Session 5??  Definately not the Session 5 log..

I have to admit I’ve been remiss in creating Session Logs, primarily because I’ve lacked the inspiration to write them. With Paul retiring sick last night, Jon on earlies, and Kevin missing, I felt it was necessary to write one for last night even if Hannah is likely to be the only person likely to read it.

If Only I could fly this thing..

We started the session where we left off previously.

Two and Four in Engineering, Four having killed both the creatures that at one time may have been human, and Two having been bitten on the side of the neck  and scratched across her torso. Given that she is wearing a spacesuit (and no they are not armoured, they’re just basic suits) she is unable to have her wounds treated where she currently is.

Three has managed to get back on board the Far Horizon’s transfer shuttle, having bounced off it and then been bounds further away when he was impacted by the shuttle when Six tried to rescue him. Whilst he was drifting about he did notice that the Far Horizon’s second transfer shuttle was docked in a “U” of ISO cargo containers in the forward cargo area. Note like modern cargo carriers ISO containers are carried in stacks on the deck of the ship with a difference. For a start the actual cargo deck is ‘inside’ the side walls of the Far Horizon, and they containers are locked into holding bays, and protected by a segmented retractable lattice roof.

One and Seven are going round in circles somewhere in the forward section of the Far Horizon. They’ve encountered one of the creatures which they dispatched and another couple of partially dismembered bodies.

Two and Four decide to make their way back to the Marauder. Given it will take them at least 10 minutes to make their way back, Six and Three decide to make their way to the Razza to drop off the 8000l of fuel they have in the transfer tank unit, before returning.

One and Seven find that they can’t retrace their steps as on section of the ship appears to have suffered further damage when the Android stopped the Far Horizon from rotating along it’s axis. Three and Five suggest just depressurizing the whole ship, given that they are all in space suits. Once Two and Four reach the Marauder, the Android begins the process, allowing One and Seven to begin retracing their steps.

Six screws up the approach to dock the transfer shuttle and crashes it into the shuttle bay, rending both the shuttle and shuttle bay unusable.

This means Six and Three have to EVA on the open space side of the shuttle and then make their way to the shuttle bay air lock to be able to get back to the Marauder.

In the meantime, Four applies a dressing from the first aid kit on the Shuttle (because none of you actually have one or bothered to take one, assuming there is one in the Med Bay, with you) to Two’s wounds. Her neck wound is still bleeding and has acquired a ‘blackened’ hue.

Based on the communicated information, Five suspects that Two has been infected by some form of Nanite infection, and asks Lisa if it’s possible using some form of high energy EMP burst to destroy nanites or a nanite infection. Lisa confirms that its possible to do so, but says that such an action may not help Two. She refuses to be drawn on why, suggesting they wait until Two gets back to the Razza, which does have an Isolation chamber in medical, where she can make a diagnosis.

With everyone back on board the Marauder they return to the Razza, everyone disembarking except Six, Three, Four, and Five, who retrieves a spacesuit (one size fits nobody style), who return to the Far Horizon. Two makes her way to the Med bay where she’s joined by Lisa. It’s been about 105 minutes since she was bitten. Her wound is much blacker now and is still bleeding. Lisa takes a blood sample, and loads it into the medical analyser. Two enters the isolation chamber, Lisa giving her a set of medical coveralls to change into and a sealable box to put her blood soaked clothing into. Lisa reinforces the forcefield on the Isolation chamber.

Preliminary results from the analyser suggest that Two has been infected by some form of mutagenic virus. She set the database to searching for a match.

Five asks if it’s possible to retrieve any sort of logs to identify where the Far Horizon has been. Lisa says that the main computer and data store was severely damaged in the explosion and is out of commission. However, she may be able to retrieve sufficient data from the FTL drive logs to extrapolate where the Far Horizon made its last jump from.

Returning to the Far Horizon, Six manages to manoeuvre the Marauder into a position that allows Five to transfer to the crashed shuttle, with the minimum of effort given she has no EVA experience or skill. Once on board the shuttle she determines that whilst the shuttle is jammed and out of commission it should be possible to undock the transfer tank from the shuttle.

She sets about doing so whilst Six flies the Marauder to the bow of the Far Horizon and docks it to the upper surface of the Far Horizon’s second transfer shuttle (which is dark).

Six and Three attempt an EVA drop to the transfer shuttle airlock but get their trajectories wrong and end up drifting away from the Far Horizon. It takes Three several shots from his rifle to correct their trajectory such that they return several minutes later to the deck of the Far Horizon. It takes them several minutes more to make their way to the airlock of the transfer shuttle.

Boarding the dark shuttle, Six realises that whoever had dock it here had powered it down afterwards, much like they had done to the shuttle in the shuttle bay. The shuttle powers up without issue, although it only has an hour of fuel remaining, and Six undocks it without issue. Once he moves it to a position adjacent to the now undocked transfer tank, he finds that the shuttle now registers both docking drones. [GM NOTE: change here.. it would have been much more logical just to undock the empty drone from the transfer shuttle and then dock the transfer tank.]. He undocks the drone from the transfer shuttle, moving it out of the way, and then docks the transfer tank to the shuttle. He then manoeuvres to pick up Five.

Three wonders if it’s at all possible to repair the transfer tank. Seven thinks he should be able to do it, he thinks he has the basic skills to do so, he just lacks the knowledge of exactly what’s involved. Five thinks she should be able to guide him but would need the Tank somewhere with atmosphere and gravity to do so.

With the Shuttle bay on the Far Horizon out of commission, plus the potential threat of a mass attack by the creatures, they realize that with the docking drone they could move the tank into the rear shuttle bay of the Razza, in a similar manner to how ISO containers would be loaded into the cargo bay of the Razza using the Razza’s own cargo drone (remember in an earlier session you discovered the Loader and Cargo drone in the cargo bay, and that Seven knows how to both use the loader, and remove operate the drone from the loader.

They make their way back to the Razza and transfer the damaged tank to the Razza’s rear shuttle bay.

Six moves the Marauder to the Razza’s forward Shuttle bay, where it’s usually docked, whilst Seven and Five begin the process of swapping the valve units around. Note Five will identify that all three value units need to be present for the transfer connection to work correctly. It doesn’t matter that the damaged valve is connected to the ruptured tank, the transfer module just needs to be able to detect the valve is present even its damaged and inoperable. It takes about an hour to swap the units around.

Lisa has managed to retrieve sufficient data from the FTL drive data cache to determine with 98.4% certainty that the Far Horizon’s last jump was initiated in the Taurean System. The system itself is unremarkable and has no significant resource to speak of. The exception appears to be the Flora of Taurean Alpha, and one tree like species in particular that has the capability to live for tens of thousands of years.

The system was originally discovered by the Traugott Corporation who established a Research base of Taurean Alpha, with a view to determining if it were possible to identify and extract the relevant DNA segments from the DNA structure of the trees with a view to extending Human life span.

About 18 months after the establishment of the Research base, something went wrong and the Taurean Alpha Virus, as its designated, was unleashed. It is classified as a Class 1 extinction threat to human life, and the Planet is under GA Quarantine. There is no know cure for the virus and no know survivability of anyone who has contracted it. Symptoms typically appear 3 hours after the virus is contracted, typically via fluid transfer either via a bite or other physical contact with a infected person.

Two is currently not showing any symptoms of the infection.

Six and Three spend the next two hours transferring fuel from the Far Horizon, making 9 round trips in total and transferring another 144,000l of fuel to the Razza (making 171,500l in total). Note the shuttle does need to be refuelled taking 2000l in total.

With Two still not showing any symptoms, Lisa takes another blood sample from her and runs it through the analyser. No virus is detected in the sample.

The decision is made to spend another 2 hours grabbing 9 ISO containers from the Far Horizon prior to Lisa initiating self-destruct. Lisa has determined that somebody attemptted to set the self destruct but appears to have been interupted. She also notes that two Execuative Officers would have been required to initiate the self destruct, yet the logged in Terminal initially had been logged in without Execuative privilage, but was rebooted to give the logged on user Execuative privilage. As she doesn't have a crew roster she can detemine whether the user who had logged in was an EO or not.

Due to the manner in which she has access to the ships control systems via the remote access terminal she can actually initiate self destruct using the emergency engineering override protocol. It will take at least a couple of hours to flood the ship with an explosive fuel/oxygen mix to ensure complete destruction of the ship.

Note with respect to the manifests of the ISO containers. The manifest of each container is encrypted. It would require Five to hack each one and crack the encryption to identify what’s in a container. The ‘readable’ elements are typical of a shipment, where it originates, who shipped it, and where the destination shipping station is, which may not be the final shipping destination.

The containers are also all locked, and again the locks would require cracking to be able to open the containers, which would only generally be done in ‘atmosphere’ as opposed to the cargo deck on the Far Horizon which generally wouldn’t be – it could be done if absolutely necessary but it’s huge and would then need to be depressurised again before containers could be offloaded.

Note: Five’s code cracker is designed for decrypting and cracking complex digital locks, such as the one on the Vault on the Razza. Cracking the manifest encryption is a different operation.

On a secondary note: Five has managed to get 16 of the 24 elements of the code to the vault. Narrative Imperative takes over at this point so you’ll have to use another means to get the remainder.. The 16 characters you have so far are “Miss Maplethorpe”.

What’s in the containers is for the next session..

---

		Back
	Session Index		Dark Matter

Site Created and Maintained by Kevin Cowley©2025
Page Created 23/07/2025 Last Updated 23/07/2025