Crashes and Craters
In which worlds collide, lightning strikes, and pleasant winds waft away.
Crash Course
The ship Chit calls Resumption vanished through the Gate last Pulse and, while it’s not exactly visible when the Gates reopen, it has left traces that even a brain smaller than a planet would have no trouble understanding. The lights of Etro have a hole in them where the enormous ship punched through at high speed. Chit shudders at the thought of a collision of this magnitude -- its own experience with the arrival of the minor “Nest” structure now floating amid T shows just how destructive this must have been.
Fanion, Flourishing
Chit sends a baadal to Pock. The baadal exerts itself to align its magnetic membrane precisely to the rim of the crater that Fanion has made its home. The baadal then squeezes itself, achieving an extreme (for baadal) density. As a result, it rains on that tiny moon for the first time in an eternity. The droplets fall, large and round and slow, like marbles through a swirling red-orange smoke. Soon puddles form around the robot, rising to cover its wheels.
Fanion extends a hose and drinks. Vents in its underbelly and upper carapace open, and compressors intake gas. Lights illuminate. Components begin to thrum. Appendages flex. The diminutive creature -- measurable in meters -- is grateful to the point of worship.
“Ask and I shall obey,” Fanion declares.
The baadal strikes Fanion with a bolt of calibrated lightning, imparting to the robot’s circuitry all information known about the Pleasant Winds, along with an intense hunger for more information.
Mission accomplished and energy spent, the baadal’s overtaxed membrane pops. Its gas escapes to space, as true a death as any storm has ever had. In time, its constituent atoms will fall back to Chit. And of course, its last rains and winds gave new life to Fanion.
Pleasant Winds
Meanwhile in a sunny crater a quarter-turn around the moon from Fanion, a different saamoohik moves to interface with the Pleasant Winds. The ship is shielded against intrusions from outside actors, thwarting the saamoohik’s limited tools for connecting to electronics.
The arrival of a third party changes matters. A small ship arrives through the Gates just before the second Pulse closes. In signal exchanges, the new visitors identify themselves as followers of Yeb the Goddess Incarnate, in the scoutship Credo. When they land near Pleasant Winds, the backwash from Credo’s thrusters disturbs the proximate baadal, and by the time the saamoohik reasserts itself, Yeb’s four-armed, four-legged devotees have disembarked to approach the Pleasant Winds on foot. The saamoohik sends a breeze into the Pleasant Wind’s airlocks when they open -- not a full consciousness, but enough to breach the electronic perimeter from the inside.
The resulting information flood is too much for the saamoohik to process. But help is on the way -- Fanion is on the move. The robot races toward the site on eight long lever-like limbs, each triple-jointed. Wheels make for the fastest transit, but Fanion also leaps like an insect even as it drives. In dreamlike bounds that seem to arc almost forever, Fanion arrives at the Pleasant Winds. Gouts of moondust spring up wherever Fanion touches down; they sparkle and linger in the low gravity.
Fanion’s incipient arrival elicits a reaction from the ships. Yeb’s devotees dash from the Pleasant Winds in great haste, leaving the airlock open behind them in their rush. Their space suits are strangely distended, and between them they carry a stretcher with a compartment -- more like a palanquin than a medical emergency.
They wait only long enough to see Fanion reach the Pleasant Winds and plug his cabling into ports on the hull before the Credo launches.
The Pleasant Winds has been left entirely open, and the Saamoohik is free to move itself in and out. It understands only a little, but Fanion is a good translator, providing imagery and explanations.
The Pleasant Winds was the property of a particularly powerful and wealthy individual, one of the Peers of Peare. Peare is a star system one jump beyond Junxn 4, and contains at least one gas giant. When the Gates closed, Peer Jorun Carvanian of House Trogondor invited many other stranded visitors to shelter with her. Some declined, while others accepted. Four survivors have now departed on the Credo, believing that Fanion intended them harm. They wished to return to their homeworld, (homeworlds?). Jorun herself was not among the survivors, but at least one of the survivors was her progeny. Over the course of explaining this, Fanion conveys huge amounts of context, like matriarchal society, feudalism, heredity, life support systems and horse.
Fanion believes that with parts from other derelicts on Pock, the Pleasant Winds can be restored to working order by the time the Gates open for Pulse 4. Records of those who lived here could be salvaged but must be decrypted. Alternatively, Fanion can attach its engines directly to himself and scrap the remainder of the ship for an estimated gain of 5 Ore and 5 Rares. Dismantling the ship means foregoing the opportunity to learn more about its inhabitants.
In either case, Fanion will be spaceflight-capable next Pulse, but must remain on Pock for Pulse 3.
The Credo meanwhile rockets toward the PulseGate in time to see it open for Pulse 3. It sends messages through the open Gate and adjusts course before passing through.
The Nest: Redux
T observes exactly one blast of high-powered radio transmissions from the Nest during the entirety of this Pulse. It is aimed not at the Gate, but at the scoutship Credo.
Next Week: I, of the Storm