for landing. Heavy volcanic activity. Cyrus: Isolated pocket forests seem to be on outskirts of magnetic anomalies. Recommended landing zones: in or around pocket forests, deep lowlands. Highlands/plateaus high in magnetic anomalies. Note: Landing on Cyrus must be conducted with EXTREME care, lest landers brush against anomalies. Magnetic anomalies may have enough pull to seriously damage or destroy vessels. -Yekaterina Yetseyev’s Audio Journal. March 10th, 2115 So we set out today towards the Avenite mine site –the one with the big damned tree. The dozers should have a road cleared for us to the avenite treehouse lode by Monday. I took two squads of commandos, a Husaria with a Rarog, and a Reiter as a guard. I’ll be travelling with them personally. We got around the issue of drone control stations by temporarily converting one of the dump trucks to a drone control station. The dozers will be running on automatic, so we’ll be traveling constantly. -Dr Alan Richard’s Audio Report.
“An analysis of the various paints has revealed some interesting…um…revalations. All these paints seem to be mixed from the mixing of various organic and inorganic color compounds. I can detect rock and plants in here, as well as what seems to be oil that matches the oil of the stingleaf plant I chronicled yesterday. I’d imagine that the rocks are ground to dust, then mixed with the plant colors, with oils squeezed from the stingleaf for texture. Simply put, it’s similar to both the red natural madder used in paints during the classical and medieval time periods, and the more advanced paints of the renaissance. However, the paints themselves were stored in simple clay pots.” Friday; -Initial landings on Cyrus and Vortex called off in light of recent scans- Waiting on confirmation from commander. -ORDs begins construction in lake Tempus. Saturday; Sunday; -ORDs finishes construction. _______________ WEEK ENDS
_________________ INBOX: COMMANDER From: Richards, Alan, Science Head I’ve got the first clue as to what our alien observers may look like, commander! I took the liberty of dusting the brush for prints. I didn’t get any fingerprints, of course, but what I did get was a selection of micro-indentations consistent with the microscopic hooks on the toe-pads of Gyrojumpers. It looks like our neighbors may either use their feet to manipulate objects, or have hands of a sort.” From: Michaels, Stewart, Administrator Commander, the bucket we left out by E-Tree is gone. Thought you might like to know. Oh, and the miners have started calling that place “E-Tree” after some old earth movie called E-T Extra Terrestrial or something. Trust a bunch of West Virginia gravel diggers to come up with terrible puns.” However, something else has been left there commander. Some sort of wicker basket. We haven’t checked it out yet. Do you want to come by later today and take a look? From: Yevseyev, Yekaterina, Major We were continuing, as per usual, through the jungle towards the eventual mine site 02, when one of our guys got SHOT BY A ROCK. I am not kidding commander. A large rocky growth hidden among a lot of regular rocks by the side of the trail our dozers were clearing swiveled like a damned drone and fired a large barbed lance at what would have been lethal speeds. It hit the man’s armor and knocked the wind out of him, knocking him down too. We disposed of the…creature? With a grenade. I’ve enclosed a sketch SPIKER
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Post by Nepty on Oct 26, 2015 17:55:11 GMT
EXPLORERS Solaris Unlimited --------Staff Commander: Dr. Iridine Gray (SUESC01) Administrator: Arty Smith (SUESC01) Chief of Security: Kesa Myr (SUESC01) -Inf Com: Captain Vladimir Rhosta (SUESC01) -Air Com: Captain Rhianna Burke (SUESC01) -Legion Com: Captain Fei Ying (SUESC01) Chief Engineer: Dr. Jebidiah Ulysses (SUESC01) Science Dept Head: Dr. Theresa Ramirez (SUESC01) Foreman: Chris Lorenzo (SUESC01) Admiral: Dr. Allison Clarke (SUESC01) --------Supplies Surplus Inf Weapons: 50% Surplus Vehicle Weapons: 50% Ammo: 90% Explosives: 100% Laser Cells: 100% Sundries: 100% Spare Parts: 80% DEPLOYMENT ________________ SUESC01 (Solaris Unlimited Extra-Solar Colony 01 ________________ WEEKLY REPORT Monday, March 6th 2115 SUESC01, Rodia, Primordia Arty Smith’s Log Well the defoliators finished cutting down the last of the grass in a four-km area for our main generator array. A lot of that space can go unused, however, since we’re going to be tweaking things a bit. The solar panels originally intended for layout in a solar field style are going to be on top of our mod building’s roofs. The wind turbines will still take up their space in a cleared field to the east. We’ll start setting up….now. I’m calling for the BWE’s components to be parachuted down from orbit now. The big flier from yesterday was back, but the dominuses scared it off, since it made its approach run right at them. One of the guys had a puffer-tree type thing blow up in his face (we think it’s a seedpod-based organism like thistles at home, so the seeds can be carried around) and spent the rest of the day looking like he’d been tarred and feathered until we got him hosed down. Monday, March 6th 2115 SUESC01, Rodia, Primordia Dr Theresa Ramirez’ log I’ve been looking at footage of “The Windbolt” as the men call it. The creature that savaged us yesterday. I haven’t been able to get a definitive picture of it, or a sketch, but hope I will be able to soon. We’ve run into an issue. It was back again this morning, but didn’t take anyone, thanks to the Dominuses, which spewed an amazing amount of metal into the air and possibly scared it off. However, this isn’t a good thing, and I’m going to tell you why. I’m honestly baffled. The Dominus can’t pivot fast enough to track this creature. If it knew that, it could pick us off with relative impunity, and –and this is going to sound silly- the Windbolt could probably outrun the Dominus’s bullets. We have a speed indicator on the argentavises, similar to a radar gun, meant for determining the speed of incoming missiles. According to the speed indicator, the Windbolt is capable of travelling just under the speed of sound. In fact, judging by the tremendous roar, and pressure cone as it accelerated away from the dominus’s chainguns, it actually broke the sound barrier there. Our Argents can manage around two hundred and twenty knots in the soup they call air here. The Windbolt can get up to six hundred sixty eight knots. That’s incredible! I’d love to see how it manages that. I should probably get an early night now though. DAY REPORT -5 HABMODS SET UP -OPS-CENTER FINISHED -1 MAN PUFFBALLED -WINDBOLT SCARED OFF BY DOMINUSES -WORK BEGUN ON MEDMODS 1, 2, HABMODS 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 AND SCIMOD TUESDAY, March 7th 2115 Arty Smith stood, hands on his hips as he watched the gargantuan pieces of machinery begin to be connected. It would take all week to construct the main excavator. The second largest vehicle ever built by humans, the Excavator’s parts had been parachuted down from orbit yesterday. When it was done, it would tower over everything. Arty smiled at the thought. It sure was impressive what mankind could do. Meanwhile, behind him, the engineers were hard at work at making a road to the main city site. The road would be a five kilometer long strip of concrete big and hard enough to roll tanks down, upon completion. For now it was a five kilometer long stretch of churned soil, being flattened by bulldozers. “Mornin’ mister smith!” Chris Lorenzo, his mine forman, was approaching. “Morning Chris.” Lorenzo nodded at the sea of greatgrass all around them. “That’s going to be a bitch to keep from overtaking the roads. Got any ideas?” “Yeah.” Arty pointed to a nearby Defoliator. “We’re going to have a defoliator do a weekly run down each side of the road to keep the grass down.” DAY REPORT -HABMODS 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 SET UP, SCIMOD SET UP, MEDMODS 1, 2 SET UP -WORK BEGUN ON AVENITE MINE SITE -MAIN EXCAVATOR BEGINS ASSEMBLY AT AVENITE MINE (1.5 WEEK ASSEMBLY) -ROAD FROM MINE SITE 01 TO SUESC01 BULLDOZED WEDNESDAY Iridine greeted each of her people as they walked into the ops-center’s meeting bunker and got seated, but as usual never got seated, herself. Only Arty knew how many cups of coffee she’d mainlined so far. "Aaaaand that's everyone,” she said, as Rhosta came in last. “Okay, I, the honorable Judge Gray, call this meeting to order. First on the agenda is a congratulations to everyone for the amazing work you've all done so far-- I couldn't ask for a better crew! With that said, I'd like to give the floor to Ms. Ramirez, who I asked to prepare what she knew about the communications interference." Dr Ramirez got to her feet. "Ahem. Right, so the problem we have to deal with is that the local EMI -that is, electromagnetic interference, is disrupting signals across the board, cutting radio and holographic transmission range down to a quarter of what it is on earth. Now, we'll probably never get full range, but I do believe that the issue can be solved by simply boosting the connections and power of our transmissions. A larger transmitter and a more powerful receiver, for example, should be enough to get through to 75% range without too much static interference. I've written a more detailed report, and if anyone is curious, I can send it to them, but what I've just said covers the basics." She sat down, then immediately stood back up. "Also, don't forget, no matter how good transmission signals are, the EMI directly around large lodes of Avenite will shut it down into static, no matter what we do to boost the range." "So our mining facilities will need separate communications nodes then-- how far from the extractors would you suggest?" "I'd say a minimum distance of half a kilometer from the edge of the lode." "Thank you. Ulysses, Lorenzo, I'd like you two to work together to make that happen. Perhaps a short rail line between the extractor and communication node, as well? Would like to hear each of your thoughts. Keep in mind, having it separate also means needing to have a security crew on it, which of course Rhosta will be glad to provide." "We can probably set up a wire-based telephone landline from the mine pit to the communication node," said Lorenzo, stroking his chin. "Landlines. I remember my mother telling me about when she got rid of hers, heh. But it's a solid technology, Make sure that it's protected against the local flora. And fauna, we don't know what kind of small burrowers that this place has." Gray moved over to the map of Rodia on the far side, which is behind where she should be sitting. "Thank you both of you. Ying, I know this interference is going to play hell with our Legion drones. Over the coming weeks, I'd like you to work with Ulysses to develop stronger transceivers for them. For now, Legion drones will have to suffer a performance hit and only rely upon their AI, except around our home base and each of the outposts. So they will be used defensively for now, patrolling our ever-growing city limits." She gazed at each of the outpost markers. "Which of course brings me to the outposts, themselves. Clarke, have you performed the needed scans of each of the outpost areas? Assume the Giant's Gap is Outpost 1, and go through them clockwise. Most notably, I need to know if we need to deploy any MOORs. We've avoided it so far, but we may not be able to for the outposts... but any general information about the terrain in those regions is helpful." She smirked a bit, referencing to a joke in a conversation many of them had before they went into MET. "The beautiful angels of our corporate office wants us to do more thorough searches-- which I'll be seeing Rhosta and Ramirez about after the general meeting." "Concerning the intended map, most of them have enough large clearings that MOORs should be unnecessary" said Clarke. "However four of the outposts will require MOORs to clear, mostly in the thickest areas of the rainforest" "Thank you. I authorize you to grant MOOR deployment authorization to the four Zephyrs that will need it, when their deployment starts near the end of the week. Ramirez, Ulysses, Lorenzo, meet with Myr about our expedition force. Myr, I approve of any reasonable deployment of vehicular assets suitable for a 25-member exploration team. Our corporate office wants to explore the jungle more deeply, so I want the four of you to take whatever military assets you need, and can reasonably maintain for a week-long expedition, and explore and document local wildlife. Myr, put your best platoon-level leader on it. I want it to be their job to make sure minimal casualties are taken. Even if that means we cannot capture live samples of any particular flora or fauna, I do NOT want a repeat of the casualties of the first day. That is extremely bad for morale. If any of you have requests for this, speak up any time before your deployment at the start of the second week." Gray knew she didn’t actually have to tell Myr that last part-- it was more for show for the rest of the officers. "Okay. Good. Rhosta, Ramirez, Myr, stay here. Everyone else is dismissed." Once the four of them are the only ones in, she grinned widely. "We have an agreement with Krupp to work together to obtain first contact. I want a three teams of scientists and soldiers to be assembled to work with them. One squad each-- that'd be eight-- a doctor, and three scientists. We will run an aerial sweep over the region in which Krupp and ourselves suspect sentient life forms, deploying from the northern base. I want you three to work this out as quietly as possible. A contact will be provided with the Krupp team also working on deploying next week. We need this, to recover our political capital, so consider this high priority. Any questions or requests?" Myr raised her hand first "Should we assume standard ROE?" "What are the standard rules for meeting new life forms that may or may not be hostile?" "I was referring to the 'do not fire until fired upon' rule. Should I assume that stands or take another approach?" replied Myr "I would prefer you only fire if it is necessary to get your team out alive. That said, we don't really know what they carry as far as firepower or technology. Err on the side of caution and bring our people back alive...I know that's a bit vague for you military types, but I'm not one. Would you say that translates to your standard RoE?” “More or less, commander." "Then tell our women and men in uniform to use a standard RoE." She smiled. "Anything else?" Ramirez raised her hand. "Permission to convert the interior of the Zephyr's cargo hold to accommodate sensor suites and a scientific lab?" "Granted. Once the Zephyrs are done with cargo transport, you may use one for that purpose. It's our best bet for exploring the other celestial bodies of this star system as well." "A flying science lab. Now this is the future I wanted as a kid…Also, if we do spot sentient life, what should we do? Land to make contact, or just continue to observe?" Gray shook her head. "We are allowing Krupp to have the public honor of first contact." She smiled. "So if you do have the urge to make first contact, don't talk about it." "But-" Ramirez began "I'm not telling you not to. I'm saying that, for political reasons, we need to let Krupp get the public appearance of having had the first contact claim, even if it's only a minute ahead of us. As painful as that sounds, we are low on political capital-- a great deal has been expended to get these rights to begin with, and we need to rebuild it... and because of that, we are vulnerable here. The more aggressive companies, like LRI and AFCR may not respect our claim to Rodia. Krupp makes a valuable ally in upholding our claims." Rameirez pouted. "Alright, but maybe we can allow myself and a few associates to tag along, during Krupp's first contact though?" she wheedled. "I wouldn't object. I'll enter negotiations on that with Krupp after the meeting is over, to try to arrange "Thank you. Myr, stay for a brief moment will you? We’ve got things to discuss. “ Wednesday, March 8th, 2115 Rodia, Primordia Kesa Myr’s Expedition Log. Expedition 2 Argentavis Quadrotors 1 Tangent Hovercar 8 Myrmidons, 1 titanomirymia 1 geologist, 1 biologist, 1 botanist, 1 chemist, 1 doctor 1 slam turret Well, we started out the day loading up into an argent. I, eight of my men and a titanomyrima named Devin. Our mission was simple. Scout out the local area for one week, get a better idea of the lay of the land. So, on day one, we headed southwest. The idea was to use all available fuel. We would get to the Gorge, if possible, check out the deposit there, then come back once we hit a half tank of fuel. The first few hours we were over open plains. The next, we had to climb higher, since the rainforest began. Gradually at first, with one or two trees dotting the plains, then copses, then the forest began in earnest. When going over the plains, we scared a herd of Sailbacks. There must have been about a hundred of them. It looked like one of those classical cowboy movies, with all the big buffalo running ahead of the hunters. We didn’t bother them though. Our mission is recon, not hunting. Later that day, we spotted a pack of twenty raptor-like creatures that seemed to be on a beeline to where the Sailbacks were. The scientists debated for a while before the biologists got to name them. He called the Gena “Tyflocursor” (Fast Runner) We’re going to stop for the night in a forest clearing and make camp. DAY REPORT, WEDNESDAY -GENERAL STAFF MEETING -HYDROPONICS GARDENS LANDED, PRESSURIZED, ATMOSPHERE SYNTHESIZED -GENERATOR ARRAY FINISHED -ZEPHYR APPROPRIATED FOR CONVERSION TO SCIENTIFIC/SENSOR CRAFT -GENEMODS LANDED, BEGIN CONSTRUCTION -EXPEDITION TO GORGE DEPOSIT BEGUN, 500 km travelled (1,000 km to go) THURSDAY 0600 HOURS Dr Ramirez was making notes in her room, checking her schedules and looking over footage of the Windbolt. She needed to find out how that creature achieved such ludicrous speeds. Perhaps it had some sort of hyper-advanced muscle systems like a giant hummingbird? He musings were interrupted as her door buzzed. “Enter,” she called, turning her swivel chair to face the door, and shutting down her holographic display station. Commodore Clarke entered the room, scowling. “Hello doctor.” “Hello Commodore. Is something wrong?” “You know what’s goddamned wrong.” She winced. She’d seen the glare that Clarke had given her when she’d suggested converting her Zephyr into a flying science lab. “Look, admiral, I know that it’s not easy, but we need a dedicated scanning system to-” “Whatever,” groused Clarke. “But all that stuff in there means that that Zephyr can’t go into space, and you know this.” “Hey!” retorted Ramirez. “You have like twenty three others in your fleet, what are you bitching about?” Clarke’s frown deepened. “Those things and the Atlases are the only trans-orbital vehicles we have, and I don’t like letting a bunch of engineers hack up one of my ships so you can go play…” he waved his hands vaguely “Cooking mama in the jungle.” “Cooking mama?” “Forget it. But just watch it, Ramirez. I don’t like having my schedule interrupted. That wasn’t your Zephyr to requisition.” “The repairs are already underway, Clarke.” Ramirez turned away and turned her holographic display back on. “It even has a name “The Apex” Calm down, we don’t need a fleet of flying labs, just one.” Clarke sighed. “Fine. Just keep your hands off the rest of my ships.” She slouched out, the door hissing shut behind her. Ramirez went back to her studies. “What a bitch,” she mumbled. _ 1500 HOURS, 20 km south of SUESC01 Arty nervously watched the skies. “Are you sure it’s nowhere nearby?” “There’s no noise, sir,” said the myrmidon left to him. The soldier’s eyes were also scanning the heavens, visible through his transparent faceplate. In the distance, the second Argentavis slowly made a circle of the site. Arty shook himself. Right. They’d left the city about half an hour ago, and two Argentavises had dropped them off here, at the banks of a shallow stream fifteen miles away, about a foot deep and four wide, they’d found a large deposit of rocks that would make for a suitable gravel mine. “Well,” said Arty, prodding the dap ground with his foot. “It’s a little wet, but with a few hosepipes rigged up, we can pump up any water runoff, and there’s no danger of cave-ins or flooding with open-pit strip mining unless we try to make it happen.” He nodded. “This is alright ground. You can bring in the beacon tonight, then we can parachute secondary excavator A’s parts here overnight.” He nodded. “Alright, so let’s get started on bulldozing a road to-” “GET DOWN!” The myrmidon roughly shoved Arty towards the open bay of the Argentavis as a loud thrumming filled the air. He stumbled and fell, nearly banging his head on the ramp as a low boom resounded over the plains. Arty crawled frantically up into the argentavis’s loading bay where a myrmidon had gotten to one knee, his rifle tracking a fast-moving black blur that was wheeling for another pass. Someone was howling into their radio, demanding that the covering Argent return to give some air support. As Arty watched the shape come at him, he began to see definition. It was matte-black, he could see that immediately. It was also mostly flat, bar it’s middle, shaped like a 21st century stealth bomber more than an avian. All of this, he processed in a second, as it darted past them. A myrmidon tried jump-packing out of the way, but the creature clipped him with one wing, sending the soldier spiraling away with a scream and a spray of blood. Then, another, more familiar roar as the supporting argentavis came in drowned out the windbolt’s humming. Arty watched in horror as the Windbolt banked, and came straight at the second argent, whose single-use rocket pod was swiveling to aim. “Oh fu-” The rockets fired just as the Windbolt came too close to miss. The air reverberated with explosions, and a deafeaning metallic screetch. When the din had died away, Arty raised his head. The argent was still there, rotors keeping it upright, while the smoke from the missiles dissipated. There was a foot-long gash in paint on the argent’s cargo bay’s near side, however. “What the hell happened?” The myrmidon who had been covering him scowled. “They missed.” “What?” “I dunno how but that creature did a barrel roll or something, avoided the missiles and grazed the side of the argent. He looked around. “At least it seems to be gone now. Let’s get out of here.” -DAY REPORT -HYDROPONICS LABS SET UP -MINE SITE SELECTED -1 MYRMIDON WOUNDED IN WINDBOLT ATTACK (slashed midsection) -BUCKET WHEEL EXCAVATOR A BEGINS CONSTRUCTION AT SELECTED MINE SITE FRIDAY Dr Ramirez contentedly let the silent hum of machinery in the science module’s main lab lull her into a sense of security. The mod had just finished construction last night and had power connected to it this morning. She laid out her tools. Today, her main goals would be to find a human-friendly way of getting rid of the magnafaenum, and to study what fauna were brought in. So far, she had identified the main residences of these plains She flicked on her recorder. “Ramheads seemed to be one of the more populace creatures, but outnumbered by the more common Quadrapedes. Quadrapedes seemed to be one of the more simpleminded creatures, and very much prey animals. Judging by how many of the harmless creatures had been spotted, she guessed that they had very a very high breeding rate. Like most creatures, they were both herbivores and vegrandivores. Quadrapedes have mouths suited for scooping things, and teeth suited for grinding and mashing. Their limbs, however, are digited, allowing them to climb trees as well as lope along the ground. Unfortunately we also found what appears to be…dangerous balloon swarms, if you belive it. I’ve included a sketch. This is what we call an “Air-Jell” These mostly clear creatures are filled with natural methane sacks that they use to float high in the air. Each one is about the size of a fully grown human male, and each one has four stinging tendrils that, when brushed, deliver a powerful neurotoxin. We lost one of our miners to a group of them yesterday. They seem to travel in loose groups, from a dozen to several hundred.” SATURDAY Dr Ramirez stroked her chin. It was night time. Three in the morning, to be exact. In one and a half hours, the base would start waking up again. She paced back and forth over the steel floor of the empty science module, avoiding tables and chairs unconsciously. Ramirez glanced out of the observation deck’s huge picture windows as she walked. In the base below, down the main ‘street,’ a stretch of steel foundations and packed earth road between the ops-center and the science module, that was lined with habmods. A pair of Dominuses walked down the street, floodlights stabbing into the darkness. The “Windbolt” hadn’t been back for several days bar it or it’s kin’s attack on administrator smith. She stopped her pacing and looked back at her notes. -The local cellular life does not encode it’s genetic data in nucleic acid. -Exocharya, that is, the local cellular domain, encodes its genetic information in parallel ladder-shaped structures with properties similar to both DNA and RNA that are stored in organelles that appear outwardly similar to ribosomes. -The blastocyst varies between plant and animal, rather than the cell wall, in this case (bar the kingdom exoborea (Alien trees) and Exochoral (Alien land coral)) Plant blastocysts are much tougher, whearas animal blastocysts are more yielding. The cell wall of both is yielding, but somewhat rigid, giving most creatures a leathery skin texture. -A protein-synthesizing organelle that functions a little like a molecular motor is common in every cell. -All in all, we are utterly incompatible with the local cellular life. She sighed. None of this was particularly useful, from a business sense. It was fascinating, of course, from a scientific sense, however. Of particular note, was how the local life could metabolize earth proteins. According to her studies, humans could actually metabolize some of the local fauna, though others were totally inedible. Quadrapedes, for example, were edible. Most Vegrandids were not, though. She rubbed her forehead and sat down. By rights, she should go back to her quarters downstairs and get to sleep. She sighed. Not likely. Best she just prepare for tomorrow. Kesa Myr’s Log, Saturday, March 11th Oh. My. God. Fuck blue whales. We were flying over a stretch of plains, almost identical to the ones we’d left, and we saw this thing in the distance. We couldn’t believe our eyes, initially. We call it a Knifehead. Dr Ramirez calls it a Cornicephalous Maximus. Five of these orange-red creatures were thundering around the edge of the rainforest, and, I kid you not, uprooting trees by bashing them with their gigantic heads, then logging them. Literally knockin g hundred meter tall trees down, then cutting them by making chopping motions with their heads, to eat their insides. We just stopped and stared. This was our third day of travel, and we’d seen a lot of strange creatures, but this thing took the cake. As we watched these truly godlike creatures (evidently herbivores) graze on the forest (they would often stand up on two legs, using their forelegs to lean against the tree, to eat leaves and branches from the canopy) I was just in awe. After nearly half an hour of watching them, I watched them fight. One of them knocked over a tree, and another, larger one sidled up, bodyslamming the younger one out of the way with the force of an earthquake, staggering it. The big one started to eat the tree the young one had knocked over, and the younger one started bellowing exactly like a damned air raid siren and pawing the ground. (sound below) vocaroo.com/i/s1FEmH9OMafiThe bigger one turned, and bellowed even louder. Then the other one charged, and they hit one another like continents moving. The giant knifeheads kept going for a while, until the elder one rushed the younger one, knocked him to the ground and rammed his head right into his side, gutting him. And I mean gutting. There was enough blood to fill an Olympic pool, and the organs were the size of officer buildings. These creatures fight to the death, it looks like. SUNDAY Kesa Myr and her two argentavises both arrived at the edge of the Gorge around nightfall. Kesa and one geologist would make the trip to the actual lode itself the next day, via the Tangent hovercar that the second argent had carried to conserve their transport’s fuel. They landed in a clearing, stopping for the night and the myrmidons spread out, placing floodlamps, in case any nocturnal predators showed up. They would all sleep in pressurized field tents tonight. Kesa and a pair of myrmidons took a stroll through the undergrowth that grew near the side of the gorge, roughly sixty meters away, patrolling the edge of the camp. Kesa looked upwards. The alien sky was stretched out before here, like a glowing tapestry. Even though her own reflection in her faceplate marred the image slightly, she still gazed up in wonder. At SUESC01, the floodlamps an lights of the aritificial city blocked out most light. On earth, the stars were almost never visible. But here, Kesa Myr saw the stars for the first time, the sky unclouded by pollution. “That’s beautiful.” Her eyes searched until she found it. The small, bright white light that was her home, four point thirty six light years away. She wondered what her son was doing. He was three when she left. He’d be eight now. He’d be eighteen when she returned. Then, Kesa’s foot bumped against something in the undergrowth. She looked down. Something shimmered by her feet. Kesa got to one knee and scraped away the leaves. The shimmering was coming off something dull and brown, scraped in several places. A large, hard object, covered in dirt. Frowning, she poured her water bottle on it, and wiped away the filth. She picked it up and stared. It was a large, lead cone, tapered at one end, the thick end covered in a spiraling groove. It was mostly hollow. It was covered in pits, showing age and disuse, and moss grew in patches on it, but there was no denying what she was looking at. One of her men walked up. “Colonel? What do you have there?” She looked up and stared right through him. “A rifled artillery shell.” _______________ INBOX: COMMANDER From: Ramirez, Theresa I’ve patched up the wounded myrmidon in the med bay, but it’ll take him a week to recover. I looked at the wound. It’s a cut, about four inches deep, into his belly area, that cut into his small intestine as well. The strangest thing is that the cut is approximately forty molecules wide. It’s the most precise cut made by anything natural and alive, ever. From: Ulysses, Jebidiah We’ve finished work on the Apex, commander. We’ve actually had to do some rather substantial overhauls. The main point defense systems were taken out, and replaced with sensor arrays. We’ve got a pop-socket dish array where the main armature would be. We’ve also replaced the laser grid with static dampers and transmission boosters. The interior has been converted to handle long trips. However, most of the space-life support had to be removed. Also, we had to take out the intrastellar thruster, as it’s power draw was interfering with the signals, and the trans-orbital booster engines, as that would have fried the aft sensor arrays. So the bad news is that this vehicle is now permanently stuck on primordia. The good news is that it’s probably the most advanced exploration tool in our arsenal now. The cargo bay’s fore port and starboard are now home to a pair of onboard computers we developed from spare parts for our mods. It can carry two disassembled argentavises in an aft rack on the ceiling, and now has a housing space fit for carrying 50 personnel. Medical has been widened out, and lab space added, as well as a communal sleeping area made from spare habmod beds. From: Myr, Kesa Commander, I’ve found something. A hollow-point one hundred and seventy five millimeter rifled artillery shell. Hollow-bottomed. According to our chemist, there’s residue that suggests it used to have some sort of armor-penetrating tip. There’s no ballistics scoring on its sides though, so it may never have been fired.
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